You have to dig through the clearance section because only certain sizes are on sale.
I'm a chonky boy so this is what I found that's around my size.
Brown Leather wallet $5
Black bomber jacket $10
Blue wool pants $10
Parka with faux fur hood lining $20
Quilted vest $10
Quilted blazer $20
Quilted Shirt Jacket $10
Boiled "Wool" jacket $20 (10% wool)
Faux Suede bomber jacket $20
​
These are only in small but pretty decent ime
3 pack briefs $5
​

Hello! I am trying to get my application package together for the VA. On the 2850 VA form under experience, there is only room for the past 3 jobs. Did anyone only do their past 3 if they had more experience, or did you add the rest of your experience on a separate sheet of paper (it does not specify to do this so I am not sure)? Thanks in advance!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• Optional: 1 cup chopped nuts (such as walnuts or pecans)

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
• In a large mixing bowl, cream together the softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
• Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla extract, mixing well after each addition.
• In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.
• Stir in the chocolate chips and nuts (if using), distributing them evenly throughout the dough.
• Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. You can also use a cookie scoop for more uniform cookies.
• Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the centers are still slightly soft.
• Remove the baking sheets from the oven and let the cookies cool on the sheets for a few minutes. Then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.
• Repeat the baking process with the remaining cookie dough until all the dough is used.
• Once the cookies are completely cooled, enjoy them with a glass of milk or store them in an airtight container for later enjoyment.

Feel free to customize this recipe by adding different mix-ins like nuts, dried fruits, or even swapping out the chocolate chips for white chocolate chips or other flavored chips. Enjoy your homemade chocolate chip cookies!

I've got a whole bunch of Apple stuff kicking around, and here's the picture with the timestamp that shows all of it. I'll be mostly in the US visiting family for the next couple weeks and can do local deals, but after that it'll be shipping only. All prices are without shipping since there's so many smaller items and it'll probably make sense for people to bundle stuff together, if you'd like to know what something costs to ship, just PM me your ZIP code and I'll weigh it out in a box and let you know what the actual shipping cost will be.
If you want to buy something or want better pictures or just have questions, don't hesitate to send me a PM! No chats please, Apollo doesn't work with them and I do 99% of my Redditing via my iPhone and iPad so I'll never see the chats, only PMs.

iPhones

2x iPhone 14, Midnight 128GB, T-Mobile Locked (Sealed in box) -- $620 ea. + shipping Wound up snagging a 14 Pro Max and 14 Plus instead and never opened or activated these, but they were bought from a T-Mobile store so they're going to be carrier locked to T-Mobile. Probably works with MVNOs on the same network, but I can't guarantee it. Here's a timestamp showing both seals still intact.
iPhone 11 Pro Max, Midnight 512GB, Unlocked -- $500 + shipping No history of repairs, factory unlocked, maximum 512GB storage, still has a whopping 93% battery health left somehow. I've used it with both physical SIMs and eSIMs across the US, Mexico, and Canada without issue. It lived its life in a case and it shows, it's in excellent condition. Here's a bunch of pictures, I can bundle in that spare charger in the pics if you want it.

Cables

Genuine Apple Power Extension Cable MK122LL/A (New!) -- $12 + shipping Brand new pulled from the box of one my MacBook Pros over the years. No retail packaging, just the original plastic sleeve that holds it in a little bundle. Replaces the regular plug with a three prong grounded extension cord on any Apple power adapter that has the removable duckhead power plug.
Caineii MFi Certified Coiled USB-A to Lightning Cable (New!) -- $5 + shipping Brand new, no retail packaging. Was included with a charger, but I already have more USB-A to Lightning cables than I can use.
Monoprice USB-A to Lightning Cable (Used) -- $3 + shipping Used and working.
Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort Cable (New!) -- $7 + shipping New, but has a little spot on the cable from when I tossed it onto a desk and it landed directly on a pink Sharpie I had left uncapped.
2x Genuine Apple USB-C to Lightning Cables (New!) -- $8 ea. + shipping Brand new, pulled from iPhone boxes and still in the little cardboard holder things Apple uses.
Genuine Apple USB-A to Lightning Cable (New!) -- $5 + shipping Brand new, still in the little cardboard holder thingy.
Monoprice 3' 3.5mm Aux Stereo Cable (New in retail packaging) -- $4 + shipping Brand new in slightly torn retail packaging, this was a spare I had kicking around from when I had a car without Bluetooth audio (horrifying, I know).

Cases

Teloxy iPhone 14 Pro Max Case (New!) -- $7 + shipping New in retail packaging. Basic black two piece case (soft inner layer, hard shell) for the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Looks to be about medium duty in terms of strength and size.
Pelican Guardian iPhone 11/XS Pro Max Case (Used) -- $7 + shipping Used, but in damn near new condition with retail packaging, never dropped. Nice and rugged without being bulky and with ribbed edges with a nice grippy texture that doesn't snag in pockets. Really really good case with a lifetime warranty from Pelican, and was only used for a few months on my 11 Pro Max which was a temporary replacement for my stolen 13 Pro Max until I could snag a 14 Pro Max.
Speck Balance Folio Clear Rose Gold Woven Metallic iPad 10.2" (7th, 8th, 9th Gen 2018 - 2021) Case (New!) -- $15 + shipping Brand new Speck brand case in original retail packaging. Fits 2018 through 2021 iPad 10.2" models and has a rose gold carbon-fiber look textured material.

Chargers

Genuine Apple 5W USB-A Charger A1265 (Used) -- $4 + shipping Used in good shape and working.
Genuine Apple 85W MagSafe Charger A1343 (Used) -- $25 + shipping Used with the normal light scratches on the shiny white plastic but in great shape overall since this was my backup charger years ago. MagSafe Gen 1 with an L-shaped connector. Includes a power extension cord with the three-prong grounded power plug, but no little folding duckhead connector.
Two Port USB-A Car Charger, 15.5W/3.1A total output (Used) -- $3 + shipping Generic car charger that was powering my dash cam and a wireless charger pad, works fine.

Misc.

iPhone 4 GSM A1332, Black (Not Working) -- $10 + shipping Doesn't turn on, no idea why, and the two bottom screws are missing. Harvest for parts or disassemble to make one of those neat exploded parts view shadowboxes.
7x Apple Stickers (New!) -- $1 ea. + shipping Classic white Apple stickers. One dollar per sticker, but there's two sheets with two stickers on them, those are two bucks each or I guess I can cut the sheet in half if need be.
Genuine Apple Folding Charger US Plug aka Duckhead (Used) -- $7 + shipping Used but in really really good shape. Here's the little US duckhead that fits into the Apple chargers with removable plugs.
Genuine Apple SIM Eject Tool (New!) -- $3 + shipping No retail packaging, pulled from iPhone box. Sure, you could use a paper clip, but this is nice and flat and fits into a phone case or something so it's good for travel. Or maybe you're an obsessive collector who needs every Apple product ever. I don't judge. ;)
Genuine Apple Lightning to Aux/Headphones 3.5mm Adapter (New) -- $7 + shipping No retail packaging, pulled from an iPhone box back in the good old days when Apple actually used to include stuff with your thousand dollar phone purchase.
Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter (Used) -- $5 + shipping Good for hooking up Mini DisplayPort Macs to those old projectors at the office that only have VGA ports.

iPhone Boxes

Genuine Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max Box, Silver -- $12 + shipping Here's the box from my stolen 13 Pro Max, a phone which has since been gutted by gun-toting Colombian gangsters after they couldn't unlock it or get me to give up the code. RIP. Includes paperwork/instructions.
Genuine Apple iPhone 7 Plus Box, Silver -- $10 + shipping One for the collectors. Includes paperwork/instructions.
Genuine Apple iPhone 6 Box, Silver -- $10 + shipping Also for the collectors, also includes paperwork/instructions.
Genuine Apple iPhone 5 Box, Black -- $10 + shipping Again for the collectors, again includes paperwork/instructions.
Okay, so I think that's everything! Message me if you've got questions and I'll get back to you ASAP.
^{Oh, and again for the bot, Repairs: none}

Please use this thread to ask any questions you have about the game. Please search though the comments section as your question may have been answered already or through the search bar.

General Resources

• General Database - Good for seeing Stats of Students, Drop Rate, Raid Stats
• Gameplay Help Overview - Great for New Players
• Min-Turn Stage Guide - Text Version, Japanese Website
• Min-Turn Stage Guide - YouTube Video Version
• PvP Guide -
• Raid Guide - More in-depth description on each Raid's Mechanics
• Raid Character Guide - Recommended Students for each Raid
• Unique Equipment Guide - More detailed stats number for Equipment
• Upcoming Banners
• Student Skill Level Up Priority - More in-depth guide for Student's skill level up
• Midokuni's Student Insights - General Overview of Students
• Global Event
• Gameplay Overview (Legacy Content)
• Upcoming Banners (Legacy Content)

REMINDER: Bind your account!

Please remember to bind your accounts and take note of your UID, member code, server location, and any information related to your account (e.g. amount spent, student roster, etc). If anything happens to your account (e.g. losing access, unauthorized access), you will need to provide as much info as you can to Nexon's customer support email. Guest accounts that are unbound will be extremely difficult to recover, perhaps impossible.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

[01] When does the server reset?
For global, dailies reset at 19:00 UTC and weeklies reset on Sunday.
[02] Should I re-roll this account?
This will depend on your priorities with PvE, PvP, or both, but you can generally see the “ideal” units as Iori, Hibiki, and Tsubaki for most content, while Shun and Haruna are great for PvP.
[03] Who should I spend my elephs on? Who should I mystic unlock?
At the start, prioritize spending your blank elephs on getting Serina to 2-star for the increased healing stat, Tsubaki to 3-star for the extra tankiness when she is reloading. It is generally advised not to spend your elephs on increasing characters to 4-star and 5-star ratings, since there is only a stat increase and the amount of elephs needed is quite high.
[04] What do my support students’ stats do?
Aside from increasing the stats of their own skills, support students will provide additional stat boosts to your striker team. The specific increase(s) can be viewed by clicking on “Support” on the right side of the team formation screen.
[05] What should I buy in the shop?

• Credit Shop - Buy out the bottom row of materials, then the first two tiers of enhancement stones as needed. Feel free to buy the higher tiers of enhancement stones if you feel that you have an excess of credits, which is very common.
• Eligma - This will depend on you, can reference question [03].
• Total Assault (raid) - Prioritize Maki’s elephs (until you unlock her) and save the rest of your currency for future updates that will add more low-rarity students to the shop, meaning you can unlock mystic for them without spending your eligma. You can also purchase the skill discs/blu-rays depending on your needs.
• Tactical Challenge (PvP) - Buy out the energy drinks as needed (warning: they are instantly consumed, they won’t be moved to your inventory). Many suggest to save these for events in order to buy drinks, refresh the shop, and repeat.

[06] What does the “leader” position do?
This is purely cosmetic, as it changes which student’s chibi shows up on the map.
[07] What benefits are there to joining a club?

• 10 AP are given daily and deposited automatically on teacher's mailbox, upon checking in.
• A maximum of two assistant can be set for Total Assault and Joint Firing Drill respectively.

1. Students assigned to assist with TA cannot also be selected to assist with JFD.
2. 20 credits are rewarded every minute by setting assistants.
3. The specific unit that is borrowed can be only used once a day.
4. There's a fee of 40,000 credits, when borrowing a assistant student.
5. The donor receives 50,000 credits instead; even though the fee is 40,000 credits.
6. The fee can only be received 20 times a day.

• It can be unlocked after clearing Mission 3 Act 4

[08] How does the pity system work?
You need to pull, at a minimum, 200 times in order to get 200 recruitment points that are redeemed for the character you want. The recruitment point system does not carry over from banner to banner, it is only shared between banners that are concurrently running.
[09] Why can’t I find my friend’s club?
While the servers’ updates are separated from JP and global, the global servers are separated further into smaller divisions. You need to be on the same server as your friend, which you can check from the home screen: top-right menu button > account > version info. The server must be the same.
[10] When is X banner coming? Should I save for X student?
We never know for sure, due to the fact that global servers are on an accelerated schedule compared to JP. Please refer to this guide for some more info.
[11] Should I use Pyroxenes to refill my AP?
If you want to prioritize progression, the first three daily refills are decently valuable, this is because the Pyroxene cost of refilling will increase for every three refills. If you are focused on character collection or future banners, you should be saving your Pyroxenes.
[12] Why can’t I buy X student’s eleph in the shop?
You can only buy elephs of students you own.
[13] What should I craft?
At the start, prioritize crafting cafe furniture until your comfort is maxed out, then students’ gifts, then whichever upgrade materials you need. The crafting system is the only way to get furniture and gifts at the moment.
[14] What is the “Anniversary” in account settings?
This is your birthday, used for characters to wish you happy birthday.
[15] When will the beginner guide missions for Nonomi end?
This is a permanent addition, so feel free to take your time with the tasks.
[16] What is the best place to farm EXP?
You can run any map to farm EXP, as the EXP gain is equal to the amount of AP spent (i.e. 10 AP spent = 10 EXP gained). You should be looking at the stages that drop the equipment upgrade materials that you need.
[17] What is the “Secret Tech Sheet” in the Total Assault shop?
This is used to upgrade a student’s (non-EX) skill to level 10.
[18] Is it worth doing a raid if I can’t pass X difficulty level?
It is always more efficient to clear the highest difficulty you can finish instead of failing/forfeiting a higher difficulty.
[19] Can I claim the Limited Students through exchanging Expert Permits? How often does the Expert Permit shop resets?
You cannot get the limited students via this method. You will still need to pull for them. There's no specific mentioned but it's expected to be monthly.

OthePast Megathreads

• Daily Questions
• Weekly Club Recruitment
• Weekly Kivotos Lounge
• Weekly Storytelling Plaza
• Technical Issues

Please have patience with other members of the community and be as polite as possible. Everyone has to start somewhere!

So I am new to Etsy and am working on setting up my store. I am using Printful in order to make prints of my artwork. I would like to use one listing on Etsy to sell these prints in various dimensions (say 8"x10," 11"x14," 12"x16," and 16"x20" but also in different finishes, (matte and glossy). However Printful separates the prints into separate items by finish. So when it pushes my creations over to Etsy I end up with 1 draft for the matte prints in 4 dimensions, and then 1 draft of the glossy prints in 4 dimensions. What I have currently been doing is using google sheets to keep track of all of the SKU numbers for each variation (finish and dimension). I have decided I will use the draft for matte prints as the listing that will go live/active. I have been first copying and pasting the SKU numbers for the Matte finish into google sheets because I find that once I make the variations Etsy decides to delete all of the information. Then I take the SKU numbers and plug them back into the appropriate variation I made. Then I look at my draft for the glossy prints and input those SKU numbers into the matte print draft I plan to go live with all of the variations set up. I plan on having the listing that started out for just matte prints and that I added the variations to go live, and then the draft for the glossy prints stay as a draft. I only recently learned what a SKU number even was and am not sure I fully understand how they work. Will this work as I intend it to? I feel really paranoid right now about it all. Thanks!

I am 36DD. I used the calculator and it still says I'm 36DD, so no surprises here! I have even vertical fullness and center horizontal fullness. And obviously they are not shallow 😢
When I was 20 I had a breast reduction and lift. One breast was reduced and lifted and the other was just lifted to match the other. It was covered by my provincial Healthcare because of back pain. According to the surgeon, one breast was a C cup, the other was a DD cup. Now, 14 years later they're big again, but they traded places. Now the opposite boob is like a DDD and the one that was reduced previously is like a D. In hindsight I guess I should have waited until my 30s for the surgery (but at least I had nice boobs all through my 20s!) I don't want to go through another surgery. I mean they looked amazing for a few years, but GETTING the surgery sucks. Recovery and all that.
Now my question :
I'm looking for bras that will make me appear flatter, but lifted and separated. I want major compression to squish these puppies flat, but without the uniboob. No padding and no underwire.
I have several cowl neck tops that look stupid on me because the cowl looks like it's resting on a big old shelf and it just doesn't look right. I'm not a big girl but I'm top heavy and I hate it because I can't wear anything I like.
I cant wear a bralette or a light support sports bra because they kinda sag, they're soft and squishy (uniboob!) and they're 2 different sizes, which is fairly obvious.
I find minimizer bras are nice and comfortable, but they still allow too much protrusion, so I'm thinking my best option is a good high compression sports bra that still allows some separation.
Can anyone recommend such sports bras?

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

[First] [Previous] [Next]
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"So we've got an extra million?" asked Finn, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, a light breeze sweeping the ash off his balcony. "Cool. Put it in the fund. If Arges plays ball, we'll have the I-75 fixed up by June." He stared down at a sheaf of documents beside him. "Alright, goodbye."
He hung up, slumping his shoulders. Taking up the sheaf, he squinted at the papers. "I really need to get my eyes checked." he muttered to himself.
Finn stubbed out his cigarette and turned to the door when his phone rang again. He groaned and picked up the call. "Finn Stevens."
"Hello, Mister Stevens, this is Adeline from N.A.S.A."
Finn perked up, quietly shutting the balcony door behind him. "Uh, hello Adeline. How can I help you? Is there a problem with the funding?"
Adeline chuckled. "No, don't worry; your donations have all made it through okay. I called in relation to a report we received from the scout party that launched about a month ago."
Finn sat down in the kitchen as he poured from the coffee pot. He tried not to get his hopes up. "Oh, is everything okay?"
"More than okay, Mister Stevens. We got word that your father's alive."
A jug of milk fell from Finn's hands and exploded on the floor. "... Come again?"
"... Your father's alive." Adeline repeated, a twinge of concern in her voice.
"Where? Is he okay?" asked Finn shakily.
A sigh made its way over the line. "Mister Stevens, all other information related to this operation is strictly confidential. However, I can assure you that Mark is alive and safe. I'm sorry if that's not enough for you, but it's all I'm permitted to say."
Finn's breath came in trembling bursts. "A-alright. Thank you, thank you so much."
"You're we-" Finn hung up.
The world reeled, Finn's head thumped and whirled, and his breathing grew more laboured. He slumped to the floor, his phone clattering down beside him. A hesitant smile forced its way onto his face, and joyous tears spilled down his cheeks. A slow, almost nervous laugh escaped his lips, slowly growing in volume and intensity, until Finn appeared mad, cackling and crying on the kitchen floor.
Margaret reached the top of the stairs with curiosity in her steps. Her face fell when she saw her husband sat convulsing in a pool of milk, and she rushed to his side. "Babe? Finn, are you okay? What happened?!" she asked frantically.
Finn seemed from the outside to slip from a trance, his gaze fixing upon Margaret. "H-he... He's alive, Marge! Mark's alive!" And with those words, his rapture overwhelmed him once more, and he clung to his wife, laughing and crying into her shoulder. In that moment, the mess in the kitchen fell away, and all the world seemed possessed by Finn's euphoria. Margaret held him tightly, feeling tears begin to well in her own eyes.
Finn's laughter wavered for a moment."He's alive."
---
The mess halls aboard Holy Krek'ka saw their usual midday bustle as prisoners lined up to be served lunch. Behn and Wora stood side-by-side as they waited their turn; the routine had become so rote that the most interesting thing to do was determine which lunch tray they held based on scratches in the plastic. <"... I'm telling you, I had this one two days ago; this mark here's from when that X'andi in Block 3 knocked into me."> Wora traced the shallow scrape in the tray as she talked.
Behn screwed her face as she tried to remember. <"I remember that being more off to the side, around here."> Her finger pointed to a scratch an inch away from the tip of Wora's thumb.
<*"No, that was a week before that. You said: If that girl's ass was any bigger, she-">* Wora's speech was cut off by a flash of movement in her periphery. She followed it to see a towering X'olandi woman, tray tucked under her arm, marching past the line. She stopped near the front of the line, and began menacing a X'andi woman half her size. It was impossible to tell what the pair was saying over the hall's usual din; it was, however, impossible to miss the sight of the smaller woman being thrown from her place in line, with her aggressor taking her place. The X'andi tried to regain her place, quickly being shoved aside. She then tried to appeal to the guards, who simply told her to join the back of the line.
Behn squinted, pointing a finger at the immense woman ahead of them. <"Hey, wasn't she taken out of gen. pop yesterday?">
Wora's face was stern. <"She was. No way she got off early for good behaviour.">
<"Friends working the desks?">
<"Maybe."> Wora's tone was heavy, as though her words were more than sound. She watched the woman as she picked out a table, and saw the point of a blue diamond on her ankle.
​
The day passed like any other, and the prisoners were sent to their cells. The couple's cell was quiet, save for Wora using the toilet. Behn leafed through her box of cards, confusion thick in her expression. <"Come on! I could've sworn Bloodletter was in this deck. Hey Wora, you think someone's sneaking in and nicking cards?">
<"Probably."> replied Wora distantly, pulling up her pants. <"My card pool's looking a tad thin, too.">
<"Mmm. You still up for a game?">
<"Nah, I'm just gonna go to bed."> said Wora as she ruffled her fur.
<"You okay?"> asked Behn, making her way to her lover.
<"Yeah, just seasonal shit. I'm always like this this time of year."> Wora turned. Her fur was unkempt and her every movement screamed exhaustion.
Behn stared at her with pity. <"I get it. You wanna take the edge off?"> she asked hopefully.
A weak smile came across Wora's face. <"Thanks, but no. Too tired.">
<"Alright."> said Behn, disappointed. <"You know I'm here for you, right?">
<"Yeah. I know."> Wora took Behn's hand and ran her teeth across it.
Behn mirrored this affectionate gesture. <"Sleep well.">
<"I plan on it.">
The lovers embraced, then left for their separate beds.
Behn had trouble sleeping, worries for Wora's mental and physical health plaguing her mind. Still, if she was to properly support her partner, she couldn't afford to neglect herself. Eventually, she managed to drift off to sleep.
Wora laid facing the wall, appearing to all as though she were in a deep slumber. When she was confident nobody was looking, she pulled Behn's Bloodletter card from deep within the fur on her chest, in addition to a card from her own box. She bit into the cards and tore them into uniform strips. Once more, she scanned for any onlookers, then lifted up the corner of her mattress and pried off the cap to her bedpost, where she removed two sharpened lengths of metal. She had gathered the metal from heavily damaged police equipment left beside that which she had been tasked to clean; waiting for the opportune moment had taken months. Each jagged piece had a crude handle held together by loose thread taken from clothing during laundry duty. The handles themselves were made for countless strips of More Than a Myth cards glued together with saliva. Wora silently apologised for the many thefts of Behn's property, but reassured herself that should the time come, Behn would forgive her. And not too soon, for if that incident with the Resh'Nilon girl was any indication, the gang had something big in the works.
​
In the dark of night, Ser'ke was escorted down to solitary confinement. The faux guards present were laughing amongst themselves with malice on their tongues, and Ser'ke could almost feel the prisoners joining them from behind their thick cell doors. He was let into the Lord's cell, where he was greeted with warmth and a glass of brandy. <"Ser'ke, my brother!"> The Lord boomed. <"The time is nigh! By the end of the month, Ta'X'rtana will be laid at our feet! And it's all thanks to you.">
Ser'ke paused mid-sip. <"Me, my lord?">
The Lord chugged from the bottle of brandy. <"Of course! Without yours and Ledrn's help, none of this would have been possible! Although we have friends on the inside of damn near everything in the city, moving to exert control on more than a few minor sectors at any one time would have given us away. But this? Using a time of crisis to completely remake the city in our image? Only a madman would think of such a thing! And only a madman would aid him in doing so. So I salute you, son!">
Ser'ke mulled on these words, continuing to sip his drink. <"So, how long now?">
<"Can't really say."> said the Lord frankly. <*"Could be tomorrow, could be in a week, could be tonight. Either way, know this: For your integral role in bringing this plot to fruition, I hereby grant you my protection.">*
<"Protection, sir?">
<"Should anyone lay so much as a finger on you without your say-so, come to me, and I'll have that fucker pay dearly. So long as you keep clear of the law, you'll make it through this without a scratch.">
Ser'ke watched his reflection in his glass. <"And afterwards, my lord?">
<"I'll have boys on the ground scrub your file. So far as the law's concerned, you've always been a law-abiding citizen."> He took a moment to think on his words. <"'Course, that won't stop you from getting up to some mischief should the mood strike you."> He guffawed, his immense frame seeming to bend his bedframe with each chortle.
Part of Ser'ke wanted to see the outcome of this bout of laughter, but his better judgement won out. <"That's good to hear, sir. If the time to strike is as imminent as you say, I had better get going. Thank you for your protection and hospitality, sir.">
<"Ah, hold on!"> Said the Lord frantically, wiping brandy from his chins. <"Have your hands healed up, son?">
Ser'ke flexed his recovered wrists and digits. <"They have, sir.">
A malicious shadow fell on the Lord's face. <"Then expect a package to be delivered to your cell later.">
Not wanting to start second-guessing the gleeful tint in his voice, Ser'ke took his leave.
​
It was in the early hours of the morning, while the lights remained off, that Ser'ke was awoken by a soft hum. By the time he roused from his restless sleep, he saw the last instant of his cell's energy gate thrumming back to life; Laying nearby the gate was a long chest. Ser'ke crept up to the container and quickly hurried back to his bed with it in tow. Checking to see if the coast was clear, he opened the chest, and his breath caught in his throat. Without a second wasted, he stashed the box between his mattress and the wall, tucking it beneath his blanket. His heart raced; he had thought he would never get to hold one again. He only hoped he wasn't too out of practice.
---
Beneath Ta'X'rtana, unbeknownst to any save the participants, the many Resh'Nilon Lords were in communication. <"We can spare a crew out west, but that's it."> said a rail-thin, elderly X'eti. <"Any more, and we'll be leaving ourselves open.">
An immense X'rtan woman huffed. <"Don't expect any more from us, Bol'kad, we're spread thin as it is hitting Ma'kerl and Goll.">
<"Cool it, Fila'mas."> chimed in the forgemaster beneath the mechanic garage. <"I have a few boys with nothing to do; I'll have 'em sent out your way, Bol'kad.">
<"Much appreciated, Agra'mil."> Fila'mas looked questioningly at the other woman in the call. <"Ulind'erak, you've been awfully quiet.">
The young woman stationed beneath the restaurant looked away from her second monitor. <"I have nothing to input; my men are stationed as best as I can. Do keep in mind that the escapees will provide support, so any shortages will be mitigated.">
Agra'mil clicked his tongue. <"Wukrof'in's lax, you know that. From what I've read, there's only a crew's worth of boys with designated drops; the rest are just gonna land wherever they want.">
An eyebrow was raised past the rim of Ulind'erak's glasses. <"That lack of coordination will disorient any cops left on the ground, while giving our crews ample cover.">
<"Ulind,"> chimed Fila'mas. <"Do you really expect a completely uncoordinated drop of prisoners to do the job for an entire city?">
<"In addition to our own crews."> retorted Ulind'erak with pointed annoyance. <"Not to mention gods know how many X'olandi.">
<"Enough."> said a fifth, faceless voice. The Lords immediately ceased their squabbling. <"It doesn't matter how many we have in the field; so long as our primary missions are accomplished, the day is won. Am I clear?">
The Lords replied in chorus: <"Yes, my Lord.">
<"Good."> said The Lord. <"Keep your ears open for the signal. Blessed be our charge; Our lands beheld.">
<"Blessed be our charge; Our lands beheld."> replied the Lords.
The call ended.
---
The commotion in Kaneti Square was palpable. Angry stall owners gathered behind barricades and hurled insults at construction workers, while those on break joined unarmed security in attempting to calm the crowd. In the square's center, scaffolding and thick sheets of metal were beginning to take the shape of a landing pad and an accompanying platform for welcoming ambassadors. A cubicle stood off to the side of the site, and K'ul was waiting patiently outside. The cubicle's interior was spartan, with only a desk and some minimal storage for documents. "How soon is this going to be finished?" asked T'aro, admiring the build quality of the desk.
<"Tomorrow at the earliest."> replied the thick-furred foreman as he took a swig from a mug of ramut. <"Sure, the platform'll be built by sundown, but it'll need testing for structural integrity. That can take half a day in and of itself, not to mention any potential alterations it'll need.">
T'aro sighed. "Just get it done; It'll still need furnishing and equipment setup before it's ready."
The foreman shrugged. <"It'll take as long as it takes, pal. Can't do ya any better than that.">
T'aro grunted. He nodded to the foreman, and left. K'ul followed him back to the car. "Remind me," said T'aro. "How many days now?"
<"Four, sir."> replied K'ul. He opened the car's door for T'aro. <"Assuming no delays.">
T'aro grumbled in response as he took his seat. He looked over the remaining items on the checklist with loathing. "I don't have enough booze for this." he groaned.
<"In four days, sir, nobody will.">
-----
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To whom it may concern: this message is of the utmost importance. Please do not disregard it. I don’t know for sure what website you’ll be seeing this on, whoever you are. Probably something submission-based, hopefully one where it stays up. Regardless, it is imperative that you keep reading. I’ll explain why soon, but before I do, some context is in order.
My brother was a brilliant man. Brilliantly talented, brilliantly clever. It was difficult growing up in his shadow. We were raised in the same nurturing, middle-upper class environment, with two loving parents that encouraged us at every turn, but it seemed there was nothing I could do that he wouldn’t outshine me at. He was no savant, you see. Julian held his own in any situation, whether that be an exam or a party with friends. Hardly ever was he not the smartest person in the room, or the most popular.
Needless to say, I was a jealous sibling. My main source of bother was academic performance. I’m not an idiot, even in comparison to my brother, but I was an underachiever for a long period of my adolescence. I’m not sure what I’d attribute it to. Hanging around the wrong people, perhaps, having my head in the clouds, something like that. I’ve always been intelligent, but for a while I really struggled to knuckle down and use that intellect. For so long, I heard the same tired expression: “if you’d only apply yourself…” I’m sure some of you reading this can relate. It wasn’t until many years later that that sentiment really rang true.
I never outright hated Julian, but I have to admit there was invariably a growing seed of resentment in my heart for him, especially as we got older and his natural aptitude really began to shine. We both had an interest in computer science from a young age, most likely inherited from our father, who worked for Microsoft before they went out of business. I still remember those nights as kids when he’d sit us down in front of his computer and show us all the little intricacies of the code he was working on. Any other children our age would be bored out of their skulls, but there we sat, attentive as ever, our developing minds fascinated by the job’s seemingly endless possibilities. Julian’s other main curiosity, which I did not share, was an affinity towards online horror fiction, though he grew out of that kind of stuff in his late teens.
He knew I had a chip on my shoulder. Mostly, he was apathetic towards it; we were never estranged, but he wasn’t going to let my discontent get in the way of his success. Though I don’t blame him, I suppose that was always Julian’s downfall. He was just too headstrong, too confident.
When we became adults, we parted ways. He went on to study at Harvard while I ended up dropping out of some bang-average local university you won’t have heard of. Following that, things were a little rough. My parents were fairly disappointed. They didn’t cut me off, rather, interacting with them became a depressing chore as they waited for their son to get his life together. At family gatherings, I gritted my teeth at the stories Julian told: developing virtual reality hardware, cutting-edge stuff, pushing the boundaries of the way we interact with technology, all while I was couch-surfing, barely making ends meet as the IT guy at a shitty school in a town I hated. It only made the prospect of snapping out of whatever haze I was in feel more difficult.
It all changed one day soon after I got my first apartment. Julian showed up out of the blue on a dewy morning with an armful of equipment and a huge, beaming smile on his face. I let him in, we talked, and he promised that what he was going to show me would completely blow my mind.
I watched as he paced about my living room setting up all his gadgetry. As soon as everything was ready, he switched on my computer and handed me a thin, plastic headset with exposed wires. Two nodes hung from either side of the thing, which fitted snugly over my temples. While I sat back on the sofa and stared at the monitor before me, he gave me one simple instruction.
“Type something into Google.”
“But I don’t have a keyboard.”
“You don’t need one.”
According to Julian’s wishes, I simply thought about the action, and it happened. The word “something” came up in the search box, and my jaw dropped open in shock. At first, I thought the obvious, that my brother was purposefully fooling me with some kind of prank or gimmick, but repeated tests all came up with the same result. And it wasn’t just searching I could do telepathically, but anything. Literally anything I could think of, limited to the capabilities of the computer, of course. I had total control. There was even a sort of projection in my mind’s eye as it was happening, like the process was actually occurring inside my brain. It wasn’t perfect, but it was nothing short of amazing.
“You’re one of the first people to try it,” he told me once I’d tested everything out. “We’re calling it NeuroWorks, or something to that effect.”
I don’t think that feeling of astonishment ever truly left me. It was then that I realised my petty indignation, the dissatisfaction I felt after so many years of being outclassed, meant nothing in the face of my brother’s achievements, and I would be doing the world a disservice by failing to assist him. Julian departed that night after some drinks and a few laughs, and the next day, I enrolled once again for a degree in computer science. Four years later, I passed with flying colours, and Julian hired me to work for him at his company. There may have been a bit of nepotism involved, but that’s neither here nor there.
The next few years were dizzying. During the time in which I was getting (re)educated, Julian had been working with a team of elite neuroscientists, specialists that filled in the gaps in his knowledge, did all the things he couldn’t. Immediately, I felt I was in way over my head, but as my learning advanced, I gradually got up to speed, and my mood improved quite rapidly. That feeling of pride, like I was finally doing something productive with my life, was nothing short of fantastic, especially in the face of so many wasted years. I was never quite on Julian’s level, of course, but with enough time, I grew to be a valued contributor to the NeuroWorks project. Off the back of a long period of arduous work, the device fully came to fruition, culminating in an international commercial release.
It was a global success, and we made a fortune. Once we’d fully optimised it, it ended up being surprisingly cheap to produce and implement. The result was its adoption in billions of households and businesses. As expected, it completely changed the way we live and work in the virtual world. Worldwide productivity and efficiency increased tenfold. Even now, I’m typing this message with those same two nodes attached at either side of my head, hands-free. As cliched as it sounds, at that point, it truly felt like we were living in the future.
Honestly, I would’ve been happy to stop there. I could’ve moved somewhere green and sunny, spent the rest of my days doing TED Talks and sipping cocktails on the balcony of a villa, not giving a single damn. But not Julian. Like always, Julian had his eyes set on further horizons, on the subsequent stretch of progress. No sooner than a few months after NeuroWorks was released did he come up with his next magnificent idea.
“Consciousness splicing.”
That was how he described it on the day he first sat me down to try and explain. We were outside a café, some pretentious, gentrified establishment in the heart of London, with a coffee each.
“The next stage of human learning, or maybe even existence as a whole. NeuroWorks, compared to this…it’s just a stepping stone, Alex,” he told me. “If we get this right, we won’t just be able to use computers with our minds, we’ll be able to think like them, too.”
I struggled to wrap my head around the concept. “How do you mean, exactly?” I replied.
“Take what makes us sentient. Our minds, our passion, our free will. Everything a machine lacks. How can it be improved? How can it be bettered? What we lack naturally, we as a species, I mean, can be found in a computer. The processing power, the boundless memory, the objectivity. Not to mention the ability to conjure up any kind of information on a whim, the entire collective library of human knowledge, dating back thousands of years. But there are limitations. Computers can’t truly think for themselves. Not yet, anyway. They require input, direction. If we can intersect the strengths of man and machine, cross the gap that separates us…”
He was stirring his drink all the while. Julian had a thing about that: he could never look at you directly when he was thinking, like the image of your baffled face would put him off somehow.
“Okay, but you’re talking purely in theoretical terms, right? We’re centuries off reaching that point. I mean, creating a neural link between a person and Mac OS is one thing-
“I think it’s possible.”
A beat passed before he sighed, grabbed a napkin, and produced a pen from his pocket. I waited as he sketched out a crude, yet complicated diagram. I can’t recall it exactly – it was something to do with the relationship between time, space, and information. Far more philosophical than scientific, I remember thinking.
“The internet is a powerful beast. Our means of controlling it, of accessing it, even with NeuroWorks, are subpar. We just need another breakthrough, and then that could open the door for who knows what else. Traversing through decades online, going back and forth whenever we want-
“Easier said than done.”
“But it could be possible. It could.”
“I disagree. Not in our lifetimes, anyway. And even if it is, it sounds…dangerous. Very dangerous. The number of things that could go wrong, the variables…it doesn’t bear thinking about. We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s learn to walk before we run, eh?”
He was quiet after that. The conversation stuck with me for the next couple of years. We were working mostly on maintaining NeuroWorks at that time, delivering a steady stream of updates and enhancements as society began to mold itself around its advent. There was some discussion as to when the next big leap forward would be, the next huge announcement from Julian’s company, but he remained tight-lipped about anything regarding that.
It was then that he started acting…weird. I saw him less and less in what was supposed to be our spare time together. The cancelled reservations and missed family events added up, but whenever I asked him about it, he just shrugged it off. “I’m a workaholic,” he would say. “You know you all mean the world to me, but so does this job.” I tried to comfort myself with that, but deep down, I think I knew he was hiding something. Something he thought would worry me, that was outside my area of expertise. I was going to confront him about it eventually. I just ended up waiting too long.
One night, he rang me out of nowhere. I remember shooting straight up into a sitting position in a pitch-black room – I think I’d been having a nightmare. The metallic surface of my phone was cold and smooth in my sweaty palm as I picked up the call and pressed it to my temple.
“Meet me at this address in half an hour. And be quick.”
I spoke a word or two in return, but the call had already ended. There was a soft blip, and some postcode I didn’t recognise appeared at the top of the screen.
Doing exactly as my brother asked, I got up, got changed, and made the 20-minute journey by car.
The place was a run-down warehouse in one of the rougher areas of town, where property prices were at their cheapest. I parked up and stepped outside, shivering as I cursed myself for not having the foresight to bring a thicker jacket. It wasn’t immediately obvious which building I was looking for, until I saw a flash of light through a broken window in the distance. Cautiously, I approached it, glancing around to assure myself I wasn’t walking into a trap, as stupid as that thought was. The main door being completely boarded up meant an obscured gap in the brickwork was my entry point.
Dodging the tiny droplets of water trickling in from the broken ceiling, I rounded a corner. The main, spacious area of the warehouse had been kitted out as a kind of makeshift workshop, near identical to a setup from NeuroWorks. It was as if someone had carved out one of our labs and dumped it here, beside walls of crumbling paint. My brow was furrowed as I stared from a distance at the scurrying scientists, who flicked me awkward looks as they went about tending to a central apparatus. I recognised a few of them, but they paid me little mind. I’m sure they knew I was coming.
It took me a few moments to realise, but Julian was part of the almighty cluster of machinery in the middle of it all. His body was a biological cog in an otherwise artificial setup; he was on his back, head tilted slightly forwards, arms splayed in a t-pose like he was being crucified. I’ll never get that image out of my head: him lying there, not having quite noticed me yet, sweat upon his brow. He was shirtless, too, wires running up and down his arms and a mesh inserted atop his shaved head, which was next to a monitor. The wires came down in gangly clumps off the side of the ‘bed’ he was on and fed into this gargantuan hunk of steel by his side. It was truly massive, topped with blinking lights and seemingly missing its outer casing. If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed he’d been kidnapped and experimented on.
He looked at me, directly upwards from his perspective, and said, “You’re late,” through a smile.
I wasn’t smiling. “Julian, what the fuck is all of this?”
“I apologise for not telling you sooner. Truth be told, I didn’t want you to worry. But this is too important for you not to see.”
I was at a loss for words.
“What we’re going to do here, today, right now, will change the course of humanity. And you need to be here to witness it. So get ready. We’re starting!”
He shouted that last sentence, and all the scientists in the room shuffled to what could only be described as their ‘posts’. I merely watched as they started a countdown sequence of sorts, dutifully coordinating the machine through a large control panel. They communicated with short, snappy gestures and mumbled technobabble that I could barely pay attention to. Instinctively, I stepped back until I was at an arbitrarily ‘safe’ distance.
Seconds later, my mouth turned dry and a quiet ringing in my ears began to form. I chalked it up to nerves initially, but it soon became apparent there was some kind of static in the air, palpable interference that manifested in a painful shock as my hand grazed the shiny edge of a worksurface. It seemed to be emanating from the middle of the room, where Julian was. His eyes were closed now, tightly; he gave the impression of someone concentrating very intently on something.
There was a hum, so low you almost felt it before you heard it, slowly increasing in pitch. I suddenly had a headache, and I’m almost certain my hair was standing up under the confines of my flat cap. Panic surfaced within me as I noticed the scientists arguing. I shouted a word of protest, only to realise my ears had popped, and the faint ringing from earlier now sounded like a cacophonous bout of tinnitus.
Something was clearly and utterly wrong. Julian’s deathly stillness as he honed his thoughts had ended, and he was now thrashing around, foaming at the mouth, unable to break free of his confines. I ran back over to his side-
“Don’t touch me!” He managed to force out. I could barely hear him, but the crazed look in his eyes, dilated like a cat’s, convinced me to leave him alone. Instead, I focused my attention on the scientists.
“What are you maniacs doing to him?” I yelled. “Fucking switch that thing off! Now!”
One of them came and pushed me away. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t make out the words. The noise of the machine was just too loud. There was a collective moment of fear as the tone became ear-splitting. No-one could hear anyone anymore.
Julian looked like he was being possessed. My attention was drawn to the monitor beside him; before, it had been inert, but it was currently displaying a fast-moving, almost psychedelic kaleidoscope of uniform shapes and colours. If you’ve ever seen what a computer looks like when you remove its RAM while it’s running, it was like that, but even more erratic and animated. I was practically hypnotised by it, and as I gazed further and further into its depths, an awful image began to emerge.
It was Julian. I swear to god, I know it sounds crazy, but Julian’s face materialised in the form of this…nightmarish coalescence of text and code. His mouth was open, and his eyes were bulging out of his skull. I turned to my brother to see him doing the exact same expression there on the table, unable to breathe. It made me feel sick to my stomach.
Suddenly, the machine shut down, taking the monitor’s display and oppressive interference with it. Julian’s eyes glazed over, his face went pale as a sheet, and he slumped down onto his back, letting out a huge exhale. It was when he didn’t take another breath that two white-coated men went to check his pulse.
A single head shake between them confirmed what I feared. Gone.
I think I was in shock the whole rest of the night, because I didn’t speak a word to anyone until the morning. They sent me home in a taxi and promised to take care of what had happened. I burst into furious, bitter tears as soon as I put the keys in the door. I was so, so angry at being kept in the dark and lied to for so long, with this having been the culmination. Little did I know that was just the beginning.
Julian’s team called me into work the next day for a private meeting. To maintain the company’s work and appearance, they were going to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Fucking figures, I remember thinking. My first urge, naturally, was to fight this burial, to expose them and bring about some sense of justice, but I was talked down from it. You might call me cowardly for that, but put yourself in my shoes for a minute; I had no real evidence at hand, and it soon became apparent that the scientists were only operating under my brother’s command. Everything had been planned out in advance, even the system that was being followed now, for what would happen if a fatal accident occurred. Telling the world the true events of that night would’ve been a losing battle – already, they’d began cleaning up their mess – demolishing the warehouse lab, scrubbing all evidence from the archives, etc. It was a tough call, but I felt compelled to adhere to my brother’s wishes and keep moving forward with NeuroWorks. You can judge me for that if you want, but I don’t care.
I forgave them all over time. It wasn’t even really their fault Julian had died that night – there’d been a freak malfunction with the equipment, leading to them being unable to turn it off. I won’t go too in-depth; there’s a lot about it that I still don’t understand to this day. Anyway, once the dust had settled, we put the incident behind us and gave up the whole ‘cutting-edge’ angle for a while. We started pursuing safer technological ventures like media creation, but that was when something strange began happening.
You see, Julian’s cause of death seemed obvious initially – most likely a heart attack or stress-related aneurysm – but the autopsy revealed something startling. There was little to no internal damage anywhere in his body: no burst blood vessels or spasmed arteries. Rather, all the electrical signals in his body had simply vanished simultaneously, deactivating his brain. It was as if he had literally been switched off.
None of this ever got out, of course. NeuroWorks, now one of the most valuable, powerful companies of all time, made sure of that. Julian’s death was publicly credited as a stroke due to undetected high cholesterol levels. But it’s certainly interesting considering what came after.
Over the next few weeks, we had virus troubles. A malicious software was making its way through our computer system. There was a bit of a panic to begin with; an internal investigation revealed we had far too much unsecured data that anyone working for a market competitor would be happy to steal and sell to the highest bidder, but the more we found out about it, the more curious we became. The strange thing about it was only partly what it did. Corruption and deletion are pretty bog-standard as far as viruses go, but its effects were largely patternless, like it was picking items at complete random. But it was also when it was doing it. After some research, we found that people had been complaining about this mystery malware they’d designated as ‘WerStar’ (due to the word apparently repeating itself over and over again in damaged code and text boxes) since the beginning of the internet. Despite this, its existence had never been formally documented anywhere, which is extremely bizarre. Whatever WerStar is, it’s completely transcendent of time.
We think we know what’s going on, though. We had our ideas to begin with, and there were plenty of skeptics amongst us, but a recent event has all but verified it. A couple of months ago, I found a .txt file on my computer that wasn’t there the day before, entitled ‘WerStargift’. It was an enormous mass of code that took weeks to fully analyse. Delving into the nitty gritty of the whole thing would take forever, but from what we’ve been able to glean from it (and I promise I’m being serious when I say this), it’s a formula for communicating virtually with the past.
Which brings us to today. Well, our today. We’re sending this message from the year 2050 to what we’ve calculated to be the mid-2010s. Myself and Julian should only be little children. Don’t worry, this isn’t some Terminator-style mission to erase or alter a former timeline. We just need you to tell us something.
The code wasn’t the only thing in the .txt file. There was a message, a message we can’t read. It’s been cobbled together on an old, outdated editor that isn’t compatible with the modern NeuroWorks setup anymore. Believe me, we’ve tried everything, but not even old computers will display it. We think our failure to view it is the whole reason we’re even able to talk to you now. In your time, it should still be legible. You may need to do something with it, view it through a Source editor, perhaps, but it won’t be hard to decipher.
You should be able to communicate with us, too. Hopefully. We’ve tested this with random forums – dozens of messages we made that were supposedly sent in 2012, and had people respond to them in that same year. We’re well aware of the danger associated with this, but at the same time, it’s the only chance we’ve got.
I’m going to wrap this up by apologising. I’m sorry that I haven’t been more specific throughout this message; there’s a lot I’ve glossed over in the pursuit of keeping things relatively short. Maybe this is just a lost cause – the technology we’re using is still extremely unrefined, so there’s a chance this might not even get out there. But it’s been 10 years since Julian ‘died’, and I’d give anything to be able to see my brother again. If this works, if we’re able to somehow establish contact, then we may even be able to reverse the process, to find him a human host.
So, please, for the love of God, please, what does it say? Where is Julian?
...
...
...
https://imgur.com/a/hu9jOuk

Part 3
Day 14
Chloe walked into what had once been the beautiful home of the Garrisons. The room she walked into was the main hall. It was large and square-shaped with a room on both sides and a hall on the other side of the door. In the middle of the room, a large antler chandelier lay in a destroyed twisted mess on the hardwood floor. She looked over at the walls and saw a few small circular holes. Bullet holes. She thought, taking a step closer to get a better look. Herman followed her wagging his tail like nothing was wrong with this situation. She looked down toward the floor and spotted large claw marks on the hardwood floor. Some looked like hound claw marks (she became acquainted enough with the marks to recognize them) but others were much larger. Far too large to be from one of the hounds.
After scanning the room for another minute she decided she’d go into the left room first. The left room was a small lounge that seemed unassuming at first glance until she noticed the couch that had been thrown against the wall and the dried blood stains on the walls and carpet. It was human blood and was mostly frozen.
She walked across the main hall and into the room on the right. This room was unassuming with very little apart from bookshelves and a small desk. It also seemed relatively undisturbed with little to no damage.
She walked down the hall into the main part of the house. This main section had an open-air kitchen/dining room and a large living room. It looked horrible, it was clear a massacre had happened here. Blood was everywhere on the floors, the walls, and even the ceiling in certain spots. Most of the blood was a dark red with occasional splatters of yellow-greenish blood. She saw bits of muscle and tissue in the blood, and all around that was wreckage. Their large 100-inch flat-screen TV lay crushed on the floor. The leather couch was flipped over and ripped in countless places. The fan lay on the floor looking like it had a sledgehammer taken to it. The kitchen was worse though… slumped against the wall was a mostly eaten body. It was essentially just a skeleton with small bits of meat and tendon still clinging on. Despite being absolutely terrified something made her want to get a closer look. She noticed most of the bones were broken if not shattered, and it wasn’t until that point she realized everything below the rib cage was missing. She yelped and looked away. The rest of the kitchen was destroyed with the drawers and cupboards broken, and one section of cupboards laying on the ground with shattered glass all around it. Lastly, the dining room. Another antler chandelier lay destroyed on the ground and the table was leaned over like it had been used as firing cover.
She walked over to the dining table only to realize another destroyed body lay behind it. This one looked like it had been thrown around by the look of its breaks. This one only had half a skull with the frontal and parietal bones absent. She looked and saw this was wearing dog tags. She let out a small sob when she saw that. She knew who it had to be. It had to be Timothy Garrison. She and Timothy were the same age and had dated through most of high school. After they graduated they had a mutual break up and she met Joey in college, but she and Timothy remained good friends. He had come to their wedding and he was the one who taught her how to shoot a rifle, and he had been the only person in his family to serve in the military.
Herman slowly walked up to the body and started sniffing it.
“Get away from him!” She screamed at the dog.
She started to sob when her brain seemed to kick back into gear. Pull yourself together and cry later, She told herself. She stood up, wiped the tears off her face, and kept going. She went back over to the kitchen and yanked their fridge open. It was stocked to the brim with meats, fruits, vegetables, and bottles. She restrained her excitement at the sight but still grabbed as much as she could. She filled a duffel bag full of only a portion of the goodies in their fridge then moved on. CREAK! The loud sound interrupted her walk over to the pantry. It came from the wooden ceiling just above her, and whatever it was that caused it sounded large. She froze and listened for more sounds, but after a while of nothing she moved on hoping beyond all hope that it was just a house noise.
She and Herman crept over to the pantry and with a quick pull she opened it. The pantry was large and also stocked with food. Most of it was crap that would expire or had already expired, but what excited her was the large sack of potatoes sitting by the door. She grabbed the sack and set it on top of the duffle bag by the fridge.
CREAK! This one was louder than the last and sent a chill down her spine. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to run out of the house or go upstairs and investigate. Her head was telling her she should leave but the other part of her so wanted to know what was making that sound. Finally, she made a decision. She’d search the bottom floor then she would go upstairs to check out the noise. CREAK! This one was the quietest so far, coming from below her. The basement, she thought, looking down at the floor.
She crept down a hall on the first floor with Herman right behind her. She was following a trail of blood like it was a trail of breadcrumbs. It was a deep crimson red and there was a lot of it. Whoever was bleeding definitely wasn’t alive anymore, she thought. She slowly followed the trail up to a white door which was now half covered in blood. Shakily she reached for the blood-covered knob and pulled the door open. It was the basement staircase but she looked at the way the blood had puddled and it told a story. They had hurried halfway down the stairs before something knocked them down to the bottom. There they are killed and then dragged into another section of the basement. She slowly walked down the stairs watching each step carefully until finally, her boot made contact with the linoleum floor.
Meanwhile…
I sat messing with and poking at the satellite phone trying to see why it wouldn’t send a call through. I’d looked through the manual and popped it open to see if anything had broken, but it was perfectly fine. I angrily smacked the phone against the coach, but still, nothing happened. At last, I set the phone down in defeat hoping Chloe was ok.
I turned from the couch to the window and saw Gretchen and Mom still busy with the shoveling. For the amount of snow on the driveway they’d made good work. Almost half of the driveway was clear of snow and covered in salt.
I watched on for a while before I heard a little beep. I looked over and saw the little screen of the satellite phone was showing an empty battery. I smacked my palm into my forehead annoyed by my stupidity.
“Hey Alby, can you get me some batteries?” I asked, looking over at him.
He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen a minute or two later he came back out holding the box of batteries.
“Thank you!” I said taking the box and quickly popping two new batteries in.
The basement was dark, very dark. Chloe could hardly see a thing, but she had thought of this scenario and pulled a flashlight from one of her pockets. Ca-Click! The thin beam of the flashlight kicked on. She was expecting to see the light illuminate the wall on the other side of the room or maybe a piece of furniture. But it illuminated a wall of webs. She saw through the webs at least a dozen cocoons far more than just the Garrison family. But even worse she saw dozens and dozens of stingers. They’d made the basement into a nest.
Bzzz…
The satellite phone continued to buzz and an uproar began to grow around her. Herman let out a growl and looked ready to pounce. Chloe in a hurry grabbed Herman’s collar and started running upstairs with him. The basement became full of the sound of screeches and she heard something big started moving down there. She sprinted as quickly as she could, making it to the top of the stairs and turning around to see at least a dozen stingers following her. Rat-a-tatatatatat!! She shot a barrage of bullets down at the stingers hitting most of them. Then something big appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Two things actually. Two hounds. She yelped and then slammed the door shut. She looked around quickly for something to barricade the door. Her eyes met a small dresser in a bedroom near the door. She pulled it out and shoved it against the door. CRACK! It came from the other side of the door and was quickly followed by a loud slam. She grabbed the still-growling Herman and started pulling him along with her. After a minute he started walking by her side and she let him go.
Suddenly she remembered the walkie and pressed the button.
“Joey… Joey, I'm here!” She yelled half excited and half still terrified.
I let out a sigh of relief; “Did you check out the Garrisons already?” He asked.
“Sort of… I’m still over there,” She explained.
She thought about telling me what she’d encountered but didn’t want to overly worry me. Plus recounting that day's events would just make things worse for her, not better.
“Ok, just be safe. I love you,” I told her.
“Love you too,” She said.
Bzzz…
She sat in the kitchen near her bags thinking for a minute. Since the crash, she hadn’t heard a thing from the basement door which made her start to suspect that the stairs had collapsed. Her curiosity had gotten desperate and she now felt like she had to check what was upstairs. She would never forgive herself if someone was still alive up there and died because she didn’t go and help them.
She slowly crept upstairs, her rifle trained and Herman at her side. The Garrison's house was set on a hill in such a way that the second floor was larger than the first. The second floor was made up of four halls that made a square with rooms within and outside of that square. The spiral stairs entered a corner of the square. Chloe reached the top stair and looked down the halls. Both were wrecked like upstairs but down one of the adjoining halls a body lay on the floor, or what was left of a body. She slowly walked over and saw this was by far the worst body she’d seen so far.
This one looked like it had been eaten similarly to Carl. The sternum and ribs were shattered and the spine was broken, but this one was worse. The bones were covered in bites and scratches, but worst of all the splatters around the body were immense; the person had likely struggled while they were being eaten alive. Chloe shivered at the thought and could only hope that they didn’t suffer long.
She stepped away from the body and got a better look around her. Apart from the body and the blood around it, there wasn’t much sign of death up there, but it still looked awful. Just like downstairs, the walls were covered in gashes and holes, and Chloe was becoming very surprised that they didn’t hear any of these gunshots.
CREAK! She looked down the hall where it had come from. For a brief second, she saw something at the end of the dark hall then it disappeared. It was only then that she noticed how dark it was up there, because of the houses set up there were no windows in the hall and the power had been out for days. She pulled out her flashlight Ca-Click! The narrow beam popped on and barely illuminated the end of the hall, but as she had thought whatever was there was gone now. She started to go about the search process methodically slowly going down the hall checking a room on the inside of the hall and then on the outside. The first room she poked her head into was a girl’s bedroom. It was decorated with a wallpaper of pink flowers and a small bed with pink covers. It was the stereotype of a little girl’s room. She noticed the covers were disheveled and a few things were knocked over. It looked like something had happened in the room but she wasn’t sure what.
She stepped out of the room and moved on to the next and the next. They were both similar with a similar disheveled nature. She started to realize whatever had happened it had woken them all up. She tried to push the last door in the hall open but it wouldn’t budge.
She continued up to the corner where she’d seen the thing. Multiple things then happened at once. She saw something massive lurking in the hall she began to turn down, she heard a creak behind her, Herman barked, and screeches began coming from downstairs sounding like the things had finally escaped the basement. Before she could stop Herman he started making a charge for the thing growling and barking. Chloe made a move after him but a gloved hand grabbed her and then covered her mouth. She watched Herman lung towards the thing then SLAM! It whacked Herman mid-air sending the dog flying back down the hall. He landed with a crash right next to her, a large bloody slash across his body. SCROAR! The sound came from the massive beast and nearly shattered her eardrums, and for one brief second, she raised the flashlight from Herman to the creature. She didn’t see much but that was enough.
She saw its face. It had four disturbing brown eyes, they were eyes she recognized. Those eyes… Those were the eyes of Mrs. Garrison. She gasped in horror through the gloved hand and she heard the person holding her let out a slight sob. The rest of its face wasn’t any better. Its top of head and forehead were all one bony plate. Its mouth was a black hole of teeth, and like the hounds, its lower jaw split into two mandibles. The back of its head had strange thin attachments that reminded her of the gills on an axolotl's head. Then in an instant, a few more things happened. The person holding her made a move for a door, the monster made a move for them, and the slamming footsteps of the hounds as they sprinted up the spiral staircase.
“Get in,” The person said, letting go of her and opening the door.
She turned around and saw the person who’d grabbed her and saw Fred Garrison standing next to the open door.
“NOW!” He yelled, grabbing her and pulling her into the room.
Fred hurried inside after her and quickly slid a fridge against the door. Seconds later angry screeches and slams rang out from the other side. They sounded like the hounds, not the big ones. Then she caught one other sound in the chaos, a wine. Oh gosh, Herman is still alive, She thought.
Fred stood by the door shotgun in hand while the slamming and screeching continued. She stood there and listened as they continuously tried to get in. Suddenly she heard Herman let out a growl, seconds later one of the hounds shrieked like they were in pain. CRUNCH! The sounds of Herman’s attack stopped and were replaced with sounds of meat ripping.
Chloe let out a small sob with her only comfort being that the crunch was likely Herman’s neck breaking.
Fred stepped away from the door and looked at her. He did not look like the man she remembered him as. His hair and beard looked like large rose bushes that were never cut. His blue eyes looked depressed like there was nothing there but sadness. Then she noticed a large bandage on his left arm. It looked like the whole arm had gotten cut open at some point.
Then her eyes wandered around the room. It was a small shop/man cave room. There were a few guns on the table, but more importantly, she noticed lit candles everywhere.
“I… I… I’m sorry,” He said with tears in his eyes.
She let down a quiet sob and Fred walked over helping her find a seat on the couch. After a minute of crying with Fred awkwardly trying to comfort her, she pulled herself together and looked up at the man.
“What happened?” She asked.
The man's face changed and she saw tears build up in his eyes; “A massacre,” He said grimly.
Then he followed with his story: “It happened around the fifth day I think. It was late and Jess and I were watching TV in the living room. Tim, Tom, Bart, and Gerry were chatting at the dinner table. Tom's wife and my four daughters were upstairs in bed. Everything was quiet and peaceful when suddenly my two dogs started barking outside. Now I know sometimes they’ll bark at dogs but this wasn’t that type of barking. This was get the heck away from me or I’ll kill you type barking. Then I started hearing weird screeching noises and at that point, I went over to the backdoor to check out the problem. I saw a bunch of massive spiders outside trying to attack my dogs, except they weren’t really spiders. Some of them had stingers and others kinda looked like slugs with spider legs. They’d stung one of my dogs a bunch and she was lying on the ground, the other was trying to stand her ground but it was a losing battle. I pulled at my revolver and started shooting at them. They were really fast. I think only one or two shots actually hit them. They started running over to me. One ran right in between my legs and a few of them tried to attack me. I shot those ones and turned around to try and stop the one that had gotten in, but it was already running havoc in the kitchen. My sons were chasing it, but they weren’t having the best of luck. Suddenly there was a crash, more spiders jumped through the now shattered windows, and something was banging on the front door. In an instant, the door was knocked off its hinges and one of those creeper things came through the door…”
Chloe interrupted him with: “I’m sorry but what are “those creeper things?””
“The… the big ones. The type that got your dog.” He explained.
“Anyways… it came running into the house, and before any of us could stop it. It threw Tom across the kitchen and into the wall. I came running to help him but that’s when it slashed my arm and threw me into the TV. The TV fell on top of me and then one of those spiders ran over and stung me in the thigh. I lay there with my eyes beginning to grow heavy. I saw Gerry, Tim, and Bart using the table as the shield. All three were hunched behind the table as the creeper began eating Tom. In a quick move, all three made a run for it. As they were running the creeper pounced and threw Tim into the table. Then it slashed Bart across the chest. Gerry managed to maneuver the creature and hurried over to help me. Bart ran down the hall to the basement and me and Gerry started hurrying upstairs. At some point, I blacked out and woke up here. Everyone was gone.” He finished with a somber look on his face.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry.” She said looking at him.
“And somehow they turned my beloved Jess into one of those.” He said motioning to outside where the Creeper had been.
She stopped to listen and realized that she couldn’t hear the hounds anymore.
“Are they gone?” She asked, looking over at Fred.
“Probably, they eat fast for their size,” Fred said grimly.
They sat there again awkwardly before Chloe asked, “What are all the candles for anyway?”
“Well I started lighting them for warmth, but I realized those things don’t seem to like them. Especially the scented ones.” He explained.
She took a whiff of the air and realized how strong the scents were in the room. It almost gave her a headache smelling them.
“So why were you here anyway?” He asked.
She got a little nervous. She felt like a little kid in trouble with her parents. She didn’t want to tell the truth because she worried it would anger him.
“We were running out of supplies.” She said simply.
Her thoughts turned back towards me as she sat there.
I sat on the couch still watching them work. They were about two-thirds done now, but they were starting to really tire and it was getting late. It had started to darken and I knew soon night would fall, and I just hoped she would make it home before nightfall. I’d tried to call her again, but this time it would ring but not go through. I started to wonder if hers had run out of battery. Bang! I immediately turned to the window in a panic. I saw Gretchen standing holding the rifle a few feet away straight down the barrel as a dead stinger. I let out a sigh of relief and turned back toward the phone in my lap. I hope you’re an ok babe.
“Fred, we have a plan. Come with me, don’t stay here, you'll die,” Chloe pleaded.
“Maybe I want to die.” He said, “Look I’m not stopping you from leaving but I’m not going.”
“Well if I go alone I’ll die, please my family needs me,” She said desperately.
Memories of his family flooded through Fred’s mind. He remembered how he felt when his first kids, Tom and Tim, were born. She hadn’t even had a kid, and suddenly he found himself doing something he didn’t think he’d be doing.
“Fine, let's go send those things back to hell!” He yelled pushing the fridge out of the way.
“Follow my lead,” He ordered turning around to her.
Then he cocked his shotgun and slammed the door open. As he had suspected the hounds and creeper were both gone, but lying on the floor next to the door were two bodies. One was the sprawled-out body of a now-deceased hound. Its neck was broken in multiple places and its yellow-greenish blood was everywhere around it. The other body was ripped off most of its flesh, but she knew who it had belonged to. Herman wasn’t going to sit there and bleed out so he must’ve lunged for one of the hounds nailing it in the perfect spot on the neck killing it. Then the other hound quickly retaliated by feasting on the dying Herman, or maybe it was the creeper she wasn’t sure which one actually ate him. But what she did know was that the skeletal remains of Herman on top of the hound had its teeth in the hound's neck.
Chloe let out a small sob and in barely a whisper said: “You were such a good boy, but you can rest now.”
She reached down and picked up a ripped piece of leather near the bodies. It was what remained of Herman’s collar. She stuff the piece into her pocket and looked over at Fred. Fred had tears in his eyes as he saw the corpse of Gerry just down the hall.
“H… He was only 15,” Fred cried as he got a better look at the scene.
Chloe stood there unsure of what to do or say because Fred looked like he was about to have a meltdown. Then his sad face turned to one of anger. She moved the flashlight past the body and down to the corner and the staircase. Lurking next to the staircase its brown eyes glowing in the light was the creeper. It was guarding the stairs and most likely wasn’t going to let them leave for as long as it lived. Her curiosity was getting the better of her so she turned a dial on the flashlight to make it brighter. She wished she could go back and stop herself. Stop herself so she didn’t have to see the horror that was the creeper. Her first interpretation of the face was fairly accurate except for one part. Inside its gaping maw behind the mandibles almost looked like a separate set of jaws. The second set was much more human-like and looked ready to shred any meat to bits, but its head was nothing compared to the body it sat upon. It appeared to have six limbs, two very long front arms with two large claws at the end, and two more arms that attached to roughly where pectoral muscles would normally be. These arms were much shorter than the previous set. It had two back legs that appeared to be quadruple-jointed. It had the normal heel and knee joints, but it had one additional joint in the foot. Despite this the legs looked vaguely dogfish, but not nearly as those of the hounds. Coming out where the tail should be was a large thorax with two nasty stingers on the end. The thorax was curved like that of a wasp ready to strike when necessary. It almost looked like it had a shell of exoskeleton on its back and thorax, and spouting out of the thicker plates were large needle-like spikes.
It let out a demonic shriek as soon as the light brightened. It ducked out of sight and started making a loud clicking noise. Chloe and Fred kept their guns trained on where it had disappeared ready for it to come out charging, but unfortunately, they underestimated it. It made a loud ticking sound followed by CREAK! Before Chloe could even turn the hound that had crept from behind had her pinned to the ground and was bitting and slashing at her back. BANG!!!! BANG!!!! Fred had lowered his shotgun to its head. The first blast blew out two of its eyes and shattered part of its exoskeleton, and the second blast dug through the broken exoskeleton into the brain. The hound collapsed dead and with his gun pointed at where the creeper had been Fred helped push the body off of her.
Chloe got up a little shaken but relatively ok. She started guarding back while he guarded the front as they slowly made their way towards the stairs. Any second they were expecting the creeper to appear from around the corner, but it didn’t. The creeper was planning something again but they didn’t know what. Just as they made it to the stairs they turned down the other hall, but saw nothing. The creeper had likely walked into one of the rooms and was waiting, but they weren’t there to explore. They hurried down the spiral staircase, but just as they got to the bottom they saw the place was still swarming with stingers, slugs, and 3 hounds. A loud ticking sound came from upstairs and the three hounds charged towards them. They started running back upstairs only to see the creeper now lurking at the top of them. Cornered in the middle of the stairs back to back with each other they began to accept their fate.
I started to really worry about where Chloe was I hadn’t heard from her in a while and it was getting late. I sat there trying to call her every few minutes but it would not pick up. BANG! I dropped the phone and turned to the window. Gretchen stood there with the rifle pointed at something off in the snow, but I couldn’t see what the thing was. BANG! I saw for a brief millisecond the bullet flying into the blizzard then nothing. BANG! I tried to pull myself up to see what it was, but searing pain went through my body when I tried. I looked out again and saw something massive emerge from the blizzard charging for Gretchen.
“I’m sorry we should’ve stayed up there,” Chloe cried as the hounds slowly stepped closer.
“Kid, I would rather die here than die in the room a coward, but you ain’t going to die here!” He said triumphantly.
Suddenly he pulled out a small can of spray deodorant and sprayed it in the hound's faces. All three toppled over making loud hacking coughing noises.
“GO!” He yelled and she quickly made her way past the hounds and downstairs.
There were still dozens of stingers down there and she still wasn’t sure what to do. Before she could do anything. RAT-A-TATATATA! All around her, the stingers began exploding as Fred landed shot after shot.
“A little help would be nice!” He yelled.
She quickly pulled out her semi-automatic and started firing as well. RAT-A-TATATATA! The hall began to fill with the exploded bodies of stingers and slugs. Suddenly she heard shuffling behind her and saw the hounds getting up. Without a second thought, she sprinted down the hall and into the kitchen. Standing in the living room was another group of stingers and a hound. How many hounds are there? She thought, then she remembered how many people in their town had two or three hunting dogs. If all of them were changed they’d be a small army.
She ducked behind the island sitting uncomfortably close to Tom’s body. Fred sprinted in a second later and saw what she did. He jumped to the ground and shimmied over to her.
“Crap kid we really are screwed,” Fred said his momentary confidence completely diminished.
Before anyone could do anything the monster that had emerged from the blizzard was attacking Gretchen. In one quick motion, it slashed open her gut and she dropped the gun. I stared outside as my mom tried desperately to fire, but even from this distance, I could see she’d loaded the gun wrong. In an instant, she was on the ground bleeding. I looked over at the shotgun sitting next to me and fired a round through the window at the beast. The window shattered and I saw the creature get hit right solid in the chest, but it didn’t matter much. Like the dog beasts, this one had a thick darkly colored exoskeleton that the round didn’t pierce. The beast looked up from what it was doing and started charging for the house. I fired again but it didn’t even slow the creature it just kept on charging straight towards the house. The boys at some point had caught onto what was going on and started crying and screaming. I tried to get them to quiet down, but they were too distraught. I grabbed the box and loaded two more rounds just as the door was thrown out of its hinges. SCROAR! It charged into the house. BANG! I shot it directly in that face and saw one of its eyes explode. SCROAR!!!! It swung a large two-clawed hand straight across my face throwing me across the room. I landed against a wall and in my weak state I leaned over and felt myself begin to fall. Unfortunately, it had thrown me right next to the basement stairs. Every time I hit a stair only hurt more than the last. At some point, my bandaged left hand slammed into a wooden stair. The pain was so bad I almost passed out. Finally, with one lass unceremonious thud, I landed on the basement floor.
Chloe looked around her hope beginning to fade then her eyes locked with the pantry. The large pantry with a window.
“Follow me,” She whispered as she started crawling for the pantry.
Fred followed close behind. Chloe crawled into the pantry and ducked into it. She peeked out of the doorway and saw that Fred had froze. The four hounds had gathered right behind him. He looked horrified and clearly unsure of what to do. Suddenly with a loud creak, the creeper's head poked into the kitchen and it let out a loud ticking sound. The hounds started screeching and one began to slowly walk towards Fred. RAT-A-TATATATA! She struck the approaching one 9 times in the face and the sudden burst seemed to wake Fred from his fear. RAT-A-TATATATA! Yellow-greenish blood exploded from the approaching hound's mouth and it slammed its head into the wall in pain. Fred turned around and sprinted into the pantry with Chloe closing the door as soon as he was inside.
Instantly sounds of slamming and scratching erupted from the door. Chloe turned to the window in the pantry and slid it open diving out into the snow. Fred quickly followed slamming the window behind him to give them more time.
Chloe sprinted through the snowy evening as quickly as she could Fred trying his best to keep up with her. The man wasn’t exactly in his prime and combine that with him not having snow shoes to be frank Chloe was surprised he was able to stay caught up at all.
As she sprinted down the darkening street getting closer and closer to home she thought she heard a faint Bang! Followed quickly by SCROAR!!!! Her worries suddenly switched from her and Fred to her family. She hadn’t called them in hours and now there was clearly something going on. She sprinted ever faster looking up and realizing she’d already made it onto their street.
As soon as their house was in view she saw the shoveled driveway, but she also saw my mom laying in a pool of her own blood. Along with that, she saw Gretchen weakly trying to get up also bloody. Chloe ran over to Gretchen.
“Gretchen, what happened?” Chloe asked as she helped Gretchen stand.
“Something… something big.” Gretchen sputtered out.
Gretchen had a lost far away look on her face. She almost seemed drunk but Chloe knew that wasn’t the case. Gretchen was likely in shock. SCREAM! Chloe immediately recognized it as one of the boys. She gently sat Gretchen down and then pulled out the rifle. Fred had finally caught up and quickly but carefully Fred and Chloe made their way into the house guns drawn.
They hurried inside and saw the creeper looming over a now-still Alby. Without a second thought, Chloe raised her rifle RAT-A-TATATA! She shot the thing a few times in the back knowing that it probably wouldn’t do any real damage. It turned around and looked at the two of them standing there. The scene was eerie as the still-burning fireplace cast a strange glow on the creeper. Everything seemed to go still for a second the two of them staring at the creeper and the creeper staring right back at them. All three of them trying to make a decision but are not sure what to do. SCROAR! It dives forward slicing at the welding helmet Chloe was wearing and then pinning her to the ground with its four legs. BANG!! His shotgun blast hardly seemed to phase the thing as started digging its claws into Chloe. She let out a scream that I heard loud and clear from the basement.
I’d managed to pull myself halfway up the stairs with my good arm and leg but my energy was running out and I was feeling lightheaded. I had to save her I had to protect her. BANG! I heard another gunshot followed by an unfamiliar scream. I didn’t know at the time that Fred was putting everything he had into trying to protect my wife.
Chloe gunless and pinned down was beginning to accept her fate when she remembered what she’d done last time. She reached for her knife and stabbed one of its feet. SCROAR!! It backed up off of her clearly in pain. Quickly she pulled the sniper rifle off her back and Bang! The bullet went clean through one of the thing's legs. She’d quite literally found the creeper's Achilles heel. It half fell to the ground letting out another roar of pain and agony. Both its front legs were crippled and it lay there defeated. Fred stepped forward ready to put a shotgun blast to the temple when suddenly. The thing reared up onto its two back legs throwing Fred into the wall. It had to hunch a little as the ceiling wasn’t very high but it still was tall. Chloe figured that on two legs without a hunch it was probably 10 feet tall. SCROAR!! Bang! It lunged towards her and she used her first shot to shoot its arm. The bullet embedded into the exoskeleton but didn’t seem to hurt it. The creature stopped for a moment as if to think. Bang! She shot the creature in the belly. The exoskeleton cracked. Bang! The second shot sunk into its stomach and the creature's blood began to leak out. SCROAR! It bashed one of its arms into her. She felt her left shoulder get cut open and the helmet went flying off.
BANG!! BANG! Two shotgun blasts rang out at the exact same time. The first blast was Fred's. It hit the creeper directly in the back of the head causing it to stumble forward. The second was my blast hitting it directly in the face. The two shots managed to hit at the exact perfect times. The creeper collapsed to the ground critically wounded.
Fred ran over to Chloe who was in a daze on the ground.
“Are you alright kid?” He asked helping her up.
“I’ll live,” She said weakly.
The creeper let out a growl from where it lay on the floor. I pointed the shotgun from where I was on the stairs and fired one final blast into its head.
“Chloe who is that?” I asked cautiously.
“Fred,” She said sounding weak.
I crawled the rest of the way up and saw Alby laying near the fireplace motionless. I froze as I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes. Then I looked closer and saw besides a cut on his arm he wasn’t hurt, and better yet it looked like he was breathing.
“Alby!” I yelled trying my best to over to him with my broken body.
He lifted his head and turned it to look at me.
“Is the monster gone?” He asked.
“Yes it’s gone,” I said trying to sound comforting.
“Ba… Babe,” Chloe stammered, now leaning down over me.
Her eyes were locked with mine but she had a horrified expression on her face. I didn’t care and gave her a long tight hug.
“You’re not leaving me again,” I told her.
Finally, I pulled away and looked at her and for a second it was just the two of us and nothing else mattered.
Fred hurried into the house helping Gretchen walk.
“Everyone downstairs now!” He ordered and we all hurried down.
“Alby where’s your brothers?” I asked him as he followed us downstairs.
“They're down here.” He said pointing down the staircase.
“Fred, what’s happening?” Chloe asked the panic-stricken man as we all stepped into the basement.
“More, more of them are coming.” He said a look of fear on his face.
“Well then let's get ready for a fight!” Chloe said, cocking the shotgun she’d taken from me.

Part 3
Day 14

Chloe walked into what had once been the beautiful home of the Garrisons. The room she walked into was the main hall. It was large and square-shaped with a room on both sides and a hall on the other side of the door. In the middle of the room, a large antler chandelier lay in a destroyed twisted mess on the hardwood floor. She looked over at the walls and saw a few small circular holes. Bullet holes. She thought, taking a step closer to get a better look. Herman followed her wagging his tail like nothing was wrong with this situation. She looked down toward the floor and spotted large claw marks on the hardwood floor. Some looked like hound claw marks (she became acquainted enough with the marks to recognize them) but others were much larger. Far too large to be from one of the hounds. After scanning the room for another minute she decided she’d go into the left room first. The left room was a small lounge that seemed unassuming at first glance until she noticed the couch that had been thrown against the wall and the dried blood stains on the walls and carpet. It was human blood and was mostly frozen. She walked across the main hall and into the room on the right. This room was unassuming with very little apart from bookshelves and a small desk. It also seemed relatively undisturbed with little to no damage. She walked down the hall into the main part of the house. This main section had an open-air kitchen/dining room and a large living room. It looked horrible, it was clear a massacre had happened here. Blood was everywhere on the floors, the walls, and even the ceiling in certain spots. Most of the blood was a dark red with occasional splatters of yellow-greenish blood. She saw bits of muscle and tissue in the blood, and all around that was wreckage. Their large 100-inch flat-screen TV lay crushed on the floor. The leather couch was flipped over and ripped in countless places. The fan lay on the floor looking like it had a sledgehammer taken to it. The kitchen was worse though… slumped against the wall was a mostly eaten body. It was essentially just a skeleton with small bits of meat and tendon still clinging on. Despite being absolutely terrified something made her want to get a closer look. She noticed most of the bones were broken if not shattered, and it wasn’t until that point she realized everything below the rib cage was missing. She yelped and looked away. The rest of the kitchen was destroyed with the drawers and cupboards broken, and one section of cupboards laying on the ground with shattered glass all around it. Lastly, the dining room. Another antler chandelier lay destroyed on the ground and the table was leaned over like it had been used as firing cover. She walked over to the dining table only to realize another destroyed body lay behind it. This one looked like it had been thrown around by the look of its breaks. This one only had half a skull with the frontal and parietal bones absent. She looked and saw this was wearing dog tags. She let out a small sob when she saw that. She knew who it had to be. It had to be Timothy Garrison. She and Timothy were the same age and had dated through most of high school. After they graduated they had a mutual break up and she met Joey in college, but she and Timothy remained good friends. He had come to their wedding and he was the one who taught her how to shoot a rifle, and he had been the only person in his family to serve in the military. Herman slowly walked up to the body and started sniffing it. “Get away from him!” She screamed at the dog. She started to sob when her brain seemed to kick back into gear. Pull yourself together and cry later, She told herself. She stood up, wiped the tears off her face, and kept going. She went back over to the kitchen and yanked their fridge open. It was stocked to the brim with meats, fruits, vegetables, and bottles. She restrained her excitement at the sight but still grabbed as much as she could. She filled a duffel bag full of only a portion of the goodies in their fridge then moved on. CREAK! The loud sound interrupted her walk over to the pantry. It came from the wooden ceiling just above her, and whatever it was that caused it sounded large. She froze and listened for more sounds, but after a while of nothing she moved on hoping beyond all hope that it was just a house noise. She and Herman crept over to the pantry and with a quick pull she opened it. The pantry was large and also stocked with food. Most of it was crap that would expire or had already expired, but what excited her was the large sack of potatoes sitting by the door. She grabbed the sack and set it on top of the duffle bag by the fridge. CREAK! This one was louder than the last and sent a chill down her spine. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to run out of the house or go upstairs and investigate. Her head was telling her she should leave but the other part of her so wanted to know what was making that sound. Finally, she made a decision. She’d search the bottom floor then she would go upstairs to check out the noise. CREAK! This one was the quietest so far, coming from below her. The basement, she thought, looking down at the floor. She crept down a hall on the first floor with Herman right behind her. She was following a trail of blood like it was a trail of breadcrumbs. It was a deep crimson red and there was a lot of it. Whoever was bleeding definitely wasn’t alive anymore, she thought. She slowly followed the trail up to a white door which was now half covered in blood. Shakily she reached for the blood-covered knob and pulled the door open. It was the basement staircase but she looked at the way the blood had puddled and it told a story. They had hurried halfway down the stairs before something knocked them down to the bottom. There they are killed and then dragged into another section of the basement. She slowly walked down the stairs watching each step carefully until finally, her boot made contact with the linoleum floor. Meanwhile… I sat messing with and poking at the satellite phone trying to see why it wouldn’t send a call through. I’d looked through the manual and popped it open to see if anything had broken, but it was perfectly fine. I angrily smacked the phone against the coach, but still, nothing happened. At last, I set the phone down in defeat hoping Chloe was ok. I turned from the couch to the window and saw Gretchen and Mom still busy with the shoveling. For the amount of snow on the driveway they’d made good work. Almost half of the driveway was clear of snow and covered in salt. I watched on for a while before I heard a little beep. I looked over and saw the little screen of the satellite phone was showing an empty battery. I smacked my palm into my forehead annoyed by my stupidity. “Hey Alby, can you get me some batteries?” I asked, looking over at him. He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen a minute or two later he came back out holding the box of batteries. “Thank you!” I said taking the box and quickly popping two new batteries in. The basement was dark, very dark. Chloe could hardly see a thing, but she had thought of this scenario and pulled a flashlight from one of her pockets. Ca-Click! The thin beam of the flashlight kicked on. She was expecting to see the light illuminate the wall on the other side of the room or maybe a piece of furniture. But it illuminated a wall of webs. She saw through the webs at least a dozen cocoons far more than just the Garrison family. But even worse she saw dozens and dozens of stingers. They’d made the basement into a nest. Bzzz… The satellite phone continued to buzz and an uproar began to grow around her. Herman let out a growl and looked ready to pounce. Chloe in a hurry grabbed Herman’s collar and started running upstairs with him. The basement became full of the sound of screeches and she heard something big started moving down there. She sprinted as quickly as she could, making it to the top of the stairs and turning around to see at least a dozen stingers following her. Rat-a-tatatatatat!! She shot a barrage of bullets down at the stingers hitting most of them. Then something big appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Two things actually. Two hounds. She yelped and then slammed the door shut. She looked around quickly for something to barricade the door. Her eyes met a small dresser in a bedroom near the door. She pulled it out and shoved it against the door. CRACK! It came from the other side of the door and was quickly followed by a loud slam. She grabbed the still-growling Herman and started pulling him along with her. After a minute he started walking by her side and she let him go. Suddenly she remembered the walkie and pressed the button. “Joey… Joey, I'm here!” She yelled half excited and half still terrified. I let out a sigh of relief; “Did you check out the Garrisons already?” He asked. “Sort of… I’m still over there,” She explained. She thought about telling me what she’d encountered but didn’t want to overly worry me. Plus recounting that day's events would just make things worse for her, not better. “Ok, just be safe. I love you,” I told her. “Love you too,” She said. Bzzz… She sat in the kitchen near her bags thinking for a minute. Since the crash, she hadn’t heard a thing from the basement door which made her start to suspect that the stairs had collapsed. Her curiosity had gotten desperate and she now felt like she had to check what was upstairs. She would never forgive herself if someone was still alive up there and died because she didn’t go and help them. She slowly crept upstairs, her rifle trained and Herman at her side. The Garrison's house was set on a hill in such a way that the second floor was larger than the first. The second floor was made up of four halls that made a square with rooms within and outside of that square. The spiral stairs entered a corner of the square. Chloe reached the top stair and looked down the halls. Both were wrecked like upstairs but down one of the adjoining halls a body lay on the floor, or what was left of a body. She slowly walked over and saw this was by far the worst body she’d seen so far. This one looked like it had been eaten similarly to Carl. The sternum and ribs were shattered and the spine was broken, but this one was worse. The bones were covered in bites and scratches, but worst of all the splatters around the body were immense; the person had likely struggled while they were being eaten alive. Chloe shivered at the thought and could only hope that they didn’t suffer long. She stepped away from the body and got a better look around her. Apart from the body and the blood around it, there wasn’t much sign of death up there, but it still looked awful. Just like downstairs, the walls were covered in gashes and holes, and Chloe was becoming very surprised that they didn’t hear any of these gunshots. CREAK! She looked down the hall where it had come from. For a brief second, she saw something at the end of the dark hall then it disappeared. It was only then that she noticed how dark it was up there, because of the houses set up there were no windows in the hall and the power had been out for days. She pulled out her flashlight Ca-Click! The narrow beam popped on and barely illuminated the end of the hall, but as she had thought whatever was there was gone now. She started to go about the search process methodically slowly going down the hall checking a room on the inside of the hall and then on the outside. The first room she poked her head into was a girl’s bedroom. It was decorated with a wallpaper of pink flowers and a small bed with pink covers. It was the stereotype of a little girl’s room. She noticed the covers were disheveled and a few things were knocked over. It looked like something had happened in the room but she wasn’t sure what. She stepped out of the room and moved on to the next and the next. They were both similar with a similar disheveled nature. She started to realize whatever had happened it had woken them all up. She tried to push the last door in the hall open but it wouldn’t budge. She continued up to the corner where she’d seen the thing. Multiple things then happened at once. She saw something massive lurking in the hall she began to turn down, she heard a creak behind her, Herman barked, and screeches began coming from downstairs sounding like the things had finally escaped the basement. Before she could stop Herman he started making a charge for the thing growling and barking. Chloe made a move after him but a gloved hand grabbed her and then covered her mouth. She watched Herman lung towards the thing then SLAM! It whacked Herman mid-air sending the dog flying back down the hall. He landed with a crash right next to her, a large bloody slash across his body. SCROAR! The sound came from the massive beast and nearly shattered her eardrums, and for one brief second, she raised the flashlight from Herman to the creature. She didn’t see much but that was enough. She saw its face. It had four disturbing brown eyes, they were eyes she recognized. Those eyes… Those were the eyes of Mrs. Garrison. She gasped in horror through the gloved hand and she heard the person holding her let out a slight sob. The rest of its face wasn’t any better. Its top of head and forehead were all one bony plate. Its mouth was a black hole of teeth, and like the hounds, its lower jaw split into two mandibles. The back of its head had strange thin attachments that reminded her of the gills on an axolotl's head. Then in an instant, a few more things happened. The person holding her made a move for a door, the monster made a move for them, and the slamming footsteps of the hounds as they sprinted up the spiral staircase. “Get in,” The person said, letting go of her and opening the door. She turned around and saw the person who’d grabbed her and saw Fred Garrison standing next to the open door. “NOW!” He yelled, grabbing her and pulling her into the room. Fred hurried inside after her and quickly slid a fridge against the door. Seconds later angry screeches and slams rang out from the other side. They sounded like the hounds, not the big ones. Then she caught one other sound in the chaos, a wine. Oh gosh, Herman is still alive, She thought. Fred stood by the door shotgun in hand while the slamming and screeching continued. She stood there and listened as they continuously tried to get in. Suddenly she heard Herman let out a growl, seconds later one of the hounds shrieked like they were in pain. CRUNCH! The sounds of Herman’s attack stopped and were replaced with sounds of meat ripping. Chloe let out a small sob with her only comfort being that the crunch was likely Herman’s neck breaking. Fred stepped away from the door and looked at her. He did not look like the man she remembered him as. His hair and beard looked like large rose bushes that were never cut. His blue eyes looked depressed like there was nothing there but sadness. Then she noticed a large bandage on his left arm. It looked like the whole arm had gotten cut open at some point. Then her eyes wandered around the room. It was a small shop/man cave room. There were a few guns on the table, but more importantly, she noticed lit candles everywhere. “I… I… I’m sorry,” He said with tears in his eyes. She let down a quiet sob and Fred walked over helping her find a seat on the couch. After a minute of crying with Fred awkwardly trying to comfort her, she pulled herself together and looked up at the man. “What happened?” She asked. The man's face changed and she saw tears build up in his eyes; “A massacre,” He said grimly. Then he followed with his story: “It happened around the fifth day I think. It was late and Jess and I were watching TV in the living room. Tim, Tom, Bart, and Gerry were chatting at the dinner table. Tom's wife and my four daughters were upstairs in bed. Everything was quiet and peaceful when suddenly my two dogs started barking outside. Now I know sometimes they’ll bark at dogs but this wasn’t that type of barking. This was get the heck away from me or I’ll kill you type barking. Then I started hearing weird screeching noises and at that point, I went over to the backdoor to check out the problem. I saw a bunch of massive spiders outside trying to attack my dogs, except they weren’t really spiders. Some of them had stingers and others kinda looked like slugs with spider legs. They’d stung one of my dogs a bunch and she was lying on the ground, the other was trying to stand her ground but it was a losing battle. I pulled at my revolver and started shooting at them. They were really fast. I think only one or two shots actually hit them. They started running over to me. One ran right in between my legs and a few of them tried to attack me. I shot those ones and turned around to try and stop the one that had gotten in, but it was already running havoc in the kitchen. My sons were chasing it, but they weren’t having the best of luck. Suddenly there was a crash, more spiders jumped through the now shattered windows, and something was banging on the front door. In an instant, the door was knocked off its hinges and one of those creeper things came through the door…” Chloe interrupted him with: “I’m sorry but what are “those creeper things?”” “The… the big ones. The type that got your dog.” He explained. “Anyways… it came running into the house, and before any of us could stop it. It threw Tom across the kitchen and into the wall. I came running to help him but that’s when it slashed my arm and threw me into the TV. The TV fell on top of me and then one of those spiders ran over and stung me in the thigh. I lay there with my eyes beginning to grow heavy. I saw Gerry, Tim, and Bart using the table as the shield. All three were hunched behind the table as the creeper began eating Tom. In a quick move, all three made a run for it. As they were running the creeper pounced and threw Tim into the table. Then it slashed Bart across the chest. Gerry managed to maneuver the creature and hurried over to help me. Bart ran down the hall to the basement and me and Gerry started hurrying upstairs. At some point, I blacked out and woke up here. Everyone was gone.” He finished with a somber look on his face. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry.” She said looking at him. “And somehow they turned my beloved Jess into one of those.” He said motioning to outside where the Creeper had been. 

She stopped to listen and realized that she couldn’t hear the hounds anymore.
“Are they gone?” She asked, looking over at Fred.
“Probably, they eat fast for their size,” Fred said grimly.
They sat there again awkwardly before Chloe asked, “What are all the candles for anyway?”
“Well I started lighting them for warmth, but I realized those things don’t seem to like them. Especially the scented ones.” He explained.
She took a whiff of the air and realized how strong the scents were in the room. It almost gave her a headache smelling them.
“So why were you here anyway?” He asked.
She got a little nervous. She felt like a little kid in trouble with her parents. She didn’t want to tell the truth because she worried it would anger him.
“We were running out of supplies.” She said simply.
Her thoughts turned back towards me as she sat there.
I sat on the couch still watching them work. They were about two-thirds done now, but they were starting to really tire and it was getting late. It had started to darken and I knew soon night would fall, and I just hoped she would make it home before nightfall. I’d tried to call her again, but this time it would ring but not go through. I started to wonder if hers had run out of battery. Bang! I immediately turned to the window in a panic. I saw Gretchen standing holding the rifle a few feet away straight down the barrel as a dead stinger. I let out a sigh of relief and turned back toward the phone in my lap. I hope you’re an ok babe.
“Fred, we have a plan. Come with me, don’t stay here, you'll die,” Chloe pleaded.
“Maybe I want to die.” He said, “Look I’m not stopping you from leaving but I’m not going.”
“Well if I go alone I’ll die, please my family needs me,” She said desperately.
Memories of his family flooded through Fred’s mind. He remembered how he felt when his first kids, Tom and Tim, were born. She hadn’t even had a kid, and suddenly he found himself doing something he didn’t think he’d be doing.
“Fine, let's go send those things back to hell!” He yelled pushing the fridge out of the way.
“Follow my lead,” He ordered turning around to her.
Then he cocked his shotgun and slammed the door open. As he had suspected the hounds and creeper were both gone, but lying on the floor next to the door were two bodies. One was the sprawled-out body of a now-deceased hound. Its neck was broken in multiple places and its yellow-greenish blood was everywhere around it. The other body was ripped off most of its flesh, but she knew who it had belonged to. Herman wasn’t going to sit there and bleed out so he must’ve lunged for one of the hounds nailing it in the perfect spot on the neck killing it. Then the other hound quickly retaliated by feasting on the dying Herman, or maybe it was the creeper she wasn’t sure which one actually ate him. But what she did know was that the skeletal remains of Herman on top of the hound had its teeth in the hound's neck.
Chloe let out a small sob and in barely a whisper said: “You were such a good boy, but you can rest now.”
She reached down and picked up a ripped piece of leather near the bodies. It was what remained of Herman’s collar. She stuff the piece into her pocket and looked over at Fred. Fred had tears in his eyes as he saw the corpse of Gerry just down the hall.
“H… He was only 15,” Fred cried as he got a better look at the scene.
Chloe stood there unsure of what to do or say because Fred looked like he was about to have a meltdown. Then his sad face turned to one of anger. She moved the flashlight past the body and down to the corner and the staircase. Lurking next to the staircase its brown eyes glowing in the light was the creeper. It was guarding the stairs and most likely wasn’t going to let them leave for as long as it lived. Her curiosity was getting the better of her so she turned a dial on the flashlight to make it brighter. She wished she could go back and stop herself. Stop herself so she didn’t have to see the horror that was the creeper. Her first interpretation of the face was fairly accurate except for one part. Inside its gaping maw behind the mandibles almost looked like a separate set of jaws. The second set was much more human-like and looked ready to shred any meat to bits, but its head was nothing compared to the body it sat upon. It appeared to have six limbs, two very long front arms with two large claws at the end, and two more arms that attached to roughly where pectoral muscles would normally be. These arms were much shorter than the previous set. It had two back legs that appeared to be quadruple-jointed. It had the normal heel and knee joints, but it had one additional joint in the foot. Despite this the legs looked vaguely dogfish, but not nearly as those of the hounds. Coming out where the tail should be was a large thorax with two nasty stingers on the end. The thorax was curved like that of a wasp ready to strike when necessary. It almost looked like it had a shell of exoskeleton on its back and thorax, and spouting out of the thicker plates were large needle-like spikes.
It let out a demonic shriek as soon as the light brightened. It ducked out of sight and started making a loud clicking noise. Chloe and Fred kept their guns trained on where it had disappeared ready for it to come out charging, but unfortunately, they underestimated it. It made a loud ticking sound followed by CREAK! Before Chloe could even turn the hound that had crept from behind had her pinned to the ground and was bitting and slashing at her back. BANG!!!! BANG!!!! Fred had lowered his shotgun to its head. The first blast blew out two of its eyes and shattered part of its exoskeleton, and the second blast dug through the broken exoskeleton into the brain. The hound collapsed dead and with his gun pointed at where the creeper had been Fred helped push the body off of her.
Chloe got up a little shaken but relatively ok. She started guarding back while he guarded the front as they slowly made their way towards the stairs. Any second they were expecting the creeper to appear from around the corner, but it didn’t. The creeper was planning something again but they didn’t know what. Just as they made it to the stairs they turned down the other hall, but saw nothing. The creeper had likely walked into one of the rooms and was waiting, but they weren’t there to explore. They hurried down the spiral staircase, but just as they got to the bottom they saw the place was still swarming with stingers, slugs, and 3 hounds. A loud ticking sound came from upstairs and the three hounds charged towards them. They started running back upstairs only to see the creeper now lurking at the top of them. Cornered in the middle of the stairs back to back with each other they began to accept their fate.
I started to really worry about where Chloe was I hadn’t heard from her in a while and it was getting late. I sat there trying to call her every few minutes but it would not pick up. BANG! I dropped the phone and turned to the window. Gretchen stood there with the rifle pointed at something off in the snow, but I couldn’t see what the thing was. BANG! I saw for a brief millisecond the bullet flying into the blizzard then nothing. BANG! I tried to pull myself up to see what it was, but searing pain went through my body when I tried. I looked out again and saw something massive emerge from the blizzard charging for Gretchen.
“I’m sorry we should’ve stayed up there,” Chloe cried as the hounds slowly stepped closer.
“Kid, I would rather die here than die in the room a coward, but you ain’t going to die here!” He said triumphantly.

Suddenly he pulled out a small can of spray deodorant and sprayed it in the hound's faces. All three toppled over making loud hacking coughing noises. “GO!” He yelled and she quickly made her way past the hounds and downstairs. There were still dozens of stingers down there and she still wasn’t sure what to do. Before she could do anything. RAT-A-TATATATA! All around her, the stingers began exploding as Fred landed shot after shot. “A little help would be nice!” He yelled. She quickly pulled out her semi-automatic and started firing as well. RAT-A-TATATATA! The hall began to fill with the exploded bodies of stingers and slugs. Suddenly she heard shuffling behind her and saw the hounds getting up. Without a second thought, she sprinted down the hall and into the kitchen. Standing in the living room was another group of stingers and a hound. How many hounds are there? She thought, then she remembered how many people in their town had two or three hunting dogs. If all of them were changed they’d be a small army. She ducked behind the island sitting uncomfortably close to Tom’s body. Fred sprinted in a second later and saw what she did. He jumped to the ground and shimmied over to her. “Crap kid we really are screwed,” Fred said his momentary confidence completely diminished. Before anyone could do anything the monster that had emerged from the blizzard was attacking Gretchen. In one quick motion, it slashed open her gut and she dropped the gun. I stared outside as my mom tried desperately to fire, but even from this distance, I could see she’d loaded the gun wrong. In an instant, she was on the ground bleeding. I looked over at the shotgun sitting next to me and fired a round through the window at the beast. The window shattered and I saw the creature get hit right solid in the chest, but it didn’t matter much. Like the dog beasts, this one had a thick darkly colored exoskeleton that the round didn’t pierce. The beast looked up from what it was doing and started charging for the house. I fired again but it didn’t even slow the creature it just kept on charging straight towards the house. The boys at some point had caught onto what was going on and started crying and screaming. I tried to get them to quiet down, but they were too distraught. I grabbed the box and loaded two more rounds just as the door was thrown out of its hinges. SCROAR! It charged into the house. BANG! I shot it directly in that face and saw one of its eyes explode. SCROAR!!!! It swung a large two-clawed hand straight across my face throwing me across the room. I landed against a wall and in my weak state I leaned over and felt myself begin to fall. Unfortunately, it had thrown me right next to the basement stairs. Every time I hit a stair only hurt more than the last. At some point, my bandaged left hand slammed into a wooden stair. The pain was so bad I almost passed out. Finally, with one lass unceremonious thud, I landed on the basement floor. 

Chloe looked around her hope beginning to fade then her eyes locked with the pantry. The large pantry with a window.

“Follow me,” She whispered as she started crawling for the pantry. Fred followed close behind. Chloe crawled into the pantry and ducked into it. She peeked out of the doorway and saw that Fred had froze. The four hounds had gathered right behind him. He looked horrified and clearly unsure of what to do. Suddenly with a loud creak, the creeper's head poked into the kitchen and it let out a loud ticking sound. The hounds started screeching and one began to slowly walk towards Fred. RAT-A-TATATATA! She struck the approaching one 9 times in the face and the sudden burst seemed to wake Fred from his fear. RAT-A-TATATATA! Yellow-greenish blood exploded from the approaching hound's mouth and it slammed its head into the wall in pain. Fred turned around and sprinted into the pantry with Chloe closing the door as soon as he was inside. Instantly sounds of slamming and scratching erupted from the door. Chloe turned to the window in the pantry and slid it open diving out into the snow. Fred quickly followed slamming the window behind him to give them more time. Chloe sprinted through the snowy evening as quickly as she could Fred trying his best to keep up with her. The man wasn’t exactly in his prime and combine that with him not having snow shoes to be frank Chloe was surprised he was able to stay caught up at all. As she sprinted down the darkening street getting closer and closer to home she thought she heard a faint Bang! Followed quickly by SCROAR!!!! Her worries suddenly switched from her and Fred to her family. She hadn’t called them in hours and now there was clearly something going on. She sprinted ever faster looking up and realizing she’d already made it onto their street. As soon as their house was in view she saw the shoveled driveway, but she also saw my mom laying in a pool of her own blood. Along with that, she saw Gretchen weakly trying to get up also bloody. Chloe ran over to Gretchen. “Gretchen, what happened?” Chloe asked as she helped Gretchen stand. “Something… something big.” Gretchen sputtered out. Gretchen had a lost far away look on her face. She almost seemed drunk but Chloe knew that wasn’t the case. Gretchen was likely in shock. SCREAM! Chloe immediately recognized it as one of the boys. She gently sat Gretchen down and then pulled out the rifle. Fred had finally caught up and quickly but carefully Fred and Chloe made their way into the house guns drawn. They hurried inside and saw the creeper looming over a now-still Alby. Without a second thought, Chloe raised her rifle RAT-A-TATATA! She shot the thing a few times in the back knowing that it probably wouldn’t do any real damage. It turned around and looked at the two of them standing there. The scene was eerie as the still-burning fireplace cast a strange glow on the creeper. Everything seemed to go still for a second the two of them staring at the creeper and the creeper staring right back at them. All three of them trying to make a decision but are not sure what to do. SCROAR! It dives forward slicing at the welding helmet Chloe was wearing and then pinning her to the ground with its four legs. BANG!! His shotgun blast hardly seemed to phase the thing as started digging its claws into Chloe. She let out a scream that I heard loud and clear from the basement. 

I’d managed to pull myself halfway up the stairs with my good arm and leg but my energy was running out and I was feeling lightheaded. I had to save her I had to protect her. BANG! I heard another gunshot followed by an unfamiliar scream. I didn’t know at the time that Fred was putting everything he had into trying to protect my wife.
Chloe gunless and pinned down was beginning to accept her fate when she remembered what she’d done last time. She reached for her knife and stabbed one of its feet. SCROAR!! It backed up off of her clearly in pain. Quickly she pulled the sniper rifle off her back and Bang! The bullet went clean through one of the thing's legs. She’d quite literally found the creeper's Achilles heel. It half fell to the ground letting out another roar of pain and agony. Both its front legs were crippled and it lay there defeated. Fred stepped forward ready to put a shotgun blast to the temple when suddenly. The thing reared up onto its two back legs throwing Fred into the wall. It had to hunch a little as the ceiling wasn’t very high but it still was tall. Chloe figured that on two legs without a hunch it was probably 10 feet tall. SCROAR!! Bang! It lunged towards her and she used her first shot to shoot its arm. The bullet embedded into the exoskeleton but didn’t seem to hurt it. The creature stopped for a moment as if to think. Bang! She shot the creature in the belly. The exoskeleton cracked. Bang! The second shot sunk into its stomach and the creature's blood began to leak out. SCROAR! It bashed one of its arms into her. She felt her left shoulder get cut open and the helmet went flying off.
BANG!! BANG! Two shotgun blasts rang out at the exact same time. The first blast was Fred's. It hit the creeper directly in the back of the head causing it to stumble forward. The second was my blast hitting it directly in the face. The two shots managed to hit at the exact perfect times. The creeper collapsed to the ground critically wounded.

Fred ran over to Chloe who was in a daze on the ground. “Are you alright kid?” He asked helping her up. “I’ll live,” She said weakly. The creeper let out a growl from where it lay on the floor. I pointed the shotgun from where I was on the stairs and fired one final blast into its head. “Chloe who is that?” I asked cautiously. “Fred,” She said sounding weak. I crawled the rest of the way up and saw Alby laying near the fireplace motionless. I froze as I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes. Then I looked closer and saw besides a cut on his arm he wasn’t hurt, and better yet it looked like he was breathing. “Alby!” I yelled trying my best to over to him with my broken body. He lifted his head and turned it to look at me. “Is the monster gone?” He asked. “Yes it’s gone,” I said trying to sound comforting. “Ba… Babe,” Chloe stammered, now leaning down over me. Her eyes were locked with mine but she had a horrified expression on her face. I didn’t care and gave her a long tight hug. “You’re not leaving me again,” I told her. Finally, I pulled away and looked at her and for a second it was just the two of us and nothing else mattered. Fred hurried into the house helping Gretchen walk. “Everyone downstairs now!” He ordered and we all hurried down. “Alby where’s your brothers?” I asked him as he followed us downstairs. “They're down here.” He said pointing down the staircase. “Fred, what’s happening?” Chloe asked the panic-stricken man as we all stepped into the basement. “More, more of them are coming.” He said a look of fear on his face. “Well then let's get ready for a fight!” Chloe said, cocking the shotgun she’d taken from me. 

Current setup.
2 double bedroom flat.
Separate Gas boiler for central heating. Vented Immersion heating with tank for hot water. Cold water tank, and also an overhead tank I believe to maintain water pressure for the boiler.
Considering going for a combi boiler, and getting rid of all the tanks, but unsure if that’s the right decision. I’ve been bitten by issues with hot water stopping in the shower if someone open a tap elsewhere before and trying to avoid that happening again here.

I have a large deck box with tools (flat head screwdriver, strap wrench, rubber mallet), vacuum, robot vacuum, hose, and all my chemicals except the muriatic acid which I keep in a seal can outside the screen enclosure. There is also skimmer socks, a 5 gallon bucket, plastic stirring stick. I have a separate small Rubbermaid box for pool toys, googles, mask and snorkel.

Leaser here.
Been in the industry a few years and recently I have had this strange trend that I haven't seen before. Residents trying to tell me that my job is to provide good customer service or they say "well, when I worked customer service..." etc...
Context: the separate residents I have heard this argument from, recently, bring up this talking point when because they want us to bend or break policy for them.
I end up having to explain federal fair housing laws to them. On a few occasions they kept pushing this "you are supposed to be customer service" pint to the degree where I have had to flat out tell them "no. I do not work in customer service. We are not a customer service company. We are a Property Management company."
Has anyone else been experiencing this?
What are your thoughts on Property Management vs Customer Service?

The Future is Officially Canceled.
Dee had read articles like this before. He couldn’t remember if the future had ever been officially canceled. But it had been canceled. Unofficially, perhaps. Hence the need to do it officially.
He skimmed the first few paragraphs …the slow cancellation of the future… …pop culture is eating itself… …imitators are imitating an imitation… The ‘slow cancellation’ theory was first flung around in the early twenty first century, on the hypothesis that if you played 1970s music to someone in the 1950s, it would blow their freaking mind. And if you played music from the 1990s to someone in the 1970s, their mind would be equally blown. But if you played music from the ‘10s to someone in the 1990s it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch. In fact, that person may even think they had heard some of it before. The same thing with music from the ‘30s to someone in the ‘10s or music from now to someone in the ‘30s. That person might conceivably think they were even listening to music from a previous decade. Pop culture had referenced itself so many times over, it was now just a copy of a copy of a copy. Degrading every time.
Dee looked down at the article's credit, Dennis Bagley, Editorial AI Operator. He knew it, AI. No wonder it read so familiar. He looked up at the various awards on his top shelf. Dee knew he was different. Better. His AI operating skills were the thing of accolades. The thing of applause. Just last week he and his AI processor picked up Gold in Effectology for their Just Poo It campaign for Charmin. And Silver in Originology for their The Ketchup In The Rye commercial for Pepsi-Heinz, about a young guy who gets kicked out of school and stays out all night trying to find a bottle of ketchup. He looked down at his processor and beamed. Its glowing red light beamed back at him.
They didn’t just stumble into that kind of effectiveness. Campaigns didn’t even get greenlit unless they scored ninety or above on the Effectology meter. He and his AI were usually hitting ninety twos or ninety threes, even a ninety five for Here’s To The Lazy Ones for Caspar mattresses. That campaign killed.
But Dee held himself to that higher calling, Originology. The metrics of original ideas. Sure, the AI did most of the work but Dee was able to tweak his processor to go way beyond the requisite twenty five percent Originology score. Together they were nailing figures in the forties, sometimes even peaking into the fifties. Scores that were head and shoulders above the rest of the department.
That’s how he could afford the sweet ‘18 Jordans Reissues on his feet. He curled his luxe Loewe headphone cable through his fingers and wrapped it around his neck like a scarf. He scoffed at a time when people didn’t think they needed a headphone cable. And imagined having nothing to twirl while listening to reinterpreted rock, nothing to wind around his fingers while he fed the processor. How many headphones must have been lost forever, just because they weren’t plugged in? Like everything else in pop culture, what went around came around, and, relatively recently, headphone cables had come back hard as the status symbol. Today, you didn’t just have to have a cable to be considered cool, you had to have the cable. It had to be thick as a rope, plated with rare metals, and covered in a fancy leather sheath from a chic brand like Gucci or Loewe.
Dee beamed as he thought of all the cool historical cultural knowledge he had amassed. Not just advertising history like the dweebs in the cubicles around him, but film history, fashion history, art history, music history. If it happened in culture, he knew about it. And he used it. That’s how he scored so high on the Originology meter. It made him feel almost like a real writer. Though he would never say that out loud. He imagined being like the old timers, upstairs. The un.ai.ded human writers, that clients would pay a serious premium for. Then he wouldn’t have to work on ketchup and toilet roll. He could have a crack at the big dogs, like Googlesoft, United American Airlines or DoritosLocosTacoBell. For now though, he’d have to stick with clients more becoming of his position. This morning’s task was to create a campaign for Pepsi-Crest. A toothpaste. Not super interesting. But he knew how to spice it up. Instead of letting his AI go back through decades of toothpaste ads just to pump out tired old crap like the It Cleans Your Face While it Cleans Your Teeth campaign that Mike Bey pitched last week, Dee mixed in a little fast food inspo from one of his favorite eras and found himself at the highly original and equally effective Where’s the Teeth? campaign. He was stunned by his own brilliance. He patted his processor and imagined it congratulating him back, then he programmed it to write an epic fifteen second anthem film and a suite of six second pre-roll spots, then sent it off to the CG department to render in time to air that night. Dee’s colleagues often asked him how he and his processor were so good at what they did. How their campaigns always scored so highly in both Effectology and Originology. They all used the same machine learning. It’s what the agency sold itself on. Never wanting to sound aloof; even though he was, or like he was tooting his own horn; even though he often did, he would merely say, “I like to pepper a bit of non advertising data in there. A little hint of me.” It was enough to provoke gasps and even make his colleagues take a step back or two, they had all been programmed to do just one task, feed the machine with advertising data. They couldn’t fathom diverging. “The AI should be enough,” was the general understanding. “The machine has better knowledge of advertising history than we do,” and “knows the ins and outs of Effectology better than we ever could.” It’s even been “scientifically programmed to exceed all expectation of Originology.” Dee couldn’t be swayed by any of the standard reactions. He would just smile, and casually amble off. Knowing full well he was beating the machine. He was a rebel in his own right. That afternoon, his section boss leaned over his cubicle. “Hullo Tara.” “Keep it formal please, colleague,” she scolded, “call me Antino. What do you look so ruddy chuffed about anyway?” “I just came up with a brilliant campaign for a very dull toothpaste. You’ll see it on The Comedy Central Reruns Channel tonight.” “Yes, well, an upstairs project is running behind and they’re calling on us down here to pull together some inspo decks, help jostle something loose in those tired old brains.” “Wouldn’t that make them not human-made? What are their clients paying all that money for?” “Loopholes, colleague, loopholes. As long as one of them humans writes the final line, it doesn’t matter how much AI they used to get there. “ “I could do that. I could do better than that. Did I tell you about my toothpaste campaign?” “Yes you did. Twice now. Must be good.” “It is.” “Well, here’s your chance for a peek into the real writer life. I’m deprioritizing your regular workload and prioritizing this inspo creation.” “Yeahhh!” Dee punched the air and freeze framed like he saw in an old movie. “The brief is for Fiat Maserati Jeep Dodge RAM. It’s a car. The Fiat Maserati Jeep Dodge RAM Unica. Like a fancy off-roader, you know what I mean? They wanna sell it to people in cities who don’t drive. More of a status symbol, you know what I mean? Like park it in front of your house so people will know you could go off-roading if you wanted to. Audience archetype is Moms. You getting this?” Dee finally broke his freeze frame but his mind was already whirring. “Yeah, I got it.” “Alright then. Bon chance.” Dee jumped into action, flipped up his AI processor’s screen and started cross referencing old Land Rover ads with The Rock movies, some Nora Ephron classics, Michelle Rodriguez’s character from all twenty eight Fast & Furious movies; even the fully CGI’d ones, the scene from Mrs Doubtfire when she’s playing the broomstick like a guitar, some Bikini Kill records, a memory of his own Mom making him wait in the car while she went shopping at Bergdorfs, a bunch of cool off-roading stuff from Top Gear and a painting of a car he’d always loved by Robert Bechtle. The machine spat out fifteen possible campaign inspo starters and Dee ran-walked them to the inspo courier in the office atrium. Before the day ended, a synthetic orchestra sounded through the building, \Pah pahhh, pah pa pah pa pah pahhh** and the employees were called into the atrium. Office meeting. As Dee strolled in, he caught the rare sight of the last few human copywriters lined up around the balcony above them. They applauded the downstairs employees, theatrically, motioning with their claps as they walked in and took seats, stood awkwardly or otherwise congregated.
There was a dramatic hush before one of the last true human copywriters finally spoke. “Great inspo. Thanks.” Wow. Each word, each letter, worth its weight in gold. That's probably why they used so few, thought Dee. “Yeah, really really good stuff.” Said another. “AI did this?” Said a third as she held the sheets of inspo out. “Some of the best inspo I’ve ever seen in all of my career.” Coughed the oldest and most regal sounding.
Dee squinted and peered up at them. Was that his inspo deck they were flashing around? Was this whole elaborate ceremony all to celebrate his AI operating? He didn’t know whether to be chuffed or anxious. Did they know he was cheating the system? Did they care? These are some of the last true human copywriters in history. They have, and are encouraged to have, the unique thought. Their work isn’t judged on how similar-without-being-exactly-the-same it is to existing campaigns. It’s judged on how different, how breakthrough, how stand out it is.
“It was me!” Dee blurted out. Quite uncharacteristically. He was usually so cool with the compliments. So coy with the recognition. His whole angle required it.
The other AI operators standing around him took their requisite step back, though this time it was less in awe, more in disgust. The air in the room stiffened. AI had ruled his department, and most of the industry, for so long that people didn’t speak up anymore. They just quietly fed the machine. And the machine took all the glory. Dee felt instant ostracism from the colleagues he had worked alongside for most of his career. He immediately questioned his outburst and retracted his ownership claim, knowing that his inspo deck would have been one of many.
“Some of it, at least. My AI, I mean. Processor.” He said. Sheepish this time. Back in his place.
The last few human copywriters smiled, nodded, bowed, gave final congratulations to all from high up on their balcony and then shuffled away in single file. All but one, Sir Coughing-Most-Regal. He slowly made his way down the grand staircase, into the atrium. A man leaving behind his usual pomp and circumstance, bringing his rare ability of unique thought into a crowd of imitation suppliers. As he reached the bottom step, he lost all of his royal air and seemed suddenly so vulnerable, walking among the regular folk. Most of Dee’s colleagues had already left, gone back to their metal masters, but Dee stayed. He knew this old man was coming to see him. He thought he might be in for a dressing down but he hoped it would be the opposite. He manifested that this titan of singular thought, the rare, unique idea, was coming to congratulate him.
“Freedkin.” The old man shoved out his hand. “Pleasure.” Dee shook it. “You say you programmed this inspo deck, yes?” He flapped the pages around. “Yes.” “Ruddy good work, let me tell you.” “Thank you.” “In all my years, since this artificial thinking thing came in, I’ve never read anything so good. Inspired me all over. I’ve been positively bursting with ideas since.” “Thank… you.” “AI wrote this you say?” “Yes.” “Ruddy good for AI. Never read anything so ruddy good. And you processed it?” “Yes.” “What’s your name son?” “Dee.” “Dee what?” “Palmer.” “Pleasure to meet you, Palmer. How much did you… influence it, the AI?” “How do you mean, sir?” “Call me Freedkin.” “How do you mean, Freedkin?” “I mean… how much of it is yours and how much is the machine’s?” Dee didn’t answer. He was looking for the angle. This old man surely didn’t value what AI does. He’s one of the last bastions of actual human creation. What was he getting at? Freedkin reoriented his question. “Mostly the machine or mostly you?” Dee thought he might have a kindred spirit here, in front of him, for the first time. He was going to take a risk. Recognizing a willingness to open up, Freedkin leaned in and spoke quietly. “Did you write this inspo or did the machine?” “I wrote it.” Dee postured. “All.” “Thought so. Good job. Our secret.” Freedkin winked. “Jolly good.” The next day, as he fed his AI little snippets of unexpected data, Dee noticed a hush come over his floor. The usual keyboard click, clack and grumble of inter-colleague banter were dead silent. All that was left was the processors’ harmonic hum. He lifted himself from his expensive ergonomic office chair and peered over his cubicle wall, spying across the sea of operators that made up the AI.ded Creativity department. A hunched figure at the opposite end of the bullpen sauntered from operator to operator, swilling a cup of coffee, looking in at each workstation. Giving a “hello” here, a nod there, even the odd salute. It was Freedkin. A real writer. Down here with the machine feeders. The other operators seemed afraid to go near him. Worried they might infect him with their inability. Dee had never seen a real writer in the operators’ bullpen. Freedkin, already old by industry standards, looked positively ancient in these surroundings. A sepia photograph in a technicolor world. Dee watched him, wondering if he should call out. He felt bound by social etiquette to not foist another outburst onto his peers. So he just watched, for a number of minutes, until Freedkin was close enough that his old eyes could make out Dee’s visage.
“Palmer!” Bingo. The two sat in Dee’s cubicle. Freedkin in the expensive office chair, as was fitting, and Dee on the wooden footstool. “For a short time we all worked from home. At the start of my career. For a short time.” “Everyone?” “Most. Not everyone, I suppose. But it was the thing to do. Was deemed more productive. Until it wasn’t. Then when this thing became the norm,” he tapped on Dee’s tiny AI processor, its red light glowed, “there was a sort of an office renaissance. I remember the bigwigs back then didn’t really want us using AI for ideas. Like it was giving in to the machine. We slowly got called back to the agency so they could keep an eye on our output. Keep it human, I suppose. That’s when the separation happened. In the end, the agency had to start using artificial thinking to keep up with demand. What are you lot churning out these days? Three campaigns a day? Four? We used to get a whole week to come up with one idea. After a while, of course, it got squeezed down to a couple of days. To the point where we needed the machine to keep up. Not long after, the bigwigs realized they could actually charge more off of the ‘human’ written stuff. Anyway, enough of the history lesson, what.” “It’s very interesting.” “Yes well, what I really came down here for,” Freedkin paused and looked around, “was some of that… good… inspo.” “I hear ya.” Dee poised his fingers over his keyboard and looked into the air like he was about to write something un.ai.ded, cocksure in his posture. “What’s this one about then?” “Watches. For Googlesoft. ‘Time,’ I was thinking, means so much, yet so little. Where does it all go? You know? How do we make more of it? Watches are time machines. See?” Dee’s posture sank. He thought of all that, by himself? No machine? He suddenly felt very ineffective. Unoriginal. He saw only the red glow from his little AI processor, staring back at him. Taking all the credit. He imagined it laughing with his colleagues in a bar while he sat at the other end of the table, ignored. He imagined it accepting awards by itself. He felt weak. He felt useless without it. It just glowed. “It kind of flows better… when I’m alone.” Dee nervously mumbled. “Right. Don’t say another word. Right you are. ‘Time.’ Remember. Where does it all go? Ok, I go. Ta-ta for now.
Dee looked down at his processor, apologetically. He quietly admonished himself before it until he felt forgiven. Then he typed in a weak initial prompt, all he could muster, write an advertising campaign about time.
The AI spat back a perfectly crafted campaign idea, line and film execution almost faster than Dee hit enter. The Best Things Come To Bros Who Wait. Dee immediately recognized it as a Guinness Surfers imitation. Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock. Its Effectology score clocked in well into the nineties. But its Originology score barely scraped by, just making it into ‘passable.’ Dee silently sneered at his surrounding coworkers. Any one of them would submit this as is and call it a day. It’d be rendered in minutes, deals made with celebrities’ CG likenesses under the hour, a revered AI voiceover and stunning synthetic music that would leave audiences lining up for these passively useful timepieces. But that wasn’t enough for Dee. That’s why he was who he was, goddamnit. Why Freedkin came to him. Him! Not Buton or Deytoro or Heckering. Him!
He added more detail to his prompt. Meaning of time. How to get time back. Time Machine. Back in time. Michael J Fox. Einstein (dog). Time Bandits. Timecop. Van Damme. Kyle Reece. Time displacement. Uhhh huhhh this felt good again. This was working. Dee and his processor were back in sync. As though they were one. Of course, as far as Freedkin knew, they were one. As Dee typed away, he imagined him and his AI coming together. Two heads. Better than one. He lost himself in his prompting and pictured his processor sitting on his shoulder, a second head, right there, next to his own. A tiny, metal appendage. Sleek, gray, with its glowing red light. And, for some reason, it was growing a little mustache. Dee and the mustached machine were completely lost in their work over the next few days. They hardly wrote any of their own campaigns. It was all inspo, inspo, inspo for Freedkin. The good stuff though, Viking Space Cruises, 1900 Tequila, Acne Studios. Each time, Dee and his processor were pretty much writing the entire thing. Freedkin hardly needed to change them at all. Just put his old world tone all over it. Add all of his extra words and ‘personality.’ Dee’s two heads were coming up with the best campaigns in the agency. And no one knew it. Except Freedkin. By now, his second head felt almost as big as his first. He could see it in his periphery. When he looked to the left, it looked back at him. It smiled sometimes. And that little freaking mustache was starting to freak Dee out. That night, Freedkin invited Dee for a couple of drinks with the other real human writers at the fanciest DoritosLocosTacoBell on the Westside. They didn’t even have to wait in line. Dee marveled at the size of the place, the expansiveness. It was packed. They were led through by the greeter to a private table at the back with a leather rope around it. He sat on the edge of the booth as the others ordered various flavors of Gatorade-aritas. When it got to Dee, he said he would have the same as Freedkin, which turned out to be a Frost Glacier Cherry-arita, the classiest -arita of all.
The writers’ conversation was mesmerizing. Every word that came out of their mouths was a unique thought. An opinion. A point of view. Dee tried to join in by recounting the narrative of various movies he had seen. The more obscure the better, attempting to interact at their level. While telling the story of Mick Jackson’s Threads to Bigelo, he could feel her searching for a point of view or an opinion in what he was saying, but he couldn’t stir one. If only he had his processor right now. Its red light glowed comfortingly in his mind. He missed it. Slowly, the other writers left. Dee couldn’t help but think he had something to do with it. He was feeling so inadequate by the time everyone but Freedkin had gone that he just sat quietly and half-smiled at him. Both of them were five or six Gatorade-aritas deep, slumped in their private booth. “Do you like what you do?” Asked Freedkin. “I love it.” “Do you really?” “I don’t know.” “I hate what I do. But I’m good at it. Do you want to know the secret, Palmer? The secret to what we do?” Dee couldn’t do anything but smile a little bigger to communicate his response. Freedkin paused for dramatic effect. “If you love advertising, you shouldn’t work in advertising.” Did Dee love advertising? He didn’t even know. He knew he knew advertising. “You think your audience loves advertising? You think they want to see your tribute to that Googlesoft spot that was an imitation of an Apple spot that was inspired by a Brett Morgen film? No! They just want to see the Brett Morgen film! They don’t want to see your thing at all!” Dee slumped further down. “But if you’re lucky,” Freedkin continued, “if you’re really lucky, and you show them something they’ve never seen before, because you hate advertising too and you just wanted to make something that made you feel something, if they feel that same feeling, you’ve got gold. But you can only get to gold by summoning all of your experiences outside of advertising. You can’t just try to make the Nike of pimple commercials. You have to make the Palmer of pimple commercials. Do you see? That’s the problem with your AI. Your machine.”
The red light flashed again in Dee’s mind. Awakened by Freedkin’s heresy.
“The best AI will ever do is just show you a better version of something you’ve seen before. They call that effective? The numbers can say whatever they want them to, all they’re really doing is pasting wallpaper on top of wallpaper on top of wallpaper. Until eventually the audience ignores it completely. But you’re different Palmer. You and I are different. Different is what sells. I had a word with Simmons up on six. She’s agreed to give you a trial period on the human floor. At my behest. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her you were already thinking for yourself. I just told her you had the potential to. You start tomorrow. Trial period. Tonight was about the other humans meeting you. I can’t tell you that they’re not skeptical. But they’re open to it. For me. What do you think?” Dee was nervous. He got off the elevator at the operators’ bullpen without even thinking about it. He walked all the way to the atrium and up the grand staircase to the human writers’ floor, instead of getting back on the elevator. He took each step steadily, taking it all in. He felt like a tourist. Like he was borrowing an identity. He imagined he was a young Freedkin and tried to put a confident stride in his step. It didn’t work. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for his AI processor. His second head. Mustached. He couldn’t turn it on because, as everyone knew, AI wasn’t allowed upstairs, in case the agency got audited. The cost consultants would be all over a human writing department that used artificial ideation. They’d be shut down. At the very least, they would lose their Un.AI.ded AI.dvertising license. The only reason for charging such a premium. Dee ran his hand along the balcony rail. He’d only ever seen it from downstairs, from the non-human thinkers’ floor. He walked from the balcony to the human writer’s work area. It was the exact opposite of what he was used to. No sea of cubicles. No click clack. No mechanized productivity. No hum. Just couches, writing desks and quiet.
“Morning.” Whistled Freedkin. “How are we?” “We?” “You.” “Wish I hadn’t drunk so much.” “Ohh, I know. Think of it as an initiation. Nothing wrong with it. Takes your mind off the job. Stops you from thinking for a minute. You need that after everything you’ve been pumping out. All that gold, that is.” “Right.” “Right. Well. Set yourself up wherever you like. First brief is for Coca-Cola. A new water! The freshest water they’ve ever sold, so they say. Tap Clear” Dee wandered over to a small writing desk and put his touchscreen down. He unraveled his headphone cable and felt for his processor in his pocket. When he found it, he rubbed it like a lamp, wishing for a genie. A couple of human writers who’d been deep in concentration when he first walked in, had been disturbed by his arrival. He didn’t recognize them from last night. They glared at him as he set himself up. He smiled in their general direction. They continued to glare. “Big Jim.” Whispered Freedkin. “Him and his team have been here three days straight, on a pitch. Don’t worry about them. They’re just under tremendous stress. This human work really takes it out of you, you know? ” Dee turned and sat with his back to them. He powered up his touchscreen and put his headphones on, draping his Loewe headphone cable around his neck and shoulders. He hovered his fingers over his keyboard, expecting ideas to come. Nothing. He skimmed the brief. Still nothing. He read the brief. Not a thing. A few of the other writers strolled in. Dee watched them find a workspace, sit down, start writing. One of them even used a pen! Dee loved this whole lifestyle. Turn up for work whenever, spout genius, have lunch, sell some billion dollar ideas, have a cocktail. The thought of it all spurred him on. He hovered his fingers over his keyboard again and braced himself for the idea flow. Nothing came. Nothing. All morning. His mind was blank. It felt like it was getting blanker. He couldn’t believe it. Even half thoughts were swimming away from him. Impossible to catch. Even just individual words. Gone. By the afternoon Dee was starting to freak out. He felt like an imposter. “Freedkin,” he hissed, “I can’t think. I can’t come up with anything.” “It takes time, my boy. Days. I told you, before we used to even have weeks…” “But my brain’s not working at all. It won’t… generate… anything.” “Relax your brain. Relax yourself.” “But Freedkin… Freedkin,” he hissed again, “I didn’t write any of that stuff. It was AI. All of it. No… I mean… I helped… but it wasn’t all me.” “Ok… hold on… boy… be careful. That kind of talk will get you killed around here. Try and make it to the end of the day. Try just writing some things down. Some thoughts. Some words. And if you still feel the same tomorrow, I’ll let the brass know it wasn’t for you. No harm.” Dee’s eyes hardened. “Do you hear me, Palmer?” Dee rubbed his temples. “Listen, this affects both of us. Yes, you, but also me… for recommending you. I’ll be out… Think!” Freedkin distanced himself. Hoping it would quell the panic. Dee stared at nothing for as long as he could. An hour, at most. Just stared. No thoughts came. No words. A blank screen. So he slipped his hand in his pocket, held his AI processor warmly, and turned it on. Instantly, an alarm sounded. “What's going on here, Freedkin?” Skewered Big Jim. “Is this your kid? What’s the big idea? Is he working for the machines? What is he…trying to infiltrate us? I can’t have this. I’ve got a family. I can’t be out of a job.” “It’s just a misunderstanding, Jim. He’ll be leaving now.” “No he won’t. Get back here, kid.” Big Jim grabbed at Dee’s shirt. Dee squirmed and tried to push him away. Big Jim got a hand on his neck instead, as some of the other writers tried to grab his arms. Dee instinctively swung his fists around. He got one of the writers, Bigelo, square in the eye. She roared “He’s blinded me!” Big Jim picked him up by his neck. Dee choked. He grabbed his touchscreen and swung it. The edge caught Big Jim on the side of the head. Big Jim dropped him and screamed. Freedkin put a hand on Big Jim’s shoulder. Big Jim swung his fist around and slammed it into Freedkin’s nose. Dee tried to slip away but Big Jim, raging, grabbed his headphone cable and dragged him back, winding the cable around his neck to try and hold on to him with it. The other writers stepped back as Dee kicked around in a panic. He got one of the writers in the stomach and another in the back. The headphone cable slipped out of Big Jim’s hands. Dee reached out for anything he could grab onto. He found a desk leg and pulled himself away from the melee as the gang of writers got him by his feet. They pulled off his Jordans and he crawled away as fast as he could, out of the writers’ area and onto the balcony. The writers caught up with him. He swung the few punches he could muster. He cracked one writer on the cheekbone as another reached for his headphone cable, wrapping it around the balcony rail to stop him from getting even further away. Big Jim steamed in, bleeding from his head, and slammed into Dee, launching him into the air with his sheer force. Dee reached for the rail but it slipped under him as he toppled over into the open atrium, between the floors. He felt a snap as the headphone cable went taut around his neck. A colleague standing in the atrium shrieked. Dee kicked his legs and wriggled about, trying to slip out. He clawed his hands around the cable and tried to loosen it but it just got tighter and tighter. He looked up to see the human writers peering down. Not helping. He could feel his consciousness slipping away. He looked to his left to see his second head staring straight back at him. As he hung, he could feel the metal head growing, exponentially, until it popped off, hit the ground and shattered. Shiny gray liquid metal spilled all over the floor and splashed up the walls. Its red light glowing all over as the metal spread around the room. Once it had flooded the entire atrium it enveloped Dee’s mind. And he was gone. The agency left his body hanging there for two days. They blamed it on a lack of janitorial availability. Everything in the office was automated, and cutting down a dead body wasn’t something their sanitation robots had been programmed to do. But, deep down, everyone knew that it was a message. That they should stay in the roles they had been assigned. So they did. So they wouldn’t end up like Dee.

I have two female poodles: a 12yo toy poodle/Japanese Chin (Sun) and a 2yo standard poodle (Moon) I have had both since they were 8 weeks old. When we got Moon, we kept her sequestered in the living room (gate) for quite some time. There was always an adult with her. Sun would be outside the gate but when Moon was put in the crate, Sun was given more love etc. We kept them separated because Sun is like 9 lbs (4kg, half a stone) and Moon is 40 lbs (18kg, 2 stone). Moon was also a big puppy who was clumsy with her big paws.
Now, they aren’t separated but they only sort of live together. They never play together. Sun will growl at Moon if she gets too close like sniffing or if Moon steps on her but this is rare now. They will occasional share the king-sized bed when I’m at work with one at the head and one at the foot. Sun has gotten bolder with Moon and will occasionally try to take her food. Moon is very much “okay cool. I’ll get more.” They are like sisters with Sun being very much “don’t touch me. Mom! Moon’s looking at me! Are you getting pets? I want pets too!” and Moon being “what’s big sister doing? Want to play with sister.” and getting her feelings hurt if Sun growls at her. This leaves me with things “Moon leave your sister alone. Sun, stop being such a brat” in a flat monotone voice. I will scoop Sun up if Moon gets zoomies or is too excited.
I will say, Sun’s eyes are rheumy and that has made her, well, bitchy. She sleeps a lot but always has. (That’s the chin in her.) They will sit next to each other if treats are involved but that’s it. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t expect them to play together but it would be nice if they could at least sit next to each other without a parent in between. I was hoping to hear from other dog parents who have a similar situation. Is it okay? Am I missing something? What can I do better? Am I worrying over nothing? Thank you in advance!

I’ve posted some questions a while back, but I’ve thought of more since. I don’t want to ask her directly or even indirectly thru the subs, but it’s more for the sake of general discussion here (her platform is too much of a cesspool for me to feel comfortable interacting with her).
Is your content meant to be cringey and weird on purpose? Is that a character or do you legit not see the cringe factor?
Why do you still defend VeeOneEye even tho he’s an admitted rapist?
Since you bring up misogyny and ageism from time to time, what’s your background on those topics? Have you ever studied them or been involved in any direct actions? Is most of your education on these topics from online or irl sources? What does systematic oppression mean to you? What’s your definition of it?
What do you think of the way western Christians are pushing for and flat out taking away rights from everyone else and using Jesus’ name to do it? As a Christian do you feel like you have some part in that, or do you see yourself as entirely separate from Christianity as an organization? Personally, my leftist activism is entangled with my sorta-religion, and while I don’t relate to mainstream Christianity I feel like it would still be wrong for me to be like “oh im different, I’m not like THOSE Christians” as a way of sidestepping accountability, even tho I’m of the “Jesus was not a religion” mindset. What’s your take on that?
What made you start bringing your mom on stream more often?
About how often does your mom suggest content ideas?
Why do you still have a mod who’s ban evading?
What’s something new you’ve learned recently?