Consious sayings tattoos

Yeah don't get upset over useless internet drama, it doesn't really matter, go touch grass etc. You're absolutely right but like bruh, my shoulders. My fucking shoulders! I'm a recording artist, I've posted so much controversial shit about social justice, religious hypocrites, mental health, feminism and religion, issues of the youth of the day but the most divisive thing I've posted are my shoulders.... what am I doing wrong?
So for context I posted a cute outfit I wore to church one day, the outfit showed my shoulders where I also have a tattoo. The comments and the arguing that ensued over the fact my shoulders were showing kinda shocked me tbh. Like usually I'll get a few rude comments but they get downvoted, I'll tell them they're being rude and we all move on. But they kept coming. The arguments for, the arguments against. Tried to explain it wasn't their church and that my church doesnt really care about these contentious shoulders of mine...but then started being called an attention whore, one guy told me my facial expression looked cheap and started calling me a whore, and if i didnt want people telling me my shoulders were bad for church why did i specify i wore that outfit to church? It was something...
I get lots of weird dms and a few rude comments here and there but damn, my shoulders? Like I never knew a seemingly benign, and rarely sexualized aspect of my body could elicit so much contention. I did not expect this at all. Despite the comments of people telling me I should have. But despite creating many songs about very controversial issues the biggest reason people are fighting over a post I made is cuz I was showing my shoulders and made the mistake to say I was at church. It honestly makes me sad but also confused. I wasn't prepared to deal with this sort of thing in the comment section under a cute outfit I wore. But I'm sad because the assumption that my church is gonna be as worked up about my shoulders as those commenters are. It's a pretty basic Canadian small town church and sure we've had our run ins but I'm in leadership there and we have developed a community where there's love and mutual respect. Why are people trying to fight me for the sake of my church that they aren't a part of? Anyhow, I guess I should go take care of my plants, they're sprouting!

I’ve been holding money for an inmate and sending money for an inmate, I know that it’s not for drugs or anything.
I know that it has to do with tattoos. I think the CO’s have cracked down on it though bc the inmate got a lay in slip for it.
Now I feel kind of anxious because I don’t want to get in any trouble and I don’t want the inmate to get in any trouble. I know tattoos are against the rules though. I would understand if the inmate got in trouble, but it’s not drugs or alcohol or cigarettes or anything. Just tattoo stuff.
I’ve also sent money for commissary, buying someone else’s commissary… & It is such a struggle in there.. inmates need a hustle if they have no financial stability outside of the prison. I make barely anything to support the inmate, I do my best but they wanted to hustle and I wasn’t going to say no because again… prison is hard to survive in.
I just hope and pray that they don’t get in any serious trouble. The inmate said I won’t get in any trouble so hopefully not. I don’t even live in the same state so idk.

Everyone knows of the modern (and previous) subculture of Christians that are self righteous and hypocritical. The way they act towards anyone “different” from them goes against their beliefs. Rather than people poking at that, folks would rather debate with scriptures that were also used out of context.
It doesn’t matter what kind of book you’re reading, context always matters. Applying that logic to the bible doesn’t automatically convert you, okay? Christians, already think they’re being attacked for what they believe in and if they notice you’re not using the right scripture, they’ll become more defensive than they already are.
One group is wrong for how they’re treating people and the other group is trying to do right with the wrong words. Rather than talking about tattoos or mixed fabrics, use these instead pls:
Ecclesiastes 7:16 Do not be overly righteous, neither be otherwise- why destroy yourself?
Philippians 2:3 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourself.” Now we know these people don’t think they’re vain but it’s still a funny jab.
Proverbs 19:17 If you are generous to the poor, you are lending to the Lord - and he will repay you.
Matthew 7:1-3 Do not judge, for you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
1 John 4:20 (lol) “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” You can claim to love a person and not go out of your way to love them through your actions. Guess what, that’s hate. If a Christian says, “I don’t hate the sinner, I hate the sin,” ask them how they plan to love the sinner.
Jeremiah 23:11 “Both prophet and priest are godless; even in my temple I find their wickedness, declares the Lord.”
Matthew 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” If a Christian has a huge social media presence, don’t even bother lol.
2 Timothy 3:5 Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
Matthew 23:28 So you appear outwardly righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
If a Christian hits you with the “you cannot serve two masters,” tell them to recite the whole verse because it refers to money.
I’m not telling you to be a believer but the best thing we as humans can do is to do good. Just ask Christians questions and if they don’t have a good answer, just leave them where they are and stop feeding their egos.

Alright, here's the setup:
I am an artificer of 2nd level or higher, and have decided to do stupid things with the most abusable infusion: replicate magic item
I am specifically replicating the spellwrought tattoo, of course.
The spellwrought tattoo is a great item to replicate, because at the allowed common rarity it can hold one use of any cantrip or first level spell, ignoring ALL material components, even ones with a prie requirement.
Now, i'm going to use this to cast the cantrip Booming Blade (Green-Flame also works) which has a material component of a melee weapon worth at least 1 sp. The spell itself involves the use of that weapon to make an attack.
therefor, if i cast this spell voiding all material components, i will have used NOTHING to cast it, and so when the spell says i use "the weapon used in the spell's casting" i will NOT make any attacks, completely wasting the action.
there is of course no point to doing this, but it's still funny

Two years ago, I met this guy before the summer of ninth grade, I was fourteen and a half and he had just turned fifteen a week ago. I was on family vacation in my homeland country, visiting relatives and whatnot and my cousin was like, “hey, I’m gonna hangout with my friends, do you wanna come with me?” And I said sure, because I wanted to get out of my small bubble and meet people and socialize. And she introduced me to her friends, and one of them specifically caught my eye. It was awkward at first, weird small talk, short laughs, and long silence. But then day after day, we got closer and closer and there wasn’t much silence left with how much we would laugh and talk about absolutely nothing. Then, two weeks later, he asked me out on a date. We went to this tea park, he got me caramel and vanilla ice cream and watermelon flavored sparkling water, and it was delicious. Then, he asked me on another date to the library, and we would sit there, him reading the books to me while I listened because I couldn’t Turkish that well even though I spoke it really good. He would call me beautiful and his pretty girl in Turkish and in Arabic. We went on more dates, stargazing, the movies, the tea park, and I guess we both didn’t realize we were running out of time, that I would have to go back to America soon. It was our last night hanging out, and we made a promise to each other that when I came back next summer, we would pick up where we were, because we both didn’t feel comfortable in a long distance relationship. Months passed by and came along spring time and my mom said we were going to turkey for the summer. I was excited. Overjoyed. So freaking happy that I was gonna see him again. I remember going to turkey, going to the tea park with my cousin, but she was being weird, saying how the friend group fell apart and stuff but i wasn’t really paying attention to what she was saying. We get to the tea park, and I go to order what i usually get, caramel and vanilla ice cream but the person worker, is the guy that I have been in love with for months now and have been so excited to see. But he doesn’t remember me. For a second, I thought he was joking, but no. He had completely forgotten me. I remember trying so hard to not cry, holding myself back from saying anything because if I did, I would become a sobbing mess in front of everyone and nobody really knew me and him were more than just friends. Our trip ended, but the night before we were gonna head to Istanbul for our plane, me and my cousin went to the grocery store, and I bumped into someone. And it was him. I thought maybe now it would click, maybe now if my cousin reintroduced us, he would remember me, but no. He just smiled and walked away. Once I got home, I tried to forget him too, just as he had forgotten me but i couldn’t. I was doing good, keeping him out of my memory, until two-ish weeks ago when my cousin texted me saying it was urgent. Apparently, people can change. That whole friend group broke up but came back together, but instead, they came back together as a gang. Such as drugs, money, guns, all that shit. He had gotten tattoos and a buzzcut. She called me and talked to me about him, saying he was asking about me and all this crap, and all I could think was “did he not remember me when he saw me those two times?” Because now, whenever I go to a library, eat caramel or vanilla ice cream, watch the stars, I remember him. But he couldn’t remember me. When she called me, he was there, beside her, and I made eye contact with him, and I told myself “that’s not the guy I fell in love with.” I ended the call and told my cousin I never want to talk to him again or see him or have anything to do with him, because I could give him a chance, but really, it wouldn’t be worth it. A guy like that, that used to be so sweet and kind and who became this guy, covered in ink with drugs and guns on him, that wasn’t the guy I loved. I’m still trying to forget him, and sometimes I think just maybe, if I had agreed to saying yes, to a long distance relationship, even though he didn’t have a phone, and we just wrote letters to each other, he would be the same sweet boy. I guess I’ll always have to wonder, what could’ve been. It’s been hard, and I don’t know how to let him go, especially with how easily everyone around me lets go of people, but I can’t do the same.

She was used to disturbing dreams. For a while after the… incident, they’d been full of clowns. Clowns with sickly green eyes, in bad boaters and garish Hawaiian shirts. This one was different, disturbing in a less placeable way.
The room is pristine white and clean. It should be full of light, but something about it is dim and dingy. Large windows line the walls, but outside there is thick smog or mist; only a few slender fingers of light can make it through. There is a seat at one of the windows. A boy sits on the seat, dressed all in white. Somehow she knows to call this boy ‘brother.’
The brother stares out at nothing in particular, unless it is merely the world beyond the walls. She decides to take a few steps closer to him, then stops dead, blood running cold. The brother turns in his seat to look dead at her. He seems almost entirely like an ordinary boy until you see his eyes. They were full of something like hate. Actually hate seems too mild a word for what is in those eyes. Hate is human. These eyes are full of a murderous intent, guided almost it seems by a higher-lower power. It transcends anything human.
In her mind’s eye she sees fat specks of blood spatter on a pitch black surface like drops of rain.
Barbara Gordon jerked half-awake in her hospital bed. Whoa. Damn sedative. She was embarrassingly aware of a puddle of drool next to her mouth and was grateful to see Dick was not around. So where was everyone? Pitch black out. What time was it? Eight? Nine?
Easy, Barb. You nodded off. Dick decided to go do something besides watch you sleep. Nothing to panic about. She was aware of her legs again. Or still, rather. Before the ‘incident’ she would have guessed that paraplegics lost all feeling in their legs. Even after making a hundred new adjustments, relearning how to pull on her pants, coming to terms with how screwed she’d be as a wheelchair-user with a second-floor apartment, even after all that, she still felt phantom pains going up and down her legs some nights.
Well. If everything went alright tonight, that might change. A doctor flown in from South Africa, a quick surgical technique that was younger than she was, and Barbara Gordon could walk again.
Damn, she was tired. Her eyes were stinging from the effort of keeping the lids open. She let them close. Not to sleep. Just a little rest… what was she dreaming about before she woke, anyway? Something about a brother wanting to kill his sister. The details were already slipping out of her mind.
She sighed comfortably. Not sleeping. Just a little rest.
***
Dick Grayson sipped from a cup of truly awful coffee (he had been warned) and grinned. Inconvenient delays aside, he’d managed to kill an enjoyable couple hours in the commissary with a pair of nurses named Pieter and Asa while Kadaver’s Mystery Theater played Thing From Another World. Dick was fairly certain, despite his best efforts, he was hitting it off with at least one of them.
“So you really grew up in a circus?”
“Yep.”
“Sorry, you just don’t seem the type.”
“To bite heads off chickens or balance a ball on my nose?”
“I mean. For example.”
“I was an acrobat. In an act with my parents and my Aunt Harry. We were the Flying Graysons.”
“No way.”
“Yeah. It was pretty normal, really. I had a teacher who traveled with us, I had chores, friends. And when we were on the road we had coffee even worse than this. Tastes like nostalgia.”
Easygoing chatter was interrupted by a noise from a nearby table, the only other one occupied. An orderly was seated there, one whose demeanor rather aptly conveyed ‘sleazeball’ without requiring too much consultation with his appearance. He was, to put it mildly, engaging a coworker standing slightly behind him, with a good deal more physicality than was strictly indicated professional ethics. The object of his affections, evidently accustomed to it, stalked off acidly while the seated orderly smirked.
Turning to his two new acquaintances, Dick raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“That’s Morty Drake,” Pieter murmured, distaste evident. “Not really the most popular guy.”
“Wouldn’t be here if we’d had even one more person apply for the job,” Asa added.
Morty Drake, still unabashed, was now singing softly to himself. “Ohhh, my love, my darling, I hunger for your pie. Oh, IIII’ll be theeere-” Abruptly, Dick made up his mind.
“Hey,” he called across the room. He was aware of Pieter and Asa looking alarmed but pressed on. “That was a bit much, don’t you think? Might want to think about apologizing.”
Drake shot him a murderous glance. “Might wanna mind your own business, dicklick.” To punctuate the suggestion, he pulled a switchblade that certainly wasn’t part of the standard uniform.
Wonder if he came up with that before or after hearing my name. Dick idly noticed a rather skillfully-done tattoo of a skeletal Musketeer on the man’s neck. He found it somehow uplifting to look for redeeming features in unpleasant people. He realized with a start that he still had ‘Maid of Honor’ tucked away in a pocket.
Dick heaved a deep, theatrical sigh. “Oh, I’d really rather not do this. But since you’re testing me. You want to take this outside?”
Drake sneered. “You’re on.”
As Pieter and Asa watched in horror, both men stood, and both sauntered languidly and insolently towards the exit door to the back alley. Dick popped the door open, then was shoved aside haughtily by Drake, who walked out first.
Dick gently shut the door behind him, let the lock click, and walked back to the table, where Pieter and Asa were staring, stupefied. He tossed Drake’s artfully-swiped security pass onto the table.
“Told him I didn’t want to do it.”
***
It took Mortimer Drake a few seconds to realize he’d been locked out, after which he immediately began seething with rage. His keycard wasn’t in its usual pocket, either, leaving him stuck with a few king-size dumpsters. A few moments’ pounding on the door met with no response, though it made him feel marginally better. That goddam skinny pretty boy fruit. Gonna kick his ass.
Mortimer Drake gritted his teeth and stomped in a random direction, trying to orient himself. Nothing looked familiar in the dark. And damn, it was cold. He fantasized about pounding the fruit’s face inside-out in the vain hope that sufficient anger could make him feel warm.
He had walked along perhaps thirty minutes when he suddenly felt a strange feeling that he was being watched. Instinctively his hand went for the switchblade in his pocket, and he stopped to look behind him. Nothing there. But the hairs on the back of his neck were still pricking. He shrugged and moved on, muttering.
It occurred to Mortimer that he wouldn’t be able to get in through the usual entrance without getting a chewing-out for losing his ID. They’d blame him for something like that, never mind the punk in the cafeteria stole it from him. But… there was a window in the hydrotherapy room that was sometimes left unlocked. He might make a discreet entrance through there.
He picked up his pace a bit, cramming down the sensation that the thing watching him was now following him.
***
Harvey Bullock drove rather faster than was advisable through the Old Gotham. Even flooded with light, the city seemed dark tonight, and the darkness seemed to be staring at him, dark like a pair of empty eyeholes. Out in the darkness was the Shape.
Gordon had been right. Bullock had been something very close to a good cop, once. Maybe he’d taken money, when it was offered. In this town, who hadn’t? But he’d known where to draw the line. He’d never roughed up anyone who didn’t have it coming and he’d never turned a blind eye to anything that would keep him up at night.
The first night Michael Myers had run amok in Gotham City, Bullock had been on duty. In point of fact, he had run the bastard over in a car. And then Myers’ insane psychiatrist had given him an unneeded tracheotomy via pen-knife. Hits had kept coming through weeks of recovery. All of a sudden he didn’t have a job anymore, and neither did Montoya. Took a shot, turned out to be the wrong target, and out on her ass. Accusations like that stuck with a cop all their lives, even ones who kept their jobs. Shoot the wrong person, and ‘extenuating circumstances’ were just two words in a dictionary.
Bullock had been lucky enough to land on his feet. But somehow he’d never left that night behind. The nightmares had started not long after he left the hospital. Even though it hadn’t been Myers that slashed his throat, in the dreams it was always that pale mask-face. Some kind of darkness had gotten into him that night, through the wound in his neck, and it had spent the last few years festering.
“I got you now, you bastard,” Bullock muttered to himself. “Evil dies tonight.”
Tonight. By his hand. No need for Gordon, no need for the Bat. This was between him and Myers. Harvey Bullock drove faster than was strictly necessary, into the darkness.
***
The hospital really was quiet for a Halloween night. Even in small towns, you could normally expect a few minor disasters on a Halloween. Evidently the lengthening string of local disasters was persuading Gothamites in the East End to stay indoors after dark. That should have been a relief to Dr. Kinsolving; with staff begging off early to go to parties, they were short-staffed by now. Instead the emptiness felt oddly disquieting. Her footsteps seemed to fill entire hallways.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she rounded a hallway and came face to face with Dick Grayson.
“Sorry!” the young man said, almost a whisper.
Kinsolving realized with a little embarrassment that she’d yelped, and grasped for her composure. “No. I- it’s Grayson, isn’t it? You were with Barbara Gordon. Are you still here?”
Grayson looked apologetic. “Sorry,” he said, voice still low. Kinsolving guessed that the Gordon girl must have been asleep. “We were waiting on some test results and never got them. I kind of lost track of time, I was-” and there he abruptly cut himself off, blushing slightly. “Actually I’ve been trying to get ahold of someone.”
He said it perfectly patiently, but to the doctor it sounded like the kind of patience that was just impatience trying to be polite. With another touch of embarrassment she realized how long they’d been kept waiting. On a slow night, too. Old Thompkins would have been furious.
“I’m terribly sorry, I don’t know what could be taking so long. Normally I would get some kind of notice from a technician-”
“Would his name be Morty Drake, by any chance?”
“Well… yes. How did you-”
“Never mind.”
“In any case, I’ll go along to the lab and see if the results are ready.”
“I’ll come with you,” Grayson said, innocently enough but clearly brooking no argument. Something about him seemed slightly on edge.
Kinsolving didn’t feel much like arguing, in any case. She was on edge herself. A little company would not be amiss. She walked briskly and Grayson kept pace with almost insolent ease. He had an undeniable charisma about him; Kinsolving was fairly certain he’d spent the last hour or so flirting with nursing staff.
Come to think of it. Where could Drake have gotten to? The doctor pursed her lips. Some day she was going to have to file a report on that one.
“Here we are,” she said at last. “If you could just hold on out here for a moment.” Grayson nodded obligingly.
Kinsolving poked her head into the lab, entering quietly, not quite tiptoeing. It was surprisingly dark. Too dark for anyone to be working. But she could make out someone sitting in the shadows. Judging from the hairstyle:
“Drake,” she said, relieved but annoyed. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
It did not occur to her, in that moment, that Drake was unusually quiet for almost anyone and especially for Drake. It was only as she got closer to him that she began to realize something was wrong. Shondra Kinsolving had been a doctor in Gotham City a long time. She, it must be said, had seen some terrible things- things done by patients, to patients, to doctors, on occasion even by doctors (she still had nightmares about what had happened with Giggling Rendell in Surgery). Nothing had quite prepared her for what had happened to Drake.
It was the smell that reached her first, but she didn’t fully process it until she felt Drake’s shoulder. It squelched. He was soaking wet. And his skin, she could see by the little remaining light, was angry, blistering red, outermost layers peeled and torn away from musculature. Drake had been boiled alive, or drowned; either way his head had been held under scalding hot water- the hydrotherapy tanks, she realized- until he died.
Kinsolving’s hand started to go over her mouth, either to stifle a scream or hold back vomit. She wasn’t sure which. But before her hand could reach her mouth, another one was there. A wet, warm hand with strength like an iron bar. She tried to scream, couldn’t. Thrashed desperately, to no avail. Out of the corner of her eye, through panic, she saw the face of the man behind her, covered in a leathery clown mask of human skin. And she saw, clamped in the other hand, a syringe inching towards her eye, thumb slowly depressing the plunger. It was close now. Closer.
And suddenly the iron grip relaxed, and she could kick free. As she did, she could hear a grunt of surprise and the flapping of pages as a book hit the Shape in the side of its head. Less than a second later the Shape’s legs came out from beneath it, and it plummeted to the floor. She felt something grip her hand, and heard Dick Grayson’s voice. “Come on. Hurry.”
By some miracle her legs began working.
They were nearly out of the room, away from Drake’s mangled body and the nightmare in the clown-skin mask. A short distance that felt like an infinity. She heard a gasp of pain from Grayson, turned around- the Shape, lunging across the floor like an animal, had pulled a scalpel from somewhere, gashed the young man’s leg. A balletic kick to the masked face sent it sprawling once more.
They made it. Out of the room. Safe. No. Not safe.
Sheer survivor instinct was numbing her senses. She could barely comprehend what Grayson was doing as he pulled something- a short metal rod?- from a pocket, and jammed it through the door’s handles.
“What was that thing?” Kinsolving said. Shrieked, really. Her voice was not under her own control.
“Mask’s different. But I’m pretty sure we just met Michael Myers. Serial killer with very messed-up ideas about Halloween pranks.” Grayson said, grimly. He was leaning slightly, sparing a leg; the scalpel must have caught him. Kinsolving half-noticed a second layer of clothing under his jeans as he groped in his pocket.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I… When he stabbed me, I think he somehow got my knife.”
She barely paid attention to that. “Is that going to hold him?!”
Suddenly the door dented outwards. Once. Twice. Again and again. The brace in the handles bent from the strain.
“Smart money says no. Run.Not ideal conditions to be facing an unstoppable serial killer, he reflected, drawing the other one. Not that facing unstoppable serial killers is ideal itself.
Nothing for it. His thumb squeezed a button on a hidden button in the stick’s base, feeling it extend and hum. Not just a stick anymore. Now it was a stun baton. That ought to at least give Myers a headache. There wasn’t much use in getting into costume now. The opportune moment for a dramatic Nightwing entrance was officially past. So, time for another tried-and-true tactic. As the Master said, ‘if your opponent is of bad temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, so that he may grow arrogant.’
“Heeeeey, Mikey Mikey Mikey,” Dick called out, as he moved through the halls. “Didn’t hurt your face too bad, did I? The clown look suits you, by the way.”
He rounded another corner, carefully. Focus. Like Bruce taught you. What can you sense? At the moment, it was the lingering smell of Drake’s boiled flesh. Smelled like guilt. Sorry, Drake. All things considered, you didn’t deserve that. Along with the smell, there was sound-
Dick Grayson whirled out of the way just as a knife, pink-handled and engraved with MAID OF HONOR, stabbed through the air. A nanosecond from piercing his neck, the wicked curved blade gouged straight through the wall next to him. Dick felt his neck muscles tense as he imagined what that blade would have done to him.
He got his first good look at Michael Myers.
The Boogeyman did not look like a knife-wielding lunatic in a pair of coveralls. He looked like a shadow that had come to life, undying hatred in its black, black eyes. The preserved clown-skin mask, wrapped around his head on leather straps, gave his face a nightmare grin, and those black eyes peeked out now through the holes, alive with naked hate. Looking at him.
“Hi, Mike,” Dick breathed.
The Shape, of course, said nothing. But suddenly the knife was moving again, whistling through the air. Dick leapt. As the knife swung wildly he vaulted the monster’s shoulder, running across the wall and landing behind. Pain! lancing through his wounded leg as he hit ground. Ignore.
The stun baton struck Myers once, twice, before Dick flipped backwards out of reach. Just in time; another wild swipe came less than inches from slicing open his belly.
The Shape staggered slightly, only slightly. A hit from the baton should have left even a strong man curled up on the ground in agony. The Shape seemed barely annoyed. Oh, that’s a bad sign. Dick saw the muscles tense. The Shape did his trick well, but it was his only trick- lunge and slash. The day a Flying Grayson couldn’t dodge a knife was the day to hang up the tights.
Again. Alley-oop. Toro! Ole!
This time, ducking down and around, under the knife blow. Another few strong blows with the baton, and something like a grunt of pain this time. Oh, dear. Am I wearing you down?
Again. Again. Avoid the knife, hit him where he was weak. Zap. AGAIN!
The baton had struck Myers no fewer than a dozen times when he/it finally collapsed to one knee, heavy breathing agonized behind the clownface mask. The head dipped, and finally the Shape collapsed to the ground hard enough to shake the hallway. He was beaten.
Dick Grayson sighed. Huh. Okay. Not so tough after all, then. Though for a moment there…
The clown-mask still looked disturbing plastered across Myers’ expressionless face. Dick realized with a start that his hand was reaching out to remove it, almost entirely unbidden by his conscious mind. Time for that later. Get his knife and get some cuffs on him. He undid a spare pair from his belt and reached out, slowly.
Slowly…
He wasn’t sure what alerted him first. Something must have. When Myers stopped playing possum, when he sat upright with mechanical stiffness, he did so fast enough to finally get a good slash in. If Dick hadn’t suddenly sensed it coming it could have been his throat instead of his hand.
He heard himself swear. Felt himself stumble on his wounded leg.
And suddenly the Shape was on its feet and was grabbing him by his jacket, charging forward to pound him into a wall. Dick kept one hand on each of the Shape’s, the one near his throat and the one bringing the knife down at him. The strength was amazing, muscles like steel. Myers slammed him again, twice, vengefully.
Gotta flip him around. Or trip him. Get a foot around his leg-
Somehow Myers sensed his intention. They wriggled, struggled. And before Dick knew what was happening he heard broken glass and felt something sharp brushing his face. He plummeted backwards out the window into the cold night. Falling. Like Mom. Like Dad. Need my grapple.
Only a floor or two up. A short fall. Thought never got the chance to become action. The sickening smack into the ground. The thud against the back of his head, and his vision giving way to blackness.
From the broken window, Myers looked at the ground below, and at Dick Grayson’s quiet, still body sprawled out upon it. He tilted his face, either quizzically or admiringly. This one had surprised him. Come close to defeating him. No worries now. On to the main course. He turned on his heel and stalked for Barbara Gordon’s room.
***
The room was as quiet as a grave. There was not even the sound of footsteps on tile hallway outside, nor was there any creaking as the door opened. It still breezed open, silently, and a horribly patient shadow filled the doorframe. It moved across the floor, still silent, savoring. The low light of the room was simply swallowed up by the shadow, but a small gleam of it glinted off the knife’s blade.
The shadow reached the bedside. The blade rose over the shadow’s head with a terrible slowness, and it struck, plunging deep into the bedclothes. The shadow kept stabbing, almost frantically. And suddenly it stopped. The shadow ripped the bedclothes free and found, not Barbara Gordon’s mutilated body, but a neat line of pillows tucked into the bed. If the Shape felt anything like human emotions, it was probably feeling rage, now...
And down the dark hallway, struggling to crank the handrims both quickly and quietly and keep her breathing steady at the same time, Barbara Gordon was making for the elevator.
Come on come on come on come on.
Maybe the bad dreams had awakened her to the sounds of fighting. Or maybe the fighting itself had awakened her. Either way, the second she was awake, Barbara had been aware that something was wrong. Every instinct in her being screamed at her to run. After a quick push of the nurse call button had failed to raise anyone, she felt inclined to listen to instinct.
Come on come on come on come on. Why the FUCK didn’t I grab my phone? It was still in the pocket of her jeans, back in the room. It had seemed like too much wasted time to retrieve it as she fled. Now she was cursing herself. Phones on the wall. Stop to make a quick call?
Barbara turned her head over her shoulder. Someone was behind her. Something. Some Shape. Different from what she remembered, but horrifyingly unmistakeable.
Nope. No stopping. Barbara’s arms, raked with muscle, began working the handrims even faster. And Michael Myers, with his terrible patient determination, followed.
The elevator was at the end of the hall. Myers was moving slowly, toying with her like a cat with a mouse. Somehow the space of that single hallway seemed to stretch on for an eternity. She dared another glance over her shoulder.
In the half-light she saw Myers was no longer wearing the mask she remembered from those years ago. The pale emotionless face with the ratty hair and black hole eyes was now a tattered, lined clown face, ugly red lips drawn taut in a hideous grin. She had seen a face like that before, leering at her before a hammer pulled back and a trigger was pulled-
Her breath was in her throat again. Just go. Fast as you can. Just go. Just go. Come on come on come ON.
It seemed miraculous that she reached the elevator, almost unreal. Primed for flight, Barbara’s mind barely processed the corpse of the nurse stuffed in, limbs twisted and back bent backwards. The name tag read “Asa.” Don’t think about it. For now, survive.
She leaned overthe arm of the chair, hand slamming against a button almost at random. Ground floor. Most space to run. She hit it again. Again. Again again again. The clown-faced Shape was still striding towards her. The empty eyes, the malicious grin. Close close close come on come on COME ON. He was nearly on her.
The doors slid shut with barely a second to spare, and Barbara heard a hand slam against it furiously. About an eternity later, Barbara felt the elevator descend, and her heart begin to beat normally. The immediate fight-or-flight fear ebbed away, replaced with a sick, horrified feeling for the dead nurse she was sharing an elevator with. Dick, she thought, suddenly. Have to find him. He could be- no. He’s still alive. Find him. No. Prioritize. First get help. This fight isn’t on your terms. So first get help. Easy-peasy. Nearly there, in fact. You’re on the home stretch.
***
Michael Myers, normally silent, grunted with effort behind his new mask. His fingers jammed between the sliding doors of the elevator like crowbars. His muscles strained. The interlock groaned from the effort, then deformed, and, finally, with strength that was beyond freakish, Michael Myers pulled the doors apart. There was a heavy, sick breathing as the black eyes watched the cables of the elevator. Then, with swift and terrible movement, Michael Myers raised his knife and sliced through the cables.

I’ll start with the job posting, I guess. I spotted it on Indeed while making my daily check for anything and everything that would hire someone with my biology degree, and it seemed on the up and up. Their website looked decent, the guy on the phone sounded nice, and I was looking for anything even slightly related to working with wildlife. Being a nightshift guard at a zoo was fine, especially when I took the incredibly generous rate of $25/hr. into account. That’s eleven bucks more than my dad makes at the local grocer, and he’s been working there for thirteen years. Then again, from the P.S. on the posting, I thought there might be good reason for the rate.
It said at the end, almost as an afterthought, ‘Zoo is haunted.’
When it comes to ghosts, they’ve never made much sense to me. Considering how badly our brains function from just getting jostled around on a football field, I’m not sure how ghosts could exist without a brain at all. I’d be excited as the next person to find proof, but YouTube videos are always fishy and the people on TV are essentially actors who only focus on the entertainment factor for their ratings. So, since I’d never seen anything that vaguely resembled a ghost, I’d say binge-watching Supernatural on Netflix last year was the extent of my experience in that department.
It seemed that the zoo hadn’t been here for long since it wasn’t even on Google Maps yet. There was a bit of a commute, it was half an hour away, but since I’d worked local jobs while I attended college online for the past four years, I’d saved up the money to buy a car. It wasn’t anything fancy, just an old Nissan sedan that I’d bought from someone in the next town over, with faded red paint and a mismatched back right door painted blue. It accomplished the job of transportation, though, which let me search the job market further away, a good thing considering how small a town I lived in. I really didn’t want to leave home yet, so moving for a job in a city or another state wasn’t an appealing option.
The website said very little. It had yet to fill in drop down menus that would excitedly describe their attractions. So far it only had some small sections about conservation and education, though that was intriguing because it mentioned that all the animals they had were endangered. I read that notation and wondered what the animals were. Mammals were always favorites of mine, which I know is a bit of a cliché, loving the furry ones. But when it comes down to it, I’ll take any animal over a person.
The employee entrance to the zoo was a door in the large steel gate that surrounded the property, a few yards down from the sliding gate that presumably opened to let visitors in. I pressed the button on a panel beside it, glancing up at the camera, and I was buzzed in. There was a short path that led to the building near the front and I knocked politely before going inside.
The interviewer, a plain metal nameplate on his desk describing him as Director of Security for the zoo, welcomed me in and sat on the other side of his desk, lounging back in his desk chair. His name was Andrew Higgs, and he had a British accent, which I thought was cool. I sat in one of the two loveseats in front of the desk.
Andrew was dressed business casual, with a blue Polo shirt, a thin black jacket, and I saw he was wearing slacks when he stood up to shake my hand. He was black, with dreadlocks that stopped just short of his shoulders, and a closely trimmed mustache. There was a tattoo, an artistic rendition of a hippo, on the right side of his neck, which bode well in my opinion. So many places hiring these days were overly uptight about their employees’ appearance, but it seemed that wouldn’t be the case here.
We went over the basics before he picked up the piece of paper off his desk, my resume, which he’d printed out. “Well, I spoke to all three of your references,” Andrew noted. “They had some good things to say. You were a great employee on the farm you worked last summer, your boss said. Punctual, hard-working, took instructions well…”
That was nice to hear. I’d spent this past summer working at a dairy farm, mostly assigned to the goats and cows they kept for milk. Aside from the staggering muscle pain that tapered from agony to merely miserable by the end of the summer, it wasn’t a bad job. I did have an old shoulder injury that I always had to work around, but it was my left shoulder and I was a righty, so it wasn’t that difficult to manage.
If anything, the muscle pain in my back and legs from being on my feet all day distracted from the typical issue I dealt with. My standard exercising day-to-day was typically either riding my bike or yoga, although yoga is mind-numbingly boring, so I need to listen to a podcast to pass the time. So, in fact, through the job, I was sort of grateful that my brain was focusing on a different area of my body that was in pain. Yeah, chronic pain is weird.
“He also said you don’t work well with others,” Andrew added, glancing up to me. “You kept submitting complaints about incompetent coworkers?”
I pursed my lips and let out a long breath through my nose, considering the most delicate way I was capable of replying to that before saying, “I dislike stupid people.”
Andrew gave me a half-smile and sighed, replying, “Well, I must confess I’m not fond of them either.” He looked back down to the paper. “This job will be a great fit for you.”
The job interview seemed like a formality, and I don’t know why. I was twenty-three and the ink had barely dried on my degree from the online college I’d attended. I’d been applying to jobs for months and had been thrilled when I’d gotten a call for an interview for this one, but also surprised. Call me a cynic, but I expected more invasive questions about any past work I’d done for a job in security, since I was a woman.
It's not like I was petite. Actually, the most common word I’d heard to describe me is ‘built’, and I fall short of being labeled overweight only because of muscle mass. One comment I recall from high school was being teased for being shaped like a rectangle. Even so, there was no good reason to look a gift horse in the mouth, but of course, me being me, that meant I examined its teeth closely.
“So, you’re hiring me? Just like that? Why?”
Andrew, chuckled. “Look, you’ve got BA in wildlife biology, and specializing in animal behavior is just the cherry on the sundae. That tells me you know animals are not people, and even if you feel like you know them, they can still be unpredictable. They can hurt you. But also, it makes me know you care.”
I suppose that did make sense, and it was true, so I’m glad he knew that. Most of my job on the night shift would be watching cameras and then walking around the place to make sure all the animals were as they should be, but it was more than that. Working at a zoo meant knowing where the line was, and sometimes it wasn’t exactly at the fence, but sometimes just putting a single finger through that fence meant losing that finger. As a whole, humans are generally idiots. Looking at you, anyone who really, honestly thinks that a bobcat would sense your boundless love enough to let you pat it.
“The website didn’t have much about the animals,” I said. “I know this place is new, so you might not have info on them up on the site yet. Do you have a map for me?”
“Oh, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Andrew said with a wave of his hand. At that point, it had seemed to be a reasonable thing for him to say, but I will tell you, the reason was not what I thought. “Just to confirm, you’re not an early bird, Miss Mason? This schedule isn’t a concern?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m pretty talented at sleeping in, actually. I never really got past that teenage talent of staying up until five and sleeping in until three. And you can just call me Ripley.”
That made him smile. “Good. Then I won’t worry about you falling asleep on the job, Ripley.”
“Oh, no way.”
“All right. So. You saw the note at the end of the job posting?”
He just stared at me and I was forced to answer, “That the zoo is haunted.”
“Right. What are your thoughts on that?”
There was no easy answer to that question, especially depending on how seriously he took it. “Do you know the best word the Brits gave to us?”
“What’s that?”
“Bollocks.”
Andrew slowly smiled and pointed at me with the end of the pen in his hand. “I think I’m going to like you,” he remarked. “Look…this is the part of the interview where we switch gears. If this was a regular zoo, you’d be a shoo-in for the job. But we’ve got other boxes to check. This outfit is…basically a preservation society. As you saw on the site, all the species are endangered, but what it didn’t say online is that the only people who came to visit are private parties.”
“So, that means…what?” I asked. “You bring in super-rich people who feel special when they get to see the animals you’re rehabilitating and taking care of? Then they donate oodles of money so they can brag to their rich friends about their charity contributions and having seen the animals here?”
Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Pretty much got it in one. It’s just more preservation and less rehabilitation. And a lot of our patrons really do care about the animals, or else they would just donate and not visit. You’ll see tourists a couple times a week, but we decided not to have anyone until we’re settled in here, and that means a person who’s on during the night shift that I can count on. And I don’t know if I can count on you yet.”
“Wait, I’ll see the tourists?” I asked. “They visit at night?”
“Everything we have is nocturnal,” he told me. That struck me as odd, but he continued before I could question it. “Listen up, and I’ll start with the basics. Have you ever seen anything weird? Possibly supernatural?”
“Nope,” I said with a shrug.
The fact is, I got along with my classmates, but I never did have any close friends. So, I thought maybe that’s why I missed out on all those reckless teen moments that started every horror movie. Maybe it left me without a bunch of exciting stories to tell. But hey, at least I didn’t break my leg falling through the floor of an abandoned building in eleventh grade.
Yes, that happened. It was a classmate of mine by the name of Brent. And yes, he’s just as much of a moron as you would imagine.
“If you see the ghost here,” he said, his tone emphatic, “will you freak out?”
I paused. “You’ve seen the ghost?”
“All the time,” Andrew told me. “It’s a young woman in a blue shirt and tan slacks, looks like she just walked out of a lake.”
“Do you have a picture?”
“No, and absolutely no photos or video are to be taken of her,” he said, his tone abruptly turning stern. “It’s cause for immediate dismissal. We have video cameras for security, but they all record off-site in a secure location, and Suzanne Cooper, the owner, manages it herself. Firstly, the ghost deserves privacy rather than exploitation, she’s not to be displayed like one of our animals, but secondly, people believe in ghosts. One leaked photo of her connecting it to us means we get overrun by ghost hunters, and if we trace it back to you, you’re done.”
Andrew seemed next-level serious about that, so I nodded. “Understood. That makes sense.”
The animals were the priority after all, I knew. I preferred them over people anyway, and that included dead people. Even if I could get a video of this ghost doing cartwheels back and forth through a wall, I would never post it and spread word of where I’d taken it. Andrew was right; the zoo would never get the paranormally-obsessed to stay away and would definitely have to relocate.
He continued, “If you’re curious, she’s never so much as tried to hurt anyone. But the zoo has moved before, and she moved with us.”
“She moved with you?” I asked, my eyebrows rising. “Is it like one of those stories where she’s attached to something in the zoo rather than a place?”
“More complicated than that,” he said. Then he grimaced. “She died because she was too ambitious with one of our animals. It never should have happened, but she… She was foolish, you’d say. Attempted to interact with one of the animals, got too close, and honestly, she should have known better. I thought she did.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “What killed her?”
He stared at his hands and shook his head. “It was before my time.”
It was clear Andrew was a true believer, but I still really wasn’t sure at that point. How was I supposed to react, though? Zoos have fences and tall barriers for a good reason. Not just to keep the animals away from us, but also the other way around, and ‘death by stupidity’ is not uncommon amongst humans. So, the story wasn’t outrageous, but still, I’d never so much as experienced something unexplainable. But if I saw a ghost, I suppose that’d be that.
“I just need to know, plain and simple, if you’re the kind of person who can handle things that are terrifying,” Andrew told me, splaying his hands. “Our last night shift bloke there was with us for years and years, but we spent months going through other employees. There were six we tried before we found him.”
“Six?” I exclaimed.
He snorted. “Yes, six. Let’s see…” Andrew counted off each one on his fingers. “The first two, the first night they saw the ghost, they lost it. One called me in a panic, babbling, and I had to get out of bed and drive to the zoo to send him home, and the second quit, although at least she made it to the next morning and didn’t drag me out here,” he said, his voice thoughtful. “They just thought I was blowing smoke up their bums with the whole thing.”
He shrugged. “Then, the third one was a bloke who was asleep when I got there in the morning, so I had to fire him. Then another ghost freak-out. The fifth bloke was someone who couldn’t deal with the animals, and then the sixth was so scared of the ghost that when I got here, he was already outside the zoo, pacing, waiting for my car. Apparently he’d said some stuff, rude or mean or whatnot, to try to get her to leave him alone and she had followed him back into the security room, so he fled. I need the opposite of those folks. Alright?”
At this point, I was starting to take it more seriously. Sure, this could just be Andrew’s thing, that he believed in ghosts and then made up these sightings to ensure I believed him. But if I saw her? What would I do?
Well, this would be my job, so I would have to take it seriously. Maybe that was why the pay was so good, to make employees think twice before ditching it. From Andrew’s perspective, if it really was haunted, he was the one who had to deal with applicant after applicant quitting as soon as they laid eyes on the guest who would never leave.
“So…honestly, I can’t say I won’t freak out, considering how next level this is,” I told him, feeling compelled to go with honesty, “but yeah. I think I can handle it, mostly because it’s important for someone to look after this place, look after the animals, so I’d do my best to work around anything that freaks me out. I mean, I have to say that I’ll believe it when I see it. But if ghosts really exist, as long as it isn’t some serial killer who stuck around to keep gutting people, I’ve always thought it’d be cool to find out we can exist after we die.”
The thing is, I think I did believe him. I thought there might really be a ghost there, because otherwise, why take it so seriously? It could’ve been that Andrew had only glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye a few times and could ascribe it to lack of sleep, but he was literally worried about word getting out. I thought that being halfway to believing him would give me the mental preparation I needed if I saw her. At least, I’d hoped so.
It turned out that most of my time would be spent at the security desk in the main building, near the entrance. Real-time footage played through thirty-five cameras around the zoo, all on a large screen that was five cameras across and seven cameras top to bottom. The cameras were impressive. I would mention the resolution, say something about them being 4K, but Andrew explained some stuff about how it’s actually the lens that is the biggest selling point. Looking at these cameras on the giant screen, I could see practically every corner of the place, and if I brought up one camera in particular to encompass 2/3 of the screen, I could zoom in so far that it felt like I could use it to check if one of the animals had fleas.
The zoo was well lit, not surprising considering nighttime was apparently the zoo’s business hours, and all of the tall lamps had red bulbs. For those of you who know why, A+ to you. For those who don’t, fun fact, it’s because red is closest to the dark and your eyes don’t need to strain to adjust to it. That meant I didn’t need my flashlight all that often, and even that was red, a solid name-brand one that had been on my desk when I arrived. I kept the white lights on back in the security room, though, because I didn’t want to make my brain think it was time to get tired.
When I headed out for my first sweep on that first night, I had the folded map in my pocket, but I already knew my way around. The layout of the zoo wasn’t that difficult to memorize, since there were only eleven expansive enclosures, and after the interview I walked around for half an hour to start training my memory. I’ll admit, working in a dark environment was creepier than I thought it would be.
I do want to mention the high quality of the zoo. The size of each enclosure was considerable, and the greenery was natural, hinting that they’d hired a pricey professional just to do landscaping toward the front of the enclosures after buying the land. The backs of the enclosures backed up into forestry, and from the estimate I got from Andrew, it seemed each of the animals had plenty of roaming space, including the small lake at the northwest corner and a manmade lake for one of the animals in particular. When I considered all of that, the thought passed through my head about how horrible it would be if word got out about the zoo having a ghost and needing to relocate, because it’d be devastatingly expensive.
My orders were to walk the zoo once every hour. This was my first security gig, so I’m not sure if that’s more or less than typical, but I had my comfy hiking boots on, the ones I’d saved up for and invested in a couple years earlier and were perfect for a job where I had to do laps around an area. This job was one that I didn’t have to worry about my shoulder pain worsening, since it was mostly about being on my feet. I take one or two Vicodin a day, depending on how bad my pain is. It came in handy in high school, actually. With a flexible ‘take as needed’ prescription, I occasionally sold pills for extra cash.
There wasn’t much to step in and there weren’t even any dips in the concrete sidewalks that I followed around in a route that easily led me back and forth until I made my way back to the office. The first three nights were actually boring. I would have thought Andrew had been pranking me about the ghost, but like I said, it hadn’t felt like that. And he hadn’t been specific about when she showed up for new people, or even for him.
To keep myself busy, I’d brought my e-reader with me, and I got into a cycle of looking over each of the cameras every time I hit the end of a chapter. I’m a pretty fast reader, so it was a good system. Also, every once in a while, I looked up if something moving caught my eye, like an owl flying close enough for the camera to catch it, but that’s about it.
Then, every hour on the hour, I did a walk through. The fourth night, I was passing by the small lake at the back left corner of the property when I saw her.
People say that you can tell if someone’s staring at you, that there’s some sixth sense humans have. It’s not true; they’ve done experiments. But the thing is, all those experiments were of someone human looking at them. After this last shift, I would guess that the sixth sense that sends goosebumps down your arms, the one that makes you feel an intangible pressure, that slides your body toward fight or flight mode, might be true of…other things.
Slowly coming to a stop at the disturbing feeling, I hesitantly looked around, through the trees. Then my heart skipped a beat and my breath hitched. It was startling because she wasn’t moving. Just standing among the trees, staring at me. I broke out in a cold sweat as I stared back at her, unsure what to do. I didn’t run. I didn’t try to talk to her. I just stood there. So, there’s my answer to Andrew: I didn’t freak out. I just froze.
The woman was Latina, her skin tone pallid from death, and was dressed as he’d described her, in slacks and a silky blue blouse. And she was soaked, as if she’d just walked out of the lake. Beyond that, her shirt was drenched in blood from what looked like claw marks across her abdomen. Her eyes were dark and penetrating, boring holes into me, as if she were able to get any and all knowledge that she wanted about me simply by glaring. The fabric of her shirtsleeves clung to her skin and was dripping, as was her long black hair. Speaking of her hair, it appeared to have seaweed woven into it, or maybe she also grew seaweed along with hair. Not my area of expertise.
The look on her face was indescribable. There was something deep in her eyes, behind her closed-off expression, that made my heart beat rapidly. Maybe I would’ve projected some emotion into her face if I’d had any idea of what she was capable of, whether she could move objects, or possess me, or if all she did was hang around. As things stood, I was left just projecting my fears, which gave me the impression that she was cross with me simply for being present. It felt like I was trespassing, even though I was a dozen feet back from the fence that encircled the enclosure. And also, this was my job so I was explicitly allowed to be here.
She was disturbingly close, and remained unnaturally still. If she had attacked me, I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done. Ran, probably, but considering ghosts probably don’t follow the laws of physics, maybe she could’ve chased me at Usain Bolt speed. For all I knew, she could teleport.
After an amount of time that felt awkwardly long, I finally spoke up.
“Hi,” I croaked.
The woman slowly tilted her head but didn’t otherwise move. I’d forgotten to ask Andrew for her name, I realized, but he had mentioned her death had been before his time, so maybe he didn’t know.
Swallowing hard, I tried to take a slow, deep breath, even though it felt like there was a cinder block on my chest. “So, I, uh…I work here now,” I said slowly. “I’m night shift security.” Pausing, I kept trying to gather information from her demeanor but failed. “Is that okay?”
At that, I saw a hint of curiosity flash across her face. “Why would it not be?” Her voice sounded completely normal, which was an off-putting contrast to her appearance.
Good question. Hell if I know the answer. “I don’t know. I mean…you were here first. I don’t know if you feel like I’m…intruding…or something.”
“You’re just doing your job,” she said, her tone softening a smidge.
I waited to see if she wanted to say anything else before saying, “Right.” Can I get you anything? A towel? Some bandages? “I’ll be going now.”
The woman made no movement to come after me as I gradually took one step, then another, keeping her in my sights as I walked off. I finally had to turn to face forward, unable or unwilling to be seen by her foolishly walking away backwards. Instead of continuing my sweep, I took the path that would lead me back to the security room. I kept looking behind me and felt her eyes on me all the way back, though I didn’t see her following me. At that point, even if she hadn’t moved an inch, my brain was on red alert when it came to self-preservation and figured I would continue to feel like a wet hand might grab me from behind at any moment.
Finally, I returned to the security room, swiping my card across the panel at the back door with a beep. Opening the door, darting inside, and slamming it behind me, I walked to the far side of the room and turned around, putting my back to the wall. Until I’d gotten back, I hadn’t noticed how fast I’d been walking, how quickly I’d been gasping for air. Leaning back against the wall, my legs turned to jelly and I slowly slid to the floor.
And that was it. My first sighting of the ghost. I’d thought that if I had seen her, there would be some part of me that was skeptical, that would reason my way out of it, convinced it was a prank. But I knew. She wasn’t a person. At least, not anymore.
***
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storiesbykaren

Since the BU 5 months ago I’ve had a lot of thing to think. That’s all I do. Making me crazy sometimes. She started talking to me while she was ending things with him. Blindsided me and was talking to the other guy while still with me. Boom she leaves me and is dating him one month later. Twice she’s told me so and so thinks i cheated on him. That exs family member hates me because she thinks i cheated on her cousin. Of course says she didn’t. All her relationships started by emotional cheating on her current boyfriend.
We were together for years and have a child together. We don’t talk hardly. She’s too far invested in her new bf to even want to have her kid for more than 24 hours.
Of course I love her still. The feeling aren’t mutual though. I just hope so bad this guy she left me for doesn’t work out. The way she left me was awful, painful I’m still dealing with it She gets to live happy ever after.knowing she wrecked me. She said told me “so what I left you get over it!!!” My new guy is a saint the grass is greener. She has told me that too!
The worst part is I still have to see her. I have to see the man she left me for name tattooed on her. That absolutely kills me I can’t stand to even look at her. It hurts

Hi! Not sure what to say on here but I’m looking to make new friends, I’m happy to talk about anything really
I’m 26M from Scotland, and some of my hobbies include gaming, I love everything horror or horror related and love playing/watching football. I like exploring the outdoors, and spend a lot of time with my dog. I’ve got a lot of tattoos too and love to see others work!
I enjoy hearing and learning about other peoples hobbies and interests so I’m happy to talk about pretty much anything.
Send me a message if you want to get to know each other 🙂

Hi! Not sure what to say on here but I’m looking to make new friends, I’m happy to talk about anything really
I’m 26M from Scotland, and some of my hobbies include gaming, I love everything horror or horror related and love playing/watching football. I like exploring the outdoors, and spend a lot of time with my dog. I’ve got a lot of tattoos too and love to see others work!
I enjoy hearing and learning about other peoples hobbies and interests so I’m happy to talk about pretty much anything.
Send me a message if you want to get to know each other 🙂

Hi! Not sure what to say on here but I’m looking to make new friends, I’m happy to talk about anything really
I’m 26M from Scotland, and some of my hobbies include gaming, I love everything horror or horror related and love playing/watching football. I like exploring the outdoors, and spend a lot of time with my dog. I’ve got a lot of tattoos too and love to see others work!
I enjoy hearing and learning about other peoples hobbies and interests so I’m happy to talk about pretty much anything.
Send me a message if you want to get to know each other 🙂

Hi! Not sure what to say on here but I’m looking to make new friends, I’m happy to talk about anything really
I’m 26M from Scotland, and some of my hobbies include gaming, I love everything horror or horror related and love playing/watching football. I like exploring the outdoors, and spend a lot of time with my dog. I’ve got a lot of tattoos too and love to see others work!
I enjoy hearing and learning about other peoples hobbies and interests so I’m happy to talk about pretty much anything.
Send me a message if you want to get to know each other 🙂

Hi! Not sure what to say on here but I’m looking to make new friends, I’m happy to talk about anything really
I’m 26M from Scotland, and some of my hobbies include gaming, I love everything horror or horror related and love playing/watching football. I like exploring the outdoors, and spend a lot of time with my dog. I’ve got a lot of tattoos too and love to see others work!
I enjoy hearing and learning about other peoples hobbies and interests so I’m happy to talk about pretty much anything.
Send me a message if you want to get to know each other 🙂

Hi! Not sure what to say on here but I’m looking to make new friends, I’m happy to talk about anything really
I’m 26M from Scotland, and some of my hobbies include gaming, I love everything horror or horror related and love playing/watching football. I like exploring the outdoors, and spend a lot of time with my dog. I’ve got a lot of tattoos too and love to see others work!
I enjoy hearing and learning about other peoples hobbies and interests so I’m happy to talk about pretty much anything.
Send me a message if you want to get to know each other 🙂

Five years ago today I had RFF phalloplasty + UL + scrotoplasty + vaginectomy with the Buncke Clinic and Dr. Chen. Basically an all-in-one "stage" where glansplasty and implants came later.
Phallo was the hardest thing I've ever done mentally and physically. About 8/9 days after surgery, when I was home recovering, I wondered just what the heck I'd gotten myself into - and to be clear, I loved my new setup, it was just the full reality of my recovery, new sensations, healing stitches, a catheter, that kind of stuff. Hardest thing I've ever done but also the best thing I've ever done for myself. I needed this surgery. Not a single regret for my path.
So I'm celebrating and sharing with you all bc I cannot stress enough how much my quality of life improved afterward. My dysphoria is 99.9% gone. The background noise has stopped. I feel whole, and I just live my boring everyday life as a boring guy, lol. I don't think about my body every single day. I have sex how my brain always said I should (both solo and with my girlfriend). Tbh even 5 years on I still get a kick out of using urinals, just walk up and unzip and pee and no stress about "will there be an open stall" (although no one is going to clock you if you sit, plenty of cis men sit to pee). Every once in a while I get a question about my arm scar (I did not have Integra and I haven't gotten a tattoo to cover it etc) but if you are stealth it's enough to say "I had surgery on it, and I don't like talking about it" - and anyone who keeps pushing that boundary is a crappy person.
Anyway. Five years later and life is really, really awesome. I wish the same for everyone reading this, that you find the same peace.
If anyone has any questions I will do my best to answer them! And if not, I'm off to have a celebratory pint, and maybe eggplant for dinner😂

Long time reddit lurker, first time poster. Sorry it’s so long.
A little bit of backstory: I (29F) got divorced a year before my friend Amy’s (31F) wedding. Me and my ex were married for 8 years and shared a friend group so the fallout ended up being messy. We initially agreed to keep the details private until I was about to move because we didn’t want there to be any side-taking or arguing among our friend group. Things were pretty amicable for the first week; we were getting paperwork sorted, I started packing and we hung out with friends separately. Then I got a call from Amy while my ex was hanging out with her and her husband (then-boyfriend). My ex spilled the beans after one drink too many and had complained to them that it was unfair I wasn’t “letting him” date before I moved out.
To be clear, he had been cheating on me with a coworker of his for at least a month and asked for a divorce because he’d “fallen in love with her”. I said I needed 3 weeks to get everything in order, then he was free to do whatever the hell he wanted. He said that was fair. Then he asked that I not out his cheating to our friends, and I said I wouldn’t if he agreed to keep his new girlfriend away until I was gone. He agreed to that too. I thought I was being more than fair. I just wanted to get away and start over. I wanted to forget and I didn’t want a drama filled exit. That was asking too much, apparently. So, when Amy asked me what the hell was going on, I told her everything. She ended up telling all of our friends, his parents found out, he was pissed and blamed me. The last 2 weeks were a shitshow. I move across the country, I’m still in contact with most of my friends, things settle, eventually the divorce is finalized, and I start trying to rebuild my life.
Eight months later, Amy calls to tell me she’s engaged and asks me to be a bridesmaid. She says everyone in the wedding party gets a plus one—except me and my ex (who is a groomsman) just to avoid any weirdness. I agreed because it was her wedding, no worries. She apologized that I couldn’t bring my new boyfriend, and I said it was totally fine because she hadn’t even met him yet. I buy my dress, I buy my plane ticket, I request time off work, and I’m excited to celebrate my friends getting married. Four months later, I fly back across the country. I spend a day with Amy and her fiancé helping with last minute wedding stuff and catching up. The wedding day rolls around—and in strolls my ex and the woman he left me for. My friend Sara, who was under the same assumption that I was (that his girlfriend was not invited), is appalled and she asks Amy’s fiancé what’s going on. He just kind of shrugs, says my ex outright refused to be part of the wedding without her, and he and Amy let it go to avoid drama even though they don’t like her. (This happened months before. Neither of them decided to tell me at any point leading up to the wedding or over the last day that I’d been with them). Amy’s fiancé must realize I’m a little pissed off. Because he asks, “Did Amy not tell you?” I say no. Then he apologized and said Amy was supposed to let me know ages ago I was getting a plus one so that I still had time to figure out my boyfriend’s travel arrangements. I played it off and said something along the lines of “it must have slipped her mind”. But I was irritated, kind of humiliated, and felt lied to. But I suck it up because. Obviously, this is my friend’s wedding day. I don’t bring this up to Amy before or after the ceremony. I just play my part and pose for photos. When the trip is over, I get back on a plane and fly home. I decide I’m just gonna let my feelings settle and I’ll talk to Amy about it after I’ve calmed down.
At some point the following week Sara texts Amy and says it was messed up to let my ex bring his affair partner and not let me bring my boyfriend. Initially Amy tells Sara she did invite my boyfriend, she’s 100% certain, and that I just decided not to bring a plus one. When Sara asks me if this is true, I check everything to be sure I didn’t miss it—texts, instagram, facebook, discord, even my email—and I didn’t. Sara’s having none of it. She tells Amy she’s full of shit and Amy immediately caves. Apparently, sometime after they asked my ex to be a groomsman and he refused to go without his girlfriend, Amy had mentioned to him that she was giving me a plus one then too. Again, my ex decided to be a baby. He said he wouldn’t be part of the wedding if I brought a date. She said she was annoyed and didn’t want to deal with it anymore, so she just gave him what he wanted and lied to her then-fiancé about giving me the plus one. She told Sara that she knew I’d be able to “handle it” so she moved on. Sara told Amy to apologize for “playing favorites” and “siding with the cheater” and she said she would. Well, it ended up taking Amy two weeks to send me a short text explaining what happened (no apology). When I didn’t respond, she sent the same text again a few days later. I don’t think she knew that Sara had sent me the screenshots of their conversation. I’m not super proud of it, but I totally ignored her. It felt like she was hoping my fear of confrontation and enough time would pass that I’d let it slide.
Which leads us (finally) to now and why I’m posting this here. The wedding was a little over two months ago and I haven’t spoken to Amy since. She sent me a long, bitter text last night. It basically boiled down to: “If you were going to totally cut me off right after my wedding, you shouldn’t have come. At the very least, you should have had the decency to stay out of the photos.” I’m heartbroken. We’ve been friends for over a decade. We have matching tattoos. She was my main confidante after the divorce. She was the first person I told when I met my boyfriend. She was the one who encouraged me to put myself out there and go for it and ask him out first. It’s not like I went to her wedding knowing that I’d leave pissed off. I didn’t want to cause a scene, I had no intention of cutting off our friendship. I acknowledge I should have messaged her after I got home, but I was going to let myself get over it. Then with Sara getting involved and Amy’s late non-apology… it all rubbed me the wrong way. I never considered our friendship over until the message she sent me last night. Now I’m not sure about anything. My boyfriend supports any choice I make, but says it’s not my responsibility to fix what she messed up. Sara thinks I should tell Amy to eat shit (she’s distanced herself from her in the wake of all this too). A neutral friend (from work) told me I should never have ignored her in the first place and that I made a mountain out of a mole hill by doing so. So… Am I wrong? Did I overreact? Should I apologize and try to fix this or demand an apology from her? Or should I just keep leaving this alone like I have been and cut my losses?

Once I was at a 7/11 and AB was there checking out. I was right behind him in line. At the time I didn’t know who he was really, but as he left, he looked me up and down. As he exited 7/11 my wife was standing outside waiting and heard him say “did you see that dudes shitty tattoos.” It didn’t really bother me but now being as big of a fan as I am now. I can’t get it out of my mind.

So for context I (18F) am visiting my dad abroad for a few months. I lived in this country for a few years when I was a kid but moved with my mom when I was like 12. My mom is like my best friend, we gossip, hang out every day, and even got matching tattoos when I was 16. Im not as close to my dad but would still make an effort to talk to him whenever I can. Overall, he’s a great dad, but as every family does, we have a few issues.
We’ve had some incidents here and there, but the main problem began when I started hanging out with some old friends of mine from Primary school. At first he was acting fine, but eventually he got the idea that I liked one guy (let’s call him J) in the group, who was my best friend when I was 5, despite the fact that I already have a bf who I love very much, and both my parents know about him.
My bf and I are long distance, so we would call often. Whenever we’d call, my dad would enter the room and very loudly say things like “are you going out with J and your other friends today” or “J’s dad and I have a meeting at the office so he’s coming over”, and things along those lines.
Since all this was detected by my mic, my bf would start questioning me over who J is and why we’re hanging out so much, and I’m always honest in telling him that J is a childhood friend of mine, and our dads work together but my bf kept telling me he didn’t feel comfortable with me hanging out with a guy (our friend group is 4 girls, 2 guys). As a result, our relationship is kind of strained to the point my bf got very dry and only spoke to argue with me.
Then one day, my dad brought up something I haven’t told anyone about my bf and I’s arguments lately. When I asked how he knew about that, he said he went through my WhatsApp on my pc while I was out. I got mad and blew up at him, saying it’s a complete invasion of my privacy and he’s acting as if I need to be supervised. He said that he’s my father and my privacy is his privacy too because I’m staying with him. I told him that he’s treating me like I’m still a kid, and his behavior is why I’m more comfortable talking to my mom about my problems than him, to which he just sent me to my room and grounded me.
I felt really bad for what I said after a while, and texted some people about it. My mom said I was right for getting angry, that I’m 18 now, my business is my own, and my dad should stop treating me like a child. But when I spoke to my friends, they said my dad just acts like that because he cares about me and I should cut him some slack.
I need an unbiased opinion, so AITA?

So my whole life I always thought people were lying, I mean in school we’d do group meditation, and they’d describe a scenario and tell you to picture it in your mind. I always just saw the back of my eyelids, I mean I could “imagine” it but I didn’t actually see anything? So normally I’d just go to sleep and take it as an excuse to skip gym.
I never realized, that people weren’t lying, they could actually see! Not just their eyelids?
Now here’s where my confusion sets in, because I can imagine things? Like an apple it’s red, round with two bumps on top, but I can’t see it? Like I can? But I can’t see it? Its confusing.
When reading books I do visualize but I don’t think I do? Let me explain, so like my friends say they can see it like a movie in their head, not just the words on the page? How? I can’t see anything, I can think of it, like associating “ok the grass is green, there’s a river over there” because I know what a river and grass is, but I can’t see it, it’s not an actual image, it’s just… components? If that make sense?
I struggle to decide whether I’m assuming I have something, or if I actually do, because I understand it as a concept? I can imagine things, but I can’t see them?
I dream every night multiple times a night, when I think back to my dreams they aren’t a clear visual though, I mean I can think that I know they’re in first person most of the time, but often I only remember the plot, not what I actually saw?
I have an active imagination and I like to draw, but I don’t “see”my drawings beforehand? I do but I don’t? like I know what I want to do, and how I want it to turn out, I don’t see it though, it’s more of a concept if that makes sense? But I do see it? I don’t know how to explain that.
When I try these little experiments, I find 1) I don’t actually see anything, I just know it is a thing, it exists, I can describe it. 2) I’m often thinking of specific or past situations to come up with the “visual” or idea or whatever? Like the ball on the table test, logically I thought of a pool table because where else would you roll a ball? The ball was white, on a pool table, it was a man pushing it, but he had no face, more like a 3D model for a video game? However I’m so confused if I just made that up after the questions were asked or if I visualized it? I think I visualized it? I don’t know?
This is rambely and weird I know I’m sorry, I’m just so confused of what people mean when they can picture something? Like am I picturing it? Am I seeing it? I don’t see anything, my mind is blank but it’s a concept and a vague idea of something in my mind that I picture, and I can see it but I can’t!?!?
I don’t know! I talked to my friends after reading through some stuff, and like the way they say they just see things baffles me? Like I know they don’t actually see it in the real world, but like what?
I tried that test thing, but it just confused me because I don’t know if I’m seeing or imagining or visualizing or what!
I sent a thing of how I think and imagine and visualize, to my friends and they said they couldn’t read it, like it didn’t make sense?
The thing was me coming up with a concept for a fortnite skin, I’ll add it here (copied from a tweet):
Hi! It’s a new day, and I back with another Fortnite Greek Myth skin concept!
For this thread let’s do Demeter, Persephones mother and the goddess of the harvest!
Todays random side fact: I’m mainly basing these off of the Homeric Hymns, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hesiods Theogony and Metamorphosis, as well as my knowledge of Greek art.
So that is why there is some conflicting information, because there’s multiple myths telling multiple different versions of the same story, as well as many different translations, so it would be impossible to be 100% accurate.
Anyways let’s get into it, so while Demeter is a goddess and would keep a youthful appearance, I want to make her appear more mature than Persephone.
Poems often talk about Demeter having blonde hair, so obviously I will start with that. Being a goddess that is so often depicted working very hard, she would have her hair up, so a messy over the shoulder braid would look nice on her. Like Persephone I think she should have green eyes, since nature.
I want to relate her heavily to agriculture, so I’m picturing a gardener type outfit. However she’s still a goddess so let’s put her in a white sundress with green flowers decorating it. At the front of the dress there should be a small apron that has golden gardening tools sticking out of it.
(I want to take a more modern approach with this skin since my other female designs haven’t really taken it.)
So let’s face it, she wouldn’t have gloves because she wouldn’t be afraid to get her hands dirty, so simply bare arms with slightly chipped pink nail polish to match the pink nail polish I put on Persephone.
In my Persephone design I added a golden necklace with a barely pendant that she got from her mother, I want Demeter to also have a matching pendant.
(Side note: you may be wondering why Demeter is so heavily related to Persephone in my design, well that’s because her Homeric Hymnn is pretty much just her grief over loosing her daughter, she loves her daughter dearly, and I think that’s crucial to her character.)
I’m thinking that maybe her dress could have small patches of dirt to show she’s been working on gardening, her knees slightly scuffed up from kneels to tend to the harvest (I know she uses powers but go with it for character design.)
She’s not like the other gods with the clean designs because she does dirty work, which is crucial to the mortals surviving.
For her shoes a simple pair of white flats would suffice, and for the little bows that are often on them it would be a snowflake instead, to symbolize how she makes winter come when Persephone is not with her.
I also think it would be important that out of the apron there is barely/wheat stalks in the pouch.
Now I think it’s only fitting that she has a sun hat, white to match her dress with the brim being decorated with green flowers.
As another small easter egg, I think one of her back shoulders, she has a frozen poppy tattoo, as it is her main flower, and another nod to the icy winter she brings. I know this design is rather simple, and doesn’t scream goddess, but I feel Demeter is far more motherly in nature, and I don’t enjoy the way media portrays her as an overbearing mother because they twist the tale of Persephones abduction into a romance story for their own obsession with the love story of good girl x bad guy. The actual poem is sad and distressing, and it states multiple times how Persephone did not want to go with Hades, she was abducted and tricked by him.
While I know ancient times were different, people hold Zeus and every-
I’m cutting that off earlier because it just goes into me rambling, but basically I’m asking, is this how you guys think as well? Like when I thought of it, I didn’t “see” it? I just.. words? But I did see it?
I asked my parents to imagine the red star with closed eyes, one couldn’t see anything like me, the other said they could perfectly and was baffled we couldn’t.
This post is all over the place I’m sorry, I’m just so confused, I should add I have diagnosed ADHD and OCD (which affects 2% of the population, which is another low statistic similar to this? Is there a connection?) if that often correlates?
I tried to use an AI to explain it to me like a toddler, but the AI said stuff about a movie theatre and yeah it just confused me more.
Two last things: I’ve always excelled academically because I think in numbers and words, and I think logically about things. I’ve seen that mentioned too? I also have terrible eyesight, like astigmatism and a really high prescription, coke bottle lenses.
I preferred chapter books as a kid as opposed to picture books because I could imagine, but I never saw a movie in my head? I saw words on a page, that I would often have to reread over and over to fully grasp. I still have to reread lines over and over often, my mind wanders, but I’m pretty sure that’s the ADHD.
I also asked my friends about the taste thing, and apparently they can ACTUALLY taste things when they see/think of them? I can’t, what the hell do they mean they can taste?
When I draw I more or less just go with the flow, which is a statement that contradicts my other one but it also doesn’t in a weird way in my brain? Like I have an idea of what I want, but I also develop as I go.
I just don’t understand, because I see but I don’t? Am I normal and overthinking the human psyche, or am I like you guys?
What are your experiences, are they similar?
I would also like to add, I’m not like complaining, I’m just confused, and intrigued with the weird psychology of the human mind.
I’m sorry if this post makes no sense, I just kinda type as I think haha