I took my great nieces and nephew to the Dollar Tree for coloring books and colored pencils. The kids found some toys and I let them pick out a few each. I didn't realize that DT now carries $5 items. So we are checking out and the cashier timidly says, "Um this is $5, do you still want it?" I look at the item and see clearly the $5 sticker. I was a tad shocked but after quickly glancing at the kids I just shrugged and said, " Yes I will still buy it. I should have seen the price." Well each of the kids had picked out a $5 toy. And each one she nervously asked if I still wanted them. I said," Yes, please." After the 3rd toy I said, "Don't worry, I'm not going to get angry at you because I know you don't set the prices." She audibly exhaled and said "Thank you". The store had only been opened a few hours that morning and this incredibly sweet and visibly stressed young person looked as though she had already taken a weeks worth of abuse from customers that morning. I was able to get a heartfelt(?) laugh out of her when she asked if I wanted my receipt and I said, "No thank you, it might make me cry." But what really makes me cry is the way human beings are treated so horribly every single day. I often see the fear in the eyes of cashiers as I approach them because I am a middle aged white woman, and I worry a lot so I look angry I think. I constantly see people visibly exhale when they realize that I'm not an entitled a*****e. And I will apologize for being a stupid customer. Because I am. I mean the $5 price tags were big enough for my old eyes to see and still missed them. So just a shout out to everyone who has to deal with human trash everyday, my heart goes out to you and I hope you know are better humans than those who treat you terribly.

Have some time to finally write a trip review for Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii for my honeymoon in December 2022 for two weeks. Mid December and left for home on Christmas Day. This was our first time redeeming cc points for anything, so lots of trial and error and lessons learned.
My wife and I had gotten married in October and were actually not planning going on honeymoon until Spring 2023 until we researched further and managed to make December 2022 work in our favor. We started planning and booking reservations TWO months before our trip. We are very fortunate to have done it in that time span and managed to make almost everything work out.
IAD - DTW - SEA - OGG on Delta, First Class One way.

• First time using a lounge ever was at DTW. We had access to the Sky Club there. Pretty good food here, very roomy. No time to lounge in Seattle
  
• only I used points for this one way flight. Transferred 95,000 Amex points to Delta. Wife paid $958 before tax for hers through the Amex travel portal. I think she got a steal as I had written on a note somewhere that the cash cost was $1533 through Delta directly but cannot remember if that was the increased price after purchasing the tickets or at time of purchase, otherwise it would have been 1.61 CPP.
  
• Very nice service in first class. Abundant alcohol and food was very nice as well.
  

Maui
Day 1
Got to Maui late in the night and picked up our rental car, a Chevy Equinox, with Enterprise. Used my Hilton Aspire to get 7x points.
One night at Courtyard Marriott by the airport and paid $500.
It was the best we could do with our timing.
Day 2 - 6
Breakfast and lunch was by the food trucks near Costco. Shopping nearby for supplies for our vacation.
Meals (Costco food trucks):

• Mo 'Ono Hawaii acai bowls
• Da Nani Pirates fish tacos
• fresh coconut water

5 nights at the Grand Wailea - 440,000 HH points
Left to check into our resort the Grand Wailea in Wailea. Both the wife and I are Hilton Diamond members. Mine through the Hilton Aspire and she has status through actual stays. We booked these nights through her account and using all Hilton points. Each reward night was 110,000 points and we got the 5th night free. So 440,000 points total.
This resort was huge and immaculate. Words can describe how nice this place is and the customer service is SUPERB. Literally, the best we have ever experienced. You only have to see and experience it for yourself. My wife and I still talk weekly about the Grand Wailea.
We booked the Terrace View - 1 King Bed as the Standard Night Reward and upon arrival we were upgraded to the Deluxe Ocean View - 1 King Bed in the Molokini wing. Breathtaking views! Avg cash price so this room type is around ~$988 before taxes, fees so it comes to 0.89 CPP (if not including taxes, fees in the total). All meals, incidentals, shopping, and experiences were put onto my Hilton Aspire. Daily food and beverage credit was $25 each for the two of us and used usually at their divine but pricey breakfast buffet. No resort fees charged for booking with points which saved us hundreds of dollars. We immensely enjoyed ourselves at this resort and the lush, manicured surrounding area.
Meals:

• Lineage Maui. A favorite in the Wailea area
  
• Morimoto - Maui. Getting the sticky ribs is a must. As well as the ishi yaki buri bop. The guy won Iron Chef because of that, apparently
  
• Wolfgang Puck's Spago at the Four Seasons. Got the best seat in the house here. Get the "Poke" cones and Hawaiian snapper
  
• Mama's Fish House. Literally the hardest restaurant to get on Maui. Must reserve 4-6 months in advance. I called two months before our trip and managed to get a table for the two of us for late lunch. We arrived and we got the best seat in the house overlooking the water! Shout out to Mike for his superb service.
  
• Lahaina Grill. Another favorite for tourists and locals
  

Experiences: renting a cabana at the Grand Wailea pool, spa day at the Four Seasons with outdoor hale beachside, Wailea Beach, hiking Twin Falls, Baby Beach, Haleakala National Park
Day 7 - 8
Two nights at the Hotel Wailea, Relais & Chateaux using Amex FHR.
Paid total ~$3400 for the One bedroom, Luxury Suite, Ocean View. Unfortunately, no upgrade upon checking in. Hotel was sold out. Daily breakfast in the form of $30 credit per person and $100 food/bev credit given through the FHR. This stay triggered the $200 FHR credit for my wife's Amex Plat
Quiet, small resort, adults only. We enjoyed our stay here and loved our room. Bed was harder than what we were use to and it was far from the beach. Otherwise we loved the restaurant and the ability to "get away". One of the top hotels in Maui and all of Hawaii. Price tag to boot.
Meals:

• The Restaurant at Hotel Wailea. Another great dinner watching the sunset
  
• Leoda's Pie Shop. Any pie is great, get the banana cream though. Lines out the door
  
• Merriman's Maui. Another top-notch restaurant with hard to get reservations. One of my personal favorites the whole trip. Another sunset dinner favorite
  

Experiences: cabana and pool day at Hotel Wailea, spa day at Montage Kapalua Bay. Outdoor hale with hot tub.
Big Island of Hawaii
Day 9 OGG - KOA (Big Island) round trip booked with Hawaiian Airlines. $106 for each of us before baggage fees. Booked direct using wife's Amex Plat.
Arrived to the Big Island and rented a Toyota Prius though Budget. Paid using Hilton Aspire.
Day 9 - 15
We booked the Hilton Waikoloa Village using all Hilton points, 6 nights in total with one night free. 350,000 pts in total used, 70,000 each night. Initially the standard room redemption was for the Palace Tower Resort View - 1 King Bed and was going for ~$540 a night before taxes/fees so CPP was 0.77. We realized even before our trip that the Palace Tower and old, needed a refresh, and was terribly far from the beach and the parking lot. We asked for an upgrade when we checked in and was given the option to move to the Makai Tower - Ocean View 1 King Bed for an additional $75 per night. We promptly took this offer. This room runs ~$694 per night before taxes/fees and if I subtract the $75 per night, I calculate this to be 0.88 CPP. The Makai tower was much better, our room overlooked the ocean and part of the resort. Frankly, Palace looked like dogshit. Daily F&B credit was $18 for each person. Incidentals again went onto my Hilton Aspire.
Towards the end of our stay, we stayed at the DoubleTree Hilo using 50,000 pts. Room rate was $308 before taxes/fess. CPP was 0.61. This was on the other side of the island and very far from Hilton Waikoloa so we decided to stay overnight there after hiking Volcanoes NP instead of driving to the west side in the middle of the night.
Meals:

• Brown's Beach House - at the Fairmont Orchid
  
• Kilauea Lodge
  
• Merriman's - Big Island
  

Experiences: Kauna'oa Beach, Mauna Kea sunset and stargazing (this is a must!!), Captain Cook monument snorkeling, Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National historical park, Punalu-u Black Sand Beach, Volcanoes National Park, Akaka Falls.
Trip home: OGG - LAX - IAD. United, First Class One way.

• Used 220,000 Chase UR rewards to redeem this flight for the both of us. Cash price of each ticket was ~$1485 before taxes/fess. CPP was 1.35
• Service was fine, food in 1st class was not very memorable.
• Did not have time to get into the Centurion lounge at LAX

Overall, an EXCELLENT trip. We were amazed and thrilled to do so much in two weeks and in such short notice. Again, only two months to plan once our dates were finalized. Between my wife and I, we have the Amex Plat and Gold, Hilton Honors and Aspire, and CFU, CSP. Each card strategically used during our trip. The FHR credit triggered for my wife, and my Aspire triggered the $250 resort credit. If I had to guess, we saved ~$15,000 or more by redeeming CC points. Hope this data point helps some of you trip planning, happy to answer any questions.

I'm looking for some specific items to fill out my collection.
(Yes, I know there is the Where To Buy on the website, and yes, I've checked it)
I'm US-based, in Brooklyn (zip 11220), and in an ideal world I would be able to find some of these within subway distance rather than purchasing online ($$$)
Had some good luck yesterday when I stumbled upon Java Monster Vanilla Light (which I had been hunting for quite some time now) in a Dollar Tree in my neighborhood, so hoping for some more good luck soon.
What I am looking for: Zero-Sugar Ultra Black Java Monster Oat Milk Java Monster Swiss Chocolate Hydro Super Sport Macho Mango Hydro Super Sport Blue Streak Hydro Tropical Thunder Hydro Blue Ice Hydro Zero Sugar Hydro Watermelon Any of the Monster Dragon Tea flavors Any of the Muscle Monster flavors Any can designs of the Monster tour water
Have you seen these flavors? Any tips appreciated

Please help me find a specific cooking show that I’ve been searching for! It was three contestants and it was like cheap prices for ingredients and they started out with like one hundred dollars. And example of a round would but one ingredient is candy corn for one dollar the other is cream corn for tree dollars and then corn on the cob for five dollars. They did that for like 4 different ingredients for one round. The show had like three total rounds for the whole show. I don’t remember the host or what i saw it on but I only have Netflix, Hulu, discovery + and Disney, so it should only be on one of those. Thanks

Sounds crazy I know but I heard this is a couple times where shrinkflation can actually help reduce obesity in the long run. I thought it was crazy but when it was explained to me it kind of seems like it could actually be a good thing health wise. For lower economic backgrounds, the idea is that cheap stores like Dollar Tree and Dollar General are more pressure prone to inflation especially in junk food, so they have to increase prices and reduce the item compared to a farmer selling fruit and vegetables. Yes, the farmer has to raise prices but it harder for him to just put less items in a container. For higher economic background if prices get too high and people have to pick between snacks and stables, they just go with the stables until a competitor arrives that offers the snacks for cheaper prices. Not sure if the data backs this up but it doesn't sound impossible I guess.

So as per my last post, I didn’t have an SM well I finally got one and she’s been hiring people like crazy. She doesn’t take feedback well and keeps saying that she’s been in retail management for 33 years but it’s her first time at dollar tree. She doesn’t do anything the corporate way and threatens to write us up if she sees us talking to the cashier. She wrote me up today and everyone who worked yesterday because we didn’t push enough freight, which is really confusing because I did around 6 Uboats by myself and the other ASM did around 2. I talked with my DM and he keeps defending her for everything and saying that she’s making less chaos. I feel bad for the cashiers who worked yesterday because they got wrote up for doing their jobs, she doesn’t want the cashiers leaving their registers to stock or anything that they normally would. I’m about to just quit because at this point it’s getting to be too much. She has cut my hours and another ASMs to give more hours to our new ASM which lives with her. We have no room for food because she wants us to only do that until it’s gone but with me being a cashier half the time, I can’t do what a Merch Manager is supposed to do. She takes 7 smoke breaks a day which last around 10 minutes each but gets mad at us for taking our breaks. It doesn’t help that she has unrealistic standards for everyone and thinks we can get a truck out in a day when I have to be MOD and every morning i open by myself so. it’s a confusing situation. I put in for my vacation and when i get back from it, I will probably quit because I start college again soon so

Yes I know. It’s no longer Halloween nor is it close to it. However i have a paranormal story that happened last Halloween. Let me share a bit of background. The year: 2022. It was Halloween and I was lucky enough to get a job at around the time of trick or treating. I was asked to immediately start work the next day. Place: Dollar tree. Now the location I work at is in a parking lot with other stores nearby and a very busy Main Street that leads out of the town I’m in. Across from it is a mall that is sadly dying. Now onto the story. One day I was scheduled to come in for a 4hr shift. 5-9 was my shift. Everything was normal. I was running register when people were waiting to cash out and doing recovery (basically grabbing items and putting them away) the time had hit around 7pm and I began restocking the stores mini soda coolers. Once I was done the time was around 8:55ish. About the normal time me and the assistant manager usually lock up. Nothing really happens during this time except for us counting down both our draws. After that we moved onto the safe and deposit count. We get through those pretty well and I sit down while I wait for the assistant manager to insert all the info into the computer. Time then was around 9:15. One set of lights had already shutoff. About 2-3 mins go by. And suddenly we hear a witches laugh. You know that, “keheheh” laugh? Yeah that one. Now no… this isn’t fiction. We were selling these little witch ornaments that made that noise. I say “what the heck?” In a confused tone and the Assistant Manager says that it’s weird. Now here’s the twist… no one was in the store besides us. The bigger twist? The decorations were motion activated. Spooky… some might say it’s a bug or something but let me say that they only did it once.

I check all my bags before I put them in my cart at Dollar Tree. I've taken several bags off the shelf lately, inspected the window and found them to have wet rot. One time I went to pick up a bag and my thumb poked right through the bag and got covered in nasty black mold (must compromise the integrity of the plastic somehow). Just now I was transferring to a ziploc for my ziploc tek and the new/just opened Savy Fare had a spot where the plastic broke and then a patch of black mold on the brick of rice inside corresponding to the break. Just wanted to share my experience. I'll be going back to using Aldi.

December 2025
Letter from UAE president to all GCC members
GCC has planned creating monetary union more than 20 years ago. It was suppossed to be created in 2010, but we were doing everything we can to slow it down. We couldn't agree how to implement it, how its governance should work or how the bills are supposed to look like.
Today I would like to present you a full plan of implementing a monetary union.

Overwiev

The currency will be called Arabian Dinar. 1 AD will be equal to 1000 fils. AD would be pegged to US Dollar at the following rate: 1 AD = 3.26 USD. It is modeled after Kuwaiti Dinar - the strongest currency in the world.
​

Denomination	Form	Front face	Rear face	Main color
1 Fils	Coin	Number "1"	Sand Dunes	Not applicable
5 Fils	Coin	Number "5"	Arabian Dhow	Not applicable
10 Fils	Coin	Number "10"	Arab and Camels	Not applicable
25 Fils	Coin	Number "25"	Coffee Pot	Not applicable
50 Fils	Coin	Number "50"	Drilling Rig	Not applicable
100 Fils	Coin	Number "100"	Arabian Horse	Not applicable
0.25 AD	Note	Arabian Oryx	Frankincense tree	Brown
0.5 AD	Note	Pearl	the tree of life	Green
1 AD	Note	Arabian Leopard	Socotra Dragon's Blood tree	Grey
5 AD	Note	Saudi Gazelle	Palm tree	Purple
10 AD	Note	Falcon	Al Ghaf Tree	Pink
20 AD	Note	Scorpion	Sidra tree	Blue
50 AD	Note	Arabian Camel	Arfaj	Red/Yellow

Symbols of the notes are the national symbols of GCC member states.

• 0.25AD = Oman
• 0.5AD = Bahrain
• 1 AD = Yemen
• 5 AD = Saudi Arabia
• 10 AD = UAE
• 20 AD = Qatar
• 50 AD = Kuwait

Implementation

We can start rolling it out as soon as the GCC states agree to this union. For the period of 6 months it would only be used in electronic transactions. During that period, the GCC Central Bank in Kuwait(it was moved there in the last year) will be printing new notes and minting coins.In the next 2 year phase freshly printed money will be distributed among all GCC states. People will be able to convert their current funds into Arabian Dirham.
The whole implementation is supposed to last for 2.5 years and it's designed to be a slow, gradual change.
​

Pros and Cons

Pros:

1. Trade between our countries will be significantly easier. All currencies were already pegged to USD, but it was still an administrative burden that is going to be wiped out, reducing the cost of doing business in GCC and making it more attractive for international investment.
2. Increased tourism revenue. Tourists will be able to land in one member country and ride to another one(e.g. using GCC railway) and they won't need to worry about exchanging money. It will make the whole GCC look attractive, not just a few countries.
3. Economical integration. People of the Gulf nations are the same. We share the same culture and beliefs. Monetary union would be beneficial not only for big corporations, but also for us and our citizens - it would be seen as a symbol of Khaleeji people united

Cons:

1. Currencies in different GCC countries have different exchange rate. Changing to a new currency may cause a small economic crisis. Nothing that we can't deal with, of course, but something that we need to remember

​

It would be highly beneficial for every GCC state to join this monetary union.

This is the self adhesive vinyl contact paper you can buy from Dollar Tree. Would this be easy to remove off a linoleum floor after I’m done with it?

Maybe i’m barking at the wrong tree but here goes nothing.
I’ll start with the short of it, and then add details for those who want.
I really enjoy personal fiances and budgeting, and I’d love to make this somewhat of a side gig, but I feel there’s heaps of people who are more qualified.
The long version I used to be really bad with my finances. I got myself in 25k debt in just a few months, and when I finally started doing a budget, I managed to get myself out of the whole I dug. I made personal finance an absolute priority for me.
My wife and I are in early 30s, we come from humble families and though we have good jobs, we are normal people earning a normal (but good) salary. Through steady savings and good investments, we’ve built a combined net worth of just over a million dollars and we will finish paying the mortgage in 12 months.
Now i don’t want to give investments advice, i just really like budgets and planning ahead. I have perfected my spreadsheets and I feel like a fair few people could use the help, and this could be something I do on the side. But I feel so pretentious at the idea of doing this. I’m sure there are tons of books about this already… but then I look around and people are struggling with their finances and I think I could help!
So i guess my question is where to go from here. So I give this a shot? I want to believe, but also want to be humble.
Using a throwaway account since many of my friends know my real reddit account.

Those little 2” bouncy balls you’d get for a quarter in a twisty thing. My cat goes crazy for them but they’re wildly expensive on Amazon.
I’ve tried: dollar tree, dollarama, and Walmart

Anybody else tired of people selling Shein products for ridiculously high prices? I was looking for a bag and found a cute one for $10, Shein brand, I Google it and it’s $3.50 brand new 😭 sooo much Shein shit on Mercari and at the thrift stores, I’m tired of seeing it and tired of people thinking they can get so much money for cheap crappy shit! I’ve also seen people selling Dollar Tree brand items for $5-$10 recently on Mercari…. Irritating 🙄

PART EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Friday
Tucker Portsmith’s head pounded so hard he felt like a blood vessel was about to explode behind his eyes. All week he had been dividing his time between trying to find out why he and Helen were no longer permitted to see Alex and doing what was necessary to distance the company from Dyadron to listening to Helen rail about the failings of Pensacola, the US Navy and him as a father and a husband.
He knew he couldn’t contact anyone in the Pentagon for answers. Not after NCIS Director Scott Dyson contacted him via a video call to tell him to his face to stop asking questions that wouldn’t be answered at this time. No matter how hard he tried to word it differently, to get even a hint of what was going on, the director shut him down. Hard. And then, he ended the call with a warning not to interfere. In any way. That they would contact him when they were ready.
Helen, of course, insisted he call the director back and demand the answers she wanted. She hadn’t taken ‘No’ well, but as much as she huffed and puffed, she would not budge him when his actions reflected on his business life. There were times to draw a line for the family and fight for what was right. When the entire US Military was telling you to stand down or risk going to jail and losing everything … that was not one of them.
Last night had been the first real night’s sleep he’d had all week, for they’d severed the last tie with Dyadron and were now completely clear of that nightmare. He might’ve had a drink or ten in private celebration of their achievements and promised Phillipa a steak and lobster dinner once a week for the rest of her life for her part in it. Right after he shook her senseless for not taking better care of herself. She’d been riding his backside about not overdoing it for so long it never occurred to him to do it for her. A mistake he wouldn’t repeat going forward, to be sure.
And now, he had visitors at—he squinted at the glowing timepiece on his side table—WTF o’clock in the morning! The pounding the door to the penthouse apartment took would’ve been heard throughout the building, made worse by the fact it was 5 am. He’d ignored the pounding at first, thinking Helen would answer the door, but when it continued relentlessly, he assumed she had already left to do one of her many daily workouts and dragged himself out of bed.
He tossed on a robe but forwent the slippers in his haste to reach the door. He tied the robe while in motion. “Coming!” he called because, of course, if Helen was gone, Donald would be with her, and he’d be alone. So far, that had suited him, as he’d been able to get a lot of work done without the interruptions.
He looked at the screen and was stunned to see four people crammed into the video image. Two in naval attire (he never did go into the whole who did what rank thing outside of Alex’s rank of Petty Officer) and two ill-fitting suits that made them either detectives or FBI.
The closest in a business suit had his fist raised to pound some more.
“Wait!” Tucker barked, unlocking the door from the inside and opening it just enough to stand in the way. “Can I help you?”
The plain-clothes person that had been beating on his door held up her badge for Tucker to see, along with a piece of paper folded into three, which she pushed into Tucker’s hand on his way past. “Federal agents. We need to conduct a search of your apartment, sir, and you need to step aside. We have a warrant.”
“A warrant for what?” Tucker demanded, opening the letter to skim the contents. In the central portion of the letter was Alexander’s name.
They’re searching for Alex?!
“Are you insane?” he demanded as the rest of them followed the woman’s lead and muscled their way in. “Alex is in a coma! In the hospital! Why …?!” And then his sleep-deprived, mildly alcohol-infused, aching brain kicked in, and he whirled on the people who were sweeping into the living room. “Where is my son?!” he demanded, storming after the four. He caught up with the closest one, who happened to be navy and went to grab her when her partner stepped between them.
“Don’t be touching her, sir. Just stand over there. This won’t take long.”
“Someone had better tell me what the hell is going on! How did you even get a warrant at this ungodly hour?! Based on what? That we’re his parents, and we’re here because he’s in a coma?!”
He watched them head up the hall and try to strongarm the first door, which was locked. “NO!” he shouted, trying without success to push against the man holding him back. “You can’t go in there!”
“That warrant says we can check everything, Mister Portsmith…”
“That room contains access to military secrets that I assure you are NOT on any goddamn warrant, and this says you’re looking for Alexander. That’s fine. I’ll unlock the door, go in first and remove my computer, and you can search to your heart’s content for a comatose patient who isn’t here.”
When the four looked amongst themselves, Tucker straightened and said in his most authoritative voice, “The contents of that room go way above your pay grade, ladies and gentlemen. If you force your way into that room based on the information on this warrant, I assure you, the Pentagon will land on you so hard your families will forget what you look like by the time they see you again.” He stood his ground, knowing he looked as intimidating as a homeless puppy in his robe, but nevertheless, there was a reason he never left that room unlocked.
Finally, the male FBI agent stepped back and gestured at the door. “Unlock it, sir. You may follow me in and collect your computer. I assumed it’s powered down?”
“Of course. My keys are in my bedroom. The master suite, third door on the left in a drawer that can’t possibly contain my son, so you have no reason to open it.” Since the agent was the first to listen to reason, Tucker addressed him. “Let me know when I’m clear to go in there and get them.”
The agent gestured for the sailors to move ahead of them, and when he came back a few minutes later, silently shaking his head, the agent said. “If you’ll come with me, Mister Portsmith.”
Tucker hated being directed like this, but until he could lay his hand on his phone and unleash the avalanche of lawyers that he had at his disposal, he wasn’t sure what was and wasn’t acceptable in this situation. It wasn’t often feds and the military joined forces on things.
He opened the drawer and collected his keys while his other hand holding the warrant palmed his phone off its charging plate. As they went back to the office, he snapped a photo of the insidious document and sent it to his lawyers’ cell phones. Yes, multiple, because it wasn’t just one senior partner that took care of their legal needs but three.
“What did you just do?” the female agent demanded, pulling Tucker’s hands apart.
“I just sent this warrant to my lawyers in New York. You’d better hope you know exactly what you’re doing because…”
His phone immediately exploded with incoming calls, which had him smiling caustically at the woman. Without seeing who had reached him first, he used his thumb to connect the call and put it on speaker.
“Who is executing the warrant?” Julian Santos demanded, his deep baritone voice filling the hallway. The federal agent gave Tucker a disgusted look and gestured at the closed front door.
I don’t think so, junior. “Four, Julian. Two feds and two from the navy. They haven’t specifically identified themselves yet, and they want me to unlock my office door…”
“Don’t you dare! The warrant only demands a search of your present accommodations. It does not include any rooms that fall under the banner of Portsmith Electronics. Those require a very different set of warrants that need to be issued directly from either Washington or the Pentagon, and I doubt you have those at the ready, correct agent?”
“We have the authority to search…” the male agent insisted but was cut off by the three-thousand-dollar an hour attorney.
“Do not unlock that door, Tucker. Even as we speak, I have people in Florida moving to have that search warrant quashed. It’ll be gone in just a few minutes.”
“Until then, this is a valid warrant.” The man turned and quickly gestured for the three with him to fan out, searching the penthouse apartment as fast and thoroughly as they could before the counter-injunction was handled.
Well, well, well. It seemed they were well aware of who they were squaring off with after all.
“Julian, I know Alex isn’t here. He’s been in a coma for over a week, and now they’ve lost him. If I go into my office and remove my computer, is there any harm in letting them search the office for Alex if only to make them go away?”
“Tucker, they’re not going away. The warrant gives them the authority to take you and Helen downtown for questioning.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. As I said, we’ll have a full team ready to move before you leave the apartment, which isn’t going to happen until more security is on hand for your laptop. Is Donald there?”
“He’s with Helen on her run.” The fact he had been locked inside the apartment for days and only ventured out when he was with Helen and, therefore, Donald was not something he was about to get into.
“Fine. I’ll get your office to organise a security detail for you and your computer. Stay put, don’t answer anything until we get there, and for Christ’s sake, leave me on speaker.” Tucker heard several tell-tale crackles in the line to indicate others had been patched into the call but had refrained from speaking.
It was a strange thing, but in Tucker’s head, he was picturing a virtual reality computer game where the enemy had him cornered until, one by one, his own team spawned around him to level the playing field … and then overwhelm it.
He didn’t hear Julian’s voice anymore and assumed he’d been muted so that the senior partner could bark out orders at whoever else was on the line with him.
“I guess you’re not an honourable man after all,” the male FBI agent said with a tight expression.
“Tell me why you think I’d break into a military hospital and kidnap my crippled son, and I’ll be the first to unlock that door.”
“Tucker!” Julian immediately came back onto the line.
“Relax, Julian. I have no idea what’s going on here, but they have no intention of telling me why they want Alex so badly.” Stiffening, he looked down at his phone. “Actually, make that a priority. There’s only so much the military can hide from us, especially if Alex was using family funds in any way to finance his situation. Have someone call Elias Stoll. He can track down Alex’s accounts and find out what he was up to that way.”
“NO!” the agents and the naval personnel all shouted at once.
“Tucker?” Julian queried, for the man wasn’t used to taking those types of directives any more than he was.
“If I do it, I’ll have to put you on hold,” he explained. The rest of that sentence went unspoken. If Julian wanted to remain an ear in the room, someone else had to do the legwork for him.
“Do not hang up,” Julian reiterated, and once more, Tucker was muted from the attorneys’ conversation.
And so began the dance of the law.
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I'd love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

1
We underestimate the trials the dead have gone through.
This obvious mistake leads to avoidable missteps in life. It is still all too common.
When my Grandfather passed away, I inherited a house in the mountains. The view was breathtaking. It had a sweeping vista of infinite pine trees. The place was nowhere near as large as the properties surrounding it.
It was a summer home for him and my Grandma. The interior of it contained many of his items. This included tobacco pipes, cabinets of obscure teas, and cupboards of whiskey bottles.
One Saturday evening I went through the attic and found a dozen stacks of boxes. The majority of them remained unlabeled. Several contained pulp paperbacks and stacks of old photos. Towards the end of his life, he gave up his old pastimes of hunting and fishing. He stayed at home and watched old game shows instead.
I tried to clean the roof space in one day. I found myself unable to complete it before tiring and going to bed.
The next morning I resumed the activity. It was no longer about trying to declutter the area and fill it with my own possessions. It was now a way to learn more about the man.
All I knew about his reputation was how he had served in World War II. My family told me how he was as short on words as he was on patience.
I found an old newspaper article, dated 1983. There were other period pieces around it. The topics varied. This included the US invasion of Grenada and the debut of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. A device known as the mobile phone received a mention.
Yet what caught my attention was the first piece. I brushed aside cobwebs to find it buried underneath a pile of cardboard with burnt edges.
The picture was of my Grandfather, Roy Davies. He held a check for fifty thousand dollars. This was an amount I later found out equaled to one hundred and fifty two thousand in today’s money. The mystery of how he could afford the place he gave me was no longer one worth pondering.
The wall behind him had an illustration of a ramshackle house on a hill. The title of the write-up was NORTHERN CALIFORNIA MAN WINS IN THE PILOT FOR NEW SHOW ‘THE TRIANGLE GAME.’
I read the five hundred word account. It detailed how he flew to Los Angeles to be a participant in an allegedly syndicated program. There were two other people he competed against. The editorial feature did not go into detail about what the goal of the game was. How to win or get disqualified was unknown to me. Still Still, my Grandfather walked out a much richer man before he flew back home.
It did mention the couple he played against, a man called James Grover and a woman named Daisy Francis.
I flipped the article. I found were words written in orange ink with a marker on the back, CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
I searched online for the triangle game. I found variations on the pastime ‘I Spy’ first. Players would spot triangular items in their immediate vicinity. I discovered a few board games, along with IQ-related quizzes.
No information was available about a television broadcast.
2
It took almost a month of research to find where James Grover lived.
I managed to find his house by paying for a background checking website. He had gotten a criminal charge for running a red light in front of a cop. Otherwise his record was clean. That single infraction allowed me to find him since it put him in that specific database.
I stood outside his red brick house in a suburb. It was a Wednesday afternoon in a neighborhood located in an upscale part of Illinois.
Frost caked the lawns near the heated sidewalk I stood on. I imagined the place to be serene in the summertime, even if it was a vacant-seeming region now.
A stretch of abodes stood before me without their lights on. Nervousness coursed through me. The idea of having traveled all this way for the information to be wrong made me anxious.
I walked along the concrete pathway towards his front door. I stepped on a creaky porch. I set aside my awareness of the likely pending disappointment and knocked.
A shuffling of feet was on the other side of the entrance. as well as A remote control clicked as the volume of a television blaring a news report got turned down.
He answered. The man fit the correct age range I calculated he would fall into. He wore a flannel jacket and slacks, He had on a blue pair of slippers. His gray mustache bristled as he saw me.
“James Grover?” I asked.
“If you’re trying to sell me something I’m not interested.”
“I’m very sorry to bother you sir, and I promise I won’t take up much of your time. I’m here to ask if you would be willing to let me ask you a few questions about something you might know about. See, I make documentaries for a living, and I have concluded that you might be able to help me.”
I could not take a good photograph when asked, but it was a stringent falsehood I conveyed well in the moment.
In reality, I was a podcaster. The term documentarian, though not as modern, seemed more legitimate. Especially to an older gentleman.
“Alright,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “What are you making a movie on? Also, where’s your film crew?”
“I gleaned that you were the type to prefer remaining anonymous. The conversation‘s recorded. This will be with your consent, of course. The subject I want to discuss with you involves the triangle game.”
Grover took a few steps away from the threshold and broke eye contact with me as his lips pursed. His eyes wandered over to the corner of his living room, and he brought his gaze back to mine.
“Why do you want to know about that?”
“Because I can’t find anything about it anywhere,” I said. “I’ve even been to the National Archives of Game Show history in search of it. It’s as though it never existed. I know it did because I found this article.”
As I brandished the piece of writing to him, his eyes bulged as he focused and scanned the text.
“Ahh,” he said as he took in a deep inhalation, “I remember that man. Tell you what, come on in. Would you like some coffee?”
I took a seat in one of his recliners as I asked him a few generic questions about his life.
James spent a considerable time of his youth in North Lawndale, one of the rougher places in Chicago. He escaped his impoverished upbringing by pursuing a career as an inventory clerk. He worked his way up to management in a warehousing company.
“I beat the odds in a big way,” he said as he folded his hands and sat across from me.
“So, what can you tell me about your experience on set that day? Do you know about anything that happened post-production?”
“They made us sign contracts where we would promise not to talk about what we went through with anyone. Still, I’m at the point where I’m not very worried, or I don’t think I should be. I was much younger then, about your age. I lived at the boxing gym and had dreams of going pro. Of course that didn’t happen, but when I wasn’t training I was drinking and doing stupid things that young men do. Bar brawls I didn’t deserve to get away with but somehow did. My mother watched a lot of game shows. Without my knowledge, she submitted my name for consideration to become a contestant. She thought it would make me a better person if I had some kind of hope for helping the family. One besides crushing peoples noses for a living.”
“How did she hear about it?”
“I have no idea. I wish I asked her.”
“How did you find out you were going to go on?”
“Back then, everything was a phone call, so that’s what we got. They flew me out there, I took a taxi to get to the set. It was not a traditional studio. The place was closer to a factory with a fake space ship built inside of it. In the center of the room was a neon triangle with the same spaciousness of a house.”
“How was the game played?”
“Before it started, they told us to write down three things we were good at. I put boxing, organizational skills, and running. Daisy listed hers as poker, math, and long distance swimming. Roy - that was his name, the person in the picture you showed me - put outdoor survival, shooting, and cooking. We would stand at each point of the triangle. We’d get asked a question by the host, and we had three minutes to answer it. If we got it right, they gave us a reward being able to attack one of the other two people using the skill sets we put down. The goal is to make the other two quit by getting enough questions correct. Of course, we went into the game blind to the rule set. Otherwise I may have chosen the most aggressive ability imaginable. Roy won because he chose aptitude with a firearm, which trumps any martial art, whether I like it or not.”
James lifted his pant leg and showed me a scar above his knee.
“At least he was kind enough to not make it a fatal blow,” he said.
I showed him the words written on the back of the newspaper clipping. He shrugged and told me he was unaware, dismissive of it as someone’s scrapped note.
I asked him if he remembered the name of the host or could give me a physical description.
“I don’t remember anything about what we called him, if he even told us what he went by. His hair was black and a pompadour style. He wore a purple suit with a bright orange tie.”
“Two last questions,” I said. “Do you know what happened to Daisy, if she’s still alive? Also, do you recall the address of the place where they filmed the game?”
“I wrote to Daisy twice a year before she vanished. We did have one conversation over the phone, and she told me that bad luck was going to follow the losers of that pilot. There was no media coverage about her passing that I ever saw. As far as the location, sure. I wrote it down in a journal I kept with me even when I traveled. I used to keep track of my workouts and diet regiment back then. Let me grab it.”
3
The location where the Triangle Game took place four decades earlier stood in a squalid part of the city.
I passed the ruins of the old LA zoo on my way to the spot. I contemplated how the sight I was about to take in could not get any stranger. I was wrong.
The building was five stories, but the front only had a trio of stained glass windows. Bullet holes surrounded the casements. The place had a nave roof and flying buttresses on both sides. Multi-colored graffiti littered the outside.
It sat in a neighborhood filled with homeless people who slept on benches.
I went there mid-afternoon. I approached the front and found two locked doors. I scaled around back. I stepped over heaps of trash in the process, and saw an opening in the form of a hole large enough to crawl into.
A surge of adrenaline hit me me as I belly crawled through. I was taking a bet on how there were no cameras, guards or residents who would make a scene out of my trespassing.
It is amazing the rules one will bend for the sake of new content on social media, I opined as I made way into the space.
I turned on the flashlight of my phone and saw nothing but an enormous dusty chamber made of concrete.
I moved into the next room. A hoarders lifetime supply of broken antiques sat. Spray painted devil-horned faces grinned from the ceiling.
What caught my attention the most was a camera’s tripod. It stood alone in the far left corner.
I approached it to get a better look. I kicked aside a bunch of cans. As they clattered away, I looked down and saw a pointed tip of something drawn on the ground.
I removed most of the trash by shoving the majority of it aside and saw what was underneath.
The large triangle, which took up most of the flooring in the chamber, was still there after all these years.
In the center of it was a thin line of blood. I crouched down and peered at it.
The fluid was still wet, and a horrid stench met me. I gagged and recoiled, and in my backing away, my shoulder bumped against a dusty and discarded shelf.
Gunfire rang out.
I did not know if it was outside or near me, but I did not wish to find out. I exited the way I came in with a relentless sprint and drove as far away as I could.
4
A year later, I was finally wrapping up my recording of the podcast. I titled it ‘Three Ways to Die.’
While the name of the series was quite sensational, I felt the story merited a bit of clickbait. I had no followers and was unsure of how it would perform.
I reasoned that giving the story any publicity I could would help me find the lost piece of media. Even if it was on the cutting room floor of that very space I had to leave.
I went to call Grover, to try and collect an email address so I could send him the pre-uploaded production.
A woman answered.
“You’re looking for my father. He lost his life six months ago. Someone killed him. I would appreciate it if you got rid of this number.”
She ended the call less than a second after the last word. She wrote me off as an insurance agent looking to take advantage of a grieving family member.
I paced around my room. Although I did not know him well, I had come to like him, and his gruesome end was not one he deserved. I researched crime news to find out what had happened to him, to no avail.
The newspaper piece I had collected that fateful day sat at the edge of my desk.
I lifted it towards me and flipped it over again. I stared at the words — CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
The sentence was nonsensical. I had applied my own meanings to the gibberish phrase. Like it was a cryptic and silly way of saying ‘outgoing mail.’
I do not know whether it was desperation, a creative inclination or an admixture of both. I decided to run it through an anagram generator I had searched for on the web.
It came up with many phrases, some of them surreal, but the one that popped out to me was EXPECT VIOLENCE.
My stomach turned as I realized how my own personal investigation yielded nothing. I opened the window and was soon exposed to some fresh Sierra air, which was therapeutic but not curative.
I decided to take a long walk. I had been sedentary over the last week due to intensive editing. I figured a jaunt would help me smooth a few psychological knots things out.
I slid my closet door open to try and find a pair of sweat pants.
The sound of thunder reverberated outside. I stared out to find the sky had become overcast.
The closet door creaked even louder than I could remember it having been before.
Orange ties hung on the rack, and a triangle painted a pastel green was visible behind it.

1
We underestimate the trials the dead have gone through.
This obvious mistake leads to avoidable missteps in life. It is still all too common.
When my Grandfather passed away, I inherited a house in the mountains. The view was breathtaking. It had a sweeping vista of infinite pine trees. The place was nowhere near as large as the properties surrounding it.
It was a summer home for him and my Grandma. The interior of it contained many of his items. This included tobacco pipes, cabinets of obscure teas, and cupboards of whiskey bottles.
One Saturday evening I went through the attic and found a dozen stacks of boxes. The majority of them remained unlabeled. Several contained pulp paperbacks and stacks of old photos. Towards the end of his life, he gave up his old pastimes of hunting and fishing. He stayed at home and watched old game shows instead.
I tried to clean the roof space in one day. I found myself unable to complete it before tiring and going to bed.
The next morning I resumed the activity. It was no longer about trying to declutter the area and fill it with my own possessions. It was now a way to learn more about the man.
All I knew about his reputation was how he had served in World War II. My family told me how he was as short on words as he was on patience.
I found an old newspaper article, dated 1983. There were other period pieces around it. The topics varied. This included the US invasion of Grenada and the debut of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. A device known as the mobile phone received a mention.
Yet what caught my attention was the first piece. I brushed aside cobwebs to find it buried underneath a pile of cardboard with burnt edges.
The picture was of my Grandfather, Roy Davies. He held a check for fifty thousand dollars. This was an amount I later found out equaled to one hundred and fifty two thousand in today’s money. The mystery of how he could afford the place he gave me was no longer one worth pondering.
The wall behind him had an illustration of a ramshackle house on a hill. The title of the write-up was NORTHERN CALIFORNIA MAN WINS IN THE PILOT FOR NEW SHOW ‘THE TRIANGLE GAME.’
I read the five hundred word account. It detailed how he flew to Los Angeles to be a participant in an allegedly syndicated program. There were two other people he competed against. The editorial feature did not go into detail about what the goal of the game was. How to win or get disqualified was unknown to me. Still Still, my Grandfather walked out a much richer man before he flew back home.
It did mention the couple he played against, a man called James Grover and a woman named Daisy Francis.
I flipped the article. I found were words written in orange ink with a marker on the back, CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
I searched online for the triangle game. I found variations on the pastime ‘I Spy’ first. Players would spot triangular items in their immediate vicinity. I discovered a few board games, along with IQ-related quizzes.
No information was available about a television broadcast.
2
It took almost a month of research to find where James Grover lived.
I managed to find his house by paying for a background checking website. He had gotten a criminal charge for running a red light in front of a cop. Otherwise his record was clean. That single infraction allowed me to find him since it put him in that specific database.
I stood outside his red brick house in a suburb. It was a Wednesday afternoon in a neighborhood located in an upscale part of Illinois.
Frost caked the lawns near the heated sidewalk I stood on. I imagined the place to be serene in the summertime, even if it was a vacant-seeming region now.
A stretch of abodes stood before me without their lights on. Nervousness coursed through me. The idea of having traveled all this way for the information to be wrong made me anxious.
I walked along the concrete pathway towards his front door. I stepped on a creaky porch. I set aside my awareness of the likely pending disappointment and knocked.
A shuffling of feet was on the other side of the entrance. as well as A remote control clicked as the volume of a television blaring a news report got turned down.
He answered. The man fit the correct age range I calculated he would fall into. He wore a flannel jacket and slacks, He had on a blue pair of slippers. His gray mustache bristled as he saw me.
“James Grover?” I asked.
“If you’re trying to sell me something I’m not interested.”
“I’m very sorry to bother you sir, and I promise I won’t take up much of your time. I’m here to ask if you would be willing to let me ask you a few questions about something you might know about. See, I make documentaries for a living, and I have concluded that you might be able to help me.”
I could not take a good photograph when asked, but it was a stringent falsehood I conveyed well in the moment.
In reality, I was a podcaster. The term documentarian, though not as modern, seemed more legitimate. Especially to an older gentleman.
“Alright,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “What are you making a movie on? Also, where’s your film crew?”
“I gleaned that you were the type to prefer remaining anonymous. The conversation‘s recorded. This will be with your consent, of course. The subject I want to discuss with you involves the triangle game.”
Grover took a few steps away from the threshold and broke eye contact with me as his lips pursed. His eyes wandered over to the corner of his living room, and he brought his gaze back to mine.
“Why do you want to know about that?”
“Because I can’t find anything about it anywhere,” I said. “I’ve even been to the National Archives of Game Show history in search of it. It’s as though it never existed. I know it did because I found this article.”
As I brandished the piece of writing to him, his eyes bulged as he focused and scanned the text.
“Ahh,” he said as he took in a deep inhalation, “I remember that man. Tell you what, come on in. Would you like some coffee?”
I took a seat in one of his recliners as I asked him a few generic questions about his life.
James spent a considerable time of his youth in North Lawndale, one of the rougher places in Chicago. He escaped his impoverished upbringing by pursuing a career as an inventory clerk. He worked his way up to management in a warehousing company.
“I beat the odds in a big way,” he said as he folded his hands and sat across from me.
“So, what can you tell me about your experience on set that day? Do you know about anything that happened post-production?”
“They made us sign contracts where we would promise not to talk about what we went through with anyone. Still, I’m at the point where I’m not very worried, or I don’t think I should be. I was much younger then, about your age. I lived at the boxing gym and had dreams of going pro. Of course that didn’t happen, but when I wasn’t training I was drinking and doing stupid things that young men do. Bar brawls I didn’t deserve to get away with but somehow did. My mother watched a lot of game shows. Without my knowledge, she submitted my name for consideration to become a contestant. She thought it would make me a better person if I had some kind of hope for helping the family. One besides crushing peoples noses for a living.”
“How did she hear about it?”
“I have no idea. I wish I asked her.”
“How did you find out you were going to go on?”
“Back then, everything was a phone call, so that’s what we got. They flew me out there, I took a taxi to get to the set. It was not a traditional studio. The place was closer to a factory with a fake space ship built inside of it. In the center of the room was a neon triangle with the same spaciousness of a house.”
“How was the game played?”
“Before it started, they told us to write down three things we were good at. I put boxing, organizational skills, and running. Daisy listed hers as poker, math, and long distance swimming. Roy - that was his name, the person in the picture you showed me - put outdoor survival, shooting, and cooking. We would stand at each point of the triangle. We’d get asked a question by the host, and we had three minutes to answer it. If we got it right, they gave us a reward being able to attack one of the other two people using the skill sets we put down. The goal is to make the other two quit by getting enough questions correct. Of course, we went into the game blind to the rule set. Otherwise I may have chosen the most aggressive ability imaginable. Roy won because he chose aptitude with a firearm, which trumps any martial art, whether I like it or not.”
James lifted his pant leg and showed me a scar above his knee.
“At least he was kind enough to not make it a fatal blow,” he said.
I showed him the words written on the back of the newspaper clipping. He shrugged and told me he was unaware, dismissive of it as someone’s scrapped note.
I asked him if he remembered the name of the host or could give me a physical description.
“I don’t remember anything about what we called him, if he even told us what he went by. His hair was black and a pompadour style. He wore a purple suit with a bright orange tie.”
“Two last questions,” I said. “Do you know what happened to Daisy, if she’s still alive? Also, do you recall the address of the place where they filmed the game?”
“I wrote to Daisy twice a year before she vanished. We did have one conversation over the phone, and she told me that bad luck was going to follow the losers of that pilot. There was no media coverage about her passing that I ever saw. As far as the location, sure. I wrote it down in a journal I kept with me even when I traveled. I used to keep track of my workouts and diet regiment back then. Let me grab it.”
3
The location where the Triangle Game took place four decades earlier stood in a squalid part of the city.
I passed the ruins of the old LA zoo on my way to the spot. I contemplated how the sight I was about to take in could not get any stranger. I was wrong.
The building was five stories, but the front only had a trio of stained glass windows. Bullet holes surrounded the casements. The place had a nave roof and flying buttresses on both sides. Multi-colored graffiti littered the outside.
It sat in a neighborhood filled with homeless people who slept on benches.
I went there mid-afternoon. I approached the front and found two locked doors. I scaled around back. I stepped over heaps of trash in the process, and saw an opening in the form of a hole large enough to crawl into.
A surge of adrenaline hit me me as I belly crawled through. I was taking a bet on how there were no cameras, guards or residents who would make a scene out of my trespassing.
It is amazing the rules one will bend for the sake of new content on social media, I opined as I made way into the space.
I turned on the flashlight of my phone and saw nothing but an enormous dusty chamber made of concrete.
I moved into the next room. A hoarders lifetime supply of broken antiques sat. Spray painted devil-horned faces grinned from the ceiling.
What caught my attention the most was a camera’s tripod. It stood alone in the far left corner.
I approached it to get a better look. I kicked aside a bunch of cans. As they clattered away, I looked down and saw a pointed tip of something drawn on the ground.
I removed most of the trash by shoving the majority of it aside and saw what was underneath.
The large triangle, which took up most of the flooring in the chamber, was still there after all these years.
In the center of it was a thin line of blood. I crouched down and peered at it.
The fluid was still wet, and a horrid stench met me. I gagged and recoiled, and in my backing away, my shoulder bumped against a dusty and discarded shelf.
Gunfire rang out.
I did not know if it was outside or near me, but I did not wish to find out. I exited the way I came in with a relentless sprint and drove as far away as I could.
4
A year later, I was finally wrapping up my recording of the podcast. I titled it ‘Three Ways to Die.’
While the name of the series was quite sensational, I felt the story merited a bit of clickbait. I had no followers and was unsure of how it would perform.
I reasoned that giving the story any publicity I could would help me find the lost piece of media. Even if it was on the cutting room floor of that very space I had to leave.
I went to call Grover, to try and collect an email address so I could send him the pre-uploaded production.
A woman answered.
“You’re looking for my father. He lost his life six months ago. Someone killed him. I would appreciate it if you got rid of this number.”
She ended the call less than a second after the last word. She wrote me off as an insurance agent looking to take advantage of a grieving family member.
I paced around my room. Although I did not know him well, I had come to like him, and his gruesome end was not one he deserved. I researched crime news to find out what had happened to him, to no avail.
The newspaper piece I had collected that fateful day sat at the edge of my desk.
I lifted it towards me and flipped it over again. I stared at the words — CC ENVELOPE EXIT.
The sentence was nonsensical. I had applied my own meanings to the gibberish phrase. Like it was a cryptic and silly way of saying ‘outgoing mail.’
I do not know whether it was desperation, a creative inclination or an admixture of both. I decided to run it through an anagram generator I had searched for on the web.
It came up with many phrases, some of them surreal, but the one that popped out to me was EXPECT VIOLENCE.
My stomach turned as I realized how my own personal investigation yielded nothing. I opened the window and was soon exposed to some fresh Sierra air, which was therapeutic but not curative.
I decided to take a long walk. I had been sedentary over the last week due to intensive editing. I figured a jaunt would help me smooth a few psychological knots things out.
I slid my closet door open to try and find a pair of sweat pants.
The sound of thunder reverberated outside. I stared out to find the sky had become overcast.
The closet door creaked even louder than I could remember it having been before.
Orange ties hung on the rack, and a triangle painted a pastel green was visible behind it.