My story began when I, “J” met this girl “A”, at work. I am married for 12 years and we have a son who is 2 years old. My wife and I were both each others rebound when we met and we figured we liked each other enough to give long term relationship a try. After 10 years of together, we still argue about every little things, more like she is always inpatient with me or belittling me. I usually hold it in until I cant, and an all out fight started between us last days, until we are tired and sick of each other and back to normal and few days or a week later the cycle repeats. We thought having a child will help us work through our problems together, but it done the opposite, the pressure of rising a kid and dealing with both our personal issues was too much. We argue even more then before.
This girl at work “A”, who had been working there for at least 3 years, I came back to the company over a year ago, we know of each other but never talk besides the hi in the morning as courtesy to a co worker from one to another. One day in August of 2022, we say hi and just started talking. We hit it off right away, we starting saying good morning to buying each other coffees to light flirting within days. Yes, she know I am married. We had many shared interested from show to music. We started to get close, we started to share our intermit thoughts and stories. Light filtering become more serious but she was reluctant to move forward with a date, because she doesn’t want to be a side piece. This is where I started lying to her, yes, I want her, I felt more connected with her then with my wife. I had never cheated on my wife in all the years we are together, but when I get to know this girl, every logical thoughts just went out of the windows, all I know is I like her more then I had ever feel for my wife. So I told the girl we are getting separated she knows how bad the wife treated me, not just from what I had told her, her and other co-workers had heard and seen the wife in yelling at me at public places for nothing. After I insist she will not be a side piece and will not affect my relationship with my son, she finally agree to go out on official date with me. She told me not to get attached as she is still recover from last relationship which wasn’t great, also we are 10 years apart in age. I am older and she is not looking to be a step mom anytime soon. I chose to ignore all the red flags she has, I am in love with this girl so bad that I can not say no to her. All I want is be there for her and say yes to whatever she needs. I have to be completed honest, I didn’t know I will fall for her hard, during the time we are going out, I was laying to my wife as why I come back late after work I had to go on trips over the weekend etc. I was torn apart and feel guilty but as soon as I saw the girl, I don’t care anymore. While I am going out with “A” my wife would call to check in etc, so during the affire I wasn’t 100% focus on the girl or 100% as a father to my son. I was split, but I was happy and got careless, I though this is great I can do both, but little did I know, the girl started to find our situation dull, things feels like had cool down. One day she told me, there’s another guy who had been trying to get her out on a date for over a moths, I pleaded with her and she said I told you I will keep looking for someone who can give me the butterfly feeling, and we never set a label between us. I should have just end it there, but I didn’t. They went out one date, and her and I are back together again, but she is still in touch with the guy.
During Christmas time she went home for 3 weeks, and during this 3 weeks I had feel like I lost her, she started becoming a bit distant. When the new year come around, my nightmare had come true, she told me to move on, as she is going out with the guy even though they had not seen each other since that one date. The worst part is her and I are actually went to a 3 weeks business trip together, we stay at the same house, different room, this was one of the worst time of my life. I had never felt this depress and sad in my entire life. During the trip she said we can still be friends, again I should have say no and just ignore her, but I didn’t. I acted like a friend, we end up hanging out with her family who was in town during the trip, which is ridiculous, we share food and drinks like we were together, she even done our laundries together, none of it is normal friendship. I should keep distant and say no, but I didn’t, I cant say no to her. After the trip and we came home, she started going cold on me even as a friend, I took this opportunity to stay away, but she kept saying I am her only safe space she trust me. Her and the guy didn’t last long, only about a month and she broke it off with him. During the time she would call me when she has PTSD or server depression. I am always there to comfort her. Its been 5 months since we ended, and yet I am the only person she went out with for her birthday. When she feels depress, I took her out to see flowers and dinners. Things were kind good between us for a bit, but the past 2 weeks, she had been dry and cold, specially during the weekend, not responding to my text we don’t really talk anymore, but she will send me reels and memes if I ignore her too long. Before I am sure she is not seeing anyone, but this weekend I feel like she is finally going out there, and even she just want me as a friend, I am the one who need to put in effort to keep the conversation going. I tried to ask her to hang out, but she kept saying no or will let me know and now just straight up no response, but 2 weeks ago she would say yes to something to what she wants. I know she is over me, but she still need me.
I cant stop thinking about her, I wish she would still send me snaps, she would tell me about her day, I keep waiting for her text even just a hello. I miss her and I want her bad. I had tried to go out with others but none of them feel right, I tried to work it out with my wife, and still long process, but I just cant shake her out of my head. I don’t know what else to do.

My story began when I, “J” met this girl “A”, at work. I am married for 12 years and we have a son who is 2 years old. My wife and I were both each others rebound when we met and we figured we liked each other enough to give long term relationship a try. After 10 years of together, we still argue about every little things, more like she is always inpatient with me or belittling me. I usually hold it in until I cant, and an all out fight started between us last days, until we are tired and sick of each other and back to normal and few days or a week later the cycle repeats. We thought having a child will help us work through our problems together, but it done the opposite, the pressure of rising a kid and dealing with both our personal issues was too much. We argue even more then before.
This girl at work “A”, who had been working there for at least 3 years, I came back to the company over a year ago, we know of each other but never talk besides the hi in the morning as courtesy to a co worker from one to another. One day in August of 2022, we say hi and just started talking. We hit it off right away, we starting saying good morning to buying each other coffees to light flirting within days. Yes, she know I am married. We had many shared interested from show to music. We started to get close, we started to share our intermit thoughts and stories. Light filtering become more serious but she was reluctant to move forward with a date, because she doesn’t want to be a side piece. This is where I started lying to her, yes, I want her, I felt more connected with her then with my wife. I had never cheated on my wife in all the years we are together, but when I get to know this girl, every logical thoughts just went out of the windows, all I know is I like her more then I had ever feel for my wife. So I told the girl we are getting separated she knows how bad the wife treated me, not just from what I had told her, her and other co-workers had heard and seen the wife in yelling at me at public places for nothing. After I insist she will not be a side piece and will not affect my relationship with my son, she finally agree to go out on official date with me. She told me not to get attached as she is still recover from last relationship which wasn’t great, also we are 10 years apart in age. I am older and she is not looking to be a step mom anytime soon. I chose to ignore all the red flags she has, I am in love with this girl so bad that I can not say no to her. All I want is be there for her and say yes to whatever she needs. I have to be completed honest, I didn’t know I will fall for her hard, during the time we are going out, I was laying to my wife as why I come back late after work I had to go on trips over the weekend etc. I was torn apart and feel guilty but as soon as I saw the girl, I don’t care anymore. While I am going out with “A” my wife would call to check in etc, so during the affire I wasn’t 100% focus on the girl or 100% as a father to my son. I was split, but I was happy and got careless, I though this is great I can do both, but little did I know, the girl started to find our situation dull, things feels like had cool down. One day she told me, there’s another guy who had been trying to get her out on a date for over a moths, I pleaded with her and she said I told you I will keep looking for someone who can give me the butterfly feeling, and we never set a label between us. I should have just end it there, but I didn’t. They went out one date, and her and I are back together again, but she is still in touch with the guy.
During Christmas time she went home for 3 weeks, and during this 3 weeks I had feel like I lost her, she started becoming a bit distant. When the new year come around, my nightmare had come true, she told me to move on, as she is going out with the guy even though they had not seen each other since that one date. The worst part is her and I are actually went to a 3 weeks business trip together, we stay at the same house, different room, this was one of the worst time of my life. I had never felt this depress and sad in my entire life. During the trip she said we can still be friends, again I should have say no and just ignore her, but I didn’t. I acted like a friend, we end up hanging out with her family who was in town during the trip, which is ridiculous, we share food and drinks like we were together, she even done our laundries together, none of it is normal friendship. I should keep distant and say no, but I didn’t, I cant say no to her. After the trip and we came home, she started going cold on me even as a friend, I took this opportunity to stay away, but she kept saying I am her only safe space she trust me. Her and the guy didn’t last long, only about a month and she broke it off with him. During the time she would call me when she has PTSD or server depression. I am always there to comfort her. Its been 5 months since we ended, and yet I am the only person she went out with for her birthday. When she feels depress, I took her out to see flowers and dinners. Things were kind good between us for a bit, but the past 2 weeks, she had been dry and cold, specially during the weekend, not responding to my text we don’t really talk anymore, but she will send me reels and memes if I ignore her too long. Before I am sure she is not seeing anyone, but this weekend I feel like she is finally going out there, and even she just want me as a friend, I am the one who need to put in effort to keep the conversation going. I tried to ask her to hang out, but she kept saying no or will let me know and now just straight up no response, but 2 weeks ago she would say yes to something to what she wants. I know she is over me, but she still need me.
I cant stop thinking about her, I wish she would still send me snaps, she would tell me about her day, I keep waiting for her text even just a hello. I miss her and I want her bad. I had tried to go out with others but none of them feel right, I tried to work it out with my wife, and still long process, but I just cant shake her out of my head. I don’t know what else to do.

Title	Format	Vendor	Price
10 Cloverfield Lane	4K	Vudu	$7
101 Dalmatians	HD	MA	$4
13 Hours The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi	HD	Vudu	$2
21 Jump Street	SD	MA	$1
3 From Hell	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$4
48 Hours	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$6
A Madea Christmas	HD	Vudu	$0.50
A Quiet Place	HD	Vudu or iTunes	$3
A Very Brady Sequel	HD	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Adventures of TinTin	SD	Vudu	$1
Adventures of TinTin	SD	iTunes	$1
Age of Ultron	HD	MA	$3
Age of Ultron	HD	GP	$2
Aladdin (2019)	HD	MA	$3
Aladdin (2019)	HD	GP	$2
Aladdin (Robin Williams)	HD	Vudu	$4
Amazing Spider-Man (The Amazing Spider-Man)	SD	MA	$0.50
Ambulance	4K	MA	$6.50
American Gangster	4K	MA	$5
American Made	4K	MA	$6
American Psycho	4K	Vudu, iTunes or GP	$5
Annie	SD	MA	$0.75
Another 48 Hours	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$6
Avengers: Age of Ulton	HD	Vudu	$3
Avengers: Age of Ulton	HD	GP	$2
Avengers: End Game	HD	Vudu	$3
Avengers: End Game	4K	MA	$4
Avengers: End Game	HD	GP	$2
Avengers: Infinity Wars	4K	MA	$4
Avengers: Infinity Wars	HD	GP	$2
Batman, The	4K	MA	$5
Beauty and the Beast (1991)	HD	Vudu	$2
Beauty and the Beast (1991)	HD	MA	$3
Beauty and the Beast (1991)	HD	GP	$2
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	HD	Vudu	$3
Beauty and the Beast (2017)	HD	GP	$2
Beauty and the Beast: Enchanted Christmas	HD	MA	$6
Beauty and the Beast: Enchanted Christmas	HD	GP	$4
BFG (Big Friendly Giant)	HD	MA	$3
BFG (Big Friendly Giant)	HD	GP	$2
Big Hero 6	HD	MA	$3
Big Hero 6	HD	GP	$2
Black Panther	4K	Vudu	$5
Black Panther	HD	MA	$3.50
Black Panther	HD	GP	$2.50
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever	HD	MA	$4
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever	HD	GP	$2.50
Black Widow	HD	MA	$4.50
Black Widow	HD	GP	$3
Boss Baby	HD	Vudu	$2
Bourne Legacy	HD	MA	$0.75
Bourne Legacy	HD	iTunes	$0.75
Brady Bunch Movie, The	HD	Vudu	$5
Bram Stoker's Dracula	4K	MA	$5
Brave (3D?)	SD	iTunes	$2
Breaking Bad Season 5 Part 1	HD	Vudu	$5
Bring it on World #CheerSmack	HD	MA	$0.50
Bring it on World #CheerSmack	HD	iTunes	$0.50
Brothers	SD	Vudu	$1
Bullet Train	4K	MA	$5.50
Bumblebee	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Cabin in the Woods	UHD	Vudu	$4
Call of the Wild	HD	MA	$3
Call of the Wild	HD	GP	$2
Call of the Wild	4K	MA	$5
Captain America: Civil War	HD	MA	$3
Captain America: Civil War	HD	GP	$2
Captain Marvel	HD	MA	$3
Captain Marvel	HD	GP	$2
Cars 2	HD	GP	$3
Cars 3	HD	MA	$3
Cars 3	4K	iTunes	$3
Cars 3	HD	GP	$2
Celebrating Mickey	HD	GP	$3
Cinderella (Live Action)	HD	MA	$4
Cinderella (Live Action)	HD	GP	$3
Clerks III	4K	iTunes	$5
Cloverfield	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$6
Coco	4K	iTunes	$5
Coco	HD	GP	$2
Collateral	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Coming to America	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Concussion	SD	MA	$0.50
Cool Hand Luke (1967)	4K	MA	$7
Copshop	HD	MA	$5
Crawl	4K	iTunes or Vudu	$5
Criminal	4K	Vudu	$5
Croods	HD	MA	$3
Croods	HD	iTunes	$3
Cruella	HD	MA	$3
Cruella	HD	GP	$2
Daddy's Home	HD	Vudu	$1.50
Daddy's Home 2	HD	Vudu	$1.50
Daniel Craig 5 Film Collection -- Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, No Time to Die	4K	Vudu	$20
Deadpool	HD	MA	$1.50
Deadpool	4K	iTunes	$3
Despicable Me	SD	iTunes	$1
Despicable Me 2	HD	MA	$2
Divergent	SD	Vudu	$0.50
Doctor Strange	HD	MA	$3
Doctor Strange	HD	GP	$2
Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness	HD	Vudu	$4
Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness	4K	MA	$5.50
Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness	HD	GP	$3
Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas	HD	MA	$3
Dragonslayer	4K	Vudu	$5
Dumbo (2019)	HD	MA	$4
Dumbo (2019)	HD	GP	$3
Dune (2021)	4K	MA	$5
E.T. - Extra-Terrestrial	HD	Vudu or iTunes	$4
Edward Scissorhands	HD	MA	$3
Elvis (2022)	4K	MA	$5.50
Emoji Movie	HD	Vudu	$2
Emperor's New Groove, The	HD	MA	$6.75
Emperor's New Groove, The	HD	GP	$6.50
Equalizer	SD	MA	$1
Escape from LA	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$6.75
Eternals	HD	Vudu	$3.50
Eternals	HD	GP	$2.50
Everything Everywhere All at Once	4K	Vudu	$6.50
Expendables 2	SD	iTunes	$0.50
Expendables 2	HD	iTunes	$1
Extreme Prejudice	HD	Vudu or iTunes	$4.50
Fast & Furious 6	HD	MA	$2
Fast and the Furious	HD	Vudu	$2
Finding Dory	HD	iTunes	$4.50
Finding Dory	HD	GP	$2
Fox and the Hound 2	HD	GP	$5
Free Guy	HD	Vudu	$3
Free Guy	HD	GP	$2
Fright Night	4K	MA	$5
Frozen	HD	MA	$3
Frozen	HD	GP	$2
Frozen 2	4K	MA	$4
Frozen 2	HD	GP	$2.25
Frozen Ground	HD	Vudu	$2
Frozen Sing Along	HD	MA	$3
Frozen Sing Along	HD	GP	$2
Furious 7	HD	Vudu	$3
Furious 7	HD	iTunes	$3
Fury	HD	MA	$2.50
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra	SD	iTunes	$1.50
Girls Trip	HD	MA	$0.75
God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness	HD	MA	$1
Godfather Part 2, The	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Godfather Part 3 Coda, The	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Godfather, The	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Gods of Egypt	HD	iTunes	$1
Good Dinosaur	HD	MA	$4
Good Dinosaur	4K	MA	$5
Good Dinosaur	HD	GP	$3
Grease	4K	iTunes or Vudu	$5
Green Mile, The	4K	MA	$6
Guardians of the Galaxy	4K	iTunes	$5
Guardians of the Galaxy	HD	GP	$3
Guardians of the Galaxy v2	4K	iTunes	$5
Guardians of the Galaxy v2	HD	GP	$3
Guilt Trap	HD	Vudu	$2
Hacksaw Ridge	HD	Vudu or iTunes	$2
Hacksaw Ridge	4K	Vudu	$4
Hammer of the Gods	HD	Vudu	$1
Haunting in Connecticut	SD	iTunes	$1.50
Heat	4K	MA	$5
Heavy Metal	4K	MA	$5.50
Heavy Metal 2000	HD	MA	$6.50
Hell or High Water	HD	Vudu	$5
Hercules	HD	Vudu	$6.50
Hercules	HD	GP	$5.50
Here Comes The Boom	SD	MA	$1
Highlander	4K	Vudu	$5.50
Hitchcock	HD	Vudu	$2
Hitchcock	HD	iTunes	$2
Hocus Pocus	HD	MA	$3
Hocus Pocus	HD	GP	$2
Honey 3: Dare to Dance	HD	iTunes	$1
Hotel Transylvania 2	SD	MA	$1
House with a Clock in its Walls (2018)	HD	MA	$4
How to Train Your Dragon 2	HD	MA	$3
Hugo	SD	Vudu	$0.75
Hugo	HD	Vudu	$2
Hugo	SD	iTunes	$0.75
Hugo	HD	iTunes	$2
Hunger Games	SD	Vudu	$0.50
Hunger Games	SD	iTunes	$0.50
Hunger Games: Catching Fire	SD	Vudu, iTunes or GP	$0.50
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1	SD	iTunes	$0.50
Hunt for Red October, The	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5.50
In the Line of Fire	4K	MA	$5.50
Incredibles 2	HD	MA	$3
Incredibles 2	HD	GP	$2
Independence Day: Resurgence	HD	MA	$2
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Inside Out	4K	iTunes	$4
Into the Woods	HD	GP	$2
Iron Man 3	4K	iTunes	$4
Iron Man 3	HD	GP	$2
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back	HD	Vudu	$2
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back	HD	iTunes
Jarhead 3: The Siege	HD	MA	$2
Jason Bourne	HD	iTunes	$2
Jaws	4K	MA	$5
Jigsaw	HD	Vudu	$3
Jungle Book (Live Action) (2016)	4K	iTunes	$4.50
Jungle Book (Live Action) (2016)	HD	GP	$3
Jungle Cruise	HD	MA	$3
Jungle Cruise	HD	GP	$2
Juno	SD	iTunes	$1.50
Jurassic Park	4K	MA	$5
Jurassic World	HD	Vudu	$3
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom	4K	MA	$5
Justin Bieber Never Say Never	SD	iTunes	$1.50
King of Staten Island, The	HD	MA	$4
King's Man, The	4K	MA	$7
Kingsman: Golden Circle	HD	MA	$2
Kingsman: The Golden Circle	HD	MA	$2
Kronk's New Groove	HD	MA	$6.75
Kronk's New Groove	HD	GP	$6.50
La La Land	HD	Vudu	$2
Lady and the Tramp (Signature Collection)	HD	MA	$5
Lady and the Tramp (Signature Collection)	HD	GP	$4
Last Night in Soho	4K	MA	$5.75
Let's Be Cops	HD	MA	$1
Lightyear	HD	Vudu	$3.50
Lilo & Stitch	HD	MA	$4
Lilo & Stitch	HD	GP	$3.50
Lilo & Stitch 2 - Stitch Has a Glitch	HD	MA	$4
Lilo & Stitch 2 - Stitch Has a Glitch	HD	MA	$3.50
Lion King (Animated)	HD	MA	$4.50
Lion King (Animated)	HD	GP	$4.50
Lion King Live Action	4K	MA	$4
Lion King Live Action	HD	GP	$2
Little House on the Prairie Season 4	SD	Vudu	$3
Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea	HD	MA	$7
Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea	HD	GP	$6.75
Little Mermaid, The	HD	MA	$4.50
Little Mermaid, The	HD	GP	$3.50
Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning	HD	MA	$7
Lone Ranger	HD	Vudu	$4
Lone Ranger	HD	GP	$2
Luca	HD	MA	$3
Luca	HD	GP	$2
Maleficent	HD	MA	$3
Maleficent	HD	GP	$2
Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil	HD	GP	$3
Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil	4K	MA	$5
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh	HD	MA	$4
Many Saints of Newark	4K	MA	$5.50
Mary Poppins	HD	MA	$3
Mary Poppins	HD	GP	$2.50
Mary Poppins Returns	HD	MA	$4
Mary Poppins Returns	HD	GP	$2.50
Matrix; Resurrections, The	4K	MA	$6
Miss Bala	SD	MA	$3
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children	HD	Vudu	$2
Mission Impossible Fallout	HD	iTunes	$2
Moana	4K	MA	$5.50
Moana	HD	GP	$2
Monster High - Electrified	HD	MA	$0.50
Monster High - Electrified	HD	iTunes	$0.50
Monsters University	HD	GP	$4.25
Mulan (Live Action)	HD	GP	$2
Mulan II	HD	MA	$5
Mulan II	HD	GP	$4
Mulan Live Action	4K	MA	$4
Mummy Tomb of the Dragon	HD	MA	$3
Neighbors	HD	iTunes	$2
Nightmare Before Christmas	HD	GP	$3.50
Norm of the North	HD	Vudu	$2
Northman, The	4K	MA	$6
Now You See Me	HD	Vudu	$2
Nurse Jackie Season 7	HD	Vudu	$3.50
Onward	HD	MA	$3
Onward	HD	GP	$2
Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre	4K	Vudu	$8
Oz the Great and Powerful	HD	MA	$3
Oz the Great and Powerful	HD	GP	$2
Perks of Being a Wallflower	SD	Vudu	$0.50
Perks of Being a Wallflower	HD	Vudu	$1
Perks of Being a Wallflower	SD	iTunes	$0.50
Perks of Being a Wallflower	HD	iTunes	$1
Peter Pan	HD	MA	$5
Peter Pan	HD	GP	$4
Pinocchio	HD	GP	$4
Pirate Fairy, The	HD	MA	$3
Pirate Fairy, The	HD	GP	$2
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	HD	MA	$3
Pitch Perfect	HD	MA	$1
Pitch Perfect	HD	iTunes	$1
Plane	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$7
Planes	HD	MA	$4
Planes	HD	GP	$2
Planes: Fire & Rescue	HD	MA	$4
Planes: Fire & Rescue	HD	GP	$2
Pocahontas	HD	MA	$5
Pocahontas	HD	GP	$4
Pocahontas 2	HD	MA	$5
Pocahontas 2	HD	GP	$4
Poltergeist	4K	MA	$5.50
Power Rangers	HD	Vudu	$2
Power Rangers	HD	iTunes	$2
Pride & Prejudice (2005)	HD	iTunes	$2
Pulp Fiction	4K	iTunes or Vudu	$5
Raiders of the Lost Ark	4K	Vudu or iTunes	$5
Ralph Breaks the Internet	HD	Vudu	$3
Ralph Breaks the Internet	4K	MA	$5
Ralph Breaks the Internet	HD	GP	$2
Raya and the Last Dragon	HD	MA	$4
Raya and the Last Dragon	HD	GP	$3
Red	4K	Vudu	$4.50
Red 2	4K	Vudu	$4.50
Redemption	HD	Vudu	$1
Rescuers	HD	Vudu	$6
Rescuers	HD	GP	$4
Rescuers Down Under	HD	Vudu	$6
Reservoir Dogs	4K	iTunes or Vudu	$6
Resident Evil: Retribution	HD	MA	$5.50
Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City	4K	MA	$6.50
Robin Hood	HD	MA	$5
Robin Hood	HD	GP	$3
Rocky	4K	Vudu	$5
Rogue	HD	Vudu	$2
Rogue One	HD	Vudu	$3
Rogue Wars: Star Wars Story	HD	MA	$3
Rogue Wars: Star Wars Story	HD	GP	$2
Ron's Gone Wrong	HD	MA	$3.00
Safe	SD	iTunes	$0.50
Santa Clause 2, The	HD	MA	$4.50
Santa Clause 2, The	HD	GP	$3
Santa Clause 3, The Escape Clause	HD	MA	$4.50
Santa Clause 3, The Escape Clause	HD	GP	$3
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Have you ever locked eyes with someone..maybe at the coffee shop or store..maybe you're wearing your ring or maybe you see theirs, but you cant shake the spark..that guy is absolutely making eyes with you. Don't you wish you could just go ahead and start that conversation you both know you really want?
This sort of thing is something I spend too much time thinking about. Maybe you do too..or, you know exactly what I mean and share the sentiment.Tired of staring and need one to call my own..well, sorta..you know what I mean
Would really love to connect with someone. I miss having someone to think about during the day..looking forward to hugging, stealing my hoodies, kissing..ect. Fill those voids for each other. Mentally, physically, whatever else-ally. Chatting throughout the day, coffee dates..Love all of it
Bit about me - attached, white, mid 30s, allegedly look younger but who knows, 6'4, brown hair, hazel/green eyes, handsome according to those old ladies who may have been being nice about the age thing, fit, a few tattoos but not full hipster, no drugs/disease & vaccinated. Big into cycling (spandex dork) cars, sports, music, sci-fi and horror movies, coffee, animals..plenty more but you're probably bored already
Looking for someone late 20s and up..I'm generally more attracted to Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and Latin women..but open in general. Chemistry and connection take precedent over 'type' shape or size, so really just more looking for the right attitude and fit.
Sound like you?? or close enough?? First impressions matter..so tell me what about this caught your eye or resonated with you..and 3 things you'd do if you won the lottery
Hope you find what you're looking for one way or another

So I have a very strange situation. My ex and I live across the street from one another. We have for the last 6 years, for the most part it goes well. A couple years ago I wanted to get a dog really bad, he wanted me to have one too so he even built a really nice fence in the back yard at my house. When it came time to pick out a dog, I ended up with two. I couldn't choose so they both came home with me. One my 16yr old picked out Loki and I just loved both, so they came home with me. When we got home my ex was insistant that the dogs stay together, I was hoping Loki would live with my daughter and Charlie could live with me. It didn't go that way so I just sucked it up and did what he wanted. It was my choice to bring home 2. He works from home 4 days, in the office one day so he watches them when he's home. These are not outdoor all day kind of dog, stuck in a kennel or on a chain they are family dogs. They gave poodle in them. I spoil them they are like our kids. Unfortunately my daughter tried to connect with Loki but she see's how Loki has dreamy eyes when she looks at me, and she felt jealous. .. (yeah they are both girls with boy names. LoL.) So she never gave it a ton of effort to connect with Loki it was off and on.
About a year and a half later my dogs are trained, they never chewed on shoes or did anything to terrible because we always bought them bully sticks, toys or whatever. . They have had bad dog days but nothing terrible.. anyways one night there was this sound in the middle of the night when I stayed over there, it woke me up it was Christmas time so it was cold as hell outside. When I finally figured out what it was it was the cutest little husky shepard mix had crawled under his porch trying to find warmth about 7 weeks old. My ex decided to bring him in, put him in the garage and keep him warm. We didn't know if he had anything so we kept him seperate from my dogs until we got him checked out. I put signs up. My daughter in-law came over and instantly tried to give him away before we had a fair chance to even try to find the rightful owner. We found a dog before and found the owner this way. I posted on Fb and neighborhood app. My daughter would go out to the garage and spend hours with him and begging to keep him as her own.. I can't afford to take on another dog.
I didn't want another dog so I told her if she was able to talk her Dad into keeping him there is no way shape or form I could be financially responsible for this dog. My ex makes 5x what I do. He took him to the vet, got him all ready to go, then bam he got ring worm but that went away pretty quickly. He spend tons of money on him again and he still has to get him fixed. My daughter recently got a job, she's rarely home and when she is home she doesn't spend a whole ton of time with him. Her room is always a mess. The dogs usually stay at his house whenever we go somewhere. When it's her weekend to be at her Dad's he keeps her dog over there, when its my weekend I keep him with me. Every time he leaves his house the dog chews on the furniture, the vertical blinds get eaten up so on, once he came home to his throw pillows all over the house torn apart. And this pisses him off ROYALLY to the point I am scared for the dog. I told him he needs to kennel him but for some reason he won't do it. He thinks its cruel but apparently copral punishment isn't.
When I have them here, at night I kennel Loki with Sammy because they get along well then Charlie sleeps in my room. I don't give him leeway to chew on anything when I'm not in the room. My family thinks I am a monster for seperating them but they don't complain, whine or anything they dont seem to care.
Idk what to do. I was out today and it happened again, he let them all stay the night at his house last night because Sammy was there, he took her to work, when he got home his blinds were chewed up again, he had just replaced 3 yesterday. He likes Sammy when Sammy is being watched but doesn't like him on the couch ir bed because he sheds everywhere and my daughter isn't responsible enough to brush him daily nor is she home that much. She has him at the end of his rope with animals since she also has a cat, she has had a snake and a hampster the snake died the hamster got murdered by Jay kitty and so on, he is fed up.
I feel guilty because now she's saying she wants to go in the Army after graduation, she's in JORTC. She can't leave that dog with him. He may kill him. I wished he would just kennel him in the house, they have one I bought for the girls, they don't need it they are pretty trustworthy if the house is picked up as it always is in the main area. My ex is a clean freak but not my daughter.
I feel so bad because I stuck up for her but he has turned into a nightmare over there. Some days she even ignores him because of his behavior, she says he ejaculated on her bed ? Idk what's that all about, didnt ask questions. My girls don't shed tiny hairs everywhere like he does, my ex loves my two but I cant say he hates him but he hates him when hes bad.
She begged for a service dog but is nowhere near being able to train him for that. He is only maybe 6 or 7 months old. Cute as a button but noone wants to touch him because you get covered in hair. We do love on him though. I call him my grand puppy and give him loves, he thinks he's more important to me then my girls, lol. I try to give him love too. He is a wrecking ball in the bathtub and my ex demands baths once a week or every two weeks. This dog always stinks. She hates giving him baths because hes to hard to contain.
On top of it all, I feed my dog premium dog food. Now that Sammy eats more then half of what my two medium size dogs eat, I ask him for half, 35.00 when I but that 37 lb bag that used to last a month and a half, now last 3 weeks. I told her to buy him a slow feeder. He is trying to talk me into going to the cheapest food there is, I can't do that for my dogs because I want them healthy for the long haul. I pay for insurance in Charlie, he pays for Loki this started when they were babies and Sammy doesn't have insurance, noone wants to pay for it. Well I can't thats why he paid for Loki.
Suggestions anyone? We do love Sammy but I feel like I messed up for sticking up for her. We dont believe in taking in a dog then giving him away but right now my ex is wishing he would get run over.
She has a job, she doesn't want to pay for anything related to him except the fun stuff. We buy treats, bully sticks are EXPENSIVE, beef cheek rolls and so on for them to chew on. She doesn't want to help out for the 20.00 bottle of shampoo I bought that's perfect for her dog but not mine, it will whiten them. He is white already. I'm not going to favor my dogs over Sammy because I love Sammy too but honestly I think giving him away would be best. Am I am monster? Also, my 23 yr old son lives with my ex, he works nights so he watches the dogs when my ex has to go into the office. Less crap gets torn up. He is moving out Thursday and my ex is on a project where he has to go out of town several days this month. It not an option to have them in my house. We don't want them roaming around the yard all day in the heat when everyone is gone, they dig craters in the yards and I won't have that. I feel like getting a huge outdoor kennel like at Costco is just aweful. We have hot summers and cold winters. Idk what to do. We did t have any problems before Sammy came along. I feel like a shit mother. I'm not even sure if it would break her heart to find the right home for Sammy at this point. How can I convince him to kennel the dog when he's not home? Maybe I will just set it up in the kitchen when we start to go somewhere. Idk. I know it sounds like he hates Sammy, he really doesn't but something has to change. We love our daughter and want her to have the things she wants but I messed up on this one.

In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks and crude jokes. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to catch his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!

It had to be there somewhere. I refused to be believe that the authors of this damned thing hadn't included any cypher, master code, or cryptogram of any kind. It still didn't make any sort of sense at all; why go to all the trouble to write the cursed thing and not bury the solution to unlocking its secrets somewhere in its pages?
Shoving my glasses to my forehead and pinching the bridge of my nose in equal measures of exhaustion and resignation, I rocked back in my chair, away from the pile of scanned pages before me. I knew the ceiling wouldn't hold the answers I sought, but I searched for them there anyway. Dr. Van Gennep would drop me for sure if I didn't come up with something soon; funding my project and research had already cost him and the department a small fortune over the last four years. Granted, the fact that I'd actually found the thing right where I said it would be had bought me considerable favor among the assorted faculty of the school's Archeology department, but that was almost two years ago now, and I'd produced a whopping fuck-all since then. The way I saw it, I had another 6 months, tops, to make good on my proposals before the "We're sorry to inform you" emails started filling my inbox.
As the more discerning among you might have surmised, I was a graduate student late in my funded research terms at that time. The tagalong son of a pair of prolific treasure hunters and grave robbers, I'd spent my youth being packed up and dragged along on my parents' oft misbegotten adventures. Turkey, Tunisia, Madagascar, Thailand; there wasn't an inch of sacred earth those two wouldn't plunder if given half a chance. I missed them tremendously. It was all I could do for their memories to dedicate my life's work to something they'd be proud of.
Of course, any success I'd enjoy to that point had been entirely thanks to them. If not for all our 'special vacations', I'd never have made it half as far as I had. Hell, the only reason I was here now was because the 'Cambodian temple of the dead' that I'd recovered this profane tome from in the first place was actually a dusty shelf in the basement of our old house. Dr. Van Gennup didn't need to know that though. Nor did the faculty. As far as they were concerned, I was a first rate researcher who had enjoyed a highly productive field excursion, on the university's dime, and made the find of a lifetime. In reality, I'd spent a semester's funding stipend earning a penicillin-resistant strain of chlamydia on a beach you've never heard of.
It didn't rightly have a name, so to speak, but my parents always just called it "The Book". Heavy, several hundred years old, and bound in a repulsive brown material of dubious origins, my parent's had bought the thing for a handful of pennies from a street peddler in Marrakesh the year before I was born. Having failed to fence the thing to their usual customers repeatedly, eventually they just stuffed the thing on a shelf and forgot about it entirely. Valuable or not, Pa always insisted it's worth was beyond measure to the right person. The right person ended up being his own orphaned son, and 'beyond measure' turned out to be a whopping 5 years of doctoral funding to Yale's Archaeology department.
I was done for the day. I'd looked at the scans for hours, again, tonight. The actual volume sat in the rare items collection of the faculty library, just up the street; as the dubiously rightful owner of the volume, I was welcome to access it whenever I wanted, but it was kept in better conditions than I could manage there. Besides, this thing smelled horrendous, and I didn't want it around.
I stripped down and hopped in the shower, failing to make good on my intention to stop thinking about the scrambled scrawling of the mad author who'd frustrated me for months. As the faculty's resident occultist, Van Gennep had helped nudge me along with the translation of anything I hadn't managed myself, but his aid continually failed to reveal anything of substance on the velum pages. That it was an allegorical text was obvious; the tale of a timeless consciousness doomed to visit depraved predations on the souls of those who eagerly embraced their own intentional destructions, written as an account from the being's point of view. The missing piece of the puzzle was, irritatingly, evidence of what drew the ire of the entity in question. The origin of The Book, some 800 years old, was impossible to determine; if I could just figure out what cardinal sin the thing was drawn to, then I might be able to confidently trace it's origins or identify its author; if it went for gluttons, I'd look at places wracked by famine in that period. If it went for blasphemy, then areas with documented religious turmoil would be candidates. Still, nothing sprung from the pages.
Exasperated, dejected, and worn out entirely, I trotted off to bed after lazily toweling off. I knew sleep would elude me entirely unless I redirected my frustrations toward something irrefutably more interesting which, as you'd be correct in guessing, meant a date with the tissues and baby oil on my nightstand. Pornhub never left much to the imagination, or forced me to decode impossible puzzles to give me what I wanted. Unlike a certain centuries-old exercise in frugality, the ol' Hub always bared its secrets to me. Tonight's prize was "Blonde Cutie Cums in the Library". A favorite of mine, both the video and the girl never failed to disappoint. 4 minutes of heavenly stroking later while the busty coed rubbed herself into oblivion, I began to urgently reach for the tissues on my nightstand. I slapped around desperately with the hand not flagellating my abused cock while the certainty that I wasn't going to find them in time built; this would have to be a free range eruption. Eyes screwed tightly shut while the wet ministrations and stifled moans continued to play from my laptop beside me, I covered myself from navel to chest in the hot mess I'd produced. My hand dropped limply to my side as my dick did the same back between my legs. I slammed the spacebar to pause the video, suddenly revolted at the idea of busting a nut in the library.
Laying for long, quiet minutes like that, I was entirely at ease and blessedly relaxed for a change. Fearing I'd fall asleep with my own cum all over me, I grabbed the shirt occupying the other side of the bed and lazily scrubbed it off my tummy and out of my chest hair. I flung the thing into the corner of the room, flicked the light off, closed the lid of the laptop, and let myself drift off into the sweet nothingness of my slumber.
"Oh god yes".
My eyes flew open and my heart skipped a beat as my body jerked itself awake in terror.
"Fuck, that's so good" the voice said again, breathy and quiet. The fans of my laptop hummed next to me. "I'm gonna cum soon".
Relieved to find that my sleep's interruption came at the hands of my outdated and unreliable laptop instead of a home invader, I spied the time on my alarm clock with less enthusiasm; 6:20am. It ought to be illegal to wake up this early.
"Fuck, I have to be quiet" said the voice from the inexplicably resumed video.
"I don't want to get caught" I said in unison with Jennica St. Claire, opening the lid of the computer and keying in my password to close the tab and cease her unwanted murmurs. I might have watched this one a few too many times.
The login screen faded and the video resolved itself, right where I had left off last night. I paused in the act of pushing the cursor to the top right of the screen, spotting something I hadn't before; joke at my expense if you want, but the green walls in the background were an unmistakable shade of vomitus green that I'd know anywhere. Yes, there over the shoulder of the woman I'd donated a hundred loads to in the last 6 months alone, was the unmistakably tacky pastel green of the Yale Archeology department's special collections library. There was no way in hell. It just wasn't possible; the coincidence was too great. I searched around the frame for more clues, wishing for the first time ever that Jennica's tits would get out of the shot so I could confirm my suspicions. I scanned through the video like a man possessed, but couldn't spot anything more useful than what was surely the corner of the shelf dedicated to Mesoamerican reference materials. I had to confirm this for myself. I had to know.
The card scanner flashed green as the happy beep admitted me to the building; locked on weekends, I was permitted access by dint of my status as a grad student. Steaming coffee in hand and nearly empty messenger bag slung over my should more out of habit than necessity, I beat a hasty path to the basement stair case and thundered down.
The familiar smell of old books and slightly rotted carpet filled my nose. This place was more a home to me than any I'd known. Call me a fraud if you want for the deception of how I came to possess The Book, I was nonetheless a decent academic. I'd have ended up here on my own, without the book, if I'd had to. I just hadn't needed to.
Another swipe of my keycard and I pushed into the special collections room, seeing it as if for the first time again. This had to be it, the room from the video. I looked around furtively to try to find the exact desk she'd sat at. It had to be in the back somewhere if she'd wanted to avoid detection. I hurried on through the stacks, delightedly matching the color of the walls to the video. My heart beat unreasonably fast as I neared the corner I suspected to be the one she'd used, unwilling to admit that confirmation wouldn't actually mean all that much; it's not like she'd be sitting there.
I rounded the corner of the last shelf, and there it was. The desk. The very one. And the chair, too. I refused to acknowledge my fading enthusiasm, going through the motions of placing a reverent hand back of the chair and imagining that this discovery meant literally anything at all. I looked back, away from the desk, lining the background elements up with what I remembered from the video. This was definitely it. Yup.
Yup.
I don't know what I thought I'd get out of this. It had seemed so important half an hour ago as I was pulling on anything at hand and rushing out the door. I must have oozed crackhead energy at the coffee place, impatiently standing there checking my watch every thirty seconds while the girl poured my flat white at a half past the ass crack of dawn. Now just felt dumb; I'd skipped brushing my teeth to be at a library at like 7:00 in the morning just to look at a chair that someone had masturbated in at some point in the past. Woo hoo.
Entirely underwhelmed, I figured I'd make the most of the trip. There was no harm in pulling the stupid thing out and flipping through it for the million and seventieth time.
I fumbled the keys into the locked cabinet that The Book slumbered in, scribbling my name on the access record card that bore only my own autograph in the last dozen lines, and hefted the weighty tome out with carefully practiced caution.
"Come on you stupid bastard" I muttered as I knocked the drawer back shut with a hip.
"Oh god yes."
My eyes widened in horror as I realized what must be happening. Piece of shit thing. I should have left it at home.
"Fuck, that's so good" she said again from my bag, muffled only slightly. I worked to calm down by assuring myself that there was nobody else there to hear. I still didn't waste any time getting back over to the desk, only slightly amused at the irony of having left my stuff at 'her' desk while her digital memory did its naughty work there again.
"I'm gonna cum soon" she insisted predictably.
"Yeah yeah," I replied sarcastically, "but what if someone hears you, huh?". I set The Book down carefully and reached for the bag.
"Fuck, I have to be quiet" she replied. I chuckled to myself as I undid the clasps and flopped the bag open.
I froze.
I had left it at home. I hadn't brought it at all. My laptop was still sitting on my bed, where I'd left it. There wasn't anything in my bag except a notebook, a stack of papers I needed to grade, and a few pens. There was nothing that could have produced the audio at all.
The Book sat there, immobile and unremarkable, as it always did, daring me to look upon it. I don't mind admitting to having let my imagination get the best of me in the moment; it was what it was, and the things it portrayed were hardly the stuff of children's bedtime stories. Telling myself that I knew better did absolutely nothing to steel my nerves. A fat pearl of beading sweat ran from my brow; it was late in the fall and cooling quickly outside, but I felt as though I'd burst to flame as I stared down at that damned book. I absentmindedly unzipped my hoodie and tore it off, dropping it to the floor and raising my hands to put them between me and the leather-bound volume, as if I'd fight it if need arose.
"I DON'T WANT TO GET CAUGHT"
I did scream then, and jumped half out of my skin. It's a wonder I didn't shit myself.
I realized almost immediately, before I'd even finished my terrified yelp, that the voice had come from my phone; in my earlier uncaring haste, I'd dumped it along with the rest of my pockets' contents onto the table, and thrown my bag down atop it. Recalling that I'd opened the video before leaving the house to compare details of the room, if needed, I laughed at my own nervousness. It wasn't even a little laugh either; relief at not being haunted by an ethereal pornstar washed over me in waves that produced a deep belly laugh in me. Clutching my chest with the effort to catch my breath, I patted The Book's cover in earnest appreciation for it's part in the now-hilarious deception. Her dialogue had sounded so loud a moment ago, but my nerves had undoubtedly amplified the effect; the rest of the video's audio continued on reasonably from my otherwise dormant phone on the desk. I must have hit play from the home screen preview when I took it out of my pocket.
Relieved laughter subsiding, I flicked the phone's lock slider to the left and closed the web browser, taking care to be absolutely sure that I'd done so, and committing the act to memory. It was only then that I afforded myself the clarity of mind to realize what I'd done; in a rush to get here, and not exhibiting an ounce of adult patience, I'd pulled on whatever was lying around before I left the house. Yes, dear reader. I had put on my cum shirt.
Horror of a different flavor bloomed within me as I let myself lift my hand from the cover of The Book; the same hand that I'd clutched my wheezing chest with moments ago, and the same one I'd wiped up my cum with only a few hours earlier in the privacy of my own home. Examining my sticky digits in disgust, I could only thank my lucky stars that I'd pulled a sweater overtop; I'm pretty sure the barista's would have called the cops if I'd walked in proudly wearing a load of cum all over myself.
Worse was the realization that I'd gotten it on the front of The Book. Mine by right of inheritance or not, the thing was likely to end up in a museum at some point during it's life, and I was loathe to consider some graduate student 50 years in the future getting writing their capstone project on The Jizzy Handprint Grimoire's dubious provenance.
Cursing myself for a fucking fool, I scrubbed the drying mark off the cover, praising myself for the fine work that I was able to do in removing any trace of my unholy offence. Deciding that the day was entirely too fucked already to consider getting any work done, I put it back in it's drawer, muttered an apology to it, and left the building as swiftly as I could. There were other libraries, and I could always mark some papers or something.

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.

I decided that every day I am going to post about a case, ranking them from least favorite to favorite and giving my on the fly reasons so I probably will miss and forget things but thought it would be a fun idea. Also please remember this is just my opinion and I know we all have differing opinions but this is my opinion.
3-5 spoilers in this post
37. Recipe For Turnabout
Overview: Recipe For Turnabout is the third case of Trials and Tribulations. The case takes place at Tres Bien a French restaurant. This case has a colorful cast of characters and is our second battle against the mysterious prosecutor Godot. The case features the daughter of a mob boss, a man who thinks he's Phoenix Wright, and many other strange but unique characters.
Mystery: The case begins with Winston Payne supposedly defeating Phoenix Wright in court. However Wright never partook in this trial and asks for a re trial for the defendant Maggey Byrde who is accused of killing Glen Elg a programmer. The crime was seen by an old man named Victor Kudo who says he saw Byrde put poison in Elg's coffee cup. However it turns out that the crime occurred not once but twice. The real culprit Furio Tigre posed as Elg and the mob boss's daughter Viola posed as the waitress Maggey Byrde leading Kudo to believe Byrde killed Elg. Then Tigre poses as Wright to lose the trial so he can get away with the crime. Tigre had another accomplice the chef Jean Armstrong who was in debt to Tigre and had to do whatever he said. Armstrong helped dispose of the body of Maggey Byrde so the reenactment could occur. Tigre had injured Viola in an accident and needed money to pay for the surgery. He called Elg for help and Elg was going to pay him with the computer virus MC Bomber except Elg won the lottery with enough to pay off his debt but not Tigre's so he desperately poisoned Elg's coffee to get the virus to pay the amount he needed.
Characters:
Phoenix Wright: Wright is good in this episode. He and Maya have fun banter and he has very funny interactions with Tigre. Wright tricking Tigre with the bottle is one of the most clever things Wright had done in a courtroom and shows how smart and tricky he can be.
Maya Fey: Maya is just as amazing as always in this episode. Her and Phoenix have fun banter and her hiding from Tigre whenever he got angry was funny.
Maggey Byrde: I really don't like her in this episode. Her treatment of Gumshoe in this episode makes me very upset. I understand your mad at him but he doesn't have a choice. Again I get why she's mad but I feel like she was a total jerk to him the whole episode.
Godot: I love how cryptic Godot is. I love how he speaks in riddles and trying to decipher what he means is fun. We learn a bit more about him through subtle foreshadowing for the future cases.
Victor Kudo & Jean Armstrong: I'm lumping them together because they are two of the big problems with this case. They both made me very uncomfortable while trying to enjoy the case. They both are very badly written and really drag this case down.
Viola Cadaverini: She is creepy but I don't mind her too much. Not much to say about her.
Furio Tigre: The star of this case is the culprit Furio Tigre. I am upset they wasted such an amazing character on this awful case. His sprites are amazing and his screams make him very intimidating. Also I love the way he talks and how angry he gets over pointless things. Him threating you because a pigeon pooped on his bike is one of the funniest moments of the case. He is so intimidating that they bring the pressing penalty system back which is way better and makes more sense then Big Top. He carries this terrible case on this back and is one of my favorite culprits in the whole series.
Problems: The problem is similar to GAA-1 it drags. Victor Kudo's testimony feels so long and while we get some useful info out of it, its a complete slog to get through his testimony. Also the fact he's annoying doesn't make it feel any faster. This case has two of the worst written characters in the whole series. I get her daughter is a mob boss but I don't understand why Viola just gets off scot free. She doesn't even testify about anything. Maggey is in my opinion at her worst here. Calling in Mia to dress up as a waitress just to get Kudo to talk is really uncomforting as is his whole waitress "fetish". Also as funny and wacky as it is the fact that no one could tell Tigre and Wright apart is pretty dumb. While I think it's really funny it does need to be a problem that the judge or even Wright's own client couldn't tell the difference between the two. Also the fact that it takes Wright a month to find out about the trial seems very strange. No one came and told him he lost to Winston Payne it wasn't in the papers or anything for a whole month.
Positives: Furio Tigre is one of the best culprits in the whole series. The trick to get him to admit the bottle is clever. I like how much personality and character they gave the victim. Like his gambling addiction, his ear infection, and more about him. He has much more character then most victims in the series. Tigre has an interesting motive and the virus is also very interesting. Also I forgot about her but I like Lisa Basil just kinda being there. I love the Godot foreshadowing with the lights turning off in the courtroom and we see Godot’s mask light up and also him saying there’s not ketchup or whatever it was on the white apron showing he can’t see red on a white background is amazing foreshadowing for the rest of the game.
Final Thoughts: The case has an amazing culprit brought down by pretty much all the other new characters in this case being terrible and the writing of certain characters being really bad. I will forever be mad they wasted Furio Tigre on such an awful case. Any opinions, thoughts, or questions about Recipe For Turnabout would be greatly appreciated.

I collected all of the recipes that my kids liked over the years, recipes of my mother's, plus any pictures I had taken of the kids cooking when they were little, pictures of as many of the final products that I had taken, plus some family pictures of us over the years and uploaded them to a place where you can make your own hard cover book. I wrote out the recipes and any notes I'd acquired over the years and organized them and the photos by Mains, Baking, Christmas and Oma's Recipes. Then I had the result printed off and I gave one to each of the kids for Christmas. It took about a year to pull it all together. The website I used has 50% off promotions a couple of times a year so that helped massively with the cost. I think the Recipe Book is brilliant, if I do say so myself!
One of my favourite recipes in the book (because lemon is one of my favouritist things) is Ann Landers' Best Lemon Meringue Pie recipe. In 1998 Ann Landers wrote, "I got it from a taxi driver in New York at least 20 years ago" so this recipe is from the 70s at least.
Best-Ever Lemon Pie 1 baked 9-inch pie shell 1 1/4 cups sugar 6 tablespoons cornstarch 2 cups water 1/3 cup lemon juice 3 egg yolks 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon extract 2 teaspoons vinegar 3 tablespoons butter Mix sugar and cornstarch together in the top of a double boiler. Add the two cups of water. Combine egg yolks with lemon juice and beat until well mixed. Add to the rest of the sugar mixture. Cook over boiling water until thick -- about 25 minutes. This does away with the starchy taste. Now add the lemon extract, butter and vinegar, and stir thoroughly. Pour mixture into deep 9-inch pie shell, and let cool. Cover with meringue, and brown in oven.
Never-Fail Meringue 1 tablespoon cornstarch 2 tablespoons cold water 1/2 cup boiling water 3 egg whites 6 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla Pinch of salt Blend cornstarch and cold water in a saucepan. Add boiling water, and cook, stirring until clear and thickened. Let stand until completely cold. With electric beater at high speed, beat egg whites until foamy. Gradually add sugar, and beat until stiff but not dry. Turn mixer to low speed; add salt and vanilla. Gradually beat in cold cornstarch mixture. Turn mixer again to high, and beat well. Spread meringue over cooled pie filling. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until top is lightly browned.

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

When I was a kid, the sidewalks that ran along the streets contained lost treasure, were the ramps for our bikes, and wound a long path to friends’ houses. I hadn’t seen these sidewalks in nearly 30 years, and when I peeked inside the old house with green shutters, the cabinets still were a shade too dark of brown and the yellow and brown countertops still contained the burn marks of a science experiment gone wrong.
This is where we held “coffee can court,” as we called it. Everyone would put two dollars into a coffee can and we’d air our dirty laundry. It was like playing baseball shorthanded, though, where you’d throw the ball up in the air and play both the pitcher and hitter at once because there were never enough players for a full game.
Judge, jury and executioner sat in the same seat. The bailiff and the plaintiff were the same. The crying mother who couldn’t figure out what she had done wrong for her son to end up here, and the court clerk whose face only communicates boredom no matter how much the mother wails, both represented by the stoic face of an 8 year old brother.
The rules were simple: 6 dollars to be divided up among the kids to correct the wrongs of the previous week. We rotated through each week, and if you were the judge last week, perhaps your generosity or revenge would be remembered this week.
He wore a suit that he bought out of the back of an 18 wheeler sale that traveled through town. The type where they unload everything and set it up on tables that contain foreign made table saws, pellet guns, and suits made in countries he’d oftentimes get confused. When I was a kid, I watched him walk out the back door with a beer can whose color changed based on what was on sale. He’d take a couple drinks and then pour the rest out.
The liquid would coat the green of the shrubs and the orange and pink flowers that lined his deck. It’d sparkle when the setting sun hit it just right. I’m ashamed that I didn’t judge that man more. How wasteful to pour it out, only to see it glimmer in the sunlight. That was 20 years ago, I suppose, and in 20 more years, I suspect I’ll be ashamed for wishing I had judged him more. That man knew what enough was. Something I’m not sure I’ll ever learn.
Twenty years of memories never counted for much, at least in a place like that. Two roads that run on forever and there’s no reason to turn around and go back. You either stayed or you left. There’s no in between. That’s the hell of it, really; there’s no in between.
Four hours after leaving that town, I found the in between. In between there and home, it seemed. She had quiet eyes that spoke too softly when she wanted to scream. That’s the type of woman you find in the in between. The last restaurant I had seen was over an hour ago, so I guess that explains the mix of egg rolls, tacos, and apple pie on the menu.
Her blue and white apron looked as generic as the parking lot, but I suspect she made it herself. The seams were double stitched with two neat rows of stitches around the edges. It’s uncommon to see that type of pride anywhere, but here it felt like it fit right in.
When she spoke, her voice sounded like it was carrying her dreams off to another place. Maybe she’d make a run to the northeast and eat fresh crab. They serve it here, but she’s sure it tastes better there. If for no other reason than you can watch the fisherman bring it in.
“You gonna give me one lil’ egg roll?” I inquired. Not sure of what the standard process was.
“I gave you two,” she replied. Not sure if she meant two egg rolls or two secrets whispered in low tones about how she’d get out of here if she could.
“Oh.”

Have you ever locked eyes with someone..maybe at the coffee shop or store..maybe you're wearing your ring or maybe you see theirs, but you cant shake the spark..that guy is absolutely making eyes with you. Don't you wish you could just go ahead and start that conversation you both know you really want?
This sort of thing is something I spend too much time thinking about. Maybe you do too..or, you know exactly what I mean and share the sentiment.
Tired of staring and need one to call my own..well, sorta..you know what I meanWould really love to connect with someone. I miss having someone to think about during the day..looking forward to hugging, stealing my hoodies, kissing..ect. Fill those voids for each other. Mentally, physically, whatever else-ally. Chatting throughout the day, coffee dates..Love all of it
Bit about me - attached, white, mid 30s, allegedly look younger but who knows, 6'4, brown hair, hazel/green eyes, handsome according to those old ladies who may have been being nice about the age thing, fit, a few tattoos but not full hipster, no drugs/disease & vaccinated. Big into cycling (spandex dork) cars, sports, music, sci-fi and horror movies, coffee, animals..plenty more but you're probably bored already
Looking for someone late 20s and up..I'm generally more attracted to Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and Latin women..but open in general. Chemistry and connection take precedent over 'type' shape or size, so really just more looking for the right attitude and fit.
Sound like you?? or close enough?? First impressions matter..so tell me what about this caught your eye or resonated with you..and 3 things you'd do if you won the lottery
Hope you find what you're looking for one way or another

Hi everyone!
I am updating my previous post in which I went over my progress with chronic TE + AGA, and I also posted picsbefore (my 2023 hair looks thicker than my update now) . To sum up, I had this diagnosis in early 2017 and I started seeing a significant improvement by 2020. I am updating this post in 2023.
As of 2023, I have not experienced any significant hair loss. While my hair is not as thick as it was before the 2017 period, it still looks perfectly fine (given that I initially had very thick hair). The only time I notice slightly more shedding is around my menstrual cycle; otherwise, it remains within the normal range of hair loss. I have been following all the suggestions I previously mentioned, but I want to emphasize the important aspects. Before you continue reading, please note that my intention is to share my personal experience and hope it resonates with many. I am not a medical professional, and I have no intention of causing harm. Therefore, please interpret these suggestions based on your own perspective. Here are the key areas I continue to focus on since my last post:

1. Mental health: I believe it's a deeply personal journey to discover what works for you in this life. Finding ways to calm racing thoughts and prioritize self-healing has been incredibly important. Hair loss, for me, began during one of my lowest points, when I was under significant stress.
2. Diet: I eat foods that provide essential vitamins, minerals, and supplements. Try to seek out more affordable local options for purchasing vegetables, nuts, produce, and other ingredients, rather than in supermarkets. I have completely eliminated coffee from my routine and switched to tea. Overall, I eat more herbs, plant roots, and nuts, and also consciously reduce my intake of sugar by opting for cane or white sugar instead of corn syrup. I also have significantly reduced my alcohol consumption and typically have around 4-5 drinks per month.
3. Reducing stress and preventing burnout: I do my best to minimize this in my own and communal surroundings. I was absolutely exhausted by life circumstances, and my cortisol levels (via blood tests) were at my highest.
4. Stopping coloring my haiminimizing heat: I do not plan to color my hair, probably ever, and overall minimize what is applied to my hair.
5. Thinking about my hormones: I try to consider how things I consume and put in or on my body would affect my hormone levels, like birth control, medication, etc. My hormone levels were a bit wacky when I was chasing the diagnosis, but doctors said it was not of major concern.
6. Exercise/increase movement: I try to work out the way I enjoy around 2-3 days a week, I prioritize walking a lot, trying to choose activities that keep me moving, massaging my neck and body whenever I can, stretching a lot, and also bike when I can.

I think these changes really help to maintain the progress I have had, I hope if you are reading this, it can help you reflect on what can help you too!
Wishing abundance and joyful experiences your way

Since I did not post this from last season; here it is: Lambs are Wilson Phillips! Let's discuss how the clue packages related to them.

• First clue package:
  • Golf setting = Chynna appeared in 1988 golf comedy film Caddyshack II.
  • “We practically grew up with … each other. Yeah, we’ve been Beverly Hills besties since day one.” = they were born and grew up together in the Los Angeles area / they appeared in a 2017 episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
  • “... turn into a massive career on stage and on screen.” = they are best known for their singing / Chynna started her career acting in films before she was a singer / Carnie hosted her own talk show / their cameo in 2011 film Bridesmaids brought renewed recognition to the group.
  • ‘Famous’ on jeans → famous genes = they are the daughters of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas.
  • Venice = the video for the debut single “Hold On” was filmed in Venice Beach
  • “We’ve traveled the world….” = they’ve toured together as a group.
  • “...graced billboards….” = they appeared on promotional billboards together / four of the singles from their 1990 debut album went Top 10 (three of those to number one) on the Billboard Hot 100 / they won the 1990 Billboard Music Award for Hot 100 Single of the Year for their debut single "Hold On."
  • “... and grazed countless red carpets.” = among their multiple red carpet appearances together, they attended the Grammy red carpet when they were nominated for four Grammy Awards.
  • Diamond ring = their cameo in 2011 film Bridesmaids brought renewed recognition to the group.
  • Popcorn = their cameo in 2011 film Bridesmaids brought renewed recognition to the group / Chynna started her career acting in films before she was a singer.
  • “Now we’re playing dress-up all over again and we’re here to show you that we haven’t lost our swing.” = they haven't performed publicly together in several years.
• Second clue package:
  • “Winning the battle royale last week was bananas!" = Chynna’s mom, Michelle Phillips, famously protested The Ed Sullivan Show’s lip-syncing rule by eating a banana during the band's televised 1967 performance of “California Dreamin.”
  • “We have to stay hocused!” = their debut single “Hold On” was covered by Irish girl group B*Witched in 2019.
  • Popcorn = their cameo in 2011 film Bridesmaids brought renewed recognition to the group / Chynna started her career acting in films before she was a singer.
  • ‘Famous’ on jeans → famous genes = they are the daughters of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas.
  • Diamond ring = their cameo in 2011 film Bridesmaids brought renewed recognition to the group.
  • “Before we rock out with our flock out….” = they have released music in the pop rock and soft rock genres.
  • Film reel / television set / clapperboard = they have appeared in several films and television shows, both together and separately.
• Third clue package:
  • Bedroom = prior to being Wilson Phillips, they would sing together in Wendy’s bedroom / their 2004 album included their cover of The Beach Boys’ 1963 single “In My Room.”
  • “And that’s something we’ve always known, even when we were young girls.” = they grew up together.
  • “We were young ladies when we hit it big.” = they were in their early twenties when their enormously successful debut album was released.
  • Platinum class boarding pass = their debut album was RIAA certified 5x-Platinum, BPI certified platinum, and MC certified 7x Platinum / their second album was RIAA certified Platinum and MC certified 2x Platinum.
  • “...we were so burned out that we started to have issues.” = they have taken several, years-long breaks as a band.
  • Fighting over christmas wreath = Wendy and Carnie released their 1993 Christmas album, Hey Santa!, during the band’s first break.
  • “We knew that going our separate ways….” = their 2004 cover of Fleetwood Mac’s "Go Your Own Way" peaked at number 13 on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
  • Friends forever book
  • “We’ve won other awards in our lives, but it’s been a very, very long time.” = as a band, their last win was the 1990 Billboard Music Award for Hot 100 Single of the Year for their debut single "Hold On."
• Fourth clue package:
  • “We’ve been on stages almost our entire lives.” = they were in their early twenties when their enormously successful debut album was released in 1990.
  • “Pet Sounds, Volume 2!” = Carnie and Wendy’s father is Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, whose successful 1966 album was titled Pet Sounds.
• Fifth clue package:
  • “We spent 14 years apart and we went our own ways.” = between their multiple breaks, they were broken up a total of fourteen years.
  • “... we went our own ways.” = their 2004 cover of Fleetwood Mac’s "Go Your Own Way" peaked at number 13 on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
  • “We became mothers ….” = they have nine children between the three of them.
  • “...and carved out our own lives and careers.” = they have each released solo albums / Chynna started her career acting in films before she was a singer / Carnie hosted her own talk show.
  • **“**Music is in our blood….” = they are the daughters of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas.
• Special clues:
  • Mask-Ray clue → Milk bottle
  • MaskPass clue → Beach Ball = Carnie and Wendy’s father is Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.
  • DIslikes → Silence
  • Clue → Can’t Let Go = their debut single,“Hold On,” was the most successful single of the year in the US in 1990. It won the Billboard Music Award for Hot 100 Single of the Year for 1990, and was nominated for the 1991 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
  • First performance:
    • “Hot N Cold” by Katy Perry
    • “Who is the biggest celebrity you've ever worked with?” → "We've worked with Paul McCartney, yes, we have." = they sand backing vocals for Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney’s 2015 song “FourFiveSeconds.”
  • Second performance:
    • “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette
    • '90s Night Clue → Mix-tape from Lance Bass → "Go your own way and cruise the country with your besties! Turn those daydreams into… a reality!" = they appeared in their own reality show, Wilson Phillips: Still Holding On.
  • Third performance:
    • “Need You Now” by Lady A
    • Thanksgiving Clue → "Reunion" on cornucopia → "For a long time I didn't think that we would be singing together on the stage ever again, but I never gave up on the three of us getting back together. And it's unthinkable for us to not be singing together again for the rest of our lives. This Thanksgiving I'm grateful to all of you but especially to you both." = they have taken several, years-long breaks as a band.
  • Fourth performance:
    • “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan
    • Big Time Clue → Bouquet of roses
  • Fifth performance:
    • “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner

Here is my ongoing accolades tally. It's still a work in progress, and I'm open to improvement suggestions!
What did I miss?

Growing up, I remember it all vividly: any time my friends or I got too close to the shed, my dad would come out hollering and yelling, telling us to stay away from there and that it was no place for kids. He told me he had expensive tools and dangerous chemicals stored there. As a child, I didn’t question it. It was just one of those things. In my mind, I had been born into a world where the sun rises in the east, breakfast is the first meal of the day and the shed stays locked. They were all true, self-evident and simply the way things existed in my young mind.
But as I grew older and eventually moved off to college, I began to question the shed more. My father still wouldn’t let me look in there. In fact, he kept the sole key on his person at all times. Even when he slept, he would keep the key in his pocket.
Then, during my second semester at the nearby state university, I got a call that every son or daughter dreads. I was attending a lecture on anatomy when my phone lit up, ringing silently in the great, crowded hall. Looking down, I saw it was my brother’s number. I went outside, lighting up a cigarette and answering it.
“Hello?” I said. “Gil?” My brother answered immediately.
“Luke, thank God you answered,” he said. “It’s dad. He’s being taken to the hospital. He had some sort of medical emergency. Can you meet us there? In maybe twenty-five minutes?” I said I would, hanging up. I grabbed my stuff in the lecture hall and made my way to my car. Twenty-two minutes later, I pulled into the hospital.
It was too late, however. My father had died of a heart attack on the way. He was declared dead on arrival.
***
We ended up inheriting the house. Our mother had died of breast cancer ten years earlier, so Gil and I were the last two of the Mortin bloodline. My brother was a good guy, though somewhat of a waste case, constantly smoking weed and dropping acid. He had a tendency to travel out far across the country without notice, moving around to see nature or go to music festivals. That is, when he had the money. And since he worked as a freelance writer, he was often broke.
He really wanted to get at the money dad had left us. He wanted the money from the house most of all. He told me repeatedly that it would be enough to tide him over until he got a footing in the writing industry, that he just needed to make a name for himself and then the money would start rolling in. He had his heart set on it. He would write anything that he could make money off of, from horror stories to romances, short stories to novels, even technical manuals or freelance journalism articles. As we walked to the house together for the first time in months, he repeated this mantra to me again: “Just enough to tide me over, Luke…”
“I think you’re probably going to burn through the money that Dad left you,” I said. “Why don’t you get a real job and just write on the side?” He gave me a sideways look.
“Did you see Hunter S. Thompson getting a ‘real job’ while just writing on the side?” he asked. I nodded.
“Yeah, he was a journalist…” I began as we walked into the house, but we both stopped simultaneously when we saw what was on the coffee table. It was all of Dad’s possessions he had when he died. They were placed neatly in a line- his wallet, his phone, his car and house key, some cash, and last of all, a little shed key on a thin, leather chain.
“What do you think is really in that shed?” I asked. Gil looked at me, pale and wide-eyed in the dark living room.
“I don’t really… I don’t know if I want to find out,” Gil said, whispering as if he were in a church- or a funeral home. I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.
“Of course we need to find out,” I said. “You and I own this property now. We should go look right now.” He breathed in sharply.
“No, no, don’t be an idiot,” Gil whispered. “It’s dark now. In the morning, we can go together. In the morning. You have waited twenty years to find out, I think you can wait a few more hours.” But there was something pleading in his voice, something scared and child-like. It reminded me of when I was scared as a little boy at bedtime, telling my dad there were monsters in the closet, and he would go to open up the door, and I’d tell him to stop, that they’re going to hurt him if he opens that door. But he would open the door and there would be no monsters in there. Surely, it was the same here. Gil would see, and for that matter, so would I. There were no monsters in there.
***
This all happened from yesterday to this morning. We ended up leaving that place together a few hours ago, bloodied and bruised and injured, after being trapped inside all night.
The day before it started, Gil stayed up late downstairs, watching TV and smoking a joint. He made himself a night-cap from my father’s liquor cabinet, pouring some Jack Daniels and ice in a cup with some Coke and sipping it slowly. I stayed with him for a while, talking.
We talked about the good times we had with Dad, about going hiking with him at the Green Mountains, or traveling to New York City with him to see the museums. I thought about how much I really missed him, and a knot formed in my throat. I quickly blinked my eyes to try to get the tears to go away.
Eventually, I went to sleep in the guest bedroom. Gil stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch in front of the TV. I heard the faint hum of it from upstairs, the canned laughter of whatever comedy he was watching, the acerbic tone of the lead characters as they delivered one witty joke after another. I fell asleep to it, the voices blending into a sarcastic, hissing whisper in my ear.
And then I was floating, bodiless, looking down on a dark cornfield with ravens staring at me. The voice was bodiless, too, sounding like it came from right behind me, but when I turned, nothing was there.
“In the halls of our fathers, everyone is dead,” it whispered mockingly. “You’ll be dead soon too, if you get curious. Some doors are locked for a reason. Some doors should stay locked.”
I woke up suddenly. Something was wrong. I heard Gil yelling. I fumbled around in the dark for the lamp, groggily checking the time. 4:17 AM. Flinging the comforters off, I ran downstairs.
Gil was sleeping on the couch, still as a corpse, and quiet as one too. I looked around confusedly. Where was the screaming coming from? I followed the noise out back. I looked at the shed, and my blood ran cold as I heard another long cry come from inside. I walked across the dirt yard in my slippers, not wanting to get any closer but walking forwards nonetheless. Part of me wondered if I was still dreaming, but the chill air against my sweaty face felt real enough.
The screaming from the shed was not in words. It was a long, drawn-out, painful shriek. It was the shriek of a mother who just lost her only child in a war zone, or the yell of someone doused with gasoline and burned alive, but amplified into an ear-splitting cacophony. I had the key in my pocket. I reached for it with shaking hands, pulling it out, slowly approaching the shed.
Then someone grabbed my shoulder. I jumped, whirling around with clenched fists, ready to fight. Then I saw it was Gil.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I said through clenched teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He put his finger to his lips, the universal signal for silence. Then he leaned close to my ear and whispered.
“If you open that shed now, we will both die,” he said quietly and calmly, as if he were just stating the weather for tomorrow. “Put the key away and go back to bed. You never want to open it in the dark. Never.”
“What do you know about it?” I whispered back, shooting glances over my shoulder at the shed. The screaming still came, though slower now, maybe one heart-rending shriek every minute or so. Part of me was glad there were no neighbors for half a mile in each direction, and that made me want to laugh. There was probably some horrific animal in there that would rip me apart if it got the chance, and I was thinking about noise complaints.
“Tomorrow,” Gil repeated, gently taking my arm and leading me back into the house. I sat next to him in the living room, pouring myself a gin and tonic, sipping it slowly as the screams from behind the house mixed with the canned laughter of the TV show, wondering what kind of man my father really was.
***
I woke on the couch, an empty glass falling out of my hand onto the cushion. Light streamed in through the windows. Gil was nowhere to be found. I looked back and forth, then heard the sizzling of food from the kitchen.
Stumbling in, I saw he had prepared a massive breakfast of bacon, sausages, corned beef hash, eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce, Texas toast, orange juice and coffee. He was smoking a joint with the windows opened, occasionally sending a grim look out the back of the house towards the shed. I sat down, pouring myself some coffee and grabbing milk and sugar to mix in.
“Who is all this food for?” I asked. He kept staring out the window. “Hey!” He turned suddenly, his face looking pale and drawn.
“What?”
“I said, who is all this food for?” I repeated. He looked around, smiling.
“Just for us. Why not? I figure you will need the energy today, and so will I,” he said cryptically. He sat down across from me, pouring himself coffee and orange juice and grabbing a plateful of meat, toast and eggs. I did the same, giving him occasional glances.
“What did Dad tell you?” I asked, pouring maple syrup on my sausages and bacon and chugging an entire cup of coffee in one long swallow. It burned my throat, but the rising heat and caffeine made me feel instantly better and more awake. Gil sighed heavily.
“Not much, to tell you the truth,” he said. “He was really drunk one time when you were away at college, a couple months ago. He was drinking more and more before he died, like something was weighing on him, something he wanted to forget. Well, anyway, I was sitting down here with him, watching those documentaries he used to love with him, and during a commercial, he just started talking about the shed.
“‘Now boy,’ he said to me, ‘I know you probably have a few questions for me. I probably should have told you and your brother about it a long time ago, but it is something I don’t like to talk about. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I think talking about it tends to wake it up.’
“‘Wake up what?’ I said. Dad was quiet for a long time, just staring at me. Then he leaned close to me and whispered something strange.
“‘The stairs,’ he said. ‘They’re not normal, son. Sometimes they go down below the shed to a… Well, I guess it is just an empty sub-floor. Just a plain, swept dirt basement below the shed. But I never built any such sub-floor, and it wasn’t here when I bought the house, and it isn’t on the plans either. If that was it, then who would care? Hah, a free storage place, people would be happy, right?’ I nodded, grinning back at Dad. He seemed to have a glimmer of his old self for a second, happy and free. But then his face darkened again.
“‘But lots of times, boy, those stairs do not lead to a sub-floor. One time, they led down to a white room covered in blood, with bright fluorescent lights flickering all over the walls and ceiling. And there was a little girl down there, dancing among all the blood, jumping and twirling in her little blue dress, little ballerina slippers on her feet, and all the skin on her face peeled off. She was just a bloody, grinning skull. And when she saw me on the spiral steps in the corner, she stopped dancing and just stared. The lights began to turn off, everything went dark, and I ran, my boy, I ran faster than I have ever run in my life. I felt little hands grabbing at me as I made my way up the last stair and slammed that shed door behind me. I locked it as something fought to get out, something that felt far stronger than any child. And that was just one time.
“‘It’s worse at night. That’s when the real dangerous ones come out. I don’t know how the stairs work, son, and I don’t think I ever really want to. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll never have to deal with them. Maybe I’ll find a way to destroy them before I die. Aye, maybe…’” Gil stopped speaking, deep in thought and remembrance. I took another sip of juice and ate some bacon before responding.
“So you’re telling me Dad went batshit crazy before he died?” I asked. Gil shook his head quickly.
“He wasn’t crazy, Luke,” he said simply. “At least, I don’t think he was. If he was, the stairs probably made him that way. Do you really think that you were just hearing a fox or something caught in the shed last night? Those screams sounded human. We both know that was something unnatural. But I wouldn’t worry if I were you. If you need proof, we’ll have plenty after today- assuming you still want to go into the shed.” And after we finished eating, with no fanfare or delay, we did. I grabbed the key, and Gil and I went out side by side, scared but not showing it, ready to finally see for ourselves the mystery that had haunted our family for decades.
***
We walked through the hard-packed dirt yard, looking down the grassy field behind the house to the rolling hills that stretched as far as the eye could see. They began to grow blue, pale and fuzzy near the horizon. It was a beautiful place to live, and hard to imagine something so evil might be right in the middle of it.
The shed loomed up ahead of us, boards tightly hammered together and freshly painted a dark red color. The shingles on the small roof all looked relatively new, and the door was expensive and sturdy. I stood in front of the door, listening for the sounds of any movement, but there was nothing. I fumbled in my pocket for the key, pulling it out, looking at Gil who stood close by my side. Then I shoved it in the lock and opened the door.
The shed was dark, as if a curtain of shadow fell across the open door. I stuck my head in, feeling around the side for a lightswitch. And that was when something grabbed my hand. I screamed, ready to pull my hand out and run, and then I felt the lightswitch on the wall. I flicked it on quickly. There was no one in there. Shaking, I turned to Gil.
“Something grabbed me,” I whispered. He nodded, unsurprised. Then we walked in the shed together.
The walls inside were all covered with plates of sheet metal. Every square inch of the shed was reinforced with steel, including the roof, which had a flat pane of metal going straight across the shed, welded to the four that covered the walls. Only the floor was unprotected. It was just a plain dirt floor with a hole in the center.
Looking closer at the protective structure of the shed, I saw deep claw and gouge marks raking the metal’s surface, even those on the bottom of the ceiling eight feet above the floor. Something had clearly been in here and wanted very badly to get out.
I inched closer to the hole in the floor, which took up most of the floor of the shed. It was at least ten feet wide. Looking down, I saw spiraling steps, descending in a clockwise fashion as far down as the light extended. I found a small rock on the ground outside, came back in and dropped it down the center of the stairway. I listened for it to hit bottom, counting the seconds on my watch. After about thirty seconds, I realized it wasn’t going to. Maybe it was too far down to hear when the stone connected.
I looked over at Gil. He was standing as near to the door as he could get, looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world. I gave him high marks for courage, though. There was something wrong in here, and I could feel it. Outside, it was warm and a fresh breeze blew the smell of flowers and pines through the yard. But in here, it was cold and oppressive. A freezing chill seemed to come from the hole in the floor, spiraling up with the stairs and running over my body, sending a feeling like ice running up and down my back.
“Do you want to go first, or should I?” I said, gesturing to the hole. Gil stared at me as if I had gone mad, his eyes widening.
“Why in the fuck should either of us go?” he said, raising his hands and using them to gesticulate wildly as he often did when he was upset. I shrugged.
“This is our property now,” I said. “We need to at least know what’s on it, don’t you think?” But there was another reason too. It was sheer curiosity, and a desire to prove to myself that there was nothing supernatural going on here, no monster in the closet, just the overactive imagination of an old man. Gil sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go. Go grab two flashlights and Dad’s gun. Maybe some extra batteries. Some extra magazines too. Better safe than sorry, after all…”
We both went inside the house together, leaving the shed door wide open, and that was when, I believe, something got out. And then the killings in town began.
***
We descended the stairs slowly. They were stone, slick in some places. There was no guard rail or any protective barrier, which made my heart beat a little faster. I liked something to hold onto. If I took a tumble on these stairs, I might keep falling forever.
We heard strange sounds from below periodically, but when we shone our lights down there, we couldn't see anything. Echoes rose around us, sounding at one point like kids playing a game of hide and seek, at another like the howling of a wolf. Strange squeaks and clicks would also arise intermittently from the shaft below us, and then stop as quickly as they had started.
The noises got louder as we descended dozens of stories, then hundreds. It seemed like the stairs would just keep going on forever, until we hit the mantle of the Earth and got burned up. Then a door appeared, painted a chipped blue with a fading daisy on the center of it. I looked at Gil, then swung it open.
Beyond it, a hallway with fluorescent lights extended as far as the eye could see. Countless rooms went off it to the left and right. The lights flickered on and off, sending portions of the hallway into darkness. The floor was falling apart in many places, with strange molds and fungi growing out of the wood. White and black molds battled for space, forming huge colonies that were bigger than my shoe. I walked forward, putting my weight gingerly on the floorboard. It creaked slightly and felt wet under my shoe, yet it held my weight.
“Come on,” I said to Gil, who followed closely behind. As soon as we had walked a few steps down the hall, the door slammed shut by itself behind us. I jumped and turned, pulling out the gun reflexively. Gil put a hand on my shoulder, pushing the gun back down.
“It’s OK,” he said. I was breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. Maybe that was why I didn’t hear the counting at first.
But as we walked down the decayed hallway, the lights turning on and off above us with every step, I realized that someone was counting, and it had been going on for a while. It sounded like the voice of a little girl.
“Forty… thirty-nine… thirty-eight…” she said, counting off the seconds. I heard giggling from the rooms around us, but I couldn’t see anyone. We kept walking forward, but that counting was getting on my nerves- not least because I couldn’t for the life of me tell where it was coming from.
We checked the rooms to the left and the right. There were broken tables, old office equipment and chairs in nearly all of them. Some of them had fish tanks, but instead of fish, they had plumes of multi-colored molds growing over the top of them, or, in one case, a dead and dried-out turtle.
“...one… ready or not, here I come!” the girl’s voice screamed gleefully, and that was when all the lights went out at once. We quickly fumbled for our flashlights, turning them on at the same time. I had the gun in one hand crisscrossed with the flashlight in the other, a trick I had seen used in cop shows. Gil had a ten-inch bowie knife in one hand, which he had just removed from the massive scabbard he had it in around his leg. In his other hand, he held the flashlight, which he frantically shone back and forth, up and down.
“Geez, calm down with that thing,” I said. “You’re going to make me dizzy.”
“Something’s coming,” Gil whispered, a note of dread in his voice. “Don’t you hear it?” I stopped, listening hard. Indeed, I heard footsteps nearing, small suppressed giggles, the swishing of a dress. My flashlight illuminated a pale face, a little boy sneaking a peak out of the nearest room. He was filthy, covered in black soot with torn clothing and what looked like blood caked into his hair. He looked up at us quickly then withdrew into the room. For the first time, I felt genuinely scared. Now we could be certain we were being watched.
“Hey!” I whispered, running into the room after him. Gil followed close behind me. The footsteps seemed to be right next to us now, but I looked around, not seeing anyone. Then a blur of movement passed by as a little girl ran over to the little boy, where he was curled in the corner under a broken folding table, crying and shaking with terror.
“Found you!” she said. I shone my light directly at her back, seeing a pale blue dress, but I couldn’t see her face.
“Get away from that kid!” I yelled. She ignored me, bending down quickly, and before I knew what had happened, she had ripped the boy’s throat out with her teeth. She turned to look at us, and I saw that her face had been cut off, and now only a grinning skull remained. It was covered in a thin sheen of blood, and two tiny white pinpoints of light seemed to glow inside the empty sockets of her eyes. With her teeth full of flesh and gristle and fresh rivulets of blood running down her skeletal mouth, she continued to cry, “Found you! Found you! Found you!”
Without hesitation, I shot her in the shoulder. She fell back a half-step, turning to look at me with that skeletal grin, then spun around and continued eating the little boy. He was still alive, choking on his own blood, his huge eyes moving over to me as he died, as if accusing me of being the cause of all this. The sound of his last gurgling breaths were the only sounds now. I shot her again, but she wouldn’t go down. A blossom of blood began to spread outwards on her back where I had shot her, but she showed no pain. Gil grabbed my shoulder tightly.
“We need to get out of here,” he said through gritted teeth. I nodded. We ran back to the door we had come in through, but it was locked tight. The lights were still off. I told Gil to take a step back, then tried shooting at the lock. The bullet ricocheted crazily as if I had shot a reinforced army tank rather than a plain wooden doorway. Next we tried kicking it open, but it was as if it were fused to the wall.
I turned to look at him, and the truth passed between us in a glimpse. To get out, we would have to go farther in, where there were likely even worse things waiting for us.

Karna (Santa)

Class: Saber
True Name: Karna (Santa)
Gender: Male
Source: Glorious Path to Santa Claus
Region: India
Alignment: Lawful-Good
Height: 178cm
Weight: 65kg
Strength: B
Endurance: A
Agility: EX
Mana: D
Luck: C
Noble Phantasm: A
Character Creator: Hazuki Minase
Character Design: pako
Character Voice: Koji Yusa
Appearance in Main Works: Fate Grand/Order

Class Skills

Magic Resistance: A
Nullifies spells of A-Rank or below. In fact he can't be harmed by modern magi. As a result of the Saber Class and the protection of Santa Claus the rank has increased compared to when he was a Lancer
Riding: -
After adopting a boxing combat style, he lost his Riding skill, despite being a Saber class. He's Santa, but he doesn't ride a sleigh. Being the boxer that he is, all he can do is to silently keep on jogging (roadwork) to train.
Divinity: A
The fact that he is the son of Surya, the god of sun, does not change even after he has turned into Santa.
"Santa is like the sun to children. So it's more sensible to say that Surya is Santa," says Karna rather matter-of-factly in the cafeteria. However, Arjuna, who was eating curry behind him, just looked puzzled when he heard that.
Hard Puncher: EX
A skill that demonstrates the raw strength of his punches. A deadly strike that can KO an enemy with just a single blow.

Personal Skills

Footwork Santa: A
An astounding skill that combines footwork and being Santa, and it is the foundation of Santa Karna’s fighting style. It’s a skill that demonstrates footwork and stepping techniques in boxing that not only maintains appropriate distances for various situations, evading attacks, and finding even the slightest openings in enemies' defenses, but it also allows him to trek as Santa Claus to ensure that he can deliver gifts to anybody, even in dangerous places such as lava fields or areas with heavy snowfall.
Flash Fist: A
This Karna does not wield a spear. The only thing he wields is his fists, but that doesn't mean his combat prowess has declined. Because he was trained by Drona, his master who was gifted in all forms of martial arts, he is accustomed to fighting barehanded. In fact, his memories of training with Arjuna and Aśvatthāman brought out a new sensation for him, and it has made him feel lighter than when he wields his spear.
His hand speed exceeds the speed of light, and those who face it can only see his fist as a trail of light...probably. His fists are as keen as a true blade.
"And that's why I'm a Saber, right?" says Santa proudly at the cafeteria. However, Aśvatthāman, who was eating a piece of chicken behind him, just looked puzzled when he heard that.
Hero of Benefaction (Holy Night): EX
One of the reasons Karna was chosen to be Santa Claus. If the hero who always gives generously when asked, is given a mysterious gift bag filled with Santa Power then we have nothing to fear anymore. Well, it's not like there's much to be scared of anyway. A skill of similar nature to "Saint's Gift"

Noble Phantasm

『The Saint's Torrential Fist.』
Rank: A
NP Type: Anti-Personnel
Range: 1 - 2
Maximum Targets: 1
Winning Arkaputra
Santa Karna's finishing combo. After quickly bobbing and weaving to keep his opponent off target, Karna steps in with a series of left and right hooks, followed by two left jabs and a straight right, then finishes with an uppercut to send his opponent flying.
These blows are obviously filled with the power of Santa and the power of the son of Surya. What should be especially noted, is that when he strikes with his finishing uppercut, the excess energy he has manifests into feathers of light and a divine halo. The combination of these powers is beyond galactic comprehension, and his opponents claim to feel like they were struck by a meteor. They immediately drop onto the mat.
The word "Arkaputra" is Karna's other name, meaning "the sun's son."
『The Saint's Intersecting Fists.』
Rank: A
NP Type: Anti-Personnel
Range: 1 - 2
Maximum Targets: 1
Graharaja Santa Claus
A one-hit killing cross counterpunch developed by Karna as his finishing blow. In addition to Karna having been inspired by boxing the moment he became Santa, Karna learned that boxing has a knockout punch called a cross counter, and for some reason Karna came to the conclusion that "Santa uses a cross counter as his finishing blow, which must be why he is named Santa Claus!" This utterly nonsensical notion is what led to him coming up with this technique.
It is not possible to actually see this attack. His fist perfectly aligns with the enemy's strike and smashes through the enemy's jaw like a beam of sunlight. It's as if a sacred sword of the stars slashed through the air... This move is both a deadly fist and a sacred sword.
The word "Graharaja" means "lord of the planets," and it is another name for the sun god Surya.

Character

First-person pronoun: Ore
Second-person pronoun: Omae
Third-person pronoun: Kare/Kanojo/Master

Personality

It's pretty much the same old Karna
However by switching to a bare-handed martial arts style he now recalls his tough training days and even if only a little, he has started to enjoy martial arts training and the growth it brings
"I don't have Indra's spear, so I'll just clench my fists and we'll exchange blows. It'll be just like those times I used to exchange blows with Ashvatthaman and the others"
Basically the above
He wants to train harder, he wants to improve his fighting skills and he wants to fight strong enemies It may look like nothing much has changed, but in some ways he's gained a younger mentality. He retains his normal level-headedness, but he also sometimes says and does things that make you think he's a passionate protagonist straight out of a shonen manga.
"I love roadwork"

Motivation and Attitude to Master

He has no particular wish for the Holy Grail.
All he wishes for is to complete his job as Santa Claus (while also training his boxing skills) He treats the Master as an advisor who is familiar with Christmas. He knows he lacks common sense so he is going to be relying on them.

Dialog Examples

"I didn't expect to be chosen as Santa but i'll do my best"
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Wonderful! What an excellent quote."
"I'd love to encounter someone stronger than me but I have Santa Business to attend to, so excuse me"
"My fist is my sword now, but you don't have to do the same. You can use whatever weapon you like."

Figure within FGO

Karna has become Santa. Because of reasons.
Once a year during Christmastime, everyone wishes for presents. Karna learns Santa Claus is the one who grants these wishes, and the moment he realizes he has the power to do so himself, he does not hesitate to take on the role. And so, whenever the children ask, "Santa, please give me a present," this new Santa Claus simply replies, "Very well. Here you go," and grants their Christmas wish. He may seem a bit frosty, but he's far from coldhearted. He just has a hard time smiling.
Stoic in a way, not over-enthusiastic, not having fun, but perfectly fulfilling the role of Santa.
But by the end of the day when he has fulfilled his duties as Santa and receives a big smile and a "Thank you" from the children he feels a different sort of happiness than when he does his usual charity work.
That's to be expected. After all he isn't the usual Karna right now, he is Santa Karna
For some reason he has taken up the masculine sport of boxing. He is an all-rounder who can do either in-boxing or out-boxing depending on his opponent (or his whims)
In most cases his choice of fighting style is either because "it looks like fun" or "it looks like I can grow stronger" never because "it will be an eazy win" . Sometimes it's necessary to have a hard fought fistfight.

Standard Weapons

Fist

Related Characters

Arjuna
Since Karna is closer in mentally to his training days, they are slightly closer than usual.
Although they are "rivals who killed each other in the Great War," now they are more like "students who studied under the same master"
Ashwatthama
Same as above. This one has more of a delinquent feel to it
"You still have that spark from when we first met ... Heh it's starting to get fun. Alright I'm in. Let's go"
Vitra
The enemy of Christmas, the mighty evil dragon.
A being "no weapon can harm" Santa Karna might have born a boxer as a result of that
Duryodhana
The only man who helped me when I was laughed at for my status. A benefactor and a friend
From the general public's point of view, he may be an asshole, but I trust and respect him
Romulus=Quirinus
The Roman Branch of the Heracles school is a rival

Comments from illustrator

Usually when you look at the ingredients of a dish, you can tell if it's going to be a meal or a dessert, right? Then we have this year Santa, Karna, who is both a Saber and boxer right? Wasn't it supposed to be a space cat? Anyway I'm so excited (pako)

I bought the Ken forkish book at Christmas time and was making fantastic bread with relative ease
But a few months ago I was following the exact same recipe but I was yielding different results. Every time I made the dough it was coming out too wet and then would break in the proving basket when I was shaping it on the countertop.
Then when the bread bakes itself. It's not as white and fluffy as it once was. It doesn't rise as much.
I'm struggling to work out what happened. I haven't done anything different to what I was doing a few months ago.
I thought that my scales have broken and that it had ruined my ratio of water to flour. So I bought new scales and the exact same thing happened with the end result of the bread. Been super frustrating. I put in 40 g less of water the other day but still it doesn't seem to be enough to change the result.
. Any thoughts on what the problem may be?

I’m at a park rn, trying to nap and just had 4 groups of people walk past me talk about a homeless person sleeping in the park and some lady said “if she wasn’t sleeping I would ask if she was hungry”. Like bro I got Krispy Kreme donuts and Thomas Hammer coffee posted up next to me, on a brand new Picnic blanket and a brand new white throw blanket under my head wearing $200 Nike shoes and a North Face sweatshirt. I’m just tired and it’s bright asf out lol. Why do people assume that I’m homeless? Why do people even care? Like I’m just depressed and thought fresh air and sunlight would be good for me and it’s relaxing here