#if we are going with the Zero is Mourning Mother theory then this could be her most vulnerable state when she was Rose

[bioswear]

I’m sick with excitement

[bookishtheaterlover7]

WOO! Had to go through high or hell water, but a blessing in the form of the mysterious new friend 🎄 helped me get the info I need

Now... Let's drag this pretentious bitch through the mud again, shall we..?

For starters, let's admire the "bride"😜

Well, well... They actually made the Wicked Witch of the East (West is Elphaba, I will not drag her with this bitch) look good. Even 👸 said she actually liked the lipstick and wearing a good outfit, covering what everyone has already seen too much of, and choosing black, to mourn her lost Instagram followers? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

And what is with that position?! She also hates the little bow on the dress, it's indicative of Albitch's Lolita personality (in my words, AS IF THE BITCH NEEDED TO REMIND EVERYONE). And those cold black eyes 😆 What is with the bow below? Most people would have the bow at the waist! (I told her that Albitch doesn't have curves to accentuate 🙃)

👸 is being a savage today and I'm loving it!!!

Honestly, she's right, as always 😆 and the thing with Albitch's stupid ass position it kinda reminds me of Cinderella's step sisters 🤭

And she actually wears something other than crop tops?!😵 And really? A babydoll dress? Could you be anymore obvious, Albitch?!

And one last thing... FUCKING FIX YOUR POSITIONS, YOU WANNABE!!!

Onto the topic of Chris...

Their rings don't fucking match! What married couple doesn't have matching rings?! This isn't the 1800s where only the bride wears the ring. Both husband and wife, are supposed to have a ring. They might not wear it all the time, but they do have rings! But these two? You put their photos right next to each other, and it looks like someone told them to each buy a ring without knowing what the other even looked like 🤭☕

His is some form of gold. Still doesn't fit... And hers, are silver, dull and fucking loose!!!

Sidebar~

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Thank you 👸 for showing me this vid, I needed that laugh 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Albitch, do you seriously don't know what to do with your hands? With all your slutty posts, I thought you'd be an expert by now 🤭 I guess that's why you never show them in pictures you post...

And another thing. This goes to all of the people who thought she's hiding because she's pregnant...

DOES SHE LOOK REMOTELY PREGNANT TO YOU?! YOU'RE FUCKING DELULU!!!

And we're back to Chris...

Yeah those wedding rings are seriously not matching. And no matter how you spin it, there's absolutely zero reason for those two to not match. Unless neither knew what the other bought in which case...

THEY'RE EXPOSING THEMSELVES!!!!

Just like how Albitch appearing without Chris only confirms our suspicions, that he's in MA, with his family, DEFINITELY WITHOUT HIS LOVING NEW BRIDE 😁

Now, isn't that just couple goals... 🙄

I mean Dodger will actually have a happy Thanksgiving this year, because his Daddy would actually smell nice and not have his wicked Step-Mother

Oh, I forgot! 👸 rewatched Chris' NYCC panel, and at 10:14 of the video...

She told me, it's really hard to notice, and I didn't but after two tries I did too, that Chris mentions that he has to use treats to get Dodger to come near him, because, "sometimes stuff happens"...

I'm sorry, but WHAT STUFF HAPPENED THAT MAKES DODGER NOT WANT TO BE NEAR YOU, CHRISTOPHER?!

I know it sounds like a stretch, and probably a major conspiracy theory. But come on! Dodger is the least shy dog on the internet! He loves new friends, in dog and human form.

And he's a dog who, like his Dad, loves to show affection, and receive it. There's no way, Dodger would avoid people, unless, and my dog is like this, they've had a bad experience with that person, and they don't trust them. Even just the scent might have them stay away. 🤔🧐

TL;DR

🎄 is an angel sent from the heavens to have helped me. 👸 is SAVAGE today with the sick burns. Albitch looks decent, but her positions, and the fact that literally EVERYTHING but the ring shines is another Red Flag 🚩(we're about to run out of room for these flags). Chris and her have rings that don't fucking match. Dodger might be having a happy Thanksgiving because his wicked Step-Mother is as far from MA as she can be (Green card, what? She doesn't know her🤭)

Oh, and...

Happy Thanksgiving to those that celebrate it 😁🍗

[terramythos]

My liveblog/commentary on October Daye #11 "The Brightest Fell" or "Friendship ended with Sylvester Torquill. Now SIMON Torquill is my best friend"

God if you told me that's a sentence I'd write when I read book 1 I'd call you fucking insane. We had this whole Cain and Abel thing going and Seanan McGuire had to go be a GOOD WRITER and make them COMPLEX CHARACTERS and shit.

Also featuring a "Resurrect Your Gays" novella at the end so.. that's nice

-Wow, this opens with a story so far section and everything 👀

-who would be like "gee the October daye series sounds interesting. Let's start with book 11"

-omfg The Luidaeg singing Poor Unfortunate Souls. Fucking hell yes.

*stares at my vampire crack theory* *stares at that line* *stares at the camera*

-(To be fair, it does parallel when Simon showed up in book 8, which is probably the actual intent, but uhhh)

-then AGAIN, half the foreshadowing lines in this series had double meanings in context

-Amandine calling Simon "your father" oh oof.

-oh my god Amandine is AWFUL. Jesus christ. Insults everyone in the room then kidnaps 2 people and just strolls out. This puts Tybalt, one of the more OP allies, out of commission for like the whole book lol

-Definitely Impossible Quest: find this character that disappeared over 100 years ago who Simon spent the last century committing misc atrocities to find

-This does lead me to wonder what motivated Amandine to show up suddenly and force October to find August. Is she just unstable/crazy as has been implied, or is it something more?

GOD shes awful!

-So oh boy we are actually waking up Simon! I'm glad we are getting more development for him cause holy crap he's an interesting gray morality character.

-Sylvester using the same binding spell Evening used on October in book 1, but this time to keep Simon from hurting October, sure draws some.. uh.. interesting parallels.

👀

-Amandine shows up again and is just fucking AWFUL. I'm trying to figure out if she has any real sympathetic traits. This is the first book she really shows up as a character out of flashbacks and the trippy shit in book 4.

- "Oh yeah Toby the reason I abused you and twisted your blood human as a kid was I wanted to mourn the daughter who disappeared and then let you die asap" like. Yikes

-Simon, established as an Arch Villain just being an awkward dad (at least toward October) is interesting. I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

-oh hey saving the pixies in book 5 actually set up a Thing in this one. Huh.

-Surprise that random pixie you saved in book 5 is relevant and a full fledged character now.

-The Luidaeg is a sympathetic character and a consistent ally in the series but BOY does she have her moments. Egads. (Quentin, who adores her, was NOT amused. We'll see how that shakes out...)

The Luidaeg just.. resurrecting an extinct race here. No big deal. I'm sure this has zero future implications.

-oh fuck the Babylon Road is back. Oh shit book 3 vibes. Oh shit

-lmao they literally end up in Blind Michael's lands. Just fuck me up

-ok theres a line that basically implies Blind Michael wasn't even that bad of a guy at one point, that he did The Ride with the best of intentions and for the life of me I am trying to figure out what they mean by that

-also intentional parallel between Blind Michael and Simon with the whole "best of intentions" thing.. Simon started as like, the arch villain. And now look where we are. So what is that implying about Blind Michael? 🤔

-I mean Blind Michael is the closest this series has come to a Dark Lord character. He was fucking awful. I'm interested to see if we are going to explore from a different angle?

-Goddamn world tour here showing up in Annwn.

-Oh duchess Riordan.. she's so pleasant. I'm glad we get to see what the fuck she's been up to since being trapped there

-Oh fuck they found Officer Thornton. He is not Well. I remember speculating what we were going to do with that plot thread lol

Are you FUCKING kidding me

-That was book SEVEN. I fucking REMEMBER that part. August was a fucking throwaway background character??? Chekhov's missing sibling?

-And it was intentional because of the door thing! She was described in a weird amount of detail for a background character! What the fuck!

-AAAND we found August. And the first thing she did was attack and basically turn October almost human. Whoops.

-And she doesn't recognize Simon. Her father. Because the Luidaeg's price was her way "home". Which includes Simon. Yikes

-omg Simon's magic finally smells like it does in flashbacks before he got corrupted. Smoke and mulled cider. Maybe I'm kinda sappy but I like that that paralleled the whole redemption arc thing

;____; FUCK dude

-October accidentally makes herself almost entirely human to save Simon. Whoopsie daisy!

FUCK DUDE ;______; full redemption arc shit there I'm gonna cry

-OK so I'm inserting this after finishing the book. And I realize this sounds like a MAJOR "not as much of an asshole as you could have been" award. But Simon had NO reason to treat Toby well. And he certainly did not in the brief glance of him in the book 1 prologue. That's changed by his second appearance (book 8). She's a changeling (always seen as inferior in Fae society) and she's the bastard child of his wife. He has every reason to treat her like shit. Yet he doesn't. He seems to want to be a father figure for her, even though she isn't really his blood related daughter, and this book reinforces that attitude. He even gives up things he wants--on multiple occasions--in order to save October, simply because he wants to. Compare him to his wife, October's actual biological mother, someone who literally created her as an expendable coping mechanism and resents the fact she's still alive? Despite everything he is WAY more of a parent to her. Found family sure is a thing in this series, huh.

-i like how instead of going all emo that she turned basically human October's just like "oh yeah I was raised in a street gang" and beats the absolute SHIT out of August

-Simon: uh excuse me did you just hit my daughter in the back of the head with a CLUB

October: she'll be fine

Well SHIT. The other shoe dropped, but not how I expected it.

-Like Simon genuinely redeemed himself, saving both August AND October despite everything. And he just sacrificed all of it. That was the final price of redemption for him. Yikes. YIKES. Like I knew it wouldn't be that easy, but this SUCKS.

-And this basically states that he wont be back to normal until fucking Oberon returns. I know the series has been leading up to that but... when the fuck. That seems like it would be the endgame.

-this is somehow worse than killing him off. How the fuck.

-August might have some redeeming traits. Shes an asshole but she is genuinely distressed when she realizes what Amandine did to October. Amandine? I'm pretty sure theres nothing to redeem her at this point. Shes fucking terrible.

-Jazz and Tybalt come back.. completely traumatized. Yeah. Ok. This entire last third is just complete despair I guess.

And award for "bleakest ending in the series" goes to...

-i think "The Brightest Fell" is the most fitting title in the series. It works on so many levels and for multiple characters. Especially in the context of the Shakespeare quote.

-i have.. thoughts. I think I'm going to do a compilation of said thoughts when I finish the next book and am officially caught up.

For now, there is also a novella @ the end so I will read that!

-"Of Things Unknown" (the novella) can basically be summarized by:

It's cool to get April's perspective! And some good old fashioned "resurrect your gays" on top of it.

-The Luidaeg: hey toby you know how you brought me back to life? You probably should not have been able to do that. You probably should not make a habit of raising the dead.

Toby: *resurrects like 5 characters who got killed off in book 2*

The Luidaeg: *breaking down the door* What the FUCK did I just say

-I am sure that January (a fucking month name) being resurrected has absolutely no future implications whatsoever :')

-Oh god theres one book left then I'm caught up. At least the novella softened the gut punch that was this book a little bit.

[yyh-revival]

Alot of people draw parallels between Kurama and Kurapika, Hiei and Killua, Yusuke and Gon, Kuwabara and Leorio But no one comments on how Karasu is this weird hybrid of Ilumi and Hisoka. ( Also Sensui and Chrollo)

Wish I could help you there, but I only saw I think two seasons? Maybe one season. *shrugs* I could never get into Hunter x Hunter. I have a few theories for why, I think, but it’s all super subjective. One of my friends is the exact opposite, obsessed with HxH and unable to enjoy Yu Yu Hakusho.

If you are a fan of HxH, I strongly advise you don’t read this. These are my personal opinions on why I cannot stand the show, not a detailed analysis of the show itself or objective view of its merit. Will be under cut.

Also I am sleep deprived and potentially tipsy so this will likely not be coherent. *finger guns*

Anyway, for me, HxH always felt… too on the nose? Too Naruto-like, in a way? Here, meet Gon, he’s a super nice and friendly dude, but oh no, he has a tragic past because his dad is missing… And now he wants to be just like his dad, who is missing, so why is he emulating a dude he doesn’t know? And here, meet Killua, he’s a psychopath and he’s like 10. Instead of getting this kid a therapist the older characters around him are going to encourage him to go kill people. Oh yes, these children are also murderers. Meet Kurapika, the Kurama of the group, who is also a bishie, is low-key scary, intelligent, caring, and also has a tragic past! Yay… And Leorio… I confess I don’t know shit about him. But he probably has a tragic past.

Okay, I am probably being too harsh on this show. I know it’s beloved by many people. But the constant pushing of “tragic!! So sad!!” and “child murder! Yay!” Is just not my cup of tea. 

YYH did this way better, in my opinion. The tragedy is there, but it’s layered on slowly. Hiei, who arguably has one of the most tragic childhoods a shonen character ever experienced, doesn’t actually tell us what happened to him until the show is almost over. We get to learn who he is, what makes him tick, we get to love him, ponder about his past, get invested. Then we are given the sad. But HxH is like Naruto in the fact that it just shoves it into our face, as if to say, “hey, this character had a bad childhood, you should feel sorry for them and love them.” I just hate that. 

And Gon… that friendly optimism is just… weird? He feels 2-d to me, not like a real child. Whereas the imperfect Yusuke acts exactly as you’d expect a child in his position to act. He has daddy issues because he never had a father. He has issues with authority because his mother was awful and he never felt safe or comforted by the adults around him. He gravitates towards male role models and at the same time rejects them. He respects only one authority, Genkai, because she is the first adult who taught him what he found useful. His kindness, his empathy, all that is earned. When Yusuke tells Genkai he cares about her, when he cries over her death, we believe it and we feel it, because we saw what he was like when he didn’t care, when he didn’t have an adult to turn to. It’s like a child that had been neglected all his life who was suddenly thrust into a foster home or an orphanage where one cranky lady is done with life, so she’s honest and raw and doesn’t throw platitudes into his face, and he respects that. He gravitates to it the same way 9th grade students do to the teacher who uses swear words in class and isn’t afraid to show the Romeo and Juliet movie that has the *gasp* boobie in it. His relationship with Genkai is realistic and earned, and genuine like crazy, and when he mourns her, the first and only adult he respected, loved, and felt safe with, we all mourn with him…

But Gon? I don’t know. He just put me off from the start. He doesn’t seem to have a reason for being so damn friendly. He doesn’t seem to act like a normal human being at all. He’s just this weird 2-d cartoon that tries to kill with kindness and be just like his missing dad instead of, ya know, doing the realistic thing and having a complicated relationship with him. Like, Yusuke doesn’t hate Atsuko. But he sure does blame her for lots of things. I can interject my own childhood here, because my feelings toward family are also complicated. I know the “missing parent” thing really well because my parents lived in a different county for half of my childhood, and I can tell you, while I understood why they did it, and loved them, and appreciated with all my heart the sacrifices they made… I still did, and still do, blame them for robbing me of a normal childhood. Of robbing me of a relationship with them. Of robbing me of that mother-daughter best friend dynamic, of being able to tell them all my secrets and feel like they’re part of my life and not just distant parental figures I respect and love the way the religious love and respect their gods. And Yusuke is the same. His relationships with all the adults in his life, even some of the other kids, are complicated and layered and realistic. He knows his mother had a raw dealing having him at what, 15? But he also blames her for not doing more… Hiei, how does he feel, knowing that his mother died, instead of leaving the Glacier Village during her pregnancy or right after birth to go look for him? How does he feel knowing she stayed there, and died there? It wasn’t her fault. She was heartbroken, she was exhausted from giving birth, and she was weak and scared and alone… it’s even implied she committed suicide. And if she did, don’t you think Hiei might still feel complicated about it? Don’t you think he might feel like she should have been stronger, for him, for this small child that didn’t deserve his fate? She should have lived and left the village and searched for him! She should have looked even if she knew he was dead, if nothing else then to bury him! That’s the sort of thoughts I bet once ran through his mind…

But Gon? Nothing. Just… love for mom and idealizing dad. It’s boring, unrealistic, and I hate it.

Killua, my friend’s favorite shonen character (if not favorite anime character) of all time is literally one of my least favorite, and the only character I might have liked, Kurapika, was clearly ripping off of Kurama, whip and all included. So I just could never finish the show.

As for the Karasu question, technically, he came first, so those other characters are based on him. But from what I did actually see of Hisoka… he’s like an evil pedo (right?? I heard something like that??) clown. That’s what he is. How is he threatening? This isn’t even a rhetorical question. Creepy, maybe. But I’d just feel slightly uneased by him and then call the police if he came near me. If Karasu had his eyes on me like he did on Kurama, I’d probably shit my pants, let’s be real. 

Karasu was a sadist. He was thrilled by the “intimacy between murderer and victim.” And the scariest shit of all? You can sorta understand him. When you murder someone, you are the only person in the world to see what happens to them. You have complete control over that person. You are their god, deciding if they are worthy of life or death. It’s an urge you can theorize about, can talk about, can even understand to a degree. But Hisoka? He uh, wears clown clothes and chases Gon? Or something? He makes scary faces? Karasu doesn’t have to even show his face to be terrifying. He just has to talk about his hobbies and his beliefs. Hell, the moment she shows up you feel something is up. I saw Hisoka like, at least 10 times and I still don’t know shit bout him. Karasu had like, 3-4 speaking scenes and they all made him fucking scarier with each one. I felt like each scene with Hisoka added absolutely zero to the show. Not to mention how fucking slow it was…

I feel like having a character target your young protagonist and make creepy faces at them is just lazy. Dude is, and I know Naruto came after, but that’s the show I saw first and actually know a thing or two about (till whenever shippuden started). So dude is just like Orochimaru. Now I was never scared of that guy, I just thought he was a total creeper. To me, there were way scarier moments. Hell, even Gaara’s brother, when he like, trapped a guy inside a puppet and then blood dripped out? Was that him? Anyway, that moment was way freakier than anything Orochimaru did. Karasu’s like 3 scenes were way more psychologically scary than all of Orochimaru’s scenes put together. And I got the same vibe from Hisoka as Orochimaru. The, he’s creepy and these kids should definitely find an adult asap, and not “holy fuck that’s a mass kidnapper/rapist/torturer/murderer and holy hell I am fascinated and also terrified and holy shit Kurama run run run!” 

*shrugs* Karasu is honestly probably the scariest villain in YYH, too. Only because he enjoys torture and murder, and he explains why. And the explanation makes fucking sense and its so terrifying that I can’t

and he also doesn’t look like a clown. That’s a major plus. I’m not and never will be scared of clowns. Like… its a clown. Its colorful and does weird shit. How is that scary? No, demonic looking motherfuckers with long ass ink black hair and eyes that glow purple with glee at the thought of ripping blood curling screams out of someone in front of a giant ass audience, and lamenting that they wish they could fucking keep him and I dont know fucking fuck his corpse is that what he meant cause holy fuck!??! 

Anyway, Karasu gives me nightmares and I love him and I don’t care for HxH and I need sleep and love you all very much please don’t hate me for disliking this show I really did give it like, three separate chances. *shrugs*

- Mod Lola

[jackfollmanwriter-blog]

Detroit

The sight of my father’s Detroit PD uniform always made me feel like a child, but seeing it there lying on the floor it made me feel even more helpless than I when I was five years old. It was funny to think how intimidating the navy blue garb could be when put upon the sinewy frame of a man with a badge when it looked so harmless and pathetic, crumpled up next to a dusty fireplace, looking like any old piece of dirty laundry.

I stepped up to the uniform with a tremble and knelt down to take it in my arms. Knowing that the sight of the uniform meant I would never see my dad’s body again, I took its collar up to my face and inhaled and hoped the fossilized scent of his Old Spice might somehow make me feel safe in a darkened place.

The little fucker’s tip was spot on. There was a cop’s uniform lying in an abandoned house at the end of Baker Street. What the little fucker didn’t tell me was the uniform belonged to Amit Patel. My father.

The little fucker I refer to is a 17-year-old borderline criminal I interviewed a few times in pursuit of a story for the Detroit Free Press before I got laid off and before I decided that he was mostly full of shit. He usually hung around the edge of an abandoned cul-de-sac pretending to sell weed and flagged me down as I was on my way to an interview with someone who I hoped was more honest.

My story was about “Zombie,” a new drug that had hit the streets of Detroit, but that was still so underground only those heavily entrenched in the world of hard drugs and law enforcement knew about it.  Those privy to information about Zombie knew it was a liquid drug of unknown ingredients usually cooked up in one of the countless abandoned houses that haunted Detroit. The users shot up the stuff in the back of their neck and it’s heavy hold led to them joining a marauding group of addicts rumored to be eating people, particularly their brains (hence the name Zombie). Whether the drug made you crave eating people or if it was just a group of people who liked to eat people who just happened to really like the drug was the subject of hot debate.

I was privy to this information because my father and my brother, Az, were in the Detroit Police Department. The two of them had pulled some strings and gotten me behind-the-scenes access to the department as I pursued the first media story about Zombie.

The department labeled me as a bad omen, because as soon as I showed up, officers started going missing. Three cops disappeared within my first month of hanging around the station and all in the same way my father eventually would. They went out on a domestic disturbance calls in one of the many cul-de-sacs littered with the shells of abandoned house that dotted the city like dead insects in a spider’s web and never came back. Their uniforms were always found in a different abandoned neighborhood than the one they had been sent to investigate.  The trend put such a scare into the department my father and brother worked at had been reduced to just four officers after a rash of retirements and resignations.  

A big reason why so many of the guys were giving it up was the entire Detroit police department had zero leads on breaking up the Zombie clan or tracking down any of the missing officers, dead or alive. I think the idea of being eaten had particularly created a flight in the officers and I believed the cannibalism rumors because nearly every house that was searched after Zombie groups had been reported there had included at least one human skeleton which was partially eaten with hacked upon bones and empty skulls.

Another key factor to the mysteriousness of the disappearing cops was, despite their uniforms always being left behind, their hats were always never recovered. The main theory connected to the permanent disappearance of the hats was because they housed a new piece of the technology, the “cop cam.” Forced on officers due to a never-ending rash of horrible PR, the GoPro-style cameras recorded everything the officers did and were monitored back at the station.

After my dad went missing, Az and his six-year-old son Cale moved into my one-bedroom apartment in the heart of the city. Az and Cale lived in a larger house on the edge of the city and we figured with all of the officers going missing, a cramped apartment downtown was a safer environment. Az and Cale had been sleeping on my couch, but the night that I had discovered my father’s uniform we all slept together in my bed with Az and I crying, Cale too young to really absorb exactly what happened.

I had an interview set up for the next week I thought about cancelling but decided to keep after days of mourning. My father’s disappearance encouraged me to double down on my pursuit of tracking down the members of the Zombie group, even if the newspaper I had initially planned on submitting my story to no longer employed me. This was no longer about reporting, this was my own personal investigation and about being able to hold a proper funeral for the man who raised me.

My interview took me out to Stoepel Park, a neighborhood ravaged by urban flight more than any other in the city. Desolate, crumpling and deserted, the burg reminded me of the Emerald City in Return to Oz.

The mother of a young man who had joined the Zombie gypsies responded to my Craigslist ad that advertised for those with information about the group to come forward for a documentary. The mother claimed her son joined the group for a few weeks, but came back home to get clean a couple of days ago. This was potentially huge. In the few months the group had been growing, there was not a single report of a defector.

I headed to Stoepel alone as the presence of anyone else, especially those that looked like law enforcement, could result in those who may have been loose-lipped clamming up. Absolutely no one wanted to be connected in any way to the Zombie group, so those that may have had information were reluctant to come forward out of fear of being accused.

My interview took me to a dilapidated manor that could have belonged to a big wig at General Motors decades ago, but was now home to single gray-haired woman with cigarette smoke-tanned skin, recessed gums and eight cats.

She spoke out of the side of her mouth with cracked lips as an ash gray feline rubbed the side of its head against my calf.

   “And I thought he was gone. I thought he was gone forever.”

I could feel the immense weight of the woman’s life in every word she spat to me from her broken easy chair in the middle of a living room that was heated by three space heaters and the body heat of a handful of felines.

   “Then one morning I heard that ol’ familiar rumble of his ol’ Chevy Luv in the driveway and I couldn’t believe it. I looked out the window and there he was behind the wheel, sleeping in the breeze of the air conditionin.”

The woman couldn’t have felt more genuine and sweet. She seemed like one of those women who looked on the verge of 65, but who was actually barely 40 and had lived about three lives already, but I just couldn’t get comfortable in the house. An open floor plan, where the living room we sat in could be entered through four different openings, I never felt secure and I was perpetually overcome with the feeling that someone was watching me.

The woman told me her son went upstairs once she brought him in from the driveway and had been up there sleeping ever since, but I kept hearing shuffling sounds from the door behind me. A clear cough from behind the door was all I needed to hear to fully tune myself out from the woman’s story and start to try and wiggle myself out of the situation.

   “He said that they tried to get him to do things he just wouldn’t do.”

I stopped the woman with a stiff hand.

   “I’m sorry, but I…

I bit my tongue harder than I ever had in my entire life and tasted the tinny spice of blood drift down my throat while I stared at something that made me want to swallow my tongue…

A gaunt, young man, clad in dirty overalls with splotches of what looked to be white paint checkered clumsily across his face emerged from a door behind the woman’s chair.  He skulked around the back of her chair with his eyes locked on me while I struggled for words.

Cold hands clamped down on the back of my neck. I was lifted up off of the couch for a moment, but squirmed as hard as I could and freed myself for a miraculous moment.

Everything became a blur – the woman screaming, my neck burning, the man in overalls descending upon me. I bolted for the front door. I dashed across the dirty carpet, slammed myself into the heavy wood of the door and pushed my way out with the presence of whoever had picked me up by my neck breathing upon my back.

I burst out onto the open porch of the house and into a shaken snow globe of a world. Fat, fresh flakes of powdery white snow stuck to the black fleece of my jacket when I ran out onto the icy sidewalk and almost fell upon my ass.

Luckily I parked my car on the street right in front of the house and never locked the doors of the 1999 Oldsmobile so I was able to slide ride in with the ice still melting upon the bottom of my shoes. I locked the doors and fired the engine just before a dark presence overtook the passenger side window. I saw the outline of an immense man out of the corner of my eye for just a sliver of a moment before I drove off down the street with my wheels skidding on the ice rink that was the pavement.

I called Az as soon as I was far enough away from the terror of the house from which I escaped.

He picked up and spoke before I even had a chance to get a word out.

   “You have to come down to the station. Dad’s camera is on.”

***

I stood with Az and the three other remaining police officers in his station watching surveillance style videos on four monitors propped on top of a long desk.

    “His came on about an hour ago. About the same time the others did,” Officer Turner explained and pointed to the monitor which broadcast the dated interior of a car.

   “Do we have tracking on these? I asked.

   “We don’t have like a GPS in them, but we can follow their location by any surroundings we see,” Turner answered. “Other than you father’s they all seem to be inside homes right now. Your father’s is going somewhere in a car, but I haven’t gotten a good look out the windows, so I don’t know where they are driving.”

Turner was clearly the alpha of the remaining group. Round, bald, mustached and gapped-toothed, he always reminded me of the dad from the show Family Matters.

   “Great fuckin time for a migraine,” Turner announced and then got up from his chair and walked away to the bathroom.

The faint sound of trickling urine was interrupted by gasps escaping from the two other officers’ mouths.

    “We got movement over here,” Officer Lind said after gulping down a mouthful of coffee sooner than he had planned.

Officer Lind was the youngest of the group and the rest of the guys always made fun of him for his long hair, even though it couldn’t have grown more than an inch from his scalp in any direction.

   “Here too,” Officer Washington chirped and adjusted her glasses. “Getting into a car.”

Officer Washington had been the lone woman in the station before everyone else left and bucked any stereotypes about female cops, she would have been considered the most attractive woman in just about any office she worked in, had two kids and was a gentle soul that actually reminded me of my grandma even though she was barely 40.

All four screens we were monitoring now showed the inside of cars.

    “Looks like everyone’s got some place to go,” Washington said quietly just before Turner came back from the restroom and took a seat next to her.

   “Still don’t recognize any locations though,” Turner noted.

    “My dad’s stopped,” I pointed out with a finger.

The car in my dad’s cam had come to a stop. We watched the cam turn to the right and look upon a palatial but crumbling estate that lurched over the sidewalk the car had parked next to.

   “Anybody see an address?” Turner called out.

   “Wouldn’t matter unless someone knows what street this is,” Lind replied.

Turner was going to continue, but was interrupted by the sound of Az vomiting upon the floor.

   “What the fuck Patel?” Washington groaned.

I patted Az on the back as he knelt over his golden vomit that smelled of light beer and splashed across the floor.

   “I didn’t know you were sick man,” I said before Az interrupted me.

   “I’m not sick. I puked because that’s Emily’s house.”

****

Emily was Az’ ex-girlfriend and the mother of Cale. I didn’t know much about her, but I did know she lived in a rundown old mansion not too far from where I had just been in Stoepel Park that Cale was scared to stay at because it reminded him of a haunted house.

I was commanding Az’ squad car on a residential street at freeway speeds while he sat in the passenger’s seat with sweat dripping off his brow and dried vomit crusted upon his lips. We had dispatched officers from other nearby stations hoping they might somehow beat us to Emily’s house, but it was likely that Az and I would be the first responders.

Both of us had blue tooth speakers sticking out of our ears connected back to the station where the other officers were monitoring our father’s cop cam and relaying what they were seeing. My heart fluttered with every detail they described, but the breaks in their descriptions were actually much more heart-stopping, my brain always assumed that they were seeing something too horrible to tell.

   “It’s somewhere in the house, but  I haven’t seen any people yet,” I could hear Washington’s voice in my ear as I mashed the pedal and tore down a street that Az told me connected to the street Emily lived on. “I sometimes hear other noises in the house though and it seems to follow those.”

   “Where is it in the house?” Az asked.

   “Not exactly sure,” Washington said. “It’s going through a hallway slowly, but I don’t know the layout of the house so I don’t know where that is.”

   “Do you know the house?” I asked Az.

He hesitated for a moment, clearly disappointed with himself.

   “No, I’ve never actually been inside, just on the porch.”

We screeched up to the house, parked behind a rusty Chevy and sprinted up to the front porch. Az handed a gun to me as we ascended the steps even though he knew that I had never touched a firearm in my life.

   “You check upstairs, I have the main floor,” Az screamed at me and tore off into the guts of the house.

I couldn’t believe how brave the adrenaline had made me. I had been the kind of person who changed the TV channel during horror movie trailers and now I was climbing stairs in a dark old house chasing after a potential cannibal with a pistol in my hand.

   “I think I hear something in the basement,” I heard Az’ disconnected voice speak into my ear. “Have you seen it go down any stairs?”

   “No,” Lind answered back instead of Washington, who had been talking to us.

   “Lind? What the fuck?” Az spat.

   “Washington left. One of the other cams just showed up outside of her house,” Lind said in an unemotional flash. “Same with Turner.”

   “Holy shit,” Az exhaled. “Where the fuck is it now?

   “I missed some shit when Washington took off, but I think I saw it go up some stairs…

I stopped at the top of the stairs when Lind finished his sentence and lifted the gun up in front of myself.

   “But now it’s in what looks like a kid’s bedroom,” Lind went on.

   “Shit,” Az yelled making me jump in my stance and drop the gun. “The noise I heard down here was a fucking dryer.”

I dropped down to pick up the gun with my eyes steadied on the darkened hallway that was in front of me.

   “Where is the last cam?” Az whispered. You said one was at Washington’s, one was at Turner’s and one is here. Where is that stray one?”

   “Uh, it was just in a backyard somewhere. It just went in a backdoor of some house. Now it’s heading down a dark stairway,” Lind answered.

    “Where is the one in here?” I called out but was interrupted by the sound of Lind yelling into the speaker in my ear.

   “Oh my God. It’s in the basement. Patel. Patel. Patel.”

Lind’s shouts were drowned out by the sound of gurgling screams.

I decided to turn back around and head down the stairs to help Az, but stopped when I saw a shadowy figure descend from an attic staircase that was at the end of the hallway in front of me.  

It was Cale. He scurried down the steps and started creeping towards me in the dark hallway.

I should have been paying complete attention to his lurking, but I was more than distracted by the horror broadcasting in my blue tooth…

Whatever Az had encountered in the basement was destroying him in a horrible manner. The sounds of my brother’s screams and Lind’s prayers to God pounded in my ear.

Interrupting the horror in my ears, a figure had stepped out of one of the doors in the hallway and had pursued Cale back up the attic’s ladder.

I snapped back to life when the sounds of my brother’s disembowelment quieted.

     “He’s following the kid up into the attic,” Lind’s voice announced in my ear.

I started shuffling to the attic ladder just as the figure’s feet disappeared up into the hole in the ceiling.

    “I don’t think it saw you,” Lind added. “The kid is hiding somewhere in the attic.”

I climbed up into the attic ladder with the gun limply held out in front of me.

   “Where is the other one, the one in the basement?” I whispered.

   “He’s still in the basement,” Lind stammered, clearly not wanting to give any details about what was going on down there.

I tuned Lind out when I climbed up into the attic and saw no signs of life, just scattered dusty boxes and lines of clothes hanging from the rafters that had turned the attic into a bit of a library of faded fabrics and forgotten styles.  The hanging outfits concealed almost everything in the space and were strung up all around me dully lit in a beam of soft light that came in through a single window.

   “Where is he?” I whispered.

   “I can’t tell, somewhere in the clothes.”

The gun still in my hand, handle slicked by nervous sweat, I started combing through the clothes, throwing them down the metal rods they hung from, revealing more and more cobwebs and dusty wooden beams.

Until…

The moving of a rack of clothes revealed Cale. Tucked up into a ball and crying, he looked away from me with his arms out in a pathetic defense.

    “We have to go,” I whispered.

I grabbed Cale’s hand and started to lift him up out of his tuck on the floor and felt a presence step up behind me. Its weight sent a creek from the floor into my ears that were also occupied by the sound of Lind’s voice…

    “It’s right behind you…

I turned around in a whirl to see the blur of a figure descending upon me with a hideously long knife.

I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

I was suddenly on my back lying next to Cale on the floor with my hand throbbing. I looked down to see the gun still in my hand and I looked forward to see the figure in a gasping clump on the floor a few feet in front of us.

I stared at the mound of motionless human matter for a few seconds before the sounds of Cale’s cries turned my attention to him. I pulled Cale close and just sat there crying with him for a few moments with my eyes glued to the prone figure on the floor in front of us and my finger on the trigger of the gun I had just fired.

After taking a few more deep breathes, I spoke.

   “Where is the other one?”

    “It’s gone,” Lind chimed back.

I didn’t bother asking any more questions about what happened in that basement, my brain assumed the worst. I pictured my brother’s uniform lying crumpled on a dirty basement floor just like I had found my father’s.

I turned my gaze to the body that lay in front of me on the floor and caught something I recognized. Perched on top of an oily mop of dark hair was a scuffed and faded Detroit Tigers baseball cap adorned with a few silver pins.

During the 80s, the Detroit PD tried to connect to kids by having officers where special police hats that were basically Detroit sports team caps. My dad had loved the Tigers one that he had so much he demanded to keep wearing it even after they quickly disbanded the idea. It was pretty much his calling card.

I could never look at a worn out Tigers cap and not think about my dad and now I was staring at his very navy hat pinned with his department pin and cop cam resting on the head of the person that had likely killed him, and possibly eaten him. It made the bone-chilling winter air that seeped through the thin walls of that attic that much more cold.

I sat shivering on the frigid curb outside of the house with Cale wrapped in a blanket next to me. I felt like I wanted a cigarette even though I had never actually smoked one.

I watched the various crews that show up after an emergency file about the stiffly frozen front yard of the house – the paramedics, the cops, the firefighters – all milling around behind the backdrop of flashing lights that seemed to light the snowy world a shade of pale pink. I put my arm around Cale and pulled him close.

I audibly groaned when an unfamiliar officer walked up to me. I was still far too shaken to be questioned about anything. I put my hands up in a dismissive posture, but the officer ignored me and started firing away with words.

    “This was all bullshit.”

   “What?” I shot back in disgust thinking about how what the guy was referring to as bullshit had just cost my brother his life.

    “This was all just a calculated distraction to get what few cops are still around here out of the way. Those fuckers just attacked every house in the neighborhood the last few hours.”

I didn’t really care. It was my time to be selfish. I didn’t care if the savages had gone into hundreds of homes and pulled away helpless people, I only cared about my brother and I didn’t want to hear any more about anything, just hold Cale and wallow in sorrow.

It took a little while, but I think the officer finally picked up on this. A sheepish look washed upon his face.

    “I found this in there and I thought you might want it.”

The officer pulled my father’s Tigers cap out from his back pocket and stuck it down upon my head.

    “I think it fits you good.”

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com