When I was nine, I found the woods.
Now, I know that doesn’t seem too impressive at first.
The thing is, I think I was the only one who could see them.
I toddled over after church on Sunday, still wearing the pink bows in my hair and carefully skipping over any patch of earth that wasn’t covered in grass so I wouldn’t stain my Sunday shoes.
There was a large field near where I lived that my mother deemed safe enough for me to play in with all the other neighborhood kids. It wasn’t a playground by any means, just a vast stretch of land that never sprouted anything worth picking. I was alone that Sunday, walking around the dead field until I could barely make out the wavering smudge of my house in the afternoon heat.
I regret it now, but at the time, I decided to slip under the barbed wire fence and run off, hoping to find something pretty. I wanted a sunflower for my hair.
That’s when I found the woods. I didn’t even realize there was anything out there; I lived in the last house on the block, and from there it just stemmed out into that empty field. No one ever mentioned the woods, not even the adults as a warning not to go in.
Obviously, I went in.
The trees were black and gnarly, with thick knobs and protruding roots so overgrown, they reminded me of bony fingers with too many knuckles. Crisp leaves in all shades of brown littered the floor, and I loved the satisfying crackle underneath my Sunday shoes as I explored.
Looking back, I don’t know what it was about the woods, but I was captivated. I was running through the trees, making tremendous leaps over streams, and just playing like the child I was. It felt like I was in another world when I looked up at the canopy of leaves and branches, sunlight glittering through the green.
It felt like minutes, no more than an hour at most, before I noticed the sky was ripe and orange. The sun was setting already.
I sucked on my teeth before sighing. Sundown meant going home. I made my way toward the direction I came in when a wispy breeze fluttered over my body, lifting the lace ends of my dress and sending my hair flying off my shoulders.
I shuddered, but kept walking.
I made it home just as my mother stepped out on to the porch to yell for me.
“Oh, there you are, Faith. Come insi—where is your bow? Little girl, I told you to change before you went playing in the field in your Sunday clothes!”
I reached into my hair and realized she was right, I was missing one of the ribbons meant to be tied around my plaits.
“I wasn’t in the field, I—“
“Hush now, I don’t care for excuses. Go on inside and I’ll run your bath.” She tsked, shoving me inside with a rough hand on my back.
The next morning, I spoke to Jeremy at the bus stop. He was my neighbor.
“Jeremy, why haven’t you ever shown me the woods?” I asked.
“What woods?”
“The woods past the field. Don’t play stupid.”
“I ain’t playing stupid. I never seen no woods, and I lived here twice as long as you. You’re stupid.”
“I am not, Jeremy! The woods are over there,” I pointed past the field. “And I’ll prove it to you after school.”
“Fine, bighead, let’s see.”
The entire day I was antsy. Finally, we sat together on the bus ride home and I knew I would be proven right.
We dumped our backpacks and lunchboxes on my porch and marched through the field. When we got to the fence, he hesitated.
“My momma says not to go past the fence because then she can’t see me.”
“Oh, you chicken, then?”
“Shut up,” he said. He looked back towards the neighborhood before rolling under the fence. I followed, ducking beneath the wire.
I led the way, the same way as I had taken yesterday.
Only this time, I couldn’t find the woods. We must have walked for ten minutes before Jeremy spoke.
“I don’t know why I believed you. You’re just a liar. I knew there wasn’t no woods.”
“There is too! You don’t know nothing.”
“Wasting my time for this… Loony, you are. I’m going home before my momma starts whining.” He turned around and I watched him until he went under the barbed wire fence again.
Where were the woods? It didn’t make sense.
I felt a cold wind wash over me, prickling at my skin. I rubbed at my arms and looked up.
My bow!
It had become undone and was just a pink ribbon gliding through the air. I chased after it, but random bursts of wind kept it out of my reach. I spun in circles and scuffed my shoes and knees as I hurried, my eyes ignoring the ground.
It finally smacked against a tree, and I realized I was at the woods once again. I grabbed my ribbon and shoved it in my skirt pocket, distrustful eyes scanning my surroundings. I could still see the edge of the field, so I hadn’t gone far, but it didn’t make sense. Why weren’t the woods this easy to find with Jeremy?
I raced inside anyway, gleefully crushing hard leaves under my feet. This time, I started kicking together piles of them in a path, jumping from stack to stack and relishing in the experience.
As I peered past the black trunks of the trees, I realized it was sunset. But that couldn’t be true, school had just ended half an hour ago. I hadn’t even had supper yet.
I backed out of the woods and when I blinked, the sun was back up, shining down brightly on me. I went back inside, examining the stark difference in the sky. When I looked to the left, outside the woods and into the open, it was sunshine. When I looked to the right, into the depths of forest, the sun cascaded yellow and orange through the dark, black trunks, just like a sunset.
I went back every day that week, and every day it was the same. It was always sunset in the woods, no matter if I went in the morning or afternoon. It was strange waking up on Saturday mornings and spending hours watching the sun frozen halfway down the horizon.
After about a month of spending nearly every day in the woods, I heard a laugh.
I think it was a laugh.
The sound was a whisper in the air and I could feel it gusting around me.
“Hello?” I called out.
Silence, just for a beat.
A round of giggles came from behind a nearby tree, but I couldn’t identify which one. It sounded like it was surrounding me. It was a guess, but I assumed it was little girl laughter. I had always wanted girl friends, so a spark of excitement shook through me.
“Hey, come on out!”
She didn’t say anything, but I heard footsteps take off and I bolted after them.
There was no path of shoes in the dirt, no overturned leaves being kicked through, nothing but the faint ghost of a breathless laugh.
“This isn’t funny,” I announced with a deep frown, clutching at my aching side.
The laughter stopped immediately.
I sucked in a deep breath.
My shadow was dark, I noticed. Much darker than it had ever been in the woods. The usually orange sky was fading fast, cold navy overtaking warm citrus colors.
“I’m going home,” I said. I don’t know why I did, I just had to let her know. “Play with me tomorrow.”
“Wait,” a girl’s voice.
I spun in a circle, unceremoniously slipping on some of those crisp leaves. I couldn’t see her.
“What?”
“Wanna see something neat?”
“Who are you,” I asked.
“A girl offering you something one last time. Wanna see something neat or not?”
I stood up and patted my skirt, dusting the dirt off.
“Show me.”
A small hand waved from behind a particularly rotten tree. I grinned and chased after the figure, darkness enveloping any discernible features; she was only a shape running ahead of me. Her voice was youthful and she was no taller than me, and I was not a large child.
We giggled in those little girl laughs as we went further and further in the deep thicket. The sunlight was nearly gone, I could barely make out my own feet as I chased after the girl.
“Where we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I groaned.
“Hush, we’re nearly there.”
I rolled my eyes, but obeyed.
“What’s your name?”
“Nearly there now, Faith.”
I slowly stopped myself, fear ebbing its way into my chest for the first time.
As if she felt my pause, she stood as still as the trees, unwavering in the growing winds. Her dress didn’t even flutter with the breeze like my skirt did.
“Why did you stop,” she asked in a strained voice. “Don’tcha wanna see? See the surprise?”
I took a step back, nearly fumbling over a thick root.
“My mother must want me home by now.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“You don’t know my mother.”
“Oh,” she sighed, her head dipping forward, long hair covering her face. “I know a lot more than you, Faith.”
She started laughing as she turned to face me, the soft sound morphing into an unrecognizable cackle.
It was so dark now, I couldn’t see much else but her. Her skin almost glittered, but there wasn’t any moonlight.
“How do you know my name?”
“You told me. You don’t remember?”
I shook my head, and though she wasn’t looking at me, somehow she saw it.
“Faith Brown. You have a bad memory. I told you I know more than you.”
The whistle of sharp gusts of air pierced my ears, her voice barely floating through the sound. My hands were sticky, cold and sticky.
“What’s your name? You know mine.” I asked again.
“You should go on home. Your mommy is really scared right now.” She said it so matter-of-factly, faint but sure.
I hated her voice, I wanted to hit her. I wanted to reach my fists into her long, ugly hair and pull it out of her face so I could spit in it. Never in my life had I ever felt so much vile, abysmal hatred for someone. It frightened me. Most of my thoughts were on my mother, though, so I didn’t pause to reflect on these realizations for too long.
I took off running in the opposite direction, praying I was heading the right way. I was sprinting like the fastest horse on the track, but somehow her laughter was right on my shoulder, cawing loudly inside my brain.
“Bye bye, Faith! Let’s play tomorrow.”
Again, I felt that prickling feeling of disdain. I nearly turned around and chased after her again, just to pummel her.
Instead, I focused on how the clearing was approaching. I ducked my head and let out a shaky breath of relief when I found myself out in the open.
Slowly, tentatively, I peered back at the woods, fully expecting to see her standing there.
It was so dark, I couldn’t see past the first couple of trees. They guarded the entrance, standing like ghouls with long, grotesque branches like bony fingers outstretched to me.
The walk back to the field was brisk; I was on edge, a growing knot weighing in my stomach that I wouldn’t make it home.
I had never been out so late. There wasn’t a cloud above to block moonlight, but even then, the moon was absent. I had no guide home, so I continued to trek in blackness, hoping I would see the streetlights soon.
I wondered if I would see her again—
A crushing grip yanked my shoulder, spinning me around and sending dirt flying as my shoes scraped the ground.
Large, strong hands shook me, and a white light blinded me. I was gone, I was dying in that moment, my soul fled my body.
“Calm down! I need you to stop screaming, honey. Stop, tell me your name.”
I heard a click and the light was much dimmer. I hadn’t realized I screamed at all.
My eyes adjusted, and I noticed the golden glitter of a badge.
“Faith Brown.”
He sighed, genuine relief in the motion.
“Let’s get you home, sweetheart.”
The night passed in a blur. I was holding his hand as we walked through the field. He said several things into the machine on his chest. My street was flashing with red and blue. My mom was smoking a cigarette on the porch. She shouted at me, but I didn’t hear a word until her icy fingers were digging into my arms, clutching me tight against her.
I slept in her bed that night, I think. I didn’t go to school that next Monday. I don’t think I went at all that week.
The next time I felt conscious, grounded back in reality, was when I accidentally pushed the glass of lemonade off the table. Shards went skittering across the kitchen floor, bouncing until they hit the walls.
“Faith!”
“Sorry, mother!” I bent down to start picking up the pieces when my mother grabbed my wrist.
“You dense little girl, don’t touch glass!” She hissed at me before her eyes softened. “Baby girl, it’s dangerous. I’ll clean it up, you — carefully — throw the bag outside. Can you do that?”
I nodded absently.
When my mother wrapped the glass in a towel and secured it in a waste bag, she sent me to the trash cans outside. They were in the backyard.
I hopped down the steps, the feeling of being out of the house already foreign. A breeze nearly made me jump.
Despite the wind being negligible, one of the bins tipped over.
A single brown leaf fell out, gliding through the air and landing right before my feet.
I don’t know how I knew, but it was obvious to me that this lead was from the woods. It fluttered at the ground a bit, the crisp corners pointing past the field, wanting me to follow. It was enticing me, urging me to just obey. I felt a strange pull in my chest, a physical tug that made my shoes scrape against the dirt and inch towards those cursed woods.
I stomped on the leaf, my teeth grinding together as I used my heel to shred it to pieces.
For a while, things seemed to be getting better. The wind didn’t call to me and I stopped having nightmares featuring a black and white figure. The girl. Jeremy even told the older boys to stop teasing me about it all.
I thought it was over.
A month had passed, maybe two. Church had finished and all us neighborhood kids were playing tag in the field. Maybe it was all the others there that made me feel safe enough to go with them.
An older girl from the middle school was it, and I scurried away from her, but I tripped on a long, pointed stick. I skidded to the dirt without an ounce of grace, dust and pebbles digging into my clothes and skin. I picked up the wooden branch and waved it around.
It was like a magnet, zeroing in on one specific direction: directly to the woods. Again, I felt that tug in my bones, my mind blank as I was almost roped in. It felt like my feet weren’t even leaving the ground, just that some unexplainable force was luring me in.
None of the other kids saw me. Or they did and didn’t care. I would rather believe the former.
I blinked.
I was back. I was in there, alone, and the sun was setting fast behind me. Dread coursed through me and I spun around, my grip taut on the stick in my hands. I clutched it to my chest, my heartbeat rising rapidly.
It was getting so dark so fast. It felt as if the blacker it got, the harder it was to breathe. Everything was so, so loud; my ears pounded, my shaky exhales were crashing waves, the rustling trees were windstorms.
The song was excruciating.
I strained my body to focus. The song—this ominous chanting that suddenly began, a crooning chorus of voices was somehow the faintest trace of sound and the most excruciatingly powerful racket possible.
I couldn’t describe it accurately if I tried. The most I could say was that it reminded me of the choir at church, but the emotions it evoked were polar opposites. There was no unified comfort, but an unrelenting hymn, slow and mournful.
With nimble steps, I inched away from the anthem, fearful of the voices stopping at hearing my footsteps.
Bright red lights exploded like fireworks.
I saw them all.
Vaguely, but undeniable. A hoard of people, all just as ghastly white as the first girl, their sinful song louder and closer. Their faces were hidden being long strands of hideous black hair. They all looked the same, a crowd of the same kin.
She stood at the front, closer than all the rest.
The burning in my throat was agonizing, bile threatening to spill out as she lifted her head. Her face, the blankest white I had ever seen, was empty save for two black holes where her eyes should have been, and a carnivorous mouth lined with rows and rows of almost-humanlike teeth.
Her face was flat, no curves or features anywhere but those haunting eyes. They were like craters, dark and empty. Still, I knew they were boring into my soul.
I was petrified. I wanted to run off as fast as I could. I couldn’t do it backwards, but I simply couldn’t look away from the swaying mass of people in front of me. I couldn’t imagine what they would do if I turned around.
I didn’t have time to make a choice on what to do next because she launched into action. She moved like a newborn animal, gangly yet purposeful, and she was heading straight for me.
She couldn’t catch me. That was all I knew.
I bolted, adrenaline carrying me with a strength I’d never have again. I was practically flying through the trees.
They were alive, leaning in and closing the gaps, making it harder for me to dart between them. Their branches scratched and nipped at my face and arms, but I could barely feel it.
“Faith, we need you at the communion!” She screeched behind me, dangerously close.
Her voice was loud, but the song from the crowd was fading. I was getting close to freedom and she knew it.
I heard her pounce and then I was slammed to the ground. Her body was light, but cold enough that where her hands touched me, the skin felt like I was soaking in an ice bath.
I couldn’t breathe, my lungs throbbing inside me. I was beyond afraid, my body acting in autopilot because my mind was mush.
I screamed, a deep, guttural shriek that surprised her. With a swift movement, I stabbed the wooden branch I still held into one of the black craters on her face and she fell back, hissing and howling like a feral creature.
I used the brief moment of distraction to shove the stake in deeper and run. I ran with all my might, the steady pounding in my ears protecting me from whatever curses she screamed after me.
My vision was going dark at the edges, my chest aflame with pricking pain building inside me. I was going down and I knew it, but I could see it then: the edge. With a final burst of speed, I catapulted myself out of the woods and as far as I could get.
I collapsed in the field.
Sometime later, my mother was shaking me to consciousness. I couldn’t move, but I bawled in her arms, scrapes and scratches riddling my body. When they changed me at the hospital, there were deep claw marks on my back.
Within two weeks, we moved. I lost a lot of my childhood. Outside of this period, I can only remember bits and pieces of what should have been joyful times. It took a long time for me to feel safe.
And I did. For a good while, I felt safe. I didn’t think of her or anything that happened for many years, the only reminder my scars on my back and the occasional flash of nightmares.
I was okay.
Until this morning.
My daughter, my darling little girl who gave me hope and a warm feeling of peace just by being near her, was coloring beside me as I finished something on my laptop.
I glanced down to her page and was nine years old again, looking right into the black abyss of two soul-sucking eyes above a sharp, dripping mouth.
“Baby,” I croaked, “baby, who is that?”
“Oh,” my daughter hummed. So blissfully unaware. “She’s a girl I met in the forest yesterday.”
I could feel every painstakingly difficult year of therapy slipping away from me. With a trembling hand, I ripped the page out of her notebook and crumbled it, ignoring her cries of protest.
We live nowhere near a forest. I can hear that song again.

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Hello everyone. I don’t know where to begin but as you can see by the title, it’s been pretty rough. It’s basically been downfall after downfall. This is pretty long so please bare with me. This week has been full of torment. To start off, I decided to go to a party with the remaining money I had left in my bank account. I really just wanted to cheer myself up as the past couple of months have been really hard. My two friends were going and we really just wanted a night of fun to get the summer started.
It started off pretty okay but as we were on our way there, my platform sandals broke and I had to walk barefoot in the middle of a pitch black forest. Dangerous, I know but it was a well known underground party that I go to all the time and luckily I didn’t scrape my feet or get any bites. During the night, the DJ kept messing up and people were starting to leave. People kept aggressively hitting on me and I started to feel uneasy. My friend then got the good idea of giving me her socks as I told her I wanted to leave early. I decided to go to my now ex-situationship’s house just to crash. He didn’t really want me there but the buses and train don’t run in my area until the morning so he was my last resort.
While I was going there, I almost got assaulted on the train. The only reason why I went in that specific cart was because I saw two police officers and only one other guy so I thought I was safe. I wanted to dose off a little as I was buzzed and extremely tired. After a couple stops, something told me to wake up and that’s when I saw the police weren’t there anymore and the other guy was walking towards me. I quickly gave him a death stare while putting my hands in my purse to make it seem like I had some type of weapon. He backed off a little until I realized he was unzipping his pants. At that moment I felt true terror and ran to the door. I was close to my stop and all I could do was stand in the corner while freaking out. I got to my stop and a lady started yelling “He was doing something in there!” and asked If I was okay. After some time I luckily arrived to my ex’s house and was totally out of it. My phone had died and all I wanted to do was sleep. I told him I didn’t want to do anything in terms of sex but he wouldn’t listen and he never does when I say no. At that point, I made up in my mind that I was never going to see him again.
I slowly ended things with him after that night. I was with him for nine months. He took my virginity and breadcrumbed me the entire time. I honestly think he was an evil man with bad intentions and I gave him benefit of the doubt even though he hid from me that he had a kid and an ex-wife. Plus he gave me an infection (I’m good now thank god). I feel like the most stupid person alive but he was my first and I honestly thought If I were to ever get into a relationship, I would be the one to have good boundaries but I guess not. I know better now. I was emotionally checked out of it for a long time as well.
So I went on hinge. I was getting ghosted left and right, up until I met this guy that I thought I hit it off with. He actually seemed to be willing to take me on a date and we were super excited about it. The day comes (which was yesterday morning) and he texted me saying he “partied too hard” and wouldn’t be able to make it. I said it was all good and we could reschedule but no response. That would’ve been my first date ever, in my life. Ya… The guy who took my virginity never took me on a date… Sad, I know.
Another thing is, I lost my job about almost a year ago and I’ve been looking ever since. Obviously to no luck but then about a month ago I basically got fake hired at this food service job. They gave me the offer on the spot during an interview and I started training about a week after but the second week rolled by and they gave me ZERO hours. I’ve been trying to contact them by calling and sending emails but they went completely AWOL. Now you’re probably wondering maybe I did something that could’ve caused this but honestly and truthfully, I didn’t cause any problems and was actually the most reserved person on the whole team. I’m very shy. Maybe they just didn’t see something in me I guess. So now I’m still looking.
On top of all this mess I’ve been struggling with my parents as they want me to go to college so badly. I’m not good at school at all. I have chronic ADHD and it’s hard for me to do things and no, this isn’t an excuse either. In High school, I never did my homework because it would take so long. One homework assignment from one subject would take all day. I specifically remember doing math homework one day because I felt such guilt from not being able to do my homework. I sat down and did it but my mind would constantly wander. It would take me a long time to concentrate. I would constantly have to re-read the questions and my answer. I’ve been trying to get help for myself but I don’t have money and my insurance isn’t good. It doesn’t cover psychiatrists and therapists that are for ADHD or autism. I need medication for my ADHD, depression and anxiety before I could even think about going to school.
All this to say, I haven’t been going out with friends or texting them as of recently. I feel too much shame in my life to have a good time anymore. This is just the tip of the iceberg as the past 3 years have been continuous hell. I feel like a waste of life and I seriously think about ending my life everyday. I have no one close to me. No one I can reach out to. I’m only trying to stay alive because I want to give my little brother a better life but this is just too hard. I have zero passion in life. I try new hobbies and get a little hopeful but then I start to feel empty, burnt out and crash. Every. Single. Time… I’m just in pure agony. I’m deeply sorry because I know for a fact I sound insufferable but there is undeniable pain here.

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The sign belongs to nearby massage parlor. It's super common for restaurants, especially within an ethnic community to drop off their menus at nearby businesses like hotels, shops, nail salons, massage parlors, etc. to advertise to the patrons of the other businesses. Their menu was visible in the photo and that's what lead people to believe that it was their sign. It all makes sense now since you would expect to tip a fair amount for a massage whereas you wouldn't expect to tip much for takeout food.
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I am in no way associated with this business, I have just seen this drama unfold over the past day.

One day I was hiking along a small mile long trail and it was an ordinary weekend and a nice sunny day. I knew the weather was going to be nice today so I decided to go for a hike and I drove to my nearest state park and once I got out of my car I smelled the nice fresh air of the outdoors and then I saw a small one mile trail and decided to go on it I walked a while on the trail and while I was walking on the trail I heard the peaceful sounds of the birds chirping and I saw the beautiful forest and the beauty of mother nature around me as I was walking near the end of the trail and I was greeted by a blocked off gravel path and a sign saying please do not go on this path hikers are not allowed on this path 500 dollar fine if caught walking on it.
I was curious when I saw this and I looked around to see If anyone was around me and I saw that no one was around me and I then jumped the fence that was blocking the gravel path I was finally walking on the forbidden gravel path and I got a rush out of it knowing I was doing something forbidden. On this so called forbidden path I looked around me to see if there was any park rangers I of course did not see any. I then kept walking on the gravel path and I was walking for a while and I kept seeing signs telling me to go back and stop walking on this path of course I ignored the signs and kept walking.
I looked at my clock and saw it was getting late and I was starting to get worried because the park is closing soon and the park rangers usually check the park to see if anyone is still in the park at closing time and If I got caught that means I would get fined 500 dollar so my paranoia made me to look around me to see if there were any park rangers around me there were none around and that gave me sigh of relief. I kept walking and it was really starting to get dark and I heavily searched my bag to see if I had a flash light I found a small dim flash light in my bag but it was bright enough to see around me but as I looked around to see I thought I had saw something in the corner of my eye of course it scared me a bit but I shrugged it off as my mind playing tricks on me. I then heard the wind howling and I thought I could hear something faint in the wind as I was listening.
I at first thought my mine was playing tricks on me and I kept listening I found out my mind was not playing tricks on me I was hearing voices in the wind and the voices were telling me to go back and to get off the forbidden path. I looked around to see that no one was there,was I hallucinating? I was walking and for a while I did not hear anything but then the wind started to howl again and I heard "please go back it's not safe". I was shaken up by this so I looked around me to see that no one was there I was for sure I heard someone. I then kept seeing stuff in the corner of my eye again and I thought I saw a ghostly figure for a second but every time I looked they were gone. I then once again started to hear the wind howling and I began to hear voices again and I kept hearing "go back go back get off the gravel path". At this point dawn was starting to come and the sky was starting to turn brighter and I saw something in the distance it was some sort of mansion me being the curious and adventurous I was happy to explore what ever this mansion was. I proceed to approach the mansion and as I was walking to it the wind began to howl very violently and the wind gust were very strong and it almost knocked me over my feet.
I began to hear "please go back go back do not go in there". I of course was too curious about the mansion to listen to what the voices were saying. I then opened the front door of the mansion and I walked in and saw that the place was old and was falling apart the wooden boards were rotting away and it smelled like mildew. I knew by the looks of this place it was abandoned and no one lived there. I was curious to explore this place so I walked around and I proceed to walk to the first room and I saw that there was a lot of holes in the wall and it looked torn apart, the bed was broken and the window was broken and I could tell that this place was old and rotting away. I then proceeded to the next room and I saw that there was symbols wrote with dried blood on the wall, this of course scared me bad and I jumped and I saw that there was rotting away skeletons of animals in this room, It looked like as if there was devil worshipers here. I then tried to walk to more rooms in this mansion and I saw more scary stuff. I saw that there was a warning wrote in dried blood on the walls saying whatever you do, do not go in the basement it's dangerous.
I then was curious to go in the basement of the mansion and I was the cat who could have died from their own curiosity. I then saw the door to the basement and I looked at it for a good 20 minutes, and after minutes I finally made up my mind to go open the basement door and go down there. I then proceeded to open the basement door and I then walked down the stairs and as I walked down the stairs the basement door slammed shut and I walked back up and tried to open the basement door I tried to open as hard as I could but it would not budge "shit I'm trapped in this basement and can't get out". I tried again to get the door to open I even tried pounding the door down but it did not work the door was locked shut.
I then gave up on trying to open the basement door and walked back down the stairs and I saw that the basement was huge and the was dried blood all over the walls It was crazy how much dried blood was on the walls and I was very scared I wanted to pound on the basement door again and get out of this place but I knew that would not work. I walked around some more around the basement and saw that there was more stairs it seemed as if the stairs went down to another floor. I proceeded to walk down the stairs and I got to where this floor was and I saw on this floor had a bit more dried blood on the wall then the previous floor I was on. I saw that this floor was bigger than the previous floor I was on and It was a massive room and in the corner of my eye I saw a figure of some sort and when I turned around it was not there I jump but then told myself that my mind was playing tricks on me because this basement was just so creepy.
I again saw that something was in the corner of my eye I looked around me fast and saw that no one was there. I kept walking around this floor and saw that it was full of furniture like very old stuff from what seemed to be from the 70s or 60s and they was a radio of some sort it only had AM on it and no FM. I thought to myself if I could turn on the radio but wondered if it still had worked so I pressed the button and surprised it turned on and starting working. All I heard at first was just static but then I kept listening and I could barely hear anything and I thought I heard something though the static but then I could finally hear something though the static and I hear what sounded like creepy voices in the static. I still could not hear it because there was still a lot of static on the radio and I tried to tune the radio to see if I could hear it more but nothing came out of it and I could still hear a lot of static but then after a few minutes I heard the voices again on the radio and I heard the voices louder this time and I could hear what they where saying and I heard a bone chilling sound coming from the radio a girl screaming "dad please help me I'm being tormented the beast is tormenting me please make it stop"!
My heart nearly stopped due to how scared I was. I saw that there was even more stairs that went down what seem like even another floor a 3rd floor even. I was curious and walked down the stairs and walked into the 3rd floor it even had the number 3 on it. I saw that this floor was not as big as the 2nd floor. I began to see that there was spiders on the wall but there was only of few of them on the walls and saw some more stuff it looked like there was some writing on the wall and it said the further you go down the worse it gets.
There were bricks on the walls of this floor and there was no wallpaper just bricks on the walls and I saw that there was a door to another room of some sort on this floor. I opened the door and saw that it was pitch black in this room and I walked into the room and could not see in the room so I got the flashlight from my bag and turned it on and it still was pitch black it's like this room was sucking any light away so I had to feel around the room but as I got walking around this room and feeling my way around I felt as if someone was behind me and I felt as if I was not alone in this room and the longer I stayed in the room the stronger the feeling got and tried to find my way out of the room because I felt as if someone was behind me and I felt as if someone was gently touching me and It got me scared but I then bolted and tried to find my way out of the room but could not for a few minutes and I then could hear a faint growl in my ear and I was running as fast I could and I finally found my way out of the room I was in. I slammed the door shut to the room I was in and I saw even more stairs that went down to another floor and ran down the stairs.
I was now on the 4th floor and saw that on the 4th floor there was cobwebs on the ceiling of the floor and spiders were more common than on the 3rd floor and there was more dried blood on the wall than the previous floors I was in. There was a lot more stuff on this floor and there was dining tables and chairs on this floor and it looks like as this was a restaurant from the 60s or 70s and I walked around the floor and there was cobwebs on the tables and chairs and spiders were crawling on the table but then I saw that there was a kitchen of some sort and I kept feeling as if something was behind me but the feeling was not that strong and I kept seeing stuff in the corner of my eye but when I turned I saw that nothing was there I realized that in the darker places that where less illuminated the feeling of something being behind me was there .
There were flickering lights in this place that seem as if they were about to die out. I somehow walked into a darker place in the floor and the feeling of something behind me was coming back. I felt as if something was lurking in this place and they lurked in the darker areas with less light. I saw that was of course more stairs that went down into the 5th floor. I was now in the 5th floor and holy crap this place was getting creepy there was a lot more cobwebs on this floor then there was on floor 4 and the spiders where now in big numbers and the spiders looked even bigger than before. This floor was even darker with less light. I saw that there was tables and chairs on the 5th floor just like the last one but they where on the tables but then as I looked away and looked back I saw that the chairs were now on the floor and broken for some reasons and I thought to myself this place has to be haunted. There less light bulbs that were on this floor than on the last floor and it was darker and there was less light.
Like I said in darker areas I felt as if someone was behind me and on this floor the feeling was stronger than on the last floor. I walked around and was in darker areas with less light and the feeling of someone behind me was getting stronger and stronger until I stopped walking and I listened closely and I could faintly hear a voice of some sort and it sounded creepy and I got scared and walked to a lighter area with more light and I saw something in the corner of my vision and then turned around to see a tall skinny shadow figures and it appeared to be afraid of the areas of the place with more light so I kept going around the place and saw more figures and I went into a darker area and something jumped out at me and tried to attack me and I ran to where a light bulb illumined the place and the figures stopped were scared off by the light of the light bulb and stopped attacking me because of the light.
I kept going down more floors and my god it felt like this thing was going down forever I was on the 15th floor when things really started getting bad the cobwebs where getting the point to where they are covering everything and spiders where so big to the point to where they are the size of the palm of my hand. I saw that there was little spiders in such massive numbers that something you could not see what they were because it was covered in so many spiders. On the 15th floor it was so dark that you could barely see in front of you the only reason I could see that there spiders everywhere was because there was only a few light bulbs on the floor that were dimly lit . The Odor on this floor was bad and it smelled like dead rotting corpses and so much dried blood on everything that it covered every square inch on what was on the floor and on the wall on everything and on everywhere.
I was standing under a dimly lit light and around me I would hear voices screaming "help me help I'm being tormented"! I then saw that around be where hundreds of glowing eyes around me but I felt as if I would be safe as long as if there was light around me. I stayed under the light bulb for until the eyes went away but then a few minutes later the light bulb above me went out and when that happened I knew I was in trouble and I bolted and I could not see in the dark so I bumped around everything and tripped and fell and as I fell something grabbed me and I could tell that this thing was big. It was dark and I could not see anything but I was in this what ever this thing was grip and I thrashed and tried to punch this thing but it was not budging I felt as if my life was coming to an end.
A stroke of luck happened and for some god only knows reason I escaped from what ever this thing was grip and ran as fast I could in the dark tripping over objects and then getting back up. I was in the dark and saw a dim light in the distance and I got closer to see it was a dimly lit light bulb I felt safe under this light bulb and the thing did not go near it. I went down more floors and on floor 18 is when some very scary stuff started happening at this point spiders where the size of cats and the cob webs where so thick that it was getting hard to walk through. I was getting attacked by spiders I was fighting them off it was getting to the point where I was getting overwhelmed by them. I found a baseball bat on the floor and used it to beat the spiders and kill them.
I heard screams everywhere and they were ear piercing. All I could hear was "I'm being tormented help"! I then realized that there was water on the floor about an inch of it. I kept walking around and I kept hearing the sloshing of water on the floor as I walked I tried to turn on my flashlight because it was dark but the darkness of the room was so bad that it sucked all the light away from the flash light. I was walking and a very nasty smell hit my nose, it was the smell of rotting corpses but the smell was very strong and I began to throw up and nearly passed out. I felt as this place I was in was filled with corpses and that was confirmed when I saw a very dim light in the distance and when I went to it I was hundreds of rotting corpses and some of them where in the very thick cobwebs hanging with web wrapped around them like mummies.
I looked down and saw that the so called inch of water was not water at all it was an inch of blood filled with maggots and flies swarming them by the thousands. I looked and saw a corpse and I kept staring at it and saw that it had long flowing blond hair and was wearing a pink backpack with yellow stars and had a purple shirt that said lets go tigers and that when it hit me like a truck and tears started flowing down my face this was my daughter she is dead and was smelly rotting corpse that mostly been mummified. My daughter was 16 when she went missing and her school mascot was a tiger and her name was Amy and she had a pink backpack with stars. I miss her so much and if she was alive by now she who have been an adult at the age of 18. I then look to see at her backpack to confirm if it was her and I saw the name Amy written on her backpack I confirmed that this was in fact my daughter. I kept digging in the backpack to see what was in it and found her phone it turned on with 45 percent battery and no password was on it.
I could no longer hold it in anymore and the tears flowing down my face become full blown sobbing. My daughter is just a mummified dead corpse. I took my daughters phone out of her backpack and put it in my pocket and as I was doing that is when I heard it a low pitched growl and a very creepy one and then I froze for a solid minute and then heard a another growl and I tried to be as quiet as I could and heard the sound of water sloshing around but that of course was not water but it was blood sloshing around. I kept hearing the blood sloshing as if something was moving around in it and my heart was pounding very hard and I felt as this was the end of me I then realized I was in this thing's nest and I was going to be the fly in the web.
I heard the sloshing again and it sounded like it was getting closer to me and I felt a warm draft over me and that when I booked it and ran I fast as I could and ran up the stairs that was closest to me. I ran to the other floors I was now at floor 17 and I knew the thing was chasing after me. I was now hyperventilating and heart pounding I could hear roaring at the stair well I knew I had to run up to floor 1 and bust the door down as hard as I could I kept running tripping over everything in the dark and dirty as hell and covered in blood. I then ran up to the stairwell that went to floor 16 and of tripped and fell while on the stairwell to floor 16 and busted my head and blacked out and woke up in a spiderweb. I open my eyes and saw I had passed out and I was back on floor 18.
I knew I was doomed and I would never be found down here I was going to be this thing's meal a few hours had passed I kept struggling and struggling and could not get out of the web. I felt a warm draft on me and I felt as if I was being stabbed this thing was digging into me with it's fangs I felt I was done for. The pain of the thing digging it's fangs in me was unbearable and I was screaming. The thing was sucking my blood until it was dry. I was there in that web for god knows how long it had to be a very long time because I was dehydrated and very hungry. I was very weak and could not move much and could barley move my limbs but for some reason I began to slowly fall out of the web and broke free from the web and I got out of the web. I began to walk slowly to the stairwell that lead to the 17th floor and I climbed up the stairs slowly and when I was up on the 17th floor I walked around the floor for a while and I saw a place I could hide in from the thing there was a door and I open and there was a glowing light in the room I opened and the light was a light blub glowing and turned and lit up the room and I saw that I was in luck because there was 2 bottles of water on the shelfs in the small room I was in and a small bag of trail mix that was month passed its expiration date. I put a chair in front of the door so the thing would not get in.
I happily ate the trail mix and drank the 2 bottles of water and I put my ear on the door to see if I hear anything and when it was ready to go. I did not hear anything when I was putting ear my ear on the door at first but then a few hours had passed, and I heard a sniffing sound a faint growl. I tried to be as quiet as I could and hoped the chair in the door made where the thing could not get in the room with me, and I was no longer weak because I drank the water and ate the trail mix. I heard banging on the door the thing was trying to get in and get me. I had to think fast, and I saw a trap door and I opened and crawled into it as fast as I could. I was inside vents now and crawling and I heard the thing break down the door, but it was too big to get in the vents I was crawling in.
I began to crawl faster and found an exit to the vents, and it was on floor 15. I was now on floor 15 and the vents for some reason just collapsed right as when I crawled out of them, and I could not get back into the vents to get away from the thing. I heard the sound of the thing getting up to the floor I was at, and I booked it as fast as I could and ran up the stairwell to floor 14. I ran up more floors and I'm now on floor 12 and I fell as if this thing is catching up to me and I ran I fast as I could and kept running until I reached floor 11 and at floor 11 I grab a knife on the table and I kept running until I got to floor 10 and then on floor 10 I fell into a huge hole that was on the floor and the wood on the floor was rotting and I fell back into floor 11. I was catch up by the thing and was in its grasp and struggled to get out of it grasp and I then stabbed it in both of its eyes and it let go of me and it was screeching in pain. I ran back into the 10th floor and went around the hole and then went up into the others floor and at floor 7 I could hear it getting closer to me again but kept running as fast as I could and heart pounding.
I few more floors left, and I could pound the door down and get out of the basement. I was running and finally got up to floor 1 and began to violently pound down the door that was the entrance to the basement and I pounded as hard I could and I had super human strength from the adrenalin and I could hear the thing coming up the floors so I did one last super hard pound on the door with all my strength and busted a hole in the door and walked out the door and at last I was no longer in the basement of this damn mansion. I then ran out of the mansion and was finally outside and I kept running on the gravel path as fast as I could and then for a while, I finally found the fenced I had jumped and got over it and was back on the small 1 mile trail and collapsed on the ground where people saw me drenched in blood.
I then woke up in the hospital and the doctor said I was lucky and almost died from severe blood loss and I realized I had my daughter's phone in my pocket and cops were in the hospital room where I was at. I also saw my wife there too and she said where were you I called the cops and your boss said you were not at work, and he then called cops and I went all over the city looking for you and stayed up and it was on the news of you going missing and I'm glad you're okay and you are alive. I told them everything of what happened I told about the thing in the basement of abandon mansion in the woods and I would never go back to that place.
My wife told me her story and she told me that she looked everywhere in town for me and her first thought I was at the bar with my friends but then saw I was not there she said it was getting dark and I had to be home to or she would call the cops and she said I did not answer the phone and she got worried and called the cops. The cops came and began to search for me, and days had passed, and they did not find me so a whole search group came and looked for me and she said she looked around the city and she tried to look for me at the small park near the house and did not find me.
She said a cop was at a state park and saw a passed out person on the ground at a 1 mile trail which was me and the ambulance came and picked me up and got me to the hospital and then a cop was at the hospital and realized it was me as I was waking up.
A few months had passed and I was diagnosed with ptsd and I told my therapist everything.

Hey Aaryn,
Good morning ☺️ just putting this here for h to see when you begin your daily Reddit run. Last night Liv, your mail lady, was on live for hours bashing you, talking about how u made her run you around to your tanning salon appointment( about your kratum use, how RUDE and disguting you and your mom were to her. How you only paid her $350 for your toes and hands even though she told you she doesn’t do feet, she talked about how u kept forcing her to go live with you while she did your nails and she felt very uncomfortable with that, she talked about how u were pretending to hit on her to make your ex girlfriend jealous, she talked about what you did to EJ and how u sent him disgusting, vile voice notes, she talked about how EJ wanted to surprise h and i were ungrateful because u wanted the surprise to come for Cory and NOT EJ, she talked about the voice notes u sent her and almost came close to telling the live what u texted her, she talked about how NASTY your mom was to her and how you and your mom BOTH have God complexes, she talked about how she had to tell u Jax could not come to the appointment with you because it was in her terms and conditions that she does not allow kids at her appointments, she talked about how u could not sit still throughout the whole appointment and she also talked about the okra you made for her.
THENNNNN…..
The minute someone told her that people from Reddit were watching and recording her and that you would probably doxx her the minute u caught wind of it she completely changed everything she said about you. You’re a “phenomenal mom,” you “just need some love,” “you have a kind heart and are just misunderstood,” you “just need someone in your life to tell you the truth” and the list goes on.
Anyone else that was on the live feel free to add anything else that two faced weirdo said 😏

I am on my second set of press on nails now and I love how they look— but I’m on day 4 and I can’t stop compulsively pulling up the edges of the nails. I’ve been gluing them back down but this is a problem I don’t have with gel from the salon. I bought some super strong NYK1 glue with a little brush after watching a lot of YouTube suggestions and it’s pretty strong, but I’m still able to pull them up. I find myself playing with them absent-mindedly in the car or while watching tv. Any tips for how to stop picking? Aside from will power??

Quick Summary:

1. Sara is back in this episode. It appears she’s staying at Colony House by Donna’s begrudging grace, Jim shows up asking her if her brother Nathan is still alive due to his conspiracy theory with Randall where they don’t believe things are actually occurring outside at night because no one can see it due to closed blinds/locked doors etc.
2. Boyd/Kenny? And the others decide to use the bile in a similar form to those of silver bullets. Their plan is to coat the ammo in the bile and then fire it from a safe distance.
3. It appears Elgin is not the only one who is being affected by dreams, Mari wakes up from a nightmare in this episode with burn marks after a monster grabs her and she sees Smiley filled with bugs/cicadas? They later check on Smiley IRL and he’s filled with the same bugs from her dream as well. Clearly the dreams are no longer just dreams and are beginning to have real world effects. Donna/UNCLEAR is frightened and or agitated by this. She implores Boyd/UNCLEAR to get rid of the corpse and burn it in the forest. The decision to sleep in shifts is made.
4. VictoJade/Tabitha discuss their findings and experiences as well. Jade is upset with Victor for not revealing that the symbols he sees are also written in the tunnels where the monsters sleep. Victor reveals that he has a set of pictures and drawings that he hid somewhere so he “wouldn’t have to remember”, he also refers to Fromville as his “home”.
5. A flashback clip occurs possibly as well with the introduction of a character named Eloise. This flashback is something related to Victor and his mother and Eloise who is a sister of his the night before everyone dies when he was a child. Victor bemoans that some of the pictures/drawings he hid were not his but someone else's, either his mothers or Eloises. He remarks that the pictures were hidden so "no one else would have to die". The clip unclearly ends with Victor asking "Eloise?" "Eloise?" hinting that she may have followed Victor's mother out into the night.
6. Victor and Jade and Tabitha discuss that memory of his further although context is lost in the wording. Victor states "I was supposed to take care of her" "But she was so scared that she ran" which seems to confirm that this was his sister who died as well alongside their mother the night Christopher betrayed everyone. A picture/drawing is shown of the towelighthouse/UNCLEAR and Victor states that's where his mother went that night "to save the children locked in the tower". Which children this is remains unclear.
7. Randall and Jim’s conspiracies come to a tilt and they decide to test their theories out. They discuss the idea of things not truly occurring as they’ve been told even the deaths of people at night as well. They seem to decide on taking a talisman and spending the night in the RV, Jim tells one of his children/UNCLEAR that he will be alright before heading out. Episode ends with them in the RV talking and someone cries for help repeatedly and loudly before something goes wrong and UNCLEAR says “new plan”

Link to subtitles: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ZFIOOIRw3ZPwQrClE5Y2muHrjpAMSMH/view

I am a newbie writer, I'd love to hear some criticism (I can imagine there's a lot) so please tell me what you think I did right and wrong.
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I pull my head away from the sink a second or so after I splash the cold water into my face, I blink a number of times as I reach down and turn the tap’s handle. I then grab a small towel and rub my face with it.
Hmm, that never wakes me up as much as I'd like to, I’m more awake than I was, which is a victory I suppose.
I turn and walk past the barely functional shower and the clean toilet, which isn’t too impressive till you see the rest of the outpost.
I open the door and walk out into the main room. The room’s somewhat divided into two, the front door is right in the middle of the wall, and to its right is the kitchen. Well, the kitchen might be giving too much credit, a few counters with a fridge, sink, and microwave. We did have a coffee maker till Baron got drunk and broke it, which left us with no more coffee and no more drinks as Cleo had us pour the rest of the alcohol so it wouldn’t happen again with something more important.
To the left of the door is a living room, an old orange sofa, which looks like it’s seen more combat than us, honestly I have no clue where Baron and Jakob found this bloody thing. We also have a lounge chair, also orange and also in the same state that the sofa is in. We have a small wooden coffee table between the sofa and our TV. It’s a small screen and it’s black and white but it works, mostly works, the machine is fine but, well, it’s held up by these four legs and I’ll just say it, those skinny chicken legs are not aging well, we’ve already nailed boards and pipes onto these legs as braces.
We have a bit of a bet going on about how long it’ll last, I’m giving the legs three months, and Baron’s doing the repairs and is giving about six months, Cleo better hopes it breaks within the week or she’s lost her money, and Jakob didn’t place a bet.
I turn around and close the bathroom door, as I do I get a view on this side of the room, three doors stand.
On the far left is the second biggest room in the outpost, only beaten by the main/common room, Baron and Jakob have that room, it’s about twice the size of the bathroom, and Jakob and Baron were just barely able to fit a double sized bed in there, although they lost the room for a desk or anything more a pair of small bedside cabinets.
In the middle of the three is the bathroom, again, pretty small, damaged shower, clean toilet.
On the far right is Cleo’s room, about the same size as the bathroom. She was able to get a desk and signal bed.
And of course, there’s the radio desk, packed just into the far right corner, just past Cleo’s door is the radio desk, it has a ton of radio equipment on it so we can get orders from HQ.
I turn around, walk a bit further over to the living area and sit down on the lounge chair, Baron is laying down on the sofa with his head turned to face the TV, and Cleo is preparing an MRE for herself, I don’t know how she can stomach those things.
Baron is a mountain of muscle, while incredibly strong he’s not the brightest bulb, still a lovely guy to be around. He’s currently wearing some old jeans and a turtleneck.
Cleo’s very strict and pretty reserved, she’s not shy, she just doesn’t talk unless she has something to say. Currently, she’s wearing some baggy green camo trousers and a brown tank top.
“How ya doing Milo?” Baron turns his head and asks.
“Hmm, fine I guess, you?” I reply and ask back,
“Fighting fit” He answers with a smile as he looks back at the TV. I look over to the TV to see what he’s watching, it’s some kind of mechanical show.
“Feeling homesick?” I sarcastically ask.
“As if” he laughed, “Hey, If I go back into mechanics then I want you to shoot me” he adds.
We both laugh at the joke. After we calm ourselves a bit he says “Anyway, I’m only watching it because it’s between this or that bloody ‘live at the capital’ with that, umm, what's-her-faces?”
“Sue Stone?” I answer.
“Aye that’s her” He snaps his fingers
“yeah, I see your point, both her and that entire show are horrible”
“The part that gets on my nerves is that it’s always on, we never get the signal for anything good here” he continues to rant and I can’t help but chuckle, it’s always a bit funny watching him get annoyed.
“Like that ‘Lies on the coast’ show, I mean that show got another season for god sake”
“Wait really?” He asks, turning a bit and starting to sit up.
“Yeah, it’s ridiculous” I answer.
He sighs and facepalms, “I wish you hadn’t told me that”
“Hmm?”
He sighs again and leans back into the sofa “That’s gone and ruined my mood”
I laugh as I stand up “Heh, sorry man, anyway, I’m off, any idea where Jakob is?”
“ umm, I think he’s on the porch ‘though he might have gone off for a walk or something” He answers.
I nod and walk off towards the cabin door and open the old door. I see Jakob as I open the door, he’s in his late twenties and has long black hair, and is wearing combat boots, black jeans, and a gray shirt, he normally has a knee-long leather jacket on but he isn’t wearing it currently. He’s sitting on a chair with his legs on the small metal table here on the porch, he’s reading a book.
“How are you?” I ask as I walk over, he looks up from the booms quickly.
“O-oh, I-I didn’t see you t-there” He speaks as he sits up more and takes his legs off the table, “and I’m good, you?”
He has a bit of a stutter, something he said he was born with, he’s tried to get rid of it, apparently to no avail.
“I’m fine” I answer as I sit down across from him. “What’ you reading there?” I ask as I reach over and grab one of the bottles of water on the table.
“Oh, it’s a S-strange man in a st-strange land” He answers, “It’s about a-a man who from Mars who c-comes to e-earth"
“Hmm, sounds interesting” I add as I uncap the bottle.
“It is! Err, w-would you like to borrow it af-after I’m done with it?”
“Sure!” I answer before taking a mouthful of the water, “Just tell me when you’ve finished it” I add.
“will do!”
And with that, I turn my head off and look out into the forest ahead of the cabin. I then look back over at Jakob. You know it's a shame, it’s always nice to speak with him yet he almost never speaks.
Let me correct that, he’s always happy to speak and always has something interesting to say, yet he almost never starts the conversation. I’ve had to guess it would stem from his past.
His past. His past is a bit of a mystery to me. I know he was once a slave to the Dominion, I know he and Baron escaped the Dominion together and I know they later joined the Freedom Fighters, I also think, but am in no way sure, that he’s a tribal.
Two main reasons, funnily, both of which also make up his role in the team.
For one, he’s a helluva sniper, he once killed a person from two thousand meters away. He also handles the hunting for our squad, getting fresh meat is fantastic when all you’ve only been eating MREs for months.
Second of all, he’s a skilled tracker, if he’s on someone’s trail then he’ll find them. There was this guy who used to be with the Freedom Fighter, but he turned traitor and used a bomb to kill a whole unit, and then Jakob was sent after him.
Jakob tracked him across the entire wasteland, he followed him north, all the way up to the ruins of those old-world cities of Calaye and that City of Lights
I had always thought places like these either weren’t real or were greatly exaggerated, but according to Jakob, they're real.
“Hey,” Jakob says, I look away from the forest and over to Jakob, “I w-was going to go on a-a hunt, wanna join?” He asks as he stands up.
I take a second to think before replying “Sure, that sounds fun” I answer as I get up
“Yeah, I h-have a pair of rifles in the c-car” He speaks as we start to walk off the porch, but then we hear a yell.
“Everyone! Here now” we both hear Cleo yell from inside. We both turn on the spot and charge into the cabin, pushing past the door.
We see Cleo sitting by the radio, Baron standing by her. “Incoming broadcast, directly from the Colonel! Get over here”
Jakob and I rush over, albeit with a lot less worry and a lot more interest.
Colonel Barnaby is the leader of the Freedom Fighters, not our founder, that was General Margaret. Officially she is still our leader, yet she went missing over three years ago, Colonel Barnaby has refused to take her position officially until he sees proof of her death.
We stand behind Cleo as she flips a few switches and turns a couple of dials, trying to get the best connection.
After a few moments we can hear a voice. “-Re you there, Sergeant Laidlaw?” His voice can be heard cutting through the static.
“Yes Colonel Barnaby, what seems to be the problem?” Cleo answers and asks.
“09-10?” He asks. A password.
Cleo turns her head towards a small open book on the desk, the book’s filled with a series of dates and names. What the Colonel asked was a date, with the day being brought down by one, and the month being brought up by one.
“01-31-09-26” She answers. Her answer is the date of birth of everyone in the squad, in days. All the dates are off by a few days, the amount depends on the current date, the amount to change by is listed in that book.
“Good, now Sergeant Laidlaw I have an important task for you and your squad” Jakob and Baron exchange a few glances at this news, “Are you familiar with the town of Pinkton?”
And there goes my excitement for this operation.
“A member of my squad is” She answers.
“Then I’ll let them fill you in on what the town is like, The more dead air the better” He mumbles the last bit, “Now listen, upon wolf street there is a warehouse, at 02:10 a shipment will be brought into it, I need you to go there and steal a crate with a serial code of ‘01-12-20-06’. Did you get that?”
“Warehouse on Wolf Street, get a crate, serial code ‘01-12-20-06’, got it” She answers as she grabs a pencil and starts jotting it down.
“Good, after receiving this crate I need you to bring it back to your base, a team will be ‘round to pick up at some point, understood?”
“Yes sir”
“On the other side,” He says as the line goes dead, leaving our squad alone again. A few moments of silence follow before Cleo turns in her chair and stands up.
“Baron, Jakob, go get your gear” She speaks, Jakob and Baron nod before quickly turning and rushing to their rooms.
She then turns to me and asks “You’re from Pinkton right? Tell me about it”
I sigh, “It’s the crown prince of rust belt towns, it peaked twenty years ago and has been on a cliff face of a decline since”.
“Without the sarcasm?” She follows.
I sigh again, “It's a small town, it used to be incredibly important as it has a port, and it has a railway going through it since the old world made it very important for getting resources from the islands to the mainland.”
“I assume that was the peak?”
“You’d be right” I continue “Pinkton is down a river, which limits the size of ships that can go there, when new rails were built to towns on the coast Pinkton fell out of favour. It won’t have much security and most people there are in their eighties so we won’t have to worry too much about noise as they’ll likely be deaf.”
“I see, well thanks, I’ll go get my gear, you go get yours” She states and turns off, going to her room to get ready.
I turn around and walk over to the couch, I kneel down and grab a suitcase from under it, my gear is stored in there. I pull it out and walk off to the bathroom to get ready.

As it suggests, trying to wrestle with this question as I got into both WF and Kelley, haven’t heard back from UNC yet (and I may not hear back before WF and Kelley’s response deadline this week). I’ve been in finance for the last 2 years, currently working as a portfolio analyst with the next logical step of portfolio manager if I stay in finance. So an MBA with a finance concentration at either school would be advantageous. Before that, I worked as a project and program manager for 6 years at an S&P500 company before trying something new. But I may go back to that if I can boost my salary more quickly, as I’m currently in the mindset of money over passions as I intend to start a family in the next 5 years. I live in Charlotte, NC and plan to forever ideally. I grew up in the Winston Salem area, so I feel my judgement is a little clouded with homer bias/some pride value towards going to an NC school like Wake. Assuming I don’t get into UNC, what would you guys pick?

17F, i started feeling a little n* about 30 or so minutes ago, and i figured i was just bored and getting in my head about it, so i spent the next 15/20 minutes taking my acrylic nails off, and i still don’t feel good. i’m laying in bed now, head propped up trying to watch youtube and i feel like garbage. it’s only 9:51pm and i have to wake up at 6am for my very last week of grade 12 and i am excited for my Drama class this week because it’s performance day on wednesday…anyways that was besides the point. i don’t feel good and idk why or what to do and i’m panicking. i don’t have any pepto or tums or ginger. pls if someone can help that would be amazing but please don’t suggest i eat or drink anything because i don’t have the stuff(incl. tea, crackers, etc.) i’m about 70% sure this is the usual random psychosomatic thing but that never takes away the fear that it’s not :(

I recently came across a post about an expat who participated in a night wedding. After reading the accounts I began to do research on my own. Not because I believe in any of that stuff. I'm a magician after all. Illusion is my bread and butter. And I can detect trickery better than most. Which in my line of work has its benefits. But old traditions are the best places to pick up new techniques. Old ways that are new to others that delight and even scare people. Because, if I can make them afraid. Make them look away. For even a second. I can pull off some astounding magic.
My gig at the cruise line was coming to an end as we neared the port of Shanghai. And for my last several shows, where I'd normally start to include my greatest tricks in order to leave a lasting impression. I developed a new act that I called "The Sneaky Bride", it involved a mannequin in a wedding dress, a beautiful train, veil, flowers on the ground - the whole nine yards some would say. The trick was that the bride would sneak bites as my assistants who are dressed as servers pass by with their trays.
I begin the trick by placing a mannequin center stage for all to see so that they know it's a dummy. I show them there are no holes, and the entire thing is solid. Then we dress it up and set the stage for a wedding. And with a bit of lighting, another assistant switches places with the mannequin and is being fed under the veil. We later changed it to more slight of hand techniques as the assistant complained she wasn't able to chew fast enough as the items of course have to get larger and larger for comedic effect.
At the end we even invited the unmarried men up to the stage and then threw out a fake bouquet, and watched them clamber over each other in good fun to catch it. The act was an instant hit and had the crowd roaring every night. Which was why I decided to take a firsthand look at the original, and see if there were any other staging techniques I could learn from this old tradition.
With some help from Bing and its ChatGPT features I was able to get a relatively good idea of where it was practiced. So I booked the next flight out to begin my quest for a real night wedding.
Upon arrival at my hotel, I asked the concierge for information about the local practice.
"Yes. I know of this one. We practice it often for children who were taken too early."
"But they are all scams?"
The concierge smiled, "In most cases the pouches mean no harm, and they're simply for families who want to provide peace for themselves and to complete a lasting tradition. Sometimes the dowries are quite lucrative as well, and it is the families who are scammed by those who go and collect these ghost wives as concubines. We call it a blue procession for the trail of ghosts the husband leaves behind wherever he goes." He leans in, "But between you and me? They're mostly all scams."
I laughed, and I can't stress this next part enough, tip your concierge! Which I did. "Thank you, and also. Do you know where I could get a good start on finding more information about these ghost dowries? Or even find one of these pouches myself?"
"The temple down this first street to the left, about half a kilometer, would be a good place to start. But finding a pouch is a bit more difficult as they pop up sporadically. However, if traditions are to be believed it is the pouch who chooses the spouse."
I thanked him again and began to make my way through the early morning rush toward the temple. The streets were lined with open markets full of food from local farmers, which were common in the morning in this part of the world. They would disappear before the afternoon and then return again to sell wares at night when it was cooler. It made the city feel as if it were breathing as the locals rose and ebbed outside with day and night.
On my way, I searched the ground and around alleys for loose pouches. But I had no such luck by the time I arrived at the temple. Large red pillars that were thicker than any tree I've personally had the pleasure of meeting held up the high ceiling. Inside, the locals were already starting to disperse as the work hours were amongst us. Which left me nearly alone in this temple at about 8:00 in the morning.
A monk or priest was kneeling on a mat in front of a wooden shrine, throwing pieces of wood in the shape of dumplings on the floor. I waited patiently for him to finish. Taking in the sights and the delicate features of the temple. When he rose I approached him.
"You don't speak English by any chance do you?"
He smiled.
"What about the middle tongue?" I asked in Mandarin.
"Oh," he seemed surprised. "Yes. How may I be of assistance?"
"What were you doing just now?"
He held out his hand and showed me two red wooden pieces that were, with closer inspection, in the shape of moons. "Jiaobei," he told me. "We use these to seek divine guidance."
"How does it work?"
The monk shows me the two sides, one was smooth and flat, the other side rounded. "You ask a question and then throw it on the ground. One block flat and one block round, means yes. Both blocks showing round means no. Or depending on the question. Anger from the Gods. Or crying in sadness as it is commonly known. And finally, both blocks showing flat means laughter. Which could mean a number of things." He hands them to me, "You throw it three times to get a better answer."
"I'm guessing if it's the same all three times, the answer is definitive?"
The monk nodded.
"Will I..."
"Ah ah ah, in silence."
I didn't want my first question to be too convoluted or difficult. So I kept it simple and asked if I was a good magician. Then I threw the Jiaobei on the floor. It clattered and rolled on its rounded back, showing two flat sides.
The monk smiled.
"That usually happens the first time anyone tries Jiaobei. But in my experience, it generally means you asked a pure question."
"What happens if I didn't ask a pure question and it came back as angry?"
"The gods will remember it. They will remember you."
"No bad first impression then huh," I whispered under my breath. "Okay. Do I need to throw it two more times or can I ask a different question?"
"You may ask a different question or throw it twice more."
"What is my name?" I threw it on the floor. And to my surprise, as the ends are pointed and difficult to balance, one of the damn things stood tall and erect.
The monk bowed to the pieces. "Truly you have been picked by the gods to be answered. Lijiao or a standing answer like this is uncommonly rare. The gods generally choose to laugh at a nonsensical question. And often get angry if you throw it two more times. And rarely do they ever answer ones asked aloud."
I bent forward, skeptical, though a temple this was, at how the thing worked. In my head I could only think that the switchboard guy was quick on his feet. But looking around I couldn't find any cameras. Though in this day an age, they're made smaller than a fly. So it was difficult to tell. I picked up the pieces, feeling for any sense of magnetism, but there were none.
I asked one last question before I left that day. I asked their gods, would I find the real deal? And I threw it on the ground three times. All three times it came up yes. But for two months I scoured the city, and the country side. And I did chance upon several pouches. Some were obviously scams as I watched each bag carefully before approaching. Especially noticeable are the ones in the city which would be laying on the sidewalk, filled with bills for people passing by. But I observed that if a local went to go pick it up, two or three men from around the corner would come and threaten him to put it back. But if a foreigner picked it up, an old man or woman would come and start calling them son before leading them away.
There were of course others that were genuinely following tradition. I chanced upon several of them and was married several times. But each one was playful almost. And performed by their parents in the day. Leaving me with several small bags of pocket change, a good dinner, as I went on my way.
During one of these fake night weddings I even saw a child playfully munching on a corn cob in the corner under one of the tables as I fed the effigy they constructed of my fake bride. Which was when I think I decided to call it quits. Believing that I'd never find the real deal. Although I did learn a lot as tradition can be translated by me into performance. Which helped me ground 'The Sneaky Bride' act further. All in all, this was time well spent.
My visa was coming to an end and I had mostly been enjoying the sights, the city, and their way of life. When on one the last day, as I was leaving from a faraway eatery that the concierge had recommended, that I saw a red pouch made of silk with a thick yarn around its throat, stuffed full of money. I looked around and didn't see a single person there, nothing except flat farmland and water gullies for miles.
Odd, I thought to myself, as it looked truly abandoned.
For a second I played with the idea of picking it up. Wondering if somehow a relative of the deceased would pop up magically next to me and I could change the world of magic by studying their technique. But I didn't want to spend my few hours chasing ghosts. I wanted to enjoy my time. So I kept walking.
I got back to the city and spent the remainder of my day eating and drinking, meeting new friends at the bar, newfound lads who I invited a hundred times to visit me in Melbourne one day. Who all agreed that if fate ever brought us back together we would drink until the sun rose. So yeah, I was fairly drunk when I got back to my hotel room, and didn't believe what I saw when I opened the door. It was a red pouch sitting on my coffee table.
"Someone's trying to play a trick on me," I mused. "They must have heard me talking at the bar." I circled the table studying the pouch. Any magician worth his smoke, likes a good bag. So there was no doubt to me that this was the same one I saw earlier. Which made me start putting two and two together. "It must be the concierge. He's the one who sent me out that far." I laughed and picked up the bag, even though I knew the rules. I opened it and thumbed through the bills. "It's much more than what I tipped him. Much more." Curious, I wondered what he would have done if I didn't return this to him. It must have been quite a few months worth of wages. I threw the bag up in the air and caught it as if I were juggling before I tossed it on my nightstand. "I'm going to let him sweat for a little bit and pretend I didn't find it tomorrow as I check out," I mused as I went to go take a shower.
I opened the door and felt the words stick to the roof of my mouth as the bag appeared on the counter next to the sink. I shot a glance back to the nightstand and indeed the bag I had just thrown on there was missing.
"This is a good fucking trick. That, or I'm drunker than I thought." I started questioning did I somehow fall asleep beforehand? Or walked into the bathroom and put it there as I mused my little scheme of making the concierge nervous at the lost pouch? Had I somehow in my drunken state done something without realizing it? No. That couldn't be it. I touched my chest to check my heart rate and put my fingers on my face. A bit flushed, but heart rate adequate. I was fine for the most part. Just drunk.
I looked at the pouch on the counter, and peered gingerly into the bathroom as if I've never stepped foot in one, before deciding to grab the bag and close the door. "Okay," I said loudly. "Whoever's doing this. Come on out." Of course no one appeared, not that I expected them to because the credo I lived by is that a good magician never reveals his trick.
"Okay, let's see how good you guys really are," I mused. Going over to my closet and placed the pouch on the shelf. Closing the door. Then I went back to the bathroom and opened the door. It was empty. I checked the nightstand drawer, mpty. I looked all over, and it was still mty. I breathed a sigh and went over to the closet door, "I guess you're just a bag after all." Except when I looked inside. MT.
I stumbled backwards and looked around, glancing at the ceiling corners in case someone had crawled up there. And even looked under the bed. But there was no one else here. I felt my chest tighten as I tried to make sense of what was happening. "Its got to be the walls I reasoned." And so for the next half hour I scoured the entire room with my hands, pushing, pressing, pulling anywhere and everywhere I could. Using all my years of experience to figure out what was going on. But there was nothing.
I couldn't stay in that room another minute so I rushed outside and nearly stepped on it! The bag! It was right at the foot of my doorstep.
My mind tried to wrap around how that was possible, "It's got to be a dupe. They've got more than one bag. I've been had, that has to be it. And the furniture inside, they have secret compartments. God, they really put a lot of effort into this," I laughed. "I have to know how this trick is done." So I opened the pouch and pulled out the note inside.
The notes generally contained their name, their current would-be age (she was 20 this year, older than most), what time they were born (8:07), a picture if they had one (she did), and how old they when they died (5). If the deceased were a bit older, perhaps a tidbit from their family is included about their personality. But most importantly, it always contained their address.
I looked at my watch, it was late and my flight was in the morning but perhaps I could still make it. So I gathered the rest of my things, my luggage, the mannequin for my act, and other bag of tricks in case I needed to go to the airport right after. "Come on," I yelled out loud to my pranksters. "Let's go see what other tricks you have up your sleeve."
I went down to the lobby and had the front desk call me a cab. I looked around for the concierge but he was nowhere to be found. So I left a note for him. And then left.
The cab drove until the city faded away. We were practically on the other side of the island by the time its tires skipped to a stop. I got out and knocked on the giant half circle doors of the address. I noticed that we were deep in the countryside. There were hardly any lights dotting the night.
I knocked several more times before I heard shuffling behind the door. And then it opened. An old man stood in front of me in his drawers.
"What do you want," he asked angrily. "Do you know what time it is?"
"I'm sorry for disturbing you at such a late hour. But," I pulled out the pouch. And his eyes widened up.
"Meju-eh. You're back." He looked at me up and down. "What are you supposed to be," he asked but then shook his head. "No, no. Come in. Come in, please."
"I don't have much time," I told him. "I have to leave in the morning."
"Sit, sit." He ushered me to a chair in the courtyard.
I placed the bag on the table next to it, "I have a flight in the morning, so if we're going to do this. We have to do it now."
Instead of fighting me, he nodded, "Yes. I agree. I don't have much time either. And Meju-eh is older than most ghost brides. The bull demon might not let her through his gets if she gets any older. And then she'll be a husbandless spinster for eternity." He ushered around, "We don't have many living relatives either. So it shouldn't be too troublesome to hurry this along." He called into the house and a young woman came out, "This is my granddaughter. Ah-ahn. Meju-eh's older sister. They were close as children."
Ah-ahn was quite beautiful. I almost couldn't take my eyes off of her.
"Go and start preparations and rouse anyone you can get a hold of. We must have the wedding tonight. Even if it isn't grand as I would like."
"Will we make it in time," I asked. "It's a lot of work for one person. Perhaps I could help?"
The old man nodded, "That's a good idea. But forgive me, I must retire for now. Or else have no energy for the wedding." He turned to his granddaughter, "Fetch me when the preparations are ready." As he left us alone in the courtyard.
"What can I do," I asked her.
"We're going to need flowers for decoration."
I pulled a rose out from behind her ear, "I happen to have a case of these on hand at all times." I put the flower in her hair.
She smiled, "Thank you."
"What else?"
"Um, we already have tables for family gatherings. There should be enough food in the freezers that we can just heat up. I need to call my aunt to come help. And wake up some of the kids. Also...we kind of need a statue of some sort, as a stand-in for my sister."
"Statue? I think I have just the thing."
Hours went by and it was the dead of the night, but watching all the people bustling around the courtyard, the kids in excited whispers, you'd never guess that all of us should have been sleeping. Soon the tables were set, the food was hot, even the decorations were strung, and I had procured my mannequin from my luggage and a few of the menfolk were putting it together inside the main living room.
Several times I found myself laughing and having a good time with the others, although chasing that hen made me look quite ridiculous, and several times I bumped into Ah-ahn and we would talk and exchange a few words. In the beginning she talked mostly about her sister. How she was troublesome as a child. Always hiding things. I told her about the pouch appearing and disappearing in my hotel. And we both had a good laugh. Eventually we talked about ourselves. I learned she wanted to get away from here, "To see the world," she told me. The more we talked the closer we got. I could feel it. Soon we were bumping into each other just to feel our bodies touch. But before anything else transpired the wedding preparations were complete.
The old man was retrieved from his bedroom and everyone gathered outside in the courtyard, looking into the main living room. There was a wooden shrine in the back of the room and the mannequin had been traditionally dressed. From an old box the grandfather retrieved several personal items that belonged to Meju. And I was then asked to enter the living room.
The grandfather said a few words, and then gave us his blessing. Ah-ahn handed me a bowl of sticky rice ball soup. I had been through this process before and knew what to do. I ate one of the pink balls and then went to go feed my new bride.
Now I've traveled with this mannequin for some time. Seen it at a dozen of my own shows. Slept with it in the room. Knew that it was in fact a dummy for all intents and purposes. However, as I started moving my spoon toward it. I swear I saw it's chest rise as if it were breathing.
I couldn't tell if it was from the alcohol ebbing away from earlier or a trick of the light. But even its shoulders looked softer than usual. My hand started shaking as it got closer to her mouth. It was like watching an out of body experience as the spoon inched under her veil. And then the CRUNCH. It scared the fucking shit out of me. I looked around hoping to see some kid in the corner playing a dumb joke. But there were none. And I didn't believe what I was seeing even as the veil started moving as her jaws chewed the sticky material back and forth.
"No way," I shook. "There's just no way." My hand was so close to the veil. "Oh God. Please. I have to know how this is done." I ripped off the veil.
Meju looked very much like her picture. But older. And then older. And older. As if her face was starting to rot away as it contorted. People behind me screamed. The lightbulbs we had strung popped. Kids were running around and the grandfather fell to the floor clutching his heart.
I backed away, the spoon clattering to the ground as I watched the mannequin crick and crack as its arms and legs bent in a tangled mess until it was walking on all fours!
The thing grabbed the bent down to the grandfather and started chewing!
I turned around and saw the other guests were piling out of the courtyard. The tables were upturned and only the dim crescent light of the moon bore down on us. Everyone was screaming trying to get out. I ran and bumped into Ah-ahn. She whirled terrified and then realized it was me. She yelled, "You never! Look at the bride before it's time!"
"I'm so sorry! I didn't know. I thought it was a trick!"
She grabbed her face, her nails leaving streaks behind as she clawed at her skin, "Now she's going to kill every living blood relative. And then you." Ah-ahn laughed manically. "She's going to torture you!"
The people kept pushing around us until we got separated. Her final words still ringing in my ears as I took to the dirt road outside and started running. I ran for nearly a mile before I spotted a cab sitting outside of someone's house. I banged on their door and then begged them to take me to the airport. Throwing at them all the money from the dowry.
When I arrived at the airport I hurried through the TSA. Relieved at the lights and normal looking people. I boarded my flight. Tapping my foot nervously the entire time, staring out the small squarish window as we prepared to take off. The sun was starting to rise as the engine roared. I took one last look at the island as we flew away. Still trying to catch my breath at what I had just caused.
My mind was reeling as I heard two knocking noises, they sounded oddly familiar, and for a second I thought that Meju had finished with her family and had somehow come boarded. But then I realized the noise was coming from my carry-on. I reached inside and pulled out two red shaped crescents that the Monk at the temple had given to me. And I realized that if I ever needed any form of divine guidance this was it.
So right there in the tiny aisle. I asked the gods if I had escaped and threw the Jiaobei.
No.
I asked the gods if I would be safe.
No.
I asked them would Meju kill me.
Both flat.
Both flat.
Both flat.
s

Pre-event post here
The Southern Imperial expedition met with a defending Khuzait force at a forested village on the harsh Khuzait frontier. The point of interest for both parties was a derelict ruined fortress, dating back both hundreds of years (and a much stronger Calradic Empire) ago. The value of the ruins was in its location; the trail through would serve as an excellent supply route for further Imperial incursions into the Khuzait heartlands. The Khan had foreseen all of this through his patience of course, and so a host of primarily tribesmen cavalry was dispatched to the old fortress under the command of a rising local clan leader. Empress Rhagaea's marshal Prince Ethynol was busy fighting his brother wars against the forces of both South and North empire, and as such the Empress took the opportunity to put a loyal Vaegir Guard in command, one of the few that escaped the suspicion and accusations that plagued the Emperor's Guard following Arenicos' demise. While placing a fiercely loyal warrior in command was a reasonable choice, many suspect this was also done to weaken the influence of Prince Ethynol, who the queen presumably fears the rising power of as he prepares for his royal marriage to Princess Ira.
Rhagaea's marshal wisely expected trickery from the Khuzaits, and was quickly rewarded for his foresight. The Khan's forces travelled through harsh, rocky terrain to attack the Imperials on the flanks, and a fight was soon found, the Khuzaits initially encircling a significant chunk of the Imperial force and inflicting heavy casualties. While the trapped Imperials fought tooth and nail in the nooks and tunnels of the ruins, the Imperial marshal succeeded in rallying his still free forces, regrouping on the forest edge before bravely charging once more into the fray to save their comrades in a signature display of legionary brotherhood.
The Imperials had learned that the tribesmen are not to be feared, but respected. And with this newfound resilience, a massive attempt to secure the ruins and save their brothers was launched, to great success. The full extent of the Imperial arsenal was on display, with crossbows boosted up to the walls by their fellow soldiers ending the life of many a steppe horse. With a brilliant display of combined arms tactics, the Imperial army was able to retake control of the ruins and save the trapped legionnaires.
This was far from the end of Imperial troubles, as the Khuzait host had mostly withdrawn and began pelting Imperial shields and heads with relentless hails of arrows, fired mostly from horseback and supported heavily by a small contingent of Khanate Lancers, some of the finest of the steppe. Numerous efforts to lure the Imperials out of the ruins were launched, including a brilliant ambush by Khuzait warriors hidden in the tall grass of the forest on a significant number of lost legionaries. Despite many small successes, the Khanate's forces could not successfully dislodge the Imperials from the strongly defendable ruins. Following a few excursions by Imperial forces against the wavering Khuzait forces, the Khanate was forced into launching a final all out assault on the ruins to avoid a mass desertion. With both sides one decisive strike away from victory, a frantic final fight broke out on the steps of the ruin fortress, with militia archers successfully giving the Imperials the knockout blow needed to fully rout the Khuzait host.
With a path now clear into Khuzait lands, the Khanate will now have to contend with regular Imperial raids as part of everyday life. To complicate matters even further, the forces of the Sultanate had also attacked in tandem with the Imperial army, but that is a story for another time (and post)...
​
In Meta Terms
The Southern Empire have defeated the Khuzaits!
The Khuzaits opened strongly, winning multiple rounds. After the Empire learned to fight with a heavily cavalry army, they were able to play to their strengths, coming back and winning hard fought rounds against the Khuzaits. The end of the battle was anyone's game, with the score being 1-1 in sets and 2-2 in rounds. Despite a strong Khuzait opening in the final round, they were eventually out manned by the empire's ranged and infantry.
Thank you to all who attended, both yesterday and today. We sincerely appreciate people sticking around through the server issues experienced yesterday (that were inflicted on us by a third party, now hopefully resolved), and its safe to say I speak for everyone when we were blown away with how smoothly today ran. The player count was fantastic for a one day in advance Sunday event, and it means a lot that people want to play so much they're willing to come at a different day.
Missed the event? Don't worry, we run them the first and third Saturday of every month, so check future sticky posts to stay informed!
Be sure to join our community Discord and grab your faction role to get in on the action, and go beyond merely playing in the event to building your character and legend around it. Participation in the Discord will likely earn you your own territory on the campaign map, which makes the eventual event for that castle all the more meaningful! If you are someone who only lurks these posts but never attends, I would genuinely like you to try the event out! If reading these summaries interests you, the experience is all the better when you're actually involved. Our community is very welcoming and has no sort of judgement based on player skill.
If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our module!
Be sure to leave any screenshots, comments, or stories from the event below!

Preface
Okay, I have a few questions -- Mother in law passed away suddenly yesterday. I am trying my best to make travel arrangements while my wife mourns. I am travelling from Halifax to Toronto, but my flights do not arrive until after midnight. My plan is to stay at a nearby hotel in Toronto for the night.
Problem 1 - Toronto to Sudbury
Next day, I will be waking up and looking for the most efficient way to get from Toronto to Sudbury with kids.. There are no car rentals, and if they do -- they do not allow for a one-way drop off. Bus appears the best way right now, 5 hours on the Ontario Northland...not the worst option.
If Successful in that approach...Problem 2
Because we are picking up a vehicle in Sudbury with intentions of driving it home..With the forest fires out there, would they pose a threat to our route? I see them popping up in Ontario and Quebec, anyone have any information about this?

The Hoax Story of Remarkable Testimony of a Buddhist monk in Myanmar (Burma) who came back to life a changed man!
Introduction The story that follows is simply a translation of a taped testimony from a man with a life-changing story. It is not an interview or a biography, but simply the words from the man himself. Different people react in different ways when they hear this story. Some are inspired, some skeptical, a few will mock and ridicule, while some others have even been filled with rage and anger, convinced these words are the ravings of a mad man or an elaborate deception. Some Christians have opposed the story simply because the radical and miraculous events described herein do not fit their feeble image of an Almighty God.
We were first made aware of this story from several Burmese church leaders who shared it with us. These leaders had looked into the story and had not found any suggestion of it being a hoax. It was with this in mind that we decided to step out and circulate the story. We do not do so for any monetary gain, or with a motivation of self-promotion. We just want to let the story speak for itself, and invite Christian believers to judge it according to Scripture. If God wants any part of it to be intended for His glory or to encourage His people, then we pray His Spirit will work in the hearts of the readers in those ways.
Some people have told us they think the monk in this story never actually died, but that he just lapsed into unconsciousness, and the things he saw and heard were part of a fever-driven hallucination. Whatever you think, the simple fact remains that the events of this story so radically transformed this man that his life took on a complete 180-degree shift after the events described below. He has fearlessly and boldly told his story at great personal cost, including imprisonment. He has been scorned by his relatives, friends and colleagues, and faced death threats for his unwillingness to compromise his message. What motivated this man to be willing to risk everything? Whether we believe him or not, his story is surely worth listening to and considering. In the cynical West many people demand hard evidence of such things, evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Can we absolutely guarantee, beyond doubt, that all of these things happened? No, we cannot. But we feel it is worth repeating this man's story in his own words so that readers can judge for themselves.
My Early Years Hello! My name is Athet Pyan Shinthaw Paulu. I am from the country of Myanmar. I would like to share with you my testimony of what happened to me, but first I would like to give some brief background information from my life growing up.
I was born in 1958 in the town of Bogale, on the Irrawaddy Delta area of southern Myanmar [formerly Burma]. My parents, who were devout Buddhists like most people in Myanmar, named me Thitpin [which means 'tree' in English]. Our lives were very simple where I grew up. At the age of 13 I left school and started working on a fishing boat. We caught fish and sometimes also shrimp from the numerous rivers and streams in the Irrawaddy area. At the age of 16 I became the leader of the boat. At this time I lived in Upper Mainmahlagyon Island [Mainmahlagyon means 'Beautiful Woman Island' in English], just north of Bogale where I was born. This place is about 100 miles southwest of Yangon [Rangoon], our nation's capitol city.
One day, when I was 17, we caught a large number of fish in our nets. Because of the many fish, a large crocodile was attracted to us. It followed our boat and tried to attack us. We were terrified so we frantically rowed our boats toward the riverbank as fast as we could. The crocodile followed us and smashed our boat with its tail. Although no one died in this incident, the attack greatly affected my life. I no longer wanted to fish. Our small boat sank because of the crocodile attack. We had to go home to our village that night on a passenger boat.
Not long after, his employers transferred my father to Yangon City [formerly spelt Rangoon]. At the age of 18 I was sent to a Buddhist monastery to be a novice monk. Most parents in Myanmar try to send their son into a Buddhist monastery, at least for a time, as it is considered a great honor to have a son serve in this way. We have been observing this custom for many hundreds of years.
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A Zealous Disciple of Buddha When I turned 19 years and 3 months old (in 1977), I became a normal monk. The senior monk at my monastery gave me a new Buddhist name, which is the custom in our country. I was now called U Nata Pannita Ashinthuriya. When we become a monk we no longer use the name given to us at birth by our parents. The name of the monastery I lived at is called Mandalay Kyaikasan Kyaing. The senior monk's name was called U Zadila Kyar Ni Kan Sayadaw [U Zadila is his title]. He was the most famous Buddhist monk in all of Myanmar at the time. Everyone knew who he was. He was widely honored by the people and respected as a great teacher. I say he "was" because in 1983 he suddenly died when he was involved in a fatal car accident. His death shocked everyone. At the time I had been a monk for six years.
I tried hard to be the best monk I could and to follow all the precepts of Buddhism. At one stage I moved to a cemetery where I lived and meditated continually. Some monks who really want to know the truths of Buddha do things like I did. Some move deep into the forests where they live a life of self-denial and poverty. I sought to deny my selfish thoughts and desires, to escape from sickness and suffering and to break free from the cycle of this world. At the cemetery I was not afraid of ghosts. I tried to attain such inner peace and self-realization that even when a mosquito landed on my arm I would let it bite me instead of brushing it off!
For years I strived to be the best monk I could and not to harm any living being. I studied the holy Buddhist teachings just like all my forefathers had done before me.
My life proceeded as a monk until I got very, very sick. I was in Mandalay at the time and had to be taken to the hospital for treatment. The doctors did some tests on me and told me I had both Yellow Fever and malaria at the same time! After about one month in the hospital I was getting worse. The doctors told me there was no chance for me to recover and discharged me to make arrangements to die.
This is a brief description of my past. I would now like to tell you some of the remarkable things that happened to me after this times...
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A Vision that Changed My Life Forever After I was discharged from the hospital I went back to the monastery where other monks cared for me. I grew weaker and weaker and was lapsing into unconsciousness. I learned later that I actually died for three days. My body decayed and stunk of death, and my heart stopped beating. My body was prepared for cremation and was put through traditional Buddhist purification rites.
Although I faded away in my body I remember my mind and spirit were fully alert. I was in a very, very powerful storm. A tremendous wind flattened the whole landscape until there were no trees or anything else standing, just a flat plain. I walked very fast along this plain for some time. There were no other people anywhere, I was all alone. After some time I crossed a river. On the other side of the river I saw a terrible, terrible lake of fire. In Buddhism we do not have a concept of a place like this. At first I was confused and didn't know it was hell until I saw Yama, the king of hell [Yama is the name ascribed to the King of Hell in numerous cultures throughout Asia]. His face looked like the face of a lion, his body was like a lion, but his legs were like a naga [serpent spirit]. He had a number of horns on his head. His face was very fierce, and I was extremely afraid. Trembling, I asked him his name. He replied, "I am the king of hell, the Destroyer."
The terrible, terrible lake of fire The king of hell told me to look into the lake of fire. I looked and I saw the saffron colored robes that Buddhist monks wear in Myanmar. I looked closer and saw the shaven head of a man. When I looked at the man's face I saw it was U Zadila Kyar Ni Kan Sayadaw [the famous monk who had died in a car accident in 1983]. I asked the king of hell why my former leader was confined to this lake of torment. I said, "Why is he in this lake of fire? He was a very good teacher. He even had a teaching tape called 'Are You a Man or a Dog?' which had helped thousands of people understand that their worth as humans is far greater than the animals." The king of hell replied, "Yes, he was a good teacher but he did not believe in Jesus Christ. That's why he is in hell."
I was told to look at another person who was in the fire. I saw a man with very long hair wrapped on the left hand side of his head. He was also wearing a robe. I asked the king of hell, "Who is this man?" He replied, "This is the one you worship: Gautama [Buddha]."
I was very disturbed to see Gautama in hell. I protested, "Gautama had good ethnics and good moral character, why is he suffering in this lake of fire?" The king of hell answered me, "It doesn't matter how good he was. He is in this place because he did not believe in the Eternal God."
I then saw another man who looked like he was wearing a soldier's uniform. He had a large wound on his chest. I asked, "Who is this man?" The king of hell said, "This is Aung San, the revolutionary leader of Myanmar." I was told, "Aung San is here because he persecuted and killed Christians, but mostly because he didn't believe in Jesus Christ." In Myanmar the people have a common saying, "Soldiers never die, they live on." I was told that the legions of hell have a saying "Soldiers never die, but they go to hell forever."
I looked and saw another man in the lake of fire. He was a very tall man and he was dressed in military armor. He was also holding a sword and a shield. This man had a wound on his forehead. This man was taller than any person I have ever seen. He was six times the length between a man's elbow and the tips of his fingers when he stretches his arm out straight, plus one span of a man's fingers when he spreads out his hand. The king of hell said, "This man's name is Goliath. He is in hell because he blasphemed the Eternal God and His servant David." I was confused because I didn't know who either Goliath or David were. The king of hell said, "Goliath is recorded in the Christian Bible. You don't know him now, but when you become a Christian you will know who he is."
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I was then taken to a place where I saw both rich and poor people preparing to eat their evening meals. I asked, "Who cooked the food for these people?" The king of hell replied, "The poor have to prepare their own food, but the rich people get others to cook for them." When the food had been prepared for the rich people they sat down to eat. As soon as they started a thick smoke came up. The rich people ate as fast as they could to ease their consciences. They were struggling to breath because of the smoke. They had to eat fast because they were fearful of losing their money. Their money is their god.
Another king of hell then came to me. I also saw a being whose job is to stoke the fires beneath the lake of fire, to keep it hot. This being asked me, "Are you going into the lake of fire too?" I replied, "No! I am only here to observe!" The appearance of this creature stoking the fire was very terrifying. He had ten horns on his head and a spear in his hand that had seven sharp blades coming from the end. The creature told me, "You are right. You came here just to observe. I cannot find your name here." He said, "You must now go back the way you came." He pointed me toward the desolate plain that I had first walked along before I came to the lake of fire.
The Road of Decision I walked a long time, until I was bleeding. I was hot and in great pain. Finally, after walking for about three hours I came to a wide road. I walked along this road for some time until I came to a fork. One road, going off to the left, was wide. A smaller road went off to the right hand side. There was a signpost at the fork saying that the road to the left was for those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The smaller road to the right was for believers in Jesus.
I was interested to see where the larger road led so I started down it. There were two men walking about 300 yards ahead of me. I tried to catch up with them so I could walk with them but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't catch them up, so I turned around and went back to the fork in the road. I continued to watch these two men as they walked down the road away from me. When they reached the end of the road they were suddenly stabbed. These two men cried out in great pain! I also cried out when I saw what happened to them! I realized the bigger road ended in great danger for those who traveled down it.
Looking into Heaven I started walking down the believers' road instead. After traveling for about one hour the surface of the road turned to pure gold. It was so pure that when I looked down I could see my own reflection perfectly. I then saw a man standing in front of me. He was wearing a white robe. I also heard beautiful singing. Oh, it was so beautiful and pure! It was much better and more meaningful than the worship we have in churches here on the earth. The man in the white robe asked me to walk with him. I asked him, "What is your name?" but he did not answer. After I asked his name six times the man answered, "I am the one who holds the key to heaven. Heaven is a very, very beautiful place. You cannot go there now but if you follow Jesus Christ you can go there after your life has finished on the earth." The man's name was Peter.
Peter then asked me to sit down and he showed me a place to the north. Peter said, "Look to the north and see God create man." I saw the Eternal God from a distance. God spoke to an angel, "Let us make man." The angel pleaded with God and said, "Please don't make man. He will do wrong and will grieve you." [In Burmese literally: "He will make you lose face."]. But God created a man named anyway. God blew on the man and the man came to life. He gave him the name "Adam". [Note: Buddhists do not believe in the Creation of the world or of man, so this experience had a significant impact on the monk].
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Sent Back with a New Name Then Peter said, "Now get up and go back to where you came from. Speak to the people who worship Buddha and who worship idols. Tell them they must go to hell if they don't change. Those who build temples and idols will also have to go to hell. Those who give offerings to the monks to earn merit for themselves with go to hell. All those who pray to the monks and call them 'Pra' [respectful title for monks] will go to hell. Those who chant and 'give life' to idols will go to hell. All those who don't believe in Jesus Christ will go to hell." Peter told me to go back to the earth and testify about the things I had seen. He also said, "You must speak in your new name. From now on you are to be called Athet Pyan Shinthaw Paulu ["Paul who Came Back to Life."].
I didn't want to go back. I wanted to go to heaven. Angels opened a book. First they looked for my childhood name (Thitpin) in the book, but they could not find it. They then looked for the name I had been given when he entered the Buddhist monk hood (U Nata Pannita Ashinthuriya) but it wasn't written in the book either. Then Peter said, "Your name is not written here, you must return and testify about Jesus to the Buddhist people."
I walked back along the gold road. Again I heard beautiful singing, the kind of which I have never heard before or since. Peter walked with me until the time I returned to the earth. He showed me a ladder that reached down from the heaven to the sky. The ladder didn't reach to the earth, but stopped in mid-air. On the ladder I saw many angels, some going up to heaven and some going down the ladder. They were very busy. I asked Peter, "Who are they?" Peter answered, "They are messengers of God. They are reporting to heaven the names of all those who believe in Jesus Christ and the names of those who don't believe." Peter then told me it was time to go back.
It is a Ghost! The next thing I was aware of was the sound of weeping. I heard my own mother cry out, "My son, why did you leave us now?" I also heard many other people weeping. I realized I was lying in a box. I started to move. My mother and father started shouting, "He is alive! He is alive!" Other people who were farther away did not believe my parents. I then placed my hands on the sides of the box and sat upright. Many people were struck with terror. They cried out, "It is a ghost!" and ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.
Those who remained were speechless and trembling. I noticed I was sitting in smelly liquid and body fluids, enough to fill about three and a half cups. This was liquid that had come out of my stomach and my insides while my body was lying in the coffin. This is why people knew I had indeed been dead. Inside the coffin there was a type of plastic sheet fixed to the wood. This sheet is placed there to retain a corpse's liquids, because many dead bodies release much fluid like mine did.
I learned later that I was just moments away from being cremated in the flames. In Myanmar people are placed in a coffin, the lid is then nailed shut, and the whole coffin is burned. When I came back to life my mother and father were being allowed to look at my body for the very last time. Moments later the lid of my coffin would have been nailed shut and I would have been cremated!
I immediately started to explain the things I had seen and heard. People were astonished. I told them about the men I had seen in the lake of fire, and told them that only the Christians know the truth, that our forefathers and us have been deceived for thousands of years! I told them everything we believe is a lie. The people were astonished because they knew what kind of a monk I had been and how zealous I had been for the teachings of Buddha.
In Myanmar when a person dies their name and age is written on the side of the coffin. When a monk dies, the monk's name, age and the number of years he has served as a monk are written on the side of the coffin. I had already been recorded as dead but as you can see, now I am alive!
Epilogue Since 'Paul who came back to life' experienced the above story he has remained a faithful witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Burmese pastors have told us that he had led hundreds of other monks to faith in Christ. His testimony is obviously very uncompromising. Because of that, his message has offended many people who cannot accept there is only one Way to Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. Despite great opposition, his experiences were so real to him that he has not wavered. After many years in the Buddhist monk hood, as a strict follower of Buddhist teachings, he immediately proclaimed the Gospel of Christ following his resurrection and exhorted other monks to forsake all false gods and follow Jesus Christ with all their hearts. Before the time of his sickness and death he had no exposure to Christianity at all. Everything he learned during those three days in the grave was new to his mind.
In a bid to get his message out to as many people as possible, this modern-day Lazarus began distributing audio and video cassette tapes with his story on them. The police and Buddhist authorities in Myanmar have done their utmost to gather these tapes up and destroy them. The testimony you have just read has been translated form one of those cassette tapes. We are told it is now quite dangerous for citizens of Myanmar to be in possession of these tapes.
His fearless testimony has landed him in prison at least once, where the authorities failed in their bid to silence him. Upon his release he continued to testify of the things he saw and heard. His current whereabouts are uncertain. One Burmese informant told us he is prison and may have been killed, while another informant was told he is now released from prison and is continuing his ministry.
Translated by: Asian Minorities Outreach P.O.Box 901 Palestine, TX 75802 U.S.A. E-Mail: monkst... u/yahoo.com Website: http://www.antioch.com.sg/mission/asianmo
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Dear Triplegem Members, The following message was posted to the NDE.com Website by someone called 'James' on 23rd July, 2000. (NDE = Near Death Experience). The Monk's story is identical. But the source is different. Details can be viewed at
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The message began with: "Buddhist Monk visits Hell" I believe this person died, body decay & rotten. He was then brought to those places by the LORD to show him some vision. <-------
This is taken from a mission paper "Northside Missions Update" Northside Christian Centre 31-61 McLeans Road Bundoora Victoria 3083 Australia
The same 'Monk's Story' followed. Then, exchange of interesting messages took place at the NDE.com Bulletin Board among NDE regulars, some of them are Christians, and finally, someone called 'Melvin', 'a Myanmar Buddhist', posted the following message and the discussion came to a close.
The fact that the same story has re-surfaced in another form (cassette), perhaps in a another country is a bit disturbing!
Best wishes to all our Triplegem members, MM Lwin
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I’m admittedly not a expert in nails, but I do like having a pedicure every once in a while. I went to a salon that is highly rated in our area. It’s extremely busy and basically doesn’t take walk-ins. Great reviews online. I checked out reviews and comments on our local community forum and booked a pedicure with someone who is highly recommended.
I had a little bit of gel still left on my toenails from a pedicure. I had done quite some time ago. The nail technician used a Dremel like device to remove the nail polish. I have never had this done before, and just assumed it was common now. She applied regular nail polish (not gel).
Six weeks later and I am noticing that my toenail is growing out really strangely. There is essentially a gap in my toenail between the cuticle, and where the toenail starts. It has separated from my toe.
A client of mine is an upper extremities surgeon (but nails - according to him - grow the same way regardless if they are on your hands or feet) and I asked him if I should be concerned about it.
He said that the technician very likely used too much of the Dremel on my nail and damage the nail bed below where the nail is. This could be pretty serious because it could cause ingrown, nails and infection, and that I should make a appointment with a podiatrist to get the entire nail removed so it can grow back safely.
I will say that it has been incredibly painful and it will take everything I can to make it to the appointment on Thursday.
Right now, I am trying to decide if I should reach out to the salon. I am a small business owner, and I don’t want to ravage them online with a review and pretty gruesome pictures without reaching out to them first. I’m trying to gauge if the Dremel use is normal , if they were being lazy, removing the polish, instead of soaking it off…. I’m just really confused as to how this could’ve happened.
If you have any experience or insight, I would love to hear it.