#people always feel like they have to reach outside of America

[euryvices]

weird things about my town that lowkey remind me of tma

god, this is going to be a long post.

okay so. i grew up in a town in the middle east (about 200 people), with my bestfriend Whom I Will Not Shut The Fuck Up about apparently, and it was a strikingly different experience to most people who've grown up in the middle east, or in america. it was yk, a rich people town, populated and run mostly by generational wealth owners. as a result, our town was very hush-hush, despite it being in the Crackass Of Nowhere.

i started listening to tmagp about two months back, under the instructions (*cough cough coercion cough cough*) of my lovely moots (im looking at you @forflightlessbirds and @need-a-name-101) i've noticed a few things which may be...off.

the first thing i need to clarify are the rules. we had five of them, that nobody really stuck to, but we all knew of. the rules in and of themselves are normal things any parent tells their child, but weirdly specific. there weren't really any repercussions if we didn't stick to the rules - but most of the time, we didn't like breaking them. they were, as follows :

don't tell strangers your real name, and if you do, run and tell the head of the community center.

if people approach you about 'coming to god' (i.e, christian/muslim/jewish missionaries) tell them god has moved.

do Not enter the junkyard at night. (we broke this one)

always carry a knife. most of us were given jade knives, but my bestfriend got a gold one. ive teased him about it most of our lives, even after we shifted.

take a buddy with you everywhere, and if you can't find one, don't go out.

me and my brother have broken all these rules about once at least, except for the knife one and the junkyard. me and my bestfriend broke the junkyard one though. we shifted together when we were barely teens. first, we lived in the uk, then in the states. we headed back home and barely spoke for a year before he died, at the ripe old age of 17. i miss him, but thats not the point.

it was only after we moved, that we realized how truly Fucked Up our town was. we were living in the middle of war ravaged county, and we had swimming pools, and ipads, and sunset cocktails? obviously i didn't realise it as a kid, as a pre-teen even - but looking at it from the outside feels like a gut punch.

now here's where im going to yap about the similarities between tma and my shitstorm of a childhood and hopefully Will Not Piss Anyone Off. if you're from my town - you'll know exactly what im talking about, and i seriously hope you reach out and/or message me.

the things everyone knows the things. they're just. there. kinda like the bogeyman your mom scares you with when you don't eat lunch except most of us have just accepted that they're real

old man hanna if you've lived here, you know him. he's weird, he's kooky, and he's got a million books and tape recorders and vinyls. he's maybe the only person in that place that doesn't come from money. he hates electronics, says they can't capture things the way old school stuff does

the graves now, our town is mainly christian. uber arab christian. we've got graves, we've got cemeteries. but outside it, on the outskirts, lie a long line of unmarked graves. are they from the arab-israeli war? the gulf war? lord knows

the 2015 blackout this was the creepiest thing that happened here. the blackout, and then the radio stations playing that reading of the bible? my parents shut everything off and rushed me and bulos to the master bedroom

the skydiving institute i have no idea if the government approved this godforsaken place, but it was there. it led to the disappearance of nahren, who was deathly afraid of heights but she said she was ready to face her fears

the church when i shifted to the uk, i saw the proceedings of the greek orthodox church there. and let me tell you - it's so different to our church. for starters, our church doesn't even seem to have any affiliation to the goc, even though it should?? the entire thing is so different

the pond now this is rather controversial. our town's pond was created in the early 70's, but no one knows How or Why. realistically, there shouldn't have been any water supply that far inland. and the water should not be that salty. we don't acknowledge it, and no one drinks from it, even if its really hot. there's a sign outside that asks parents to hold their children tightly when passing by the pond

the soldiers they're mainly american (at least the one i met was), but they rarely enter our town. and when they do, they can only stay in one specific motel - we're not allowed to talk to them. once i did, though. im still...fucked up from it

there's a lot more, but i don't think y'all wanna know about my fucked up town anymore. just writing this is giving me the heebie-jeebies.

we usually aren't allowed to leave our town once we're in it. but my dad got special permission for us to leave, before the divorce. so we did. and then my parents got divorced. which made our family Not Happy, so we weren't exactly welcomed back.

that being said, i don't think there's anything really wrong with my town. it's just a bit...different. and i love it. even if it doesn't seem to love me right now.

god, i think i need to go lay down. i hate remembering all this.

[lives-in-midgard]

Finally Safe

Paring: Bucky Barnes x reader

Summary: After being kidnapped from Hydra you get saved by Bucky and the Avengers.

Word Count: 1300

A/N: Hey everyone! I finally wrote a Bucky fanfic again and I hope you like it!

Divider made by @firefly-graphics

Masterlist

 You weren’t sure where you were or how long you had been there. You didn’t know what time it was or what day it was. Has it been weeks or months since you were there? You weren’t sure. The only thing you knew was that you were on your way home from work. It was only a short walk, so you decided to walk. You always thought it is a safe path until someone hit your head and you suddenly woke up in a cell in a place where no one would probably ever find you.

You were so scared, especially when these strange men came to you. The first day they didn’t do anything to you and just laughed, but the next day they started doing experiments on you. The experiments made you feel nauseous, and you began to feel a change. Whatever they wanted to do to you seemed to work. After a while you finally found out where you were…it’s a HYDRA base. You couldn’t believe it. You’ve heard stories about them. Scary things. The winter soldier was one of those things you heard about. Is he still here?

You always had to think about your friends and family. Are they looking for you or did the people who kidnapped you made it look like you died? Every night you cried yourself to sleep and hoped that one day someone would come and save you. Maybe the Avengers would somehow find out about this Hydra base and save you. Maybe this was just your dream, and no one could ever save you, but you didn’t lose hope. Not even after everything they did to you.

You suddenly woke up when you heard someone screaming and it sounded like someone was fighting. You quickly sat up and took a shaky breath because of the injury on your left arm. There was again a scream to hear. What happened?

Suddenly a loud noise was heard, and your door opened. You couldn’t recognize him…you have never seen this man before and he didn’t look like the others here. He had short brown hair, a black leather jacket and then you noticed that he has a metal arm. You got scared and moved further to the back of the room so that your back was leaning against the wall.

“Hey, it’s okay…I won’t hurt you.” He said in a soft tone and made a few steps near you.

“I’m Bucky.” He knelt down in front of you. Bucky looked friendly, but you weren’t sure if you could trust him.

“You can trust me, I promise.” He said with a worried look. You thought about it for a second, but then you told him your name and he began to smile. Then he reached to his ear.

“I found someone.” Bucky looked at you while saying that.

“Okay, let’s get out of here.” He said to you. Then he stood up and reached his hand out for you. You took his hand and stood up.

“You stay behind me…I promise I’ll get you out of here.” He said with a slight smile. As you followed Bucky through the halls, it was quiet until a Hydra agent suddenly appeared who started to attack Bucky. Then everything happened so fast they started to fight and suddenly more came. Then a shield flew behind you and you jumped to the side. Captain America and some more Avengers came to help. When you saw another guy trying to hurt Bucky from behind, you finally got out of your shock and wanted to help him. It was the perfect time to use the powers they gave you. You pointed your hand at him and then he started to turn to ice.

“Woah, what was that?” One of the avengers said while Bucky looked at you impressed. You helped them take down the others by using your power and turning them into ice and stone.

When you walked outside with them, they talked about how amazing you were.

“You okay?” Bucky asked quietly.

“Yeah.” You mumbled and looked away again. As you sat down in the quinjet, Bucky sat down next to you.

“Oh no, you’re bleeding.” Bucky said when he noticed the wound on your left arm.

“That’s from yesterday…it must have started bleeding again.”

“Steve, can you get me the first aid kit?” Bucky asked, looking over to Steve, who nodded. A few seconds later Steve was back, handing it to Bucky and giving you a soft smile. Bucky gently took care of your wound and wrapped a bandage over it.

“Thank you for saving me.” You said, looking into his beautiful blue eyes.

“You’re welcome. I’m so glad that I could save you.”

You didn’t talk much the rest of the fly. Steve told you that you would be staying at the Avengers compound for a while and that there is a spare room next to Bucky’s room.

It was already dark when you landed at the compound. You followed them into the building and to the living room.

“I’ll go get you some clothes of mine, so you can change.” Wanda said and you nodded.

“And I’ll make you a sandwich.” Natasha announced and went into the kitchen. You sat down on the couch next to Bucky and Steve. After a while Wanda came back with some clothes. Then you changed into some new clothes which made you feel a little better, then you ate the sandwich, and Bucky showed you to your room.

“If you need anything, doesn’t matter what time just knock on my door, okay?” Bucky said and you nodded.

“Okay, thank you Bucky.”

“Of course.” He said with a smile.

You sat down on the bed and began to smile. You were happy that you are finally safe. After a while you laid down in bed and tried to sleep but it took a long time for you to fall asleep.

When you woke up you let out a scream. You had a nightmare that felt so real, like you were there again. You sat up quickly, starting to sweat and starting to breath fast. Someone opened the door to your room and ran over to you.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay, you’re safe.” Bucky whispered as he sat down next to you.

“Bucky.” You mumbled and reached for his arm.

“Yeah, it’s me.” He said but it still didn’t calm you down and Bucky was really worried about you.

“Let’s try to breath together, okay?” He suggested and you tried to nod and follow his breathing. But it didn’t work that well.

“Okay, let’s try something else, doll.” He said and then laid down next to you.

“Put your head on my chest and try to follow my breathing.” Bucky said in a gentle tone. You did as he said and laid your head on his chest. Then Bucky started rubbing your back, you listened to his heartbeat and tried to follow his breathing.

“That’s it, doll. Just breathe in and out.”

“You’re doing so well, doll.” With every minute you were laying like this, you felt better and safer. After you calmed down, you looked up at Bucky.

“Thank you.” You whispered and Bucky smiled at you.

“You’re welcome, doll. I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.” Bucky said in a sad voice.

“It wasn’t you’re fault.”

“I know but you don’t deserve it, no one does.” Bucky said and you nodded.

“You should try to get some sleep.” Bucky suggested.

“Can you stay here?” You asked.

“Of course.” He said and you laid your head back on his chest. Bucky held you and gave you a kiss on the forehead. After a while you fell asleep in his arms and felt safer than you ever did.

Taglist:

@marvelogic | @eviebuggg | @buckys-wintersoldier | @nicoline1998enilocin | @kandis-mom | @sergeantbarnessdoll | @noellez-best-life23 | @sgtgarricks | @ratchildspartan | @scott-loki-barnes |  @mrs-bucky-barnes-73 | @mrsbuckybarnes1917 | @brnesblogposts

@beaubbdoll

[ishanijasmin]

the 4 horsemen of adulthood

on monday, i consumed a sainsbury’s meal deal and two cream and jam scones and forgot to drink any water until 10pm. or i didn’t so much forget as think, ‘i’m thirsty’ and then just not do tanything about it—i literally don’t know why. i explained it to three separate people today and they were all like, ‘yep, makes sense.’ ??? does it???

it’s been a long time since my self-neglect hit critical mass like that; i went to bed queasy and woke up with a headache and a bunch of my clothes from yesterday heaped in a corner because i’m nearly 30 and i can’t just not drink water for an entire day anymore without feeling it. i have to identify as nearly 30 so that when i turn 30 in six months i’m not hit with whiplash.

i remember being 15 and staying up til 3am talking to my tumblr friends in america. i remember chugging four shots one after the other and then having the time of my life as fast as possible. i remember not stretching, not wearing spf, not being worried about needing a coat. no longer! ageing is just coming to terms with the fact that you do, in fact, have needs, one essential after the next. sleep, sunlight, movement, water: the four horsemen of being an adult, shortening telomeres and all.

someone reading this might think, ‘hmm, sounds like you’re depressed.’ maybe! this year i’ve been in and out of depressive phases, of varying lengths of time—a few days to a week, usually, but sometimes a bit longer. i think part of this is that i never seem to be able to come to terms with who i am. i’m permanently in a mix of white knuckling my own life and holding it together for fear that i might explode.

this year i bought an apartment. i quit a job that was my dream, because having autonomy and not being controlled and condescended to at work mattered more to me than being purpose-driven in the end. i founded a choir, recorded an album, became a trustee, was featured in an exhibition, and went on a bunch of trips. i pulled the rug out from under myself over and over again just to feel like i was alive.

i often feel i am watching myself as a marionette, and big me is poking and prodding little puppet me with a stick, chanting, ‘change! change! change!’ just to see what happens. because i don’t know what happens. now she moves house! now she quits her job! now she starts using different pronouns! now they’ve signed up for a year long pottery class! what will they do next?! who will they become? who are they becoming right now?

a lot of things are scary and i do them anyway because i believe in jumping out of my comfort zone (me, prodding the puppet self with a cattle prod: ‘change! change! change!’). things like showing up, putting myself out there, holding space, reaching out, sending an email, public speaking—they’re the choices i make to have control over my world and my selfhood, even if they do make it feel scarier. it’s not always so deliberate—usually it’s ending something that’s no good for you anymore, which is sad, and feels forced, but choice is change as a process, not as a one off.

and if that weren’t enough, everything is so fast and so slow at the same time! the days are long, the years are short. the days are long. i don’t have much in the way of routine, which theoretically means that i probably experience less time dilation than average. i would be lying if i said the presence of a nine to five actually made me feel better, because i remember being in it, and it didn’t, but it stopped me from feeling like i am metamorphosing at light speed.

that’s the journey, and embracing it (or if not, at least holding on). from the outside, it’s sitting on the couch, going to a museum, eating a pastry for breakfast not because i can but because i can’t think of an alternative, doing admin, catching a friend for a walk, going to the charity shop and leaving empty handed, picking up a prescription, watching 3 minutes of schitt’s creek at a time, bleaching every orifice in your home to stave off fruit flies. from the inside? it’s the wildest ride. let us take a step back, look at our puppet selves, and let them breathe for a hot minute, because change is gonna come, ready or not.

[foggylikemyvision]

im serious i can't feel anything- hit me.

a not very short short. read at your own discretion.

cw: america's current trans genocide, gunshots, america, fainting, chronic fatigue syndrome (implied)

there's something so, so beautiful about the danger. reaching out and gently holding something that is so often malicious and harmful.

you're enraptured as you hold the muzzle of a crystalline creature, soft and inviting until you hear a loud bang and the creature shatters. it's dark in your room when you wake.

the flickering lights of red and blue and white- ones meant to represent freedom yet oppress those who barely oppose their skewed mindset.

you're enraged as you grip tightly to the end of a blue, pink, and white flag. gunshots ring in the air a little ways away.

you keep marching, even as a bullet tears the very edge of the skin off your leg.

at home, you fear for your life. stage nine, they mutter, stage nine of genocide in the country meant to exist for its people.

you sob, the missing poster of your best friend soaking through with your tears.

maybe you should move to canada? they're- they're taking trans refugees, right?

you take comfort in the fictional world of sagau, being loved and wanting to be loved by your people who think of you as divine.

you know it won't happen, not really. you're a bit too chubby and have too much hair and acne- your habits aren't great and your personality is unattractive-

no, no, this isn't about you.

this is about the people outside, the people screaming and crying and yelling and shouting as they're taken into a van kicking and screaming.

several people look on, disappointed, but no one bats an eye and continues on their day. some even look happy about it.

being under the trans umbrella- something other your assigned gender- it terrifies you. yet, you embrace it as you embraced the crystalline creature in that nightmare so long ago. sharp, dangerous, yet so perfect. you wish to be like it.

in some sick sense- you wish to be feared. you want people to look at you and flinch in fear, to command people with your presence. to be the frightening one instead of being full of fright.

yet, you know it wouldn't happen. you don't have the heart to do it.

you become dizzy, often. standing and suddenly feeling as if you're going to pass out. you're always tired, hungry, even after eating and sleeping a full 8 hours.

you faint one time, as you're stepping back to your device. you become dizzy, black and white spots cloud your vision, and you crumble onto the ground in a heap.

you swear, as your head hits the ground, you can hear frightened shouts coming from your device. you ignore it.

things were odd, that's very much for sure. you got better drops than normal, your daily luck was always the best it could be. you got different dialogue and animations than normal, even.

you try to ignore the worried glances the characters in genshin gave you, passing it off as an expression glitch.

when you woke up from your fainting spree, it wasn't cold, hard, tile you awoke on. it was soft, soft grass. your previously motionless body arises, and you subconsciously bring your hand up to wipe at the drool in the corner of your mouth.

you sit up, carefully cradling the few squirrels laying on top of you, and set them in your lap. you glance around at the too-perfect trees and cut mountains, quickly deducing where you are based on the massive fucking tree above you.

you take a moment to rest, sitting at the statue of the seven with your eyes half-lidded and a soft, contented smile on your lips. eventually, the squirrels leave you, a raven instead landing on your head as you stand up.

"mmn," you mumble to yourself, "hope I don't fucking die on the way to mondstadt, i guess."

you're thankful for your large, oversized jacket with ginormous pockets, as the rocks here are much shinier than earth's and there are plenty of acorns and mushrooms on the ground.

you try to ignore how the flowers and mushrooms you grab seem to grow around your hands, sustaining life despite disconnected from their roots. you try to ignore how the electro crystals don't hurt, despite a small tingle.

you pass it off as a high pain tolerance.

the walk to mondstadt doesn't take nearly as long as it should, what with any monsters you see deciding against attacking you, with a few hydro slimes even coming along for the trip.

hey! at least you didn't faint right?

just kidding you nearly passed out like 10 times. the slimes and birds with you settled for pecking you gently on the head or butting against you whenever they thought you needed to lay down.

at least the naps were good, you think. it was the best sleep you've had in a while.

the thought makes you bitter, but you're glad you're not home.

you push through exhaustion, even as your friends pester you to lay down. you swear that some of the slimes pout.

it's as you're entering mondstadt that you start to see black-white-gray spots cloud your vision and collapse to the ground. a few shouts ring out, but the faint doesn't last long, only a few seconds. dazed, you rise from the cold stone.

"sorry about that.. uh.." you mutter rubbing your eyes after zoning out, "why's everyone looking at me.."

your head hurts and you look up, "oh! sorry little guys. that's my bad, I probably should have listened to you, huh?"

your hand comes to pet the slimes and bird before moving into mondstadt to find a particular.. green bard. knowing the feral goblin, he might know what to do.

oh well, it's worth a shot. what's the worst that could happen?

[destinyc1020]

https://x.com/dreezabz/status/1833564853065437268?t=zcnrQaef4Bfs6fBmlxgQvQ&s=19 over 100k likes. We talk about this on your blog all the time but maybe some of the antsy Tom fans will now listen since its coming from someone who's opinion they value a lot, a rando on twitter. I've always said it's never been really about Tom, it's more about them wanting bragging rights for the person they stan in the time frame they are active on social media. Y'all save yourself the headache coz this is not sports where when you reach 30 your body deteriorates. Its acting, which only gets better with time. Tom seems to be doing this at his own pace and if he's not giving what they're looking for, there are plenty of actors that are tbh.

And honestly even if he does nothing outside of spidey (I really doubt that will be the case, only 28!) throwing tantrums about his choices only serves to annoy people that have decided to enjoy his career for what it is not what they want it to be. Imo that's lowkey hater energy that's shouldn't be coming from someone that considers themselves a fan.

Nothing anyone outside of his circle (ie fans who don't really know him, no matter how much we convince ourselves that we do) says or do could influence what Tom decides to do. So I feel like the fans that can't enjoy anything that he does because of what he's not, should really let him go tbh.

X

👏🏾👏🏾

I don't usually agree with people on Twitter lol, but this person hit it straight on. People are out here acting like Tom is a professional athlete or something, who usually hits his prime by age 30 ROTFL. 😅🤣

THEE Legendary actor James Earl Jones just died, and he was in his 90s STILL acting. He just finished voicing Darth Vader for the last time in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, and he was also in "Coming To America 2"!

Wasn't Betty White still acting in her 90s as well?? You have no time limit on your career when you're an actor. That'ws the beautiful thing about acting. 😊

I've always said it's never been really about Tom, it's more about them wanting bragging rights for the person they stan in the time frame they are active on social media. Y'all save yourself the headache coz this is not sports where when you reach 30 your body deteriorates. Its acting, which only gets better with time.

I totally agree Anon. It's always just been about bragging rights imo. And I totally agree that most actors only get better with age! 😃

And honestly even if he does nothing outside of spidey (I really doubt that will be the case, only 28!) throwing tantrums about his choices only serves to annoy people that have decided to enjoy his career for what it is not what they want it to be. Imo that's lowkey hater energy that's shouldn't be coming from someone that considers themselves a fan.

GIRL!!! Can you say it louder so the people in the back can hear you?!?? 🙌🏾👏🏾

Nothing anyone outside of his circle (ie fans who don't really know him, no matter how much we convince ourselves that we do) says or do could influence what Tom decides to do. So I feel like the fans that can't enjoy anything that he does because of what he's not, should really let him go tbh.

I agree Anon. I don't know ANY actor who picks their next roles based on what FANS say ROTFL. 🤣 Y'all are wasting your breath! lol. Tom is gonna do what TOM wants to do.

Some of us just choose to enjoy his career as it IS, not what some fans think it should be.

[beep-beep-imma-sheep]

I decided to read Anne Frank's Diary... What an interesting experience considering Venezuela's current events.

—

Our lives were not without anxiety, since our relatives in Germany were suffering under Hitler's anti-Jewish laws. After the pogroms in 1938 my two uncles (my mother's brothers) fled Germany, finding safe refuge in North America. My elderly grandmother came to live with us. She was seventy-three years old at the time.

This anxiety feels similar to... Pretty much what anyone who fled their home country would feel.

After May 1940 the good times were few and far between:

28th of July, anyone?

first there was the war, then the capitulation and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews. Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees:

Out freedom was severely restricted... Yeah. That speaks for itself.

Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use street-cars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.;

This is not the same, of course, but this also reminds me of how, even if there's no official curfew, no one dares to go outside after certain hour. I remember one of these nights my aunt woke up around 2 am and saw the military through the window roaming around were I live, probably looking for someone to arrest.

Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields; Jews were forbidden to go rowing; Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; Jews were forbidden to sit in their gardens or those of their friends after 8 P.M.; Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes; Jews were required to attend Jewish schools,etc.

... Well, we haven't reached that point. But no one SHOULD get to that point-.

You couldn't do this and you couldn't do that, but life went on.

That sounds very 🇻🇪 to me.

Jacque always said to me, "I don't dare do anything anymore, 'cause I'm afraid it's not allowed".

Again, that feeling looks... Very familiar.

It seems like years since Sunday morning. So much has happened it's as if the whole world had suddenly turned upside down.

🇻🇪28th of July🇻🇪

It's more like being on vacation in some strange pension. Kind of an odd way to look at life in hiding, but that's how things are.

Coping mechanisms be like.

Whatever we do, we're very afraid the neighbors might hear or see us.

GIRL, SAME. There's Chavistas in my neighborhood, I'm s c a r e d that they'd end up ratting us out on being from the opposition so the police can put us under arrest.

Though the people who work there are not on the premises after hours, any sound we make might travel through the walls.

I know that fear.

We've forbidden Margot to cough at night, even though she has a bad cold, and are giving her large doses of codeine.

...

Of course, we can't ever look out the window or go outside. And we have to be quiet so the people downstairs can't hear us. (...) Not being able to go outside upsets me more than I can say, and I'm terrified our hiding place will be discovered and that we'll be shot. That, of course, is a fairly dismal prospect.

From July 28th to August 1st I didn't even dare to look out the window. And the fear of being shot is something I carry with me since I was a kid.

And sometimes they talk about Moortje and I can't take that at all. Moortje is my weak spot. I miss her every minute of the day, and no one knows how often I think of her; whenever I do, my eyes fill with tears. Moortje is so sweet, and I love her so much that I keep dreaming she'll come back to us.

Unrelated to the topic, but back in the last days of May my dog passed away (yes, I had the worst pride month). I resonated with this scared 13 y/o girl who had to leave everything behind, even her beloved pet.

Yesterday I had a horrible fright. At eight o'clock the doorbell suddenly rang. All I could think of was that someone was coming to get us, you know who I mean. But I calmed down when everybody swore it must have been either pranksters or the mailman.

Sometimes I remember the fact that a guard could just... Break into my house and take me or someone I love away. And that's terrifying.

[headingalaxys-spicy]

Spicy plz I’m so bored ;-;— could you grace me with some headcanons for yandere America with an s/o who seems oblivious to his tendencies but is actually just. Pretty okay with it? Like they feel like this is the best they’re gonna get so they may as well make the most of it? Despite my casual tone I’m very okay with you ripping my heart out with angst or despair in any way you see fit <3

Probably not my best work but still hope you like it!

Okay warning ya'll this post is SPICY also it goes over abusive relationships so if that's not for you I suggest that you turn away now.

Your problems all began when you were let into the real world after college. It would be easy, they said. You just needed your degree, they said. Then it would be ‘smooth sailing’. 

Sure. SURE. That was a load of total bullshit. You now had to battle tooth and nail just to have the basic necessities barely. Your future looked bleak. ‘The Dream’ that originally you wanted to achieve: Get married, have two kids, have a house you owned, and maybe a fancy car that yu could show off and keep up with the Joneses. Best them even. 

You simply wanted more time with your family and friends, so you avoided applying to ghost jobs and attending interviews that ultimately led nowhere. You did freelance work like writing gigs, catering, and the occasional art commission in order to keep your head above the water. 

Some days were easy, but most were difficult. Keeping the tiny flame ignited within you to keep you going was a 24 hr 7-day 7-day-a-week kind of job. With each passing day, finding the will to exist was getting harder. 

‘Why do anything if I’m constantly feeling empty?’ 

You felt as though you were on a pitch-black road where your flashlight could only reach 2 ft in front of you. 

That was until Alfred burst into your life in the early morning sun rays that broke through the deep blue-black of the nighttime sky. His outward warmth brought the birds to life and made the flowers blossom. He was the bright person you needed to be around you. Even if that meant you tolerated his sinister tendencies that you commonly wrote off as him being an excellent protective boyfriend in a somewhat twisted way. 

Alfred always knows where you are. He ensures the Find My iPhone tracker is activated and shares your location with him at all times. When you first saw it, and he didn’t even bother to ask or even tell you that he did so… You simply ignored it. He was your boyfriend, and that’s what good boyfriends do…..protect their highly vulnerable S/O and part of that is knowing where you are at all times. 

Things don’t escalate if you’re incredibly passive and are compliant with the rules that Alfred sets for you. You will have a lack of privacy. He gets far more possessive if individuals (s) in your midst are suspicious or seem to be far too friendly for his liking. You become afraid of him when he raises his voice while interrogating you about one of your friends or acquaintances. Alfred’s fist will have made another gaping hole in the wall, which sometimes makes you fear for your life or your family. You would nearly jump out of your skin every time you came home & you saw his infamous frown combined with sapphire blues holding back famished flames, needy for more people to devour if they dared to come in between the two of you. 

Anyone who dared to challenge him on any of his behavior would be silenced swiftly. Most of the time, his victims would never be seen again; other times, they’d end up with some horrific injury or illness that prevented his targets from having the willpower to fight back or squeal. 

You always wondered why it had become much more difficult for you to maintain genuine friendships. You glossed over the fact that Alfred demanded 110% of your attention. This makes it hard for you to have a life outside of him. He also has enforced a curfew on you. 

‘He does that so some creep doesn’t try to kidnap me.’ That would be one of the excuses that you tell yourself in order to excuse his behavior. Besides, how long has it been since you were able to get a date before him? Two or three years, probably more, since so much time has passed since you’ve had a serious long-term relationship. You couldn’t really remember at this point. 

Whenever he objects to you leaving the house, 98% of the time, you employ some tactics when dealing with him. Negotiation. You primarily used this tactic when the effects of becoming stir-crazy have become unbearable. You feared that you would be swallowed up by his home and never seen again. 

“Alfred….” your eyes will search the hardwood floor for the perfect combination of words that will assist in getting you to some level of freedom. 

“I really want some fresh air….and…it’s been forever since we’ve had a cute date on in the park….or going to my favorite restaurant that is on the promenade….” Your eyes cautiously climb up to meet his. You braced yourself for the possible avalanche that was going to careen towards you if you didn’t plant your ice ax in neutral snow. 

“Where I first began to fall in love with you truly!” You blurted out with partially feigned fervor. Enough energy was behind your words that you could see Alfred’s shoulder relax. His freshly trimmed eyebrows were raised in curiosity and disbelief. However, he wasn’t entirely convinced yet. You needed to stroke his ego a little more. He needed reassurance that you were utterly smitten with him. His continued silence was a sign for you to continue with your argument. 

“I know when the last sun rays of the day hit your magnificent sky blues, I know that we were meant to be together.” It will feel like an eternity has passed before Alfred finally responds. 

“Alright, babe.” 

You hear him rise from his spot on the couch & make his way towards you. 

“We can go tonight, but you’ve got to get dressed in something better than that~” Alfred will have pinned you to the front door as he whispers in your ear his other demands he has for you. Usually, it’s that of a sexual nature. Alfred does have you do things like: have you wear a skimpy outfit while you iron his clothes, and give him head while he reads comics or plays video games. You’re not allowed to deny him anything that he asks of you when you work out a ‘deal’ with him. If you do you’ll have to do double of whatever it is along with being chained to the bed for a few days. 

Essentially dear reader you have Stockholm Syndrome. Regardless of what torture he puts you through, you wouldn’t want your life any other way. After all, it was Alfred who brought forth the morning sun in your life which felt as though you were cursed to be within a state of eternal midnight. 

Who were you to complain when he saved you from being on the streets whose jagged teeth had the flesh of the unfortunate on them but always eager for more.

So what if you were a little traumatized?

So what if you sometimes you had scars whenever you did something to set the sleeping volcano off?

It was better than being awash amidst the sea of people who merely became a number to add to a statistical data set. 

Alfred does weaponize sex a lot within your relationship. Not only is it a bargaining tool whenever you are desperate to meet your social needs as a human, but you use it to stop his occasional rampages, get some level of privacy (for example, showering by yourself or being able to keep a dairy without him snooping in it) 

Since Alfred is an exhibitionist & will never turn down an opportunity to showcase his power over you, he will have you do extreme things with him. He’ll demand that you have sex in public with him, like in the park, at a movie theatre, at Disney World on a dark ride, or even on the top of the roof of a government building. If it’s risky as hell with an epic story to tell, then Alfred will want to rail you there. Bonus: he will want you to be butt-naked in the car as well. Alfred will want you to feel every ounce of embarrassment, shame, & every emotion in between that makes you feel vulnerable and powerless. However, this punishment will only occur if you’re stupid enough to try and plan an escape away from him or say something that majorly punctures his ego. 

No matter how much he made you cry, made you bleed after sex, siphoned you off from your support system, and kept you firmly under his thumb… your low self-esteem told you that this was what you deserved. This was normal. This was how all couples behaved.

[sophieinwonderland]

The Plurality of... The Hybrid Chronicles: What's Left of Me

Over the past couple weeks, I've been listening to book one of The Hybrid Chronicles, What's Left of Me.

And it is AMAZING. Fantastic story with a fantastic narrator!

As always, expect huge spoilers ahead!

A World of Twin Souls

The Hybrid Chronicles takes place in an alternate reality where every person is born as two people. Each has their own name. Each has motor control of the body at different times and can switch who is in control. And they communicated with each other internally with mindvoices just like most systems.

This is how it is in the beginning, at least.

There's a recessive soul that usually fades away naturally though childhood. Usually around 4 or 5. Some take longer. If the recessive soul doesn't fade away, if they don't "settle", then the two become a Hybrid.

If a child reaches 10 and hasn't settled yet, they're sent away to nightmarish institutions.

The history the government gives explains that Hybrids are all terrible and chaotic. At some point in the history of The Americas (The whole supercontinent appears to have one centralized government in this universe) people rebelled against the Hybrid leadership, massacred the Hybrids, and took control of their new Hybrid-free nation.

The Americas became intensely xenophobic and trade was cutoff from the rest of the world.

The government of The Americas pushes constant anti-hybrid propaganda, showing the other nations as violent and destructive because of their hybrid leadership.

A weird note on names: One of the least believable things about this story to me is that parents give their children two names. It seems like it would make much more sense for them to just call each soul by the same name. Maybe with a number attached. For example, you might just have Addie 1 and Addie 2 instead of Eva and Addie. Then when the recessive soul fades away, it will feel less like your child just died. Because it seems really messed up that there's just a world where you're expected to name two children, knowing that one would be guaranteed death. (In real life, it's common for places with high infant mortality rates to not name their babies immediately.)

But then again, maybe some people tried that, and it just resulted in one of the souls choosing a different name for themselves anyway. And then if that soul with a different name settled as the dominant, then the parents get a child with a name they didn't choose. I suppose I could accept that headcanon. 🤷‍♀️

Eva and Addie

That brings us to the main characters. Our viewpoint character is Eva, a recessive soul who has lost motor control of the body. But she didn't fade away completely. She shares a head with Addie.

The two have to constantly hide who and what they are from the world, lying to everyone and saying that only Addie survived.

At the same time, Eva longs for nothing more than to be able to move her fingers again. To talk to people outside of their body.

The relationship between these two characters is the heart of What's Left of Me. The two are like sisters. They comfort each other when they're hurt or scared. They fight with each other. They fight for each other. And they are both willing to sacrifice for the other.

Addie has to wrestle between her desires to remain "normal," and to support Eva and let Eva be herself.

As a system, something I often hear come up from singlets is a question of why you would let someone take control of your body.

And I think this amazing bit of dialog when Addie and Eva find a way for Eva to regain her mobility encapsulates it perfectly.

When you care about someone, of course you would be willing to give up time for them. Even if it's hard sometimes to step away from the reins.

At its core, this book is about pluralphobia. In part, from a society that is openly hostile to plurals. But it's also about internalized pluralphobia. It's about Addie and Eva's self-hatred instilled into them by a world that refuses to accept them.

It's about their own struggle to be able to accept themselves.

This is such a poignant quote and it stuck with me more than anything else in the book.

So far, most of the excerpts from this are focused on the general premise of the book and the relationship of the protagonists. What I'm going to say next is more spoilery as it's from near the end of the book. If what I've mentioned already as enticed you to read it for yourself, this is a good place to stop...

...

...

...

Acceptance

Through the story, Eva gradually regains motor controls and the two start to accept themselves more.

And I must say that it's an amazing journey. I love seeing Eva so excited to talk to people and even just move her fingers for the first time in years.

Every new milestone is so well-written. (And the narrator does an incredible job playing the characters in the audio book.)

And it all culminates in this exchange, with Eva in full control and no longer hiding, or ashamed to be who she is.

Proud. Determined. No longer afraid to be who she is.

Parallels to Real Pluralphobia

The ages of settling are interesting to me. If it's not done intentionally, it at least feels like a pretty big coincidence.

I recently mentioned my feelings about imaginary friends and the belief that many of them are sentient beings. Through that lens, you can see a lot of parallels.

An imaginary friend in childhood may be treated as if they're real by the rest of the family, just playing around. It's often seen as a normal thing. But as a child ages, imaginary friends are more stigmatized. Children are expected to outgrow them. And most will disappear.

Except when they don't...

And then having people in your head is suddenly treated as an illness. You're suffering psychotic hallucinations or a dissociative disorder. Much like with hybrids, you're treated as if you're "sick" or "broken."

And the age range of this is pretty close. Most imaginary friends fade away during early childhood. This is also when self-states are alleged to become fully integrated and why 10 is usually considered the maximum cutoff for the trauma that causes DID.

Stigma of plurals as "dangerous" is persistent through our media in the form of the evil alter trope, and through media that portrays malevolent psychotic hallucinations as self-conscious entities with their own identities and personality.

There's not some huge government conspiracy in real-life. But the connections are definitely there between the fear of hybrids in The Hybrid Chronicles and the pluralphobia and ableism plurals experience in the real world.

And with our country's history of ableism, even being forcefully shipped away to an institution for being plural would have been a real fear 50 years ago.

On mechanics of Manifestation Types and Emotion Influence...

Having compared the plurality of the book to real plurality and to imaginary friends, I should mention that the souls of the book are exclusively fronters. There are no inner worlds, nor do either Addie or Eva have external visualized mindforms.

And even when she lacks control, Eva seems to almost always be attuned to the body.

Another thing the book handled really well, I thought, was the sharing of emotions between the two and how they can both experience emotions from the other, while clearly identifying those emotions as belonging to the other soul.

And with this excerpt, I feel I should also give a shoutout to the unique formatting choice to denote their mind speech. Though, full disclosure: the audio book can be confusing sometimes when that formatting doesn't exist and you have to depend heavily on context clues to figure out if something was said in their head or through their mouth. Sometimes I didn't realize that something had been verbalized... or not verbalized... until a few sentences later.

Conclusion

What's Left of Me is a fantastic book exploring (whether intentional or not) plurality and pluralphobia in an alternate universe where everyone is born with two souls. It's such a great story, and the dynamic between Eda and Addie is handled amazingly.

Writing this felt weird. When doing The Plurality of… Batman (Failsafe), I was focusing on one character who happened to be plural and ignoring most of the story aside from what was relevant to that.

Likewise, The Plurality of… Skyward - Diones dealt with a single alien species. None of these really felt like I was writing a review of the whole work.

But with What's Left of Me, the plurality is so central to everything that it's practically unavoidable. It's seeped into every layer of the worldbuilding and the characters.

I still left a lot out. There are a bunch of hybrids in this book and a lot I could say about each of them. Maybe I will another time. I chose to only focus on Addie and Eva to keep this from getting too unfocused and avoid giving much more away than I needed to.

And that itself is a situation I haven't been in, where I feel like I need to omit a lot of the plurality in a story just because there's SO MUCH there.

It's a plural world where about half the characters are plurals.

And I only talked about the main two.

There is just too much plurality in this book to cover it all in a single post. So do check it out for yourselves.

And as always, thank you for your time. Have an amazing day! 💖

[soupandflowers]

Day 2 - Is it possible to die from embarrassment?

Another late entry, however I'd say this one went more smoothly than the other. It only took me about 3 hours to write! Anyways, I could've cut this one short, but I liked this idea too much and decided to pull through with it. So, yay me? Next few days will just be drawings though because writing is not my forte LMAO. This one features the Asian family because I wish we had the boys interacting with the others' families. Poor Hong Kong. Also prolly OOC loooooool. Also tried to write Korea as rather more super outgoing and enjoy meeting new people. He still has his clashes though. Hopefully I did a little bit of justice to him here. No beta we die like HRE. Word count is 2,548. @hongiceweek

Is it possible to die from embarrassment?

As Hong Kong urges Iceland- who has dumpling bits stuck in his hair and shirt- upstairs to his room, he can’t help but apathetically want to pack his things, hitch a ride to the nearest bus stop, take a flight to the middle of South America and formally live out the rest of his life under a brand new identity. Someone else can take over as the personification of Hong Kong, he thinks.

And that is saying something. Among the two boyfriends, Hong Kong is easily the more savvy between the two. He knows all the right moves and words to get his partner to flush and hide his face in embarrassment. Hong Kong is teasing, smooth, and witty, thus it’s not very often or easily to make Hong Kong falter to its knees. The point is the dynamic between them has always been consistent. When it comes to Iceland, Hong Kong rarely ever loses his cool.

That is up until now.

Hong Kong hurries Iceland to his room and slams the door shut behind him. Locking it and pulling a chair from his desk underneath the knob for good measure. As Hong Kong rushes to his drawer to find suitable spare clothes, Iceland stands by and tries his very best to reassure him. Hong Kong says nothing as he finds a suitable shirt and disappears into his personal bathroom, with running water that can be heard shortly afterwards. He walks back out.

“Here. There’s a warm washcloth and some spare clothing that you can use. Feel free to wash your hair and use any of the towels as well.”

“Gotcha. “, nods Iceland. “Thanks.” He disappears into the bathroom and quietly closes the door behind him.

Then, a breaking of glassware and shouting could be heard from downstairs . Of course, the loudest voices belong to Taiwan and Korea, only to be outdone by China’s, only to be outdone by Thailand’s.

Hong Kong sits on the edge of the bed and heaves a frustrated sigh. He places his fingers on the bridge of the nose.

Just what the hell even happened?

— It was another world meeting that was just supposed to be the two of them.

When the meeting called for the noon break, Hong Kong caught up to Iceland wanting to ask if they could get lunch together. As they were exiting the meeting hall, Taiwan just so happened to be in the area and being the only person to know about their relationship so far, she saw them and was teasing her brother in the distance.

Unfortunately, talking to her was South Korea, who followed Taiwan’s gaze and called out to greet the both of them. Not wanting to get Iceland involved with his family, he urges him to hurry out the door.

But one thing leads to another and Korea’s attention draws China’s and also wanting to greet his student, meets them just before they reach the door. Before Hong Kong could take off in the other direction, Taiwan, Korea, and now Japan caught up to them.

While initially wanting to greet the fellow asian, the family took interest in the Icelander as well. Having not many chances or reasons to converse casually with someone outside of Asia, they took the chance to get to know him. In which, while Iceland shyly returned the gesture, Hong Kong was starting to get peeved that Iceland was getting a little bit too involved with his family. When Hong Kong had to break the conversation that they were late for lunch, China brought this up:

“Oh! Well, we would love to get to know you more, Iceland. Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight and I’ll treat you to some authentic Chinese cuisine!”

Hong Kong’s heart drops and he tries to pull his boyfriend out of there before he could respond. However, Taiwan and Korea blocked their way and pleaded for Iceland to visit. To Hong Kong’s dismay, his boyfriend agreed. He gazes at horror at his boyfriend as the rest of the Asians cheer and pull Iceland over to plan for tonight. Fast forward to China’s summer home in Beijing. For the past hour, the rest of Hong Kong’s asian siblings have been running around to prepare for Iceland’s arrival. In excitement to share their culture, China has been working on multiple dishes and cuisines all at once, Taiwan putting down homemade decorations around the kitchen and living room, Korea booting up the karaoke machine to put out his favorite songs to sing, and poor Japan just being pulled around by the previous three as they all demand for his help. The house was chaos.

Hong Kong could only stand there and watch in disbelief. He could withstand his family’s shenanigans, hell, he would often be a part of that too. But in the case of Iceland? Really? No way in hell.

Hong Kong palms his forehead as Japan passes by. Japan, sensing his frustration, assures the boy that everything will be alright and that the rest of the family is only doing everything in their power to welcome Iceland. Surely, his own family wouldn’t make a fool of themselves in front of a guest.

When he finishes that sentence, Taiwan calls for his help, grabs him, and pulls him abruptly to the side. This causes Japan to yelp and grasp the tablecloth as he falls with the rest of the tableset going down with him. Shouting ensues.

Hong Kong can only stand in horror. Just then, the doorbell rings.

It was as if a pin dropped. Everyone starts scrambling to fix the kitchen as Hong Kong quietly slips out of the room to greet Iceland.

Calmly, he opens and slips out the front door. Iceland is standing there before him and raises a shy wave.

Hong Kong only returns with a poker face.

He grabs his shoulders.

“DO NOT COME IN.”, he grits through his teeth. Iceland starts to tremble as his boyfriend looms over before him.

The door opens behind them and they both turn to find China standing there. China’s bright smile looks as if he was about to greet Iceland, however his face drops when he processes what he is witnessing.

Unfortunately for the boys, their faces were perhaps a little bit too close to each other.

An angry yell can be heard across the neighborhood.

—

When China finally calmed down and the boys explained what was going on, they made their way to the dining area. To Hong Kong’s surprise, the table was already set with the silverware and dishes set in place. The others come up politely to welcome their guest.

Despite the evening getting off to a rough start, the dinner itself began smoothly. Iceland’s mouth was already watering as everyone took their seats and gave thanks before digging right in.

If there was anything that at least went well today, it was the pride and presentation of the variety of Asian cuisine right before them, with each dish being of origin from each asian personification. And it made for great discussion too, as Iceland asked what each meal was, the asians took turns in explaining and sampling for him to try it.

What a great way to start off the discussion! That is until- China being a little bit too prideful of his homeland’s cooking- started sampling and piling food onto Iceland’s plate more than the others. Iceland, not wanting to be rude, could not bring himself to decline and he nodded nervously at the pile of food building up in front of him. Already annoyed with China’s meddling, Hong Kong stands up and forces his sensei to sit back down, in which he begrudgingly obliged.

Sensing the awkwardness in the air, Taiwan (once again, being the only one aware of the boys' relationship), started playing wingman and began doing icebreakers with Iceland. The topic started off general at first, but gradually, the conversation shifted in trying to frame Hong Kong the best way possible, much to his embarrassment. However, it only grew worse when Taiwan brought up their childhood together and accidentally slips in a story about her brother being so afraid of the dark that he needed China to sleep with him every night. Hong Kong was about to lose it again when Korea interrupted.

Wanting to join in the conversation, Korea opted in. Thankfully with the addition of Korea, the conversation shifts topics before any more embarrassing stories about Hong Kong could be revealed. Korea begins asking about Iceland’s home country, his culture, and the other Nordics, in which the Icelander happily obliged to answer. Unfortunately though, as Korea and Iceland ease into each other’s presence, his boyfriend found great difficulty to slip his presence back into the conversation.

Taiwan takes notice of this. In another attempt to assist her brother, she intervenes in their conversation, claiming that Korea is being inconsiderate to Hong Kong for barging into the discussion, with a tone that may-or-may-not sound a bit condescending.

Then, one thing happens and leads to another and all of a sudden, fighting ensues at the dinner table. Taiwan and Korea are fiercely throwing insults and shouting over Iceland before China intervenes, yelling at the both of them that they have a guest over and they are embarrassing themselves. Of course, this family has a long history of not taking shit from China and only ignored his intervention. Fortunately, the fighting moved on from the subject of Iceland, but unfortunately, the two started arguing about each other and personal matters that a guest definitely should not hear.

Offended by his disciples’ disregards, China calls out to Japan, who has been silently and anxiously watching the whole thing, to try and stop them. Japan stands from his seat and tries to mediate the two, but Taiwan takes advantage of the situation to claim that Japan sides with her. Mouth agape at offense, Korea takes a handful of food and aims it at Taiwan, in which she dodges and it hits Japan square in the face instead.

The tables ensues into chaos. Taiwan returns Korea’s gesture and soon enough, food is flying across the room as China starts screaming in rage as he witnesses his precious hardwork go to waste. In which both respond back by pelting him with rice and noodles, which only amplifies his shouting. Japan tries to crawl away but Taiwan pulls him to stand up, hands him a bowl, and orders him to start throwing.

For Hong Kong and Iceland, they take cover underneath the table. Hong Kong’s face is red in embarrassment and when he looks over to his boyfriend, his eyes widen at the sight of Iceland’s hair and upper shirt being covered in dumpling bits. He feels like he could bury himself alive underneath that table right then and there.

Suddenly, the front door could be heard opening and closing, followed by multiple footsteps growing near.

“Hey all! Philippines gifted us some pastries from his house! Whose down to try so-”, the voice is instantly silenced as a splatter could be heard.

The boys peer from underneath the table. As it turns out, the voice belonged to Thailand’s and he took a dumpling as well to the face. Macau and Vietnam were behind him in shock as they supported his balance from being smacked in the face.

The room went silent. Thailand was the best buddy anyone could ever have.

Unfortunately, he could be the worst enemy anyone could ever have.

Thailand roars and launches forward fiercely, but Vietnam and Macau struggle to strain him back. The shouting and food fighting resumes.

Hong Kong tugs at Iceland’s shirt and without saying a word, they both quietly sneak away from the kitchen. He takes Iceland’s hand and hurries him upstairs to his room.

And that, brings back to now.

As another shattering of glass could be heard downstairs, Hong Kong bends over and rubs his face, feeling absolutely mortified. He starts thinking of ways to get a new visa when Iceland exits the bathroom, his hair damp and wearing his boyfriend’s shirt. As Iceland sits on the edge of the bed beside him, Hong Kong pretends to keep his cool.

A moment passes, before Iceland places a reassuring hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder. Hong Kong avoids his gaze.

“You know my brothers are the same as yours, right?”

Hong Kong rolls his eyes. “Do your brothers throw food around as well?”

“Pfft, no… they throw dishes.”

“Even then, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t act like lunatics in front of a guest.”

“Maybe not", begins Iceland. He scoots closer. "But have you ever met Sweden? The guy doesn’t even do anything and you already have people throwing their wallets begging him to not mug them.”

Hong Kong tries to shrug it off, however a chuckle escapes.

Iceland grins. “Don’t get me started on Dan as well. One time, we had a diplomat over at Dan’s house and then a mouse ended up scurrying into the meeting room. The woman was freaking out so he pulled out his fucking battle axe from his display case. You know what happened next? He split it into a bloody half. I’m pretty sure she passed out right there.”

That got to Hong Kong and it sent him into a series of giggling. Iceland gently leans into him.

“And then you have Norge, who we keep telling him to stop talking to his trolls or whatever in front of others. But he keeps forgetting to do so everytime and everyone else stares at him like he is crazy.”

“And then you have Fin! You’d think he would at least be the one to know how to host a guest, but that guy is seriously weird on his own.”

Hong Kong‘s giggling turn into full-hearted laughter as Iceland’s grin grows. He leans into his partner’s side to plant a kiss on his cheek. Hong Kong smiles and returns the gesture by wrapping his arm around his boyfriend’s waist and planting a kiss on his shoulder and then placing his chin on top of it.

“Maybe I should come over to meet your family instead.”

“Yeah, well, wouldn’t you like to see how that would turn out?”

Just then, they hear Macau calling their names for them to come back downstairs. The boys turn to look at each other before getting up and making their way back down.

When they returned to the kitchen, it became a palette of wasted food staining the walls and the floor alongside with two broken plates scattered by the table. They are immediately greeted with Taiwan, Korea, China, and Japan (who didn’t even do anything), kneeled over on the ground as Vietnam rants away at a lecture frenzy. To her right, Thailand’s smile has returned, but his eyes glare down at them menacingly as he rubs his cheek with a washcloth. To Vietnam’s left, Macau stands there and is the only normal-looking person in the room. He takes notice of the boys’ arrival and greets them.

Vietnam also takes notice as well.

“ALL FOUR OF YOU, APOLOGIZE THIS INSTANT TO THESE BOYS!!”, she demands to the four. They all lift their heads in the boys' direction. Just as when they open their mouths to apologize, it dawns upon them that Iceland is wearing Hong Kong’s shirt.

An uproar fills the house.

[p5x-theories]

What We Know About Riddle

(last updated 7/26/24!)

Haruna Nishimori, codename Riddle, is a ten year-old math prodigy. She joins the team as a "Phantom Idol", or cognitive teammate.

Her files are named with the codename "Why" instead of her canon codename Riddle. The exact significance of this, if any, is unknown.

Her Japanese voice actress is Yui Ogura.

Haruna is the focus of a side story, though exactly what the earliest point it becomes available at is unclear, as she was added in a later update. Her side story centers around her and her group of friends, who call themselves the "Expedition Team", as they explore Shibuya and enjoy solving puzzles together. Two of them, Kyou and Yuna, spend every day after school with Haruna (until they have to go to cram school), but the fourth member of their group, Shouta, hasn't joined them lately, spending all his time studying. Haruna worries it might be her fault, because she's so gifted at math she'll be going overseas to attend an American college after graduating from elementary school, and now he's avoiding her. However, after talking to Shouta, Wonder helps reassure her it's not purely because she's going to college, and she ends up making a special puzzle for Shouta to remind him why they're friends, and communicate to him that they'll always be friends even if she's in America, and they reconcile.

After her side story is completed, the player will occasionally be given the chance to spend a time slot with Haruna as an honorary member of the Expedition Team.

Haruna is driven by her sense of curiosity. She always wants to understand everything, and will ask questions from anyone she knows who's around her in search of the full explanation to whatever's caught her attention. Her mother connects this to why she excels at math, though it's also noted that Shouta was originally the first to solve puzzles when they were very little, but Haruna quickly surpassed him once she got the hang of it, learning from him. Math seems to be her favorite subject (unsurprisingly, given she excels in it), and she excitedly mentions taking university-level classes in it as well as English outside of elementary school.

Kyou and Yuna seem to enjoy exploration and puzzles as well, but are nowhere near Haruna's level, and are frequently amazed at how she can manage to solve things. When playing a riddle scavenger hunt set up in Shibuya, they essentially leave all the tough questions to her. However, Haruna doesn't seem to mind this or feel taken advantage of in any way; she genuinely enjoys spending time with them, and this feeling seems to be mutual. She also likes sharing puzzles with anyone else she can- including Wonder- and will often invent her own to challenge people to, with a demonstrated awareness of the intelligence level of whoever the puzzle's intended for.

Still, her intelligence doesn't keep her from acting childish, most obviously in her sense of childish curiosity and interest in the world around her. She can be a bit overexcitable and pushy, particularly when she wants answers, for instance asking Wonder several questions all at once before he has a chance to answer any of them. She also runs off when something catches her attention, forgetting she's supposed to be sticking with her mother or Wonder in a crowded area. During her side story, she never reaches a level of significant negative emotion (for instance, she never throws a tantrum or bursts into tears), but even when upset or frustrated she does look particularly distraught. It's clear she wears her heart on her sleeve, and sees no reason not to.

On that note, her words and actions seem to imply she dislikes when things are unfair, something doesn't have an answer, or someone lies, though she may not even be directly aware of how much this bothers her. When the aforementioned riddle scavenger hunt has a final question that's unsolvable, she immediately heads back to the start to let the staff know, but becomes upset when they won't believe her (because other people "solved it", which Wonder discovers was due to the person running that riddle giving anyone a stamp regardless of whether they could solve it). When Shouta won't talk to her and says he has to go to cram school, she also immediately repeats what his mother said a few minutes before about his grades being great, wondering why he's still going. It seems to be that, while she excels at puzzles, she may not have the same level of skill at deducing why people act the way they do, perhaps partially due to how young she still is.

Previous promotional material, prior to Version 1.3.2 which added her side story, described her as a children's clothing model, but this no longer seems to be the case.

Riddle's Persona Daeira (based on an Oceanid of the town in Eleusis in southern Greece, connected with the Eleusinian mysteries) is categorized as a Psychokinesis type, and resists Psychokinesis while being weak to Curse.

Daeira is a Superior Persona, meaning she’s good at buffing teammates and improving their effectiveness, and her trait buffs teammates' attack based on how many layers of "Childish Fun" she has when she casts a Persona skill (it also consumes all layers of it to do this). Her psychokinesis attack skill hits one enemy, and for one round after using it, when any teammate does a Persona skill attack, Riddle gains a level of Childish Fun. Her first support skill buffs the team's defense, increases their healing and shielding abilities for one round, and if she has no Childlike Fun when the skill ends, she gains two levels of it; her second support skill requires a layer of Childlike Fun, and buffs the team's attack (if she has at least two layers, their damage dealt will also increase). Her passive skills give a chance to gain multiple layers of Childish Fun from her psychokinesis skill, and boost the attack buff given when three or more layers of Childish Fun are consumed at once.

In combat, her melee weapon is a pickaxe, while her ranged weapon appears to be some kind of ball-shooter toy gun. Her Highlight is shown from 1:02 - 1:15 in this video, and it deals psychokinesis damage to one enemy, also increasing the damage dealt by all allies (relative to how many layers of Childish Fun she has) for one round.

Her recommended card sets are 1) 4 of Coins (Power) + Queen of Cups (Trust), 2) 3 of Cups (Abundance) + Queen of Cups (Trust).

The game recommends teaming her up with 1) Fleuret and Sepia.

[t4t4t]

a pogrom is violence against jews, you nazi whore. terrorists getting their balls blown off because israel rigged their pagers with explosives is not a fucking pogrom, go shove a sharpened stake up your ass till it cracks your skull

".... In a brief space I can only say that the part of life spent in Arbeit, the triviality of existence in a commodity market as seller or customer, worker or client, leaves an individual without kinship or community or meaning; it dehumanizes him, evacuates him; it leaves nothing inside but the trivia that make up his outside. He no longer has the centrality, the significance, the self-powers given to all their members by ancient communities that no longer exist. He doesn’t even have the phony centrality given by religions which preserved a memory of the ancient qualities while reconciling people to worlds where those qualities were absent. Even the religions have been evacuated, pared down to empty rituals whose meaning has long been lost.

The gap is always there; it’s like hunger: it hurts. Yet nothing seems to fill it.

Ah, but there’s something that does fill it or at least seems to; it may be sawdust and not grated cheese, but it gives the stomach the illusion that it’s been fed; it may be a total abdication of self-powers, a self-annihilation, but it creates the illusion of self-fulfillment, of reappropriation of the lost self-powers.

This something is the Told Vision which can be watched on off hours, and preferably all the time.

By choosing himself a Voyeur, the individual can watch everything he no longer is.

All the self-powers he no longer has, It has, And It has even more powers; It has powers no individual ever had; It has the power to turn deserts into forests and forests into deserts; It has the power to annihilate peoples and cultures who have survived since the beginning of time and to leave no trace that they ever existed; It even has the power to resuscitate the vanished peoples and cultures and endow them with eternal life in the conditioned air of museums.

In case the reader hasn’t already guessed, It is the technological ensemble, the industrial process, the Messiah called Progress. It is America.

The individual deprived of meaning chooses to take the final leap into meaninglessness by identifying with the very process that deprives him. He becomes We the exploited identifying with the exploiter. Henceforth his powers are Our powers, the powers of the ensemble, the powers of the alliance of workers with their own bosses known as the Developed Nation. The powerless individual becomes an essential switch in the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing God, the central computer; he becomes one with the machine.

His immersion becomes an orgy during the crusades against those who are still outside the machine: untouched trees, wolves, Primitives.

During such crusades he becomes one of the last Pioneers; he joins hands across the centuries with the Conquistadores of the southern part and the Pioneers of the northern part of this double continent; he joins hands with Indian-haters and Discoverers and Crusaders; he feels America running in his veins at last, the America that was already brewing in the cauldrons of European Alchemists long before Colon (the Converso) reached the Caribs, Raleigh the Algonquians or Cartier the Iroquoians; he gives the coup de grace to his remaining humanity by identifying with the process exterminating culture, nature and humanity.

If I went on I would probably come to results already found by W. Reich in his study of the mass psychology of Fascism. It galls me that a new Fascism should choose to use the experience of the victims of the earlier Fascism among its justifications."

Fredy Perlman, Antisemitism and the Beirut Pogrom, 1982.

[creature-wizard]

EIYPO confuses me on so many levels because how egocentric do you have to be to think that you are the only person capable of complex thought and that you know exactly what is going on in someone else's head or that you know the answer to everything in the universe. other people are not your dolls!

also how can you say that everyone is a master of their own fate but also everyone is a projection of someone else's conciousness because we all live in different universes or something??? these are all so confusing. it feels like a cop out so people can claim they manifested having a pet dragon and others won't question them on it.

The idea of Everyone Is You Pushed Out was first promoted by Neville Goddard. As far as I know, he never really anticipated anyone trying to manifest anything truly extraordinary; or at least, he never really targeted the kinds of people who might try to. For all of his assertions that you could manifest literally anything you could imagine, he always focused on extremely normative examples; EG, manifesting a house, a partner, a vacation, etc. The Law of Assumption wasn't really meant for people who might think outside the box of the American Dream.

I think a lot of people today kind of believe in EIYPO (I don't think there are very many people who fully believe in it deep down) because of the Pygmalion Effect, which seems to confirm it if you don't already know about it and understand that it's a psychological/social thing, rather than some metaphysical thing.

And on the Internet today, you're far more likely to run into a lot of people who don't have the kind of privilege that pretty much everyone who "succeeds" with the Law of Assumption has, and people with much bigger imaginations than Goddard's original audience. You have a bunch of people who suddenly need to explain why this this supposedly infallible practice just isn't doing what Goddard said it should do.

So what do you do? You throw in some quantum woo about multiple realities and cite a CIA document that you know no one is going to actually read and critically analyze, and voila, now you can explain this away. Of course it all falls apart if you really stop and think about it for more than a few minutes (like, if we all live in separate realities, how are we even seeing each others' posts?), but you know that the average Neville Goddard follower doesn't have very good critical thinking skills.

And it's truly evil, because the kind of people who are falling into this are some of the most desperate audiences the Law of Assumption has ever had. They aren't the typical middle class Americans Goddard would have been reaching in the economic boom of post-war America; they're kids and young adults suffering under the crushing weight of late stage capitalism.

For anyone reading this: If you are leaving or questioning the Law of Assumption and need help, please see this post.

[magnoliamyrrh]

yall i had the weirdest fucking nightmare last night which i feel could be a scenario for a short horror or something

so i was a chicken.

living on this mans farm somewhere in america, but like a rly fucked up farm where he figured out how to genetically modify us chickens or something so wed grow extra wings legs etc so he could cut them off and sell them and keep us alive and we would regrow them. and like idk one day a bit after sunset when there's still light in the sky but its dim, he gets mad at us i think because we were talking amongst ourselves (pretty sure we weren't allowed to talk because it reminded him we were beings like him too and made him feel bad) hes like fuck it its harvest day so he lines us all up and hes going around tearing limbs and shit,, hes like grabbing the skin off of their backs and pulling it over their heads and snapping wings and shit

and its like horrid and horrifying and like he gets to the chicken next to me who tries to speak again maybe to tell him that he wasnt speaking or to not do it which kinda defeats the purpose and like. and like he yells at it that its not allowed to bc were just animals who cant speak etc but like we clearly can but anyway he tears the skin and limbs off of the one next to me more brutally than usual and then he gets to me and like,,,, i just start speaking to him louder and idk saying what but it pisses him off so bad that he grabs me by the neck and takes me to the chopping block and before hes abt to chop me i keep talking to him and idk what i say that gets to him to stop for a moment. i think i remember saying things like we Can speak, we Can you cant just ignore it we can feel and speak and think just like you we may be animals but we Can this isnt right

and i can see his face break a bit, just a bit and he looked at me and i remember thinking Now i have to put on my best act, i have to pretend to care abt what hes feeling, and i go,, you werent always like this with my voice cracking and crying. you werent always like this with us. by this point it is dark outside and the porch light is illuminating us

and he goes no,no i wasnt. i know youre people too. i know you can speak. i can see a look of regret on his face. contemplation. disgust with himself probably. but then he snaps out of it, his face goes cold again. he looks at me with dead eyes and goes on abt how now he has some rare illness thatd gonna kill him so he needs money. some more justifications too this is the world blah blah. he needs to do this. he reaches for my back and tears my skin off over my head, skins me alive, grabs my extra wings and snaps them and takes them with him. i could feel the pain and fear and horror in my dream. ...he leaves me there. but he does not kill me. he does not kill me as he intended

and then i wake up

[bacon-sandwich-of-dionysus]

American Werewolf In London and Guilt

Ah... where to begin with American Werewolf? I love that film so much, it's humorous, it's gory, it's bizarre at times, and it's got some cracking special effects by the legend Rick Baker.

However, what also enthrals me about American Werewolf is the way it portrays David's guilt. He quite literally has the ghost of his friend, Jack, who didn't make it, haunting him, telling him he should have been the one who died by going on about what a mess his funeral was as well as how miserable limbo is. Jack then goes on to tell David he needs to die. His newfound lycanthropy is going to cause further disaster otherwise. Jack implies David doesn't deserve to live. When David slaughters some more people during his "carnivorous lunar activities," he encounters their ghosts, which too tell him he should do the world a favour and die. You could see the ghosts as sort of a form of David's inner thoughts. More importantly, they're manifestations of his guilt. Jack is the guilt of the survivor, the one who made it, who just happened to make it, while the other ghosts are David's future guilt as a result of future mistakes, which join forces with Jack to haunt David, to demand he join Jack like he should have.

Isolation is also a big theme in American Werewolf. David is literally isolated, an outsider, a tourist in England. His support network and family are back home in America and he can't return until he's fit to travel. He's trapped and surrounded by strangers. Although he does manage to find friendly and romantic company in nurse Alex, he's still alone in an unfamiliar place for the most part. Alex does help David a lot in his recovery, but she also dismisses his distress at first. She only realises the severity of the situation when David almost loses it, harassing a policeman to arrest him, screeching that he's the one who killed the victims in the paper, and when someone else, aka the doctor, tells Alex that there must be something more than trauma messing with David's mind.

David is essentially left to fester with his guilt until it's too late; until the full moon appears. It's an explosion! The breaking point if you will. David's inner beast, inner emotions which he's bottled up and buried in the hopes of getting better faster, come rushing out in this tsunami of blood and violence.

Because, unlike those around were to believe, David is not crying wolf. He's been traumatised, he's in pain, and he needs someone to believe that his dead best friend is a ghost haunting him.

When it reaches that breaking point, only then do people start confirming their suspicions that something's wrong. However, it's too late. David doesn't want help anymore. He's moved on. He's accepted the isolation. The werewolf won, and David, in the final act of the film, has been consumed by his guilt.

I love the final scene where Alex tries to reach out to him. It's an ambiguous one. Everyone has their own interpretation. Some people think it's a part of David surfacing before the beast resumes control and lunges at Alex. Others believe it's David surfacing and remaining, choosing to lunge at Alex so he can be shot, feeling as though he is past the point of no return. Both are valid and I think both feed into the same idea of being consumed by your guilt. Either way, whether the wolf takes over or it's David choosing to be put down, David still dies and he dies pushing someone away because he's afraid for what might become of Alex otherwise. It's the guilt. The guilt of losing his best friend, the guilt of killing those victims, the guilt of remaining alive when the ghosts demand he end it all in the name of preventing further pain and suffering.

The wolf is guilt thriving.

I love a lot of werewolf films, but American Werewolf just does it for me. I always love it when people look at the werewolf as a concept and see something they can do with it to make it their own. Werewolves are such ancient monsters, and they can mean different things to different people. So, yeah, that's my little ramble about American Werewolf.

[jgmartin]

THE ONE BENEATH

[Short Horror, Military, Sci-fi]

The military base doesn’t exist.

Not officially.

It’s a rusted out corpse of abandoned hardware, a veritable graveyard of fallen soldiers and crumbling structures. Hidden twelve miles deep in the jungles of South America, there’s no reason anybody should be here. None. So why did I find a woman half-dead on the ground?

It’s a question I want answered.

She’s sitting across from me. Her eyes are downcast, her blouse is torn and her copper cheeks are flecked with spots of red. I don’t know if the blood belongs to her or somebody else, but I figure by the end of this, I’ll have a pretty good idea.

“Tourist?” I ask.

She gives me a hard stare. It’s quiet. Unyielding. She’s not certain who I am, and judging by the look in her eyes, she’s running a series of probabilities. It’s the black suit that does it. Always. People see the suit, they see the briefcase, and their imagination spins into overdrive.

I try another question. “Did you come alone?”

She shakes her head. Her mouth is a thin line, defiant and uneasy. The legs of her chair squeal as she rocks back and forth, giving motion to her anxiety. She’s considering the possibility that this is her last day on earth. Her last hour.

If I’m being honest, it might be.

“How many were with you?”

“Lots,” she says quickly. “They're still around. They know where I am, know where we are right now and–”

“I doubt that.”

Her voice stumbles.

“If anybody was with you, then chances are they’re already dead. Jobs like this? They’re usually bloodbaths. Massacres. They’re not the sort of places you expect to find survivors, much less unarmed ones.”

She swallows. “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Some friend. I don’t know the first thing about you.”

“Funny. I was about to say the same thing.” I reach into my briefcase and pull out my clipboard, centering it on my lap. On it are questions. They’re the sort of questions whose answers are typically written in blood. “How about you and I get to know each other?”

“If you think I’m gonna just tell who I am–”

“I don’t care who you are. I care about what you're doing here, miles deep in the jungle, sitting in a military base that doesn’t exist.” I press my pen to the clipboard. “How about you fill me in?”

The woman’s eyes narrow. Her slender hands ball into tight fists. If I had to guess, she’s not used to feeling this vulnerable, this powerless. “And if I leave?” she says, standing up. “What then? Are you going to cuff me to a pipe?”

I smile. “Why bother?”

The corner of her mouth twitches.

“You’re not going to leave,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

For a moment, my eyes dance with hers, and in their fire I see something– some buried ember of fear. It’s unmistakable. “You know better than I do what’s out there,” I say. “So go ahead. Walk out that door if you think you’re safer outside. I won’t stop you.”

I wait for her to move, but she hesitates. They always hesitate.

“Maybe you’re right," I say. "Maybe I’m not a friend, but I’m the closest thing you’ll find to one for miles, so if I were you, I’d quit worrying about me. I’d start worrying about what it is I’m doing here.”

“Meaning?”

I wave my hand toward the broken window. Outside are rusted humvees. A crumbling barracks. Outside is a road so overgrown that tiny trees are sprouting from cracks in the concrete, while clutches of moss do their best to hide old rifle rounds. “Places like this aren't left to rot without a good reason. Soldiers are trained to fight. They aren't trained to flee into the jungle, leaving their equipment and assets behind." I gesture broadly. "Look around. This base was evacuated in a hurry, and that begs the question– why? More importantly, why did I find you in the middle of it?”

Her eyes dart outside. Her pupils are dilated in a cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety. “If I tell you… then you’ve gotta tell me something first.”

“Tell you what?”

“Who you are,” she says, voice trembling. “I want to know what’s really going on here. The truth. I’ve been lied to enough today.”

Have you? I study her. The truth of my work isn’t something people want to hear about– not really. They might think they do. They might think they’re ready to open Pandora's Box, to see the dark underbelly of reality, but it’s rarely the case.

Still, the woman strikes me as stubborn. If pulling back the veil can get her talking, then maybe it’s worth the existential crisis. I slip a hand inside my jacket, pull out my badge and toss it to her. She catches it, just barely. “There you go,” I say. “Everything you need to know about me, right down to my height and birthday."

She appraises the badge. Her eyes move across the laminate once, twice, then snap back up to me, suspicious. “This says you work for an organization called The Facility. I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s the idea. We’re a shadow contractor. The less people know about us, the easier it is to do our job.”

“And what is that job?”

“Anomalies,” I tell her. “We investigate Events of supernatural origin. They’re typically caused by entities– things you’d recognize as monsters, or urban legends. My job is to hunt those things. Capture them.”

She shakes her head. "Why?”

“That’s a complicated question. The short answer is that it’s necessary. The long answer is that you’ll sleep better not knowing." I lean forward, flaring my jacket behind me, letting the woman get a glimpse of the pistol on my hip. "Fact is, I came here tonight to investigate an Event, but instead I found you. I’d like to know why that is.”

Her eyes drift to the window. She’s wearing the expression of a woman who was praying her nightmare was all in her head, that whatever she saw today was the product of acute psychosis, a little bit of neurological sabotage and nothing else. Now she’s considering that maybe there’s something more here. Maybe she’s not as crazy as she hoped she was.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She bites her lip. Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Maria.”

“You look like you’re having a hard time processing things, Maria.”

“You don’t know what I saw…” she mutters. “You have no idea…”

“I hear that a lot.” I pull out a pack of smokes, slip one between my lips. I light it and the nicotine tastes sweeter than heroin. It ripples through my body like emotional morphine, and just like that, the next part gets a little easier. “Between you and me, my father was killed by an entity, Maria. I watched him die.”

Her eyes meet mine. They’re wide. This wasn’t the emotional curveball she was expecting, and that’s exactly what makes it effective. Always.

“Happened when I was seven," I tell her. "I saw the whole thing from under my bed, cowering. A creature had him in its grip. Some tall man with two faces. He lifted him up to the ceiling and turned to me, asked what my favorite nightmare was, and then he tore my father in two. Like paper mache.”

I blow out a plume of smoke and it hangs in the air between us. Then I take another long drag. The truth is, I hate this story. I hate it more than anything else in the entire world. It’s a memory I’ve gone my entire life trying to forget, but in moments like these, it’s the most valuable piece of history I own. Even now, it’s working its black magic. I watch Maria’s posture shift. Her shoulders fall, slumping forward in horrified disbelief. She’s doing the human thing and empathizing with me, sharing a piece of my pain, and that’s exactly what I need her to do.

“Is that how this so-called Facility found you?” she asks.

“It is.”

Her eyes are staring a hole into the concrete floor. She looks distant. Haunted. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

I ash my cigarette. “Don’t be. It’s ancient history. The point I’m trying to make is that when you’ve seen an entity kill somebody, it stays with you. You recognize the scars. And right now, I see those scars all over your face.”

She doesn’t speak. She looks out the window, out across the military ruins to a rusty steel wheel rising from the dirt. It's bolted to a hatch that leads underground. One she’s been stealing glances at for the better part of our conversation.

“That bunker,” I say. “I found you lying beside it, bleeding and barely conscious. Something happened down there, didn’t it?”

A moment passes. Her eyes are narrowed in focus, like she’s weighing her options. Calculating outcomes. Eventually, she takes a breath. Asks a question. “You said that you hunted entities… Well, what about demons?”

“What about them?”

“Do they exist?”

I crack a grin. “Depends who you ask. Are you saying that you saw one down there?”

“I’m not sure,” she says at length. “Maybe not a demon but… something like it.” She stops. Her teeth dig into her lip, and then she says something that shocks even me. “I think I saw the devil. Satan.”

“Satan?” I say, whistling. “Now that’d be something.”

“You think I’m nuts,” she mutters, shaking her head. “I knew you would… Everyone will…”

“I don’t think you’re nuts. Not yet." I take one last drag on my cigarette, burn it to the filter and flick it to the floor. "The truth is, The Facility’s been tracking strange activity in the area. A lot of it. Entities are being drawn to this base, being pulled in from nearby regions like moths to a flame, only to vanish without a trace. I'm talking about heavy hitters. Nightmare fuel. These aren’t the sort of entities that we can destroy, much less contain, so the fact that they’re dropping off the face of the Earth is starting to get concerning.” I thumb to the broken window. “This base? It’s the Bermuda Triangle for boogeymen. I’m here to find out why.”

She shrinks in her seat. “Jesus… Do you think it has something to do with what I saw?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t know until I get more details, and that means I need to know what you’re doing here.”

“Here?” she says, glancing at the bunker. “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

"Not possible. We do this before nightfall. There’s no other way.”

What Maria doesn’t realize is that this entity likely already has her scent. Sooner or later, it’s going to return for her. When that happens, I need every advantage I can get– and that means understanding just what happened here.”

“Hang on,” she sputters. “What happens at nightfall?”

“Keep derailing my investigation, and you’ll find out.” I scratch her name onto the clipboard. “Now start talking. We’re losing daylight.”

She runs a frantic hand through her hair. “Christ. Alright,” she says, voice cracking. “Let me think for a second. It started a couple weeks ago, I think. A reader sent in a tip about this place–”

“Slow down. A reader?”

“Right, fuck. I'm a journalist. I work for an online paper, and we solicit tips for our stories. Usually scandals. Corruption. It's mostly political stuff… but a couple weeks back, a man sent in something bizarre.”

“That man have a name?”

“John.”

“Just John?”

Her voice breaks. “Yes.”

I write it down.

She continues. “John said he'd been hearing screaming, that his whole village had, coming from somewhere in the jungle nearby. Military was in the area. They were sending convoys through the village in the dead of night, with their headlights off to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Apparently they were all driving up an old road, one that hadn't been used in decades. John knew the road. He knew it led to an old military base… one that used to conduct illegal experiments."

I lean back. "What kind of experiments?"

"The human kind. Genetic stuff. DNA splicing, mutating– you name it."

“Seems weird John would know that.”

“He used to work there,” she explains. “A long time ago, during the Cold War.”

I frown. “The nearest village is twelve miles away. Nobody is hearing screaming at that distance."

“That’s just it. They didn’t hear screaming from the base, they heard it from the jungle. John said it sounded just like it used to when he worked there. Guttural. Animalistic. He could tell that the people screaming had been experimented on, and that they were being let loose in the jungle."

"Let loose?"

"Yeah. I guess they'd send out test subjects, then release other experiments, more advanced ones, to hunt them down.

"What for? To test their capabilities?"

“Partly,” she says darkly. “But mostly for food.”

I chew on the tip of my pen. "Cannibal humans, genetic testing, a massive military cover up– sounds like Pulitzer Prize material."

She folds her arms, gives me a scathing look. “Is that sarcasm?”

“Not at all. Give me John’s age.”

“Not sure,” she says. “Seventy, maybe? He was in good shape. Fit. But he looked rough.”

“Rough?”

“I just mean he looked like he’d been through the ringer. Had a hard life. His skin was leather, and he was missing half of his teeth. His hair was a tangled mess. I’m pretty sure I saw lice moving in his beard.” She pauses. “And his eyes…. His eyes were unnerving.”

“Describe them.”

“Well, they were pale– paler than the moon. And every so often they’d sort of pulse, almost bulge out of their sockets. I hate to say it, but he looked freaky.”

“And John brought you here, to this base?”

She nods.

“And where’s John now?”

“He’s…” Maria’s eyes drift to the bunker. “He’s dead. Down there.”

Could’ve guessed. I follow her gaze and the steel hatch is turning crimson in the setting sun. My stomach twists. What I don’t tell Maria is that entities are most active after nightfall. If I don’t solve this mystery soon, then the answer is likely going to come find us– and I’m not sure I like our chances of survival.

“That hatch,” I say. “I'm guessing that's how you and John entered the bunker.”

“Yes.”

“Describe the interior.”

Maria takes a second. She furrows her eyebrows, as though thinking back. “It was narrow,” she says slowly. “Like a tall cylinder. I remember standing at the top of the hatch and looking down into a dark pit that stretched forever. John got on the ladder and told me to follow. He said it’d be a bit of a descent, but once we were down there, he was certain we’d find the evidence we’d need to blow the conspiracy wide open.”

“What state was the bunker in?” I ask. “John implied operations had resumed, but did it appear that way?”

“No…” she says. “Frankly, the condition was awful. It looked like the bunker had been abandoned since the Cold War. Moss crept up the walls and the ladder rattled with every step we took. The place was a deathtrap. Every time I put my foot down, I half-expected the ladder to snap.”

Odd. One would think John would clue in after seeing the state of the bunker that it wasn’t fit for operation. Then again, John strikes me as a man not altogether there. He might have been mentally ill. Out of his mind. Based on Maria’s description of him– the pale eyes, chilling demeanor– I can’t help but wonder if John wasn’t so much an employee of the program as he was a test subject.

Maria continues. “About fifty feet down the ladder, we started to see catwalks. Dozens of them. They extended off the ladder in every direction, leading to various entrances along the interior.” She trails off, as if collecting her thoughts. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. Quiet. “The entrances were welded shut. All of them. It’s like they were trying to keep something trapped inside… like they didn’t want it getting out.”

“All of the entrances?” I ask.

“No,” she says, tugging nervously at her sleeve. “Not all of them. One was different. We found it at the bottom of the ladder, half-submerged in rainwater. The flooding only came up to our knees, so we were able to wade through easily enough but…” Her fingers dance across her jeans. They pick at the fabric.

“But what?”

“It was torn open,” she breathes. “The entrance, I mean. It was warped outward like something had clawed its way out of the bunker, pulled it apart like a tin can. I’m talking about inches of steel here. Enough to shrug off the shockwave of a nuclear warhead– I mean fuck, what could do that?”

For the first time, I feel the ghost of fear creep through me. It’s subtle. Insidious. If what she’s describing is true, then there are two, maybe three entities I’m aware of with that capability. All three are impossibly violent. Vicious. Official policy to avoid contact at all costs. If such avoidance isn’t possible, then policy dictates the elimination of all witnesses to ensure the preservation of social order.

I look to Maria. She’s covered in bruises, blood and judging by the way she’s cradling her arm, probably has at least one fracture. She’s already suffered a nightmare. I wonder if I’ll have the courage to put her down if the time comes.

“The door,” I say, hoping she doesn’t hear my voice crack. “John used to work there. He must have had thoughts on the damage.”

She snorts. “He said it was explosive charges. He said the military probably breached the door to get inside when they restarted their science project, but I knew that couldn’t be true. First of all, the door was warped outward– not inward. More than that, there wasn’t a shred of explosive damage in the area.”

“I’m assuming these were observations you shared.”

“Of course. John didn’t care though, just changed the subject– asked me if I had any skeletons in my closet. Asked me if I’d ever hurt people, or considered it and–”

“What?”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, laughing in disbelief. “Talk about a left turn into what the fuck. I shrugged it off. I mean, I knew John had demons in his past– maybe he was looking for a little absolution from me. It’s not like he sounded threatening. He almost asked the questions casually, like he was hoping we could start a conversation, forgive each other for our sins, sorta thing. He didn’t press the subject. Maybe if he had, though, things would’ve been different.”

She sighs. Her eyes shift to the bunker, hazy with memories. “He helped me squeeze through the damaged doorway, and we continued on. All the passages were flooded down there, utterly dark. We sloshed through countless corridors, our headlamps reflecting off the black water and making shadows against the walls. It creeped me out. It felt like we weren’t alone down there because I’d keep seeing movement out of the corner of my eye.”

Movement. I wonder if she really was just seeing things, or if there had been something down there, stalking them even then. “Anything stand out as interesting in those corridors?”

“In some sense, all of it was interesting,” she says. “The whole place was like a buried time capsule. In the rooms we passed I saw ancient magazines and peeling posters. I saw little relics from the 70s or earlier, some floating in the water, others sitting on dusty tables and countertops– even keepsakes, like lockets, wedding rings. Even the desks were full of soggy documents. Classified ones. Seemed strange they’d just leave all that behind.”

She takes a deep breath. “We passed through a series of maze-like corridors, then climbed a ladder that finally got us out of that floodwater. It felt nice to be on dry ground again, but the new chamber…” A shiver runs through her. “It was narrow to the point of being claustrophobic, and all along its walls were streaks of dark paint. The air felt musty. Rancid. But it wasn’t until we turned the corner that–” She stops suddenly, her expression paling.

“Maria,” I press. “What happened when you turned the corner?”

A moment passes. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. “Something crunched under my foot,” she says. “Bones. The passage was full of them. Skeletons were piled a foot high. It looked… It looked like they’d died scrambling over each other, like they were trying to reach the ladder and escape something. That’s when I realized the streaks along the walls weren’t paint. They were blood. Old and brown.”

My heart thrums. Could this be evidence of John’s so-called experiments? “Did the bones appear to be mutated at all?”

Maria nods, slowly. “Yes. Some more than others. One skull could’ve belonged to a man, but its jaw was elongated, like a horse’s. A single, twisted horn curved out of its forehead. Another was… another was flat. Square. It looked like somebody had rolled a person’s head under a tractor, but it had dozens of eye sockets. Multiple mouths.”

She brings a hand to her mouth. Gags. She looks like she might be sick, and I can’t blame her. I’m beginning to feel a little light-headed myself, though for another reason. Outside, we’re losing light. Night is fast approaching, and I’m worried it might be bringing something that I’m not yet ready to deal with. Something violent. Deadly.

“What was John’s reaction to the bones?” I ask, swallowing my dread.

“His reaction?” she mutters. “Jesus… Well, he picked one up– another skull. This one looked like it could’ve belonged to a woman, maybe, but where the mouth should have been was something else entirely. Mandibles. Like a wasp, or an ant. Whatever it was, it got John excited. His eyes did that creepy thing where they bulged from his sockets, and down there in the dark, I swear they even glowed. He held the skull up, just inches from my face and asked me how it made me feel. I could hardly focus on his words. His breath smelled like rot. Decay. He pressed me against the wall, but I shoved him off. He came back at me, and I took a swing at him– caught him across the jaw because I wasn't taking any chances down there. That dazed him. He stumbled, spat out some blood.”

An altercation. A new, unexpected wrinkle to her story that isn’t giving me any solutions to save our lives. Still, John is a curious individual. He was right about the experiments. If he’s dead, then I wonder what role he played in all of this… “How did John react to you hitting him?”

“He got weird,” she says, shaking her head. “Like fucking bizarre. He started mumbling nonsense, then shouting that I was being cruel, evil, like those monsters all over the ground. He cried. He whimpered that he was hurt, and that he brought me here as a favor, but now I was betraying him.” Maria pauses, as if she’s trying to make sense of her own story. “It was so strange. The way he was shouting didn’t sound angry, but almost performative. He kept calling me a monster like he was trying to get somebody’s attention.”

“And did he?”

Her mouth falls open as if to say no before a sudden realization flickers across her eyes. “Yes…” she breathes. “Oh God, I didn’t notice at the time but yes. Right after the shouting, we heard a clanging sound. It echoed through the passage. Whatever it was, it sounded distant. Far off, like it was coming from the entrance to the bunker, from that long ladder.”

“How did you react?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I mean, hell, I don’t think I believed it was really happening. We were miles deep in a jungle in a military base that by all accounts didn’t exist. Who the hell could be coming down the ladder?”

“And John’s reaction?”

“He grabbed my hand. Swore. He said the military must’ve figured out we were there, that they were coming to capture us, or kill us, or turn us into one of their newest abominations– who the fuck knows. He told me he knew a place where we could hide. We fled down passages that twisted and turned like a labyrinth. I followed his lead. At that point I had no idea where we were, no idea how to find my way back. He was my lifeline. My only shot. But the entire time we ran… I heard something rumbling in the dark.”

“Something human?”

“Do humans howl?”

Goosebumps trace my skin. No. They certainly don’t. “Maria,” I say, “this is important. What did the howl sound like– a wolf, or maybe a hyena?” This could be my chance to identify this thing. To figure out what it is we’re up against, and save our lives.

But she shakes her head. She shakes her head and I hate her for it. “No,” she tells me.

“It didn’t sound like anything alive. It sounded artificial, electronic. It howled like a microphone screams with feedback, all high-pitched and ear-splitting.”

My grip tightens, cracking the plastic shell of my pen. Maria’s description doesn’t sound like any entity I’m familiar with, and that’s making me frustrated and terrified. “This place John mentioned,” I say, swallowing. “The place he said you’d be safe– where was that?”

The color in her face washes away. “A wide room, shaped like a pentagon. All along the wall were slots. Gun turrets. They were abandoned, rusted out like everything else there but it was the words written all across the walls that made my blood go cold…” Her voice trails off. She tries to finish her thought, but it comes out as a sob. She drops her face into her hands and the tears come out like a torrent, messy and loud. I give her a moment to let it out, to collect herself, but the truth is I’m not sure it’s a moment we can afford.

Outside, the sun is missing. It’s gone. The last scraps of daylight are making crooked shadows out of the treeline, spilling them across the base like decrepit fingers, reaching toward us like hungry phantoms.

My eyes find my clipboard. I scan it. I review the details I’ve recorded in search of some clue, some revelation that might get us out of this alive, but my writing is a mess. It’s uneven. It occurs to me that my hand has been shaking, that even now my palm is slick with sweat.

“I’m sorry,” Maria sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay.”

It isn’t.

“You said there were words on the wall. What did they say?”

“Sector 5…” she says, taking a shuddering breath. “Sector 5: Feeding Trough. And the room… Oh god, there were corpses everywhere. They were scorched. Burned. They were half-devoured, rotting away, with maggots pouring out of their skin. The scent was… Nothing in the world smelled more terrible, more revolting.”

“Corpses,” I say, heart pounding. “Like the ones you saw before? Genetic experiments?”

“You said something earlier. Something about missing monsters… Disappearing entities…”

I lean forward. "What about it?"

Her eyes get wide. The contours of her face twist with the onset of dawning horror. “I think I found them,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I think I found all of them down there.”

My jaw clenches. It’s my turn to go pale with shock. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces begin to connect in my mind. They’re building a picture that I’m not sure I want to see, but it’s a picture that’s becoming difficult to deny. “Why?” I press. “What makes you so sure they weren’t just test subjects like the others?”

“These felt different,” Maria says quickly. “Horrible in a way that even the others couldn’t compare to. It’s like when you look at a manikin, or a doll… What’s the phrase?”

“Uncanny valley,” I offer.

“That’s it,” she says. “That’s what I felt looking at these things, the uncanny valley. It was like they didn’t have a soul– like they never had a soul. Some looked human. Nearly. But they were too tall, or their limbs were too long, or they had too many teeth in all the wrong places. But what scared me most of all wasn’t the bodies, it was the thought that something had killed those things. Something had torn literal nightmares to pieces, and there was a good chance it was coming to do the same thing to me and John.

“John,” I say, still trying to parse his significance in her ordeal. “That many bodies couldn’t have appeared overnight. They’d been there for a long time. That means he probably knew about them, didn’t he?”

She nods, gasping. “He knew. He fucking knew. He shoved me onto that pile of corpses, that festering and decaying pit of monsters and told me as much. He started shouting. Call me a monster all over again. Evil, he said. Twisted. He kept pointing at me like all of this was my fault, and he hadn’t both led us to our deaths.”

Her voice becomes a stuttering mess. “A-all the while I heard that thing in the dark. Approaching. I felt terrified, hopeless and numb. I kept asking John why me? Why go through all this trouble just to kill me? And he told me that he didn’t have a choice. He knelt next to me, put a hand on my cheek and whispered that his child needed to feed. It was getting hungry. Desperate. He almost looked fucking r-remorseful if you can believe it, and he told me that he was really sorry, and that he hated to do this but… He stepped away from me. Stood against the wall of the chamber. Watched. Waited.”

For a second, I’m afraid Maria is going to break into fresh sobs, but she pushes through.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she continues, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I didn’t have anywhere to run, anywhere to hide, so I just lay there in that heap of monsters. I gave up. The whole time, those footsteps got closer and closer. The nearer they came, the slower they got. It was like it knew I was trapped. Like it’d done this before, and knew there wasn’t a rush…” She looks up at me. “Do you think… John did that to other people too?”

“It’s certainly possible. Did you get a good look at the creature?”

She shudders. “Yes. I had my headlamp trained on the passage the whole time, and when it appeared around the corner, I almost missed it. I heard it, but I could barely see it. It was a tall, flickering shadow. It pulsed. Vibrated. The way it moved was jerky, haphazard, almost like it had one foot in our reality, like it was glitching with every step it took.”

“Glitching…” I mutter. Why does that sound familiar?

“That’s right,” she says. “And that wasn’t even the strangest thing about it.” She gets small in her chair. “It had these eyes. Amber ones. Bright and gleaming, like twin cinders smoldering in empty space. It felt like they were piercing me, like its eyes were digging through my skin and looking into my mind. Or my soul. It was like that thing was taking bites out of my memories, tasting them before spitting back out…”

“How did it feel? Painful?”

“No, she says. “It felt cold. Like a blizzard in my head, like all my thoughts had frozen to a crawl. Maybe that’s why I calmed down. I don’t know… I remember sitting there, totally numb as the Shadow phased through the metal bars of the gate. It almost looked human. It had two arms, two legs and a head, but its body was made of black static. Like television interference.”

Television interference… Where have I heard that description before? I rack my mind for a match, some kind of urban legend or ancient lore that matches what she’s saying, but nothing jumps out. I flip through the pages of my clipboard, stopping on one labeled ABERRATE EVENTS. It’s The Facility’s own Most Wanted List. My eyes fly through the cases listed, but there isn’t anything close to what she’s describing.

An idea strikes me.

“Did the Shadow hurt you at all?”

She looks down at her arm. There’s a large gash there, framed by clots of dried blood. “No… I don’t think so,” she says hesitantly. “I got these injuries when I was trying to escape.”

No, of course it didn’t. It had other food available already. “And what happened after it pierced you with its eyes?” I ask.

“It walked past me,” she says. “It walked through that mulch of corpses and headed straight for John. It started speaking along the way. At least, I think it did.”

“What do you mean by speaking?”

“Do you remember how I said it was howling before?”

“I do.”

“Well, this time it was hissing– like a livewire, or static electricity. Whatever it was communicating, John looked panicked. He was crying. Pleading with it. He kept saying that he’d done his best, but there was nothing else out there, so the Shadow would have to make due with me. But the Shadow didn’t seem to care. It grabbed John by his long hair, lifted him up to the ceiling and its cinderlight eyes started gleaming an angry orange.”

My heartbeat races. My pen flies across the clipboard, desperately trying to avoid missing a single detail.

Maria keeps talking. She keeps giving me more of what I need. “John kicked and screamed,” she says. “He begged me to help him, told me that if I didn’t I was every bit the monster he’d said I was and I’d be next… But before he could finish, the Shadow’s eyes flashed and leaked fire. John started shrieking, moaning as his face melted into his skull.”

Maria’s face twists with revulsion. Disgust. She looks away, back to the bunker. I wonder if she’s hearing what I am– that dim rumble of something moving underground, that slow march of an approaching nightmare. Our clock is ticking. It’s not something I can tell her though, because as soon as she starts panicking, I lose the chance to connect the dots I need.

“Maria,” I say, pulling her attention back. “Continue. It’s critical I get these details.”

“Sorry… It’s not a memory I like thinking of but… The Shadow held John there, his legs twitching weakly, and then it grabbed his head and tore it off his neck.” She brings a hand to her mouth, starts nervously biting her nails. “Then it lifted John’s skull to its amber eyes. It opened its mouth and screamed fire. The heat I felt was like an open furnace, like Hell itself. Tendrils of darkness emerged from the Shadow, clutching at John’s scorched skull and cracking it open like an egg. His brain spilled out. The Shadow caught it in those tendrils, and brought it into itself. His brain. Like it was fucking assimilating it… Or eating it. ” She looks up at me, and there’s the same angry defiance I saw when we met. “Now do you get it?” she asks. “Now do you see what I mean about this thing being the devil? What else could do something like that?”

A good question. I can think of one entity. Only one. If my guess is correct, then Maria and I get to live to see tomorrow’s sunrise. If it’s wrong, then I need to put a bullet in both our heads before that thing finds us.

All of it hinges on my next question.

“It killed John, then what? What did the Shadow do?”

“It turned back to me,” she says. “It glared at me with those blazing eyes, and I thought I was next. I knew I was. But then I felt another blizzard sweep across my mind, and that was it– I blacked out.”

“Hang on…” I mutter. “What do you mean you blacked out? I found you lying outside of the bunker. How did you escape?”

She shakes her head, frantic. “I don’t have a clue. I blacked out, then the next thing I remember was waking up outside the bunker, with you pouring water on my face and telling me we needed to talk. That’s it.”

She shoots up from her chair. “Christ! We need to leave.”

I blink. “Why?”

“The police. I’ve gotta tell them about John and what he was doing. I’ve gotta tell them about this base. Maybe John brought others here. More victims. Maybe some of them are still alive down there and need help. We need search parties and–”

“Don’t bother,” I say.

She looks at me, stunned.

“The police won’t have any record of John. Tell them where you were, what you saw in that bunker, and they’ll probably kill you.” I reach into my pocket, pull out my lighter and run a thumb down the sparkwheel. It flickers to life. “Fact is, John doesn’t exist. Neither does this base.”

I bring the lighter to the edge of my clipboard. The flame catches a page.

“What the hell are you doing?” Maria exclaims.

“Saving your life,” I say, tossing the clipboard to the floor. It pops and cracks as the fire eats the woman’s story, one word at a time.

“What the fuck? You said you believed me!”

“I still do,” I tell her. “That’s the problem. An hour ago, I had no idea what was going on here, but the more you spoke, the more it started making sense. I realized that you and John were more right than wrong. That there really is a conspiracy here. A cover-up.”

“Then the people deserve to know!”

“They do,” I confess. “And they will, eventually– but not from you, and not from my report. Neither is an option.”

She shakes her head, incredulous. “Then how?”

I walk to the window, rest my hands against the edge. I take a breath. It’s humid, heavy with South American heat. “I’ll figure something out. I always do.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence. Then, she asks the obvious question. “It’s your employer, isn’t it? This whole thing has something to do with The Facility.”

“Yes,” I tell her. “I think it does.”

She appears at my side. The two of us stare out across the dark of the base, out at the steel hatch rising from the dirt, where a devil made flesh is inching ever closer. “I thought you said your job was hunting monsters,” she says at length, “not creating them.”

“My job is a lot of things. More than anything else, it’s complicated. The Facility is… Well, it’s not what I’d call a good organization. Or even a moral one.”

“Then what is it?”

I consider the question. “A pragmatic answer to an otherwise ugly question.”

She looks at me expectantly.

“The question of salvation,” I explain. “The question of how do you rescue humanity from a nightmare so twisted that it defies all language? All concept of imagination? There’s something coming for us, Maria, something dark and unfathomable, and these entities– these monsters might be our only chance at fighting back.”

She’s quiet. Her expression is difficult to read.

“Decades ago, The Facility was a very different organization,” I tell her. “In those days, they thought the approaching nightmare was right around the corner, that we had weeks or months until it showed up on our doorstep. They didn’t know. Out of fear, they greenlit any and every possible solution. Or at least, that’s what the rumors say.”

“Rumors?”

I nod, darkly. “There’s no real records of The Facility’s activities during the Cold War. Most documents were destroyed. The few that remain are heavily redacted. I wasn’t around then, obviously, but I picked up bits and pieces from old timers I’ve worked with. They mentioned black projects. Hidden programs. One project was particularly infamous, so much so that even now, half a century later, The Facility hasn’t entirely snuffed out its legend.”

“What project?”

“Project Judas,” I say. “If you believe the rumors, it was headed by a brilliant biochemist named Screech. Jonathan Screech. The aim of the program was to create the ultimate weapon, a monster that could assimilate targets into its being, absorbing their capabilities. Such a function would provide it with a near limitless power ceiling. The problem was–”

Something hits my ears. Maria’s hand finds my arm, squeezing it painfully.

“Do you hear that?” she hisses.

Steel rattles in the distance. There’s a low groan of warping metal, like the rungs of a ladder slumping beneath the weight of something titanic. There’s something beneath us. It’s inside of that bunker, climbing that old ladder, and it’s making its way to the surface.

“We’ve gotta run!” Maria tugs at my arm, but I keep my feet planted where they are. My eyes narrow. I stare at the now trembling steel wheel, lit up beneath the light of the jungle moon.

Maria stumbles backward. A smile finds its way onto my face. In the distance, across the ruins of the base, the bunker’s hatch is thrown open. A dark shape emerges. It buzzes like television static, framed in shafts of moonlight. Its twin eyes glow like cinders. The shadow lurches, looking around, scanning the base and emitting a low electric hum.

“That’s it…” Maria whimpers. “Oh God… that’s it…”

The creature sees us. It sees me. It takes a shambling step forward, and dust and dirt flies into the air beneath its weight. Its eyes smolder, growing and growing until they become a blaze of fire. Maria is on the ground. She’s hiding beneath the window sill, reefing on the fabric of my pants and pleading with me to run, but I hardly notice she’s there.

This shadow– this monster, is why I’ve come here tonight.

Now, we finish things.

A wave of arctic air passes through my mind. It’s just as she described. My heart slams as I feel this Shadow rifle through my thoughts, chewing on my memories. I close my eyes. I breathe deep, inviting it in. Go ahead. Have your fill.

And then with one final shiver, the cold in my skull fades. That Shadow retreats, pulls back from my mind and when I open my eyes, I see it gazing back at me. The fire in its eyes dims to that cinderglow. It tilts its head skyward. Six black wings burst from its back in a shower of static.

“What’s happening?” Maria asks frantically, still on the ground beneath the window. “How are you going to kill it?”

“I’m not,” I tell her.

The Shadow belts out one last distorted howl before launching itself into the air like a streak of night. Three flaps of its wings, and it’s gone. Vanished into the sky, lost amongst the clouds.

Maria rises to her feet. Her eyes are wide. She’s shaking, her entire body is shaking with a tidal wave of horror. “Oh no…” she mutters, gazing at the sky. “It’s gone… So many are going to die…”

“Yes,” I tell her. “I hope so.”

She turns to me then, angry. Stunned. “You told me your job was stopping those things! Hunting them! What’s the deal, asshole? Why’d you just let it fly off?”

“Because I never finished my story.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”

“Project Judas had a directive,” I explain. “A very specific one. Its purpose was to assimilate hostile entities, to annihilate monsters and boogeymen, and ensure the survival of our species. Simply put, it was never made to hurt humans. After everything you’ve told me, I’m not convinced it can.”

She crosses her arms, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Were you even listening to what I said? I found a fucking graveyard down there. It burned John’s skull to a crisp, cracked it open, and ate his brains. I don’t care what it was designed for– I watched it kill a human right in front of me.”

“I’m not certain you did.” I lift up my briefcase, paying my now ashen clipboard one final, farewell glance. “From everything you described, I question whether John was a man at all by the time he took you down to that bunker. If he really was Johnathan Screech, and I think the evidence points to yes, then it’s said he conducted more than a few experiments on himself along the way. The glowing eyes? I’ve never met a human with a set of those.”

“But–”

“Fact is, John brought you here to kill you. John told you that he needed to feed you to his child, that he didn’t have a choice…” My thoughts turn to all the strange disappearances that lead me here. The missing entities. The absentee urban legends. “He was feeding Judas a steady supply of horrors, just enough to keep it from entering hibernation– right up until the moment he ran out. That’s why he pulled you down there. He thought you’d be an easy mark, that maybe with a little creative twisting of the narrative, he could convince Judas that you were close enough to food. Remember how he kept calling you a monster? Unfortunately for John, he misunderstood his own creation. Project Judas wasn’t designed to harm human beings. It went against its core directive. So in that moment, when John offered you as a sacrifice, a flip switched in Judas that made it realize John had crossed the threshold and become a monster himself.”

She’s quiet as we walk out the door. “You think he really was that Johnathan Screech guy?”

I shrug. “Maybe. I doubt there are dental records to double check, but based on what you’ve said tonight, it wouldn’t surprise me if Screech couldn’t let his project die. A creature like Judas… The Facility probably didn’t have a means of terminating it, so they buried it instead. Sealed it behind blast doors a kilometer beneath the earth. Then they erased all records of this base ever existing.” My SUV is gleaming black, impossible to miss against the ruinous backdrop of ancient humvees. I crack the passenger door. “Need a ride?”

She smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile all night, and I can’t help but smile back. “Thank you,” she says. “For not killing me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She clambers into the seat, and just as I’m about to close the door, she stops me. “Wait,” she says quickly. “I forgot earlier, but John mentioned another entrance. One used for freight… That’s probably how he got back into the bunker after they sealed it up. He seemed to know everything about that place.”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I figure he must have.”

I close the door and circle to the driver's side.

“So what do we do now,” she asks as I hop in. “About that thing, Project Judas?”

"Nothing," I say, plugging the key into the ignition and giving it a twist. The engine rumbles to life. “As far as I’m concerned, that creature isn’t a monster. And that means it’s not my problem.”

The vehicle rattles as we pull out of the base and onto the jungle road. Maria twists in her seat. She looks back through the rear window as her worst memory falls further and further behind us. “If it isn’t a monster, then what it is it?” she asks.

Words drift around my head. Definitions. I’m trying to figure out how to explain what it is that she and I saw, what it is that more people will see in the coming weeks. I’m trying to think of a way to tell Maria that whatever that thing was, she doesn’t need to be afraid of it. None of us do.

I open my mouth to reply, but I’m interrupted by a microphone howl. It’s distant. Far away. I crane my head and look up through the scatter of vines passing above us. And then I see it. A dark speck on the horizon. It’s little more than a dot against the moonstreaked clouds, but I know that if it were closer, I’d see a creature with six wings. I’d see a shadow with cinderlight eyes. A body of black static.

I’d see a guardian angel– one with plenty of work to do.

[kuninge-jane]

Prologue

3 September, 1872

London, United Kingdom

Louisa, beloved daughter, I pray this letter finds you well. By the time this letter reaches you, we will be half-way across the Atlantic, returning home after our long travail in the Old Country. Our business has concluded favourably, and I am glad at the prospect of returning home with good tidings. Tell your younger siblings that we will be arriving soon.

Your Father,

Thomas Rutledge.

28 September, 1872

Boston, Mass., United States of America

“Sister, when will mother and father be home?” the youngest of the Rutledge siblings, a boy of 5, called Jacob, asked his eldest sister, indeed the eldest of all the siblings, save John, off serving in the Army.

Owing to her health, she had remained a maiden, though already at the age of 24. Were it any other family, she might have been shuffled off out of the home to some far-off cloister somewhere, or something of the like. The Rutledges, however, were a more progressive family than most, though they still had their proud traditions, and Louisa had been able to stay in the family home, running things while her globe-trotting parents carried on with the family business, trading in the far-flung corners of the globe.

“I can’t say for certain, Jackie. I would have thought they’d be here by now,” Louisa responded, trying not to let the growing concern she had been feeling more and more with each passing day show on her face.

If any of the past voyages from London were any indication, their parents should have arrived not much more than 5 days after the final letter arrived, but now they were nearly 10 days on from the arrival of the letter, and there was still no word of their parents – whether good or bad, news was better than no news.

Jacob began to pout, the natural state of the youngest sibling, and scampered off somewhere in the house to mull. Louisa sighed, seating herself beside a window and watching out it as the people bustled about outside.

She typically preferred the comfortable countryside estate the family owned near Philadelphia, but in that, she was a minority, and the rest of the family preferred the almost palatial manor in Boston proper, finding joy in the hub-bub of the city in which their father was born – as such, it was there that their parents always put into port, and where the children would usually be waiting patiently for their return.

As she sat lost in thought, the family’s butler, Alexander, who had been serving her father and mother longer than she herself had been alive, gently rapped on the door to her study.

“You may enter,” she called, turning away from the window to face the elderly gentleman.

His face, generally ever-placid, carried a strange note of emotion Louisa was familiar with on the old man, and she couldn’t quite place it.

“Young lady Louisa, I-I,” the man’s voice broke like a young boy’s, “I have some grave news about the master and mistress.”

He produced a handkerchief from a pocket and began to dab at his eyes as tears welled up.

Louisa, having never seen the man break his demeanour in all her 24 years of knowing the man, sat heavily back down in the chair she had stood up from when he had entered her room, her hand clasped firmly to her mouth.

“A-Are you certain?” she asked.

“The lifeboats from their ship arrived this morning, but they were no-where to be seen. Several other passengers stated that they had seen the master and mistress aboard ship when it went down,” Alexander confirmed, his voice quivering while he spoke.

“So, there is still a chance?” Louisa said, though in her heart, she already knew the answer.

“The authorities do not believe there to be,” the butler shook his head, looking far older to the young woman than he ever had before.

“Very well. Please, send a letter to Brother – he’ll wish to hear this news from you before anyone else,” Louisa instructed the butler, for he was the father of the eldest Rutledge sibling’s wife, Marianne, and someone with whom he had a strong relationship.

Louisa’s stomach began to churn as the butler left her room to return to his own to do as she had asked. How was she going to tell the children? Heaven help her, how was she going to tell tiny Jacob, still so attached to their mother?

7 October, 1872

Boston, Mass., United States of America

After Louisa informed the children of the demise of their parents at sea, they held three days of mourning, and Louisa began planning the funeral for their parents. John received leave from the Army to return home and settle the affairs of inheritance.

Save Jacob, who had become totally despondent, hardly eating or drinking, the rest of the family carried on as if in a fugue. All work was done with efficiency, and affairs were righted with proper haste, but all around them were aware that they had become somewhat detached.

Louisa, though weak in body, seemed to be handling things the most, directing the family in all their daily activities. Though she put up this brave front, inside she was as distraught as all the others, but she dared not show it, out of fear that if she did, the family would falter – she wouldn’t be able to show her face to her parents if that happened.

At the funeral, they all wept. For most of them – such as Louisa – it was the first time they had done so since they first heard the news.

In spite of their wealth, and those crowds in attendance, it was a rather modest affair. Though their father was indeed a wealthy man – one of the wealthiest in Boston – he was also a rather humble and generous man. This last statement shown by the fact that many who turned up to mourn at the funeral were people from the poor houses in the city, whom their father had given small loans, jobs at one of this businesses in the city, or many other kinds of help.

At the end of it all, the family were tired. Tired, and ready to get back to living life. The youngest of them, especially Jacob, though, were still distraught. It would take time for them to heal.

18 October, 1872

Outside Philadelphia, Penn., United States of America

Louisa, dearest daughter. I pray this letter finds you in good health. I am sure by now you have heard of our demise. However, I wish to inform you that your mother and I are well. Well enough, though not out of the woods yet. After we arrived in Rhode Island in our lifeboat, a doctor sent us on our way immediately to our estate near Philadelphia.

Your mother and I apologise for the grief we have put you through, and wish that all of you might join us while we recuperate.

Your Father,

Thomas Rutledge.

The letter arrived two days after it had been addressed, late in the evening, after Louisa had put the younger ones to bed. She often carried on later than anyone in the house, a habit her doctor had long urged her to abandon, out of concern for her health, but she liked those hours just after the sun went down, finding them to be the best time for being alone with her thoughts.

And time she indeed needed this particular evening, given the contents of the letter. It was surely written in the hand of her father, whose writing habits she was well accustomed to, often helping him draft documents for the business; the tone was the same as the many letters he’d written before.

However, in spite of all those things obvious to her, she couldn’t put aside the feeling there was something wrong, something off. She knew in her mind that she ought to be feeling joy, hearing from the hand of her father that both he and her mother were well, but in place of joy, she felt dread.

In the end, though, she knew that she couldn’t ignore the letter, regardless of the dread it filled her with – she knew she would have to take her siblings with her to the estate.

21 October, 1872

Boston, Mass., United States of America

The Rutledges set off from their city estate to go to the rural state near Philadelphia. After mulling over the letter and what to do about it, Louisa elected to share it with Alexander and John, who were again having a night of mourning, drinking in the sitting room and reminiscing. The two, after reading the letter, immediately began making plans to leave the city and head for the rural estate.

The next morning, along with all the young ones, the family all set off for the estate near Philadelphia. The journey to the estate through Philadelphia was uneventful, and that, coupled with the obvious joy shown by the others, began to put Louisa at ease.

Arriving at the estate, Louisa was the first to get to the front door. Affixed to the doors was a note, pinned with a letter opener. The letter began with writing identical to her father’s, but it slowly began to drift further and further from his penmanship.

Louisa, beloved daughter, indeed your father did truly love you. However, his love for you and your siblings was not enough to allow him to run free from my grasp.

No, and now it seems his love was not enough to save his beloved children, either.

Pray, did you feel even the barest hint that something might be wrong when you read the letter I set to you in the city, Louisa?

I do so doubt it – here you are reading this letter, after all.

And glad I am that you are reading it! For it means you have fallen into my grasp.

Do not be afraid, however, for it will be only but a while until you join once more with your father and mother.

Warm Regards,

S.