Hazel the witch on bugs bunny

Hello, Have a question, not sure if it’s a bug. Since upgrading to 23.01/05 I’ve noticed on reboot that I lose internet connection. To resolve, I go into wan interface and change the speed duplex to anything other than what it is.
I had to reinstall Pfsense since I corrupted it some how trying to get my DAC cables to work and I noticed it again when upgrading to 23.01 from CE.
I just installed the patches, rebooted and same thing again. I’d set interface to 10GBase-SR from default to get internet back after after upgrading. I left it there, then just did patches and switch it back to default after reboot due to no internet.
Running bare metal asrock b760 itx with i3 13100 and XXV710-DA2 connected to Arris S33 on the 1G port. Using 10GTek transceivers connected to US8-150 Unifi switch on sfp port. I don’t recall this being an issue in 2.6 and I can’t recall if I ever ran 22.x.

Hey EVE,
I would love to dive back into eve and start trying all sorts of legal exploits with game mechanics. Not the sort of bug abuse or unfair advantage. But just play with the game engine ingame. Create fun scenarios and Win eve ofcourse. Like creating a ship with maximum amount of EHP (for its tier) and go have fun with it.
I'm worried that with low amount of time available maybe like 30 minutes a day eve, especially omega isn't worth it.
Do you guys and girls have any input on ideas if this is feasible or should I try to create more time. I can afford omega tho 20 a month is crazy high. I've one toon with about 40mil sp (it's I think mainly focused on frigates and tengu).
I stopped playing for 3-4 years atleast so it's all bit vague.
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Secondary question, would there still be (if it can be made with CCP approval) interest for like the hacking minigame outside of eve? In let's say a web browser game for phones (and pc) but I imagine it mostly playing while travelling? I've put up this idea looooong ago (it's somewhere far in my Reddit history) 😅
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Main goal is to have fun again, I'm searching a new game after finishing kingdom come deliverance
Every input is welcome 😊 o/
Edit: stupid formatting

A little about me:
I am 5"9', brown hair, hazel eyes and my build could be described as strong with some softness for aftercare or cuddling. I am looking for that woman, who shares hobbies, interests, and well...kinks with me and I am unsure what I want to get out of it relationship wise, however I do know that eventually I would like to meet the person who talks me to me after at least a friendship and comradery is built. Trust is very important to me, I will share myself but not show my face immediately so I have to build that trust up first. If you feel the same and enjoy sharing yourself the same way I do then I think we will get on swimmingly. I go to the gym 4 days a week as well. If you want to know more, about me, just ask!
Kinks -
Breeding - This I feel is a super common one from my perspective, and I do love it especially the higher the risk of impregnation. Begging to be bred is even better...
Gentle/Pleasure Dom - There isn't really a term that I would use to describe my type of Dominating without cringing but being a pleasure Dom is as close as I can get to how I play with my subs.
Public or high risk of being caught, sex - I just feel that, let me give you an example. You have a nice summer dress on and decided not to wear your panties. You didn't tell me as we sit down on a park bench, slightly hidden but still visible to those who look hard enough. You don't even say anything, sit on my lap and start grinding, making me hard enough to unzip my jeans and reach in to put me inside you to grind further until you take that cum you need inside you. That is the sort of thing I mean.
Edging/Multiple orgasms (both) - This pairs with how I Dom but if we edge together, we explode together
There are others, but these are just to catch the eye of people who have similiar but if you want to know more just ask
Turn offs / Hard limits:
Overly violent and risk of mutilation, permanent physical or mental harm
Scat/Gore/Piss
Humiliation
BBW, unpopular opinion but if you say you are bubbly or BBW you are just trying to be cute about being fat
Just all the horrible stuff really
As stated before this, I am looking for someone who is or wants to meet in real life at some point. I know a lot of the blokes here also want this but I am patient and never push for it. If it happens it happens. Someone who takes care of themselves like I do gym wise, I enjoy going outside and wild camping, climbing (sport or TRAD) and in general I am always looking for an excuse to be outside and exploring to see or find beautiful landscapes. Confidence is key, sharing yourself with me is key, and location is pretty important too so I would prefer if you were at least in the same country as me.
I prefer redditchat to PMs as I just.. will forget if it is a PM so if you want to send me a message please send me a bit about yourself (pictures work wonders) and maybe open with some of your own kinks. I am open to a lot of things as long as it is NOT on my hard limit.

I've had this several times now and it really pisses me off! I had a great flying lap around Monaco only for it not register. I quit and reload the game to find a Q1 P20 result. Q2 worked but my time was crap. Q3 also had an endless session which also didn't register.
I really don't know why I'm wasting my time on this crock of bug filled crap. 🤬

Hey, lately i have been wondering why the servers get increasingly worse on xbox. A few servers has been bugged for 2 ish weeks now, and connection to other servers get gradually worse, is this the sign? Are they pulling the plug or just toning the efficiency down on said servers to make People leave the game?

28F Caucasian, 5’10”, 275, occasional drinking, no tobacco use but a nicotine vape. No medical issues besides asthma.
As the title states I got my first hemorrhoid, I was icing it and using witch hazel pads as google suggested. Today it started slightly bleeding, little clots and bright red blood, a little bit into the work day, it burst (?) and was bleeding quite a bit. I changed my pad and cleaned the area as much as I could but it bled for almost 2 hours straight, is this normal? Should I continue icing and witch hazel or is this something I need to see my PCP for?

Dear friends, I offer all the sets from Collector Cache 2021-2022, Immortal 2021-2022 Mythical Set 2021-2022

Hero	Set	Quantity	Price
Collector's Cache II	Collector's Cache II	Collector's Cache II	Collector's Cache II
Legion Commander	Bird of Prey	2	4$
Silencer	Grand Supressor	1	4$
Alchemist	Darkbrew's Transgression	1	4$
Oracle	Transcendent Path	2	4$
Brewmaster	The Wilding Tiger	1	4$
Doom	Dawn of a Darkness Foretold	2	4$
Pudge	Cursed Cryptbreaker	by agreement	4$
Nightstalker	Feasts of Forever	4	4$
Phantom Assassin	Darkfeather Factioneer	1	4$
Clinkz	Withering Pain	by agreement	4$
Vengeful Spirit	Acrimonies of Obsession	2	4$
Huskar	Sacred Chamber Guardian	1	4$
Techies	War Rig Eradicators	2	4$
Treant Protector	Grudges of the Gallows Tree (RARE)	by agreement
Anti Mage	Brands of the Reaper (RARE)	1	15$
Void Spirit	Sublime Equilibrum (VERY RARE)	1	40$
Coll Cache I	Coll Cache I	Coll Cache I	Coll Cache I
Riki	Scarlet Subversion	2	4$
Snapfire	Whippersnapper	1	4$
Chen	Hounds of obsession	5	3$
Clockwerk	Seadog’s Stash	5	3$
Dawnbreaker	Starlorn Adjudicator	2	3$
Spectre	Spoils of the Shadowveil	by agreement	4$
Faceless Void	Chines of the Inquisitor	1	3$
Ursa	Trophies of the Hallowed Hunt	4	3$
Phoenix	Crimson Dawn	4	4$
Terrorblade	Forgotten Station	5	2.5$
Undying	Dirge Amplifier	4	3$
Monkey King	Champion of the Fire Lotus	1	2.5$
Witch Doctor	Deathstitch Shaman	5	4$
MARCI	Blue Horizons (RARE)	4	10$
INVOKER	Angel of Vex (RARE)	by agreement	15$
PRIMAL BEAST	Dark Behemoth (VERY RARE)	2	20$
Dead Reckoning	Dead Reckoning	Dead Reckoning	Dead Reckoning
Medusa	Death Adder	1	7$
Sniper	Expired Gun	1	7$
Lina	Dead Heat	1	7$
Immortal 2022	Immortal 2022	Immortal 2022	Immortal 2022
Centaur Warruner	Infernal Cavalcade	1	1.5$
Enchantress	Flutterstep	2	1.5$
TemplarAssasin	Seclusions of the Void	3	1.5$
Venomanser	Aktok's Glory	4	1.5$
Meepo	Everglyph Goggles	3	1.5$
BroodMother	Limbs of Lycosidae	3	1.5$
Huskar	Draca Mane	3	1.5$
Necrothos	Sullen Sanctum	4	1.5$
DarkSeer	Insight of Forlorn Precipice	1	1.5$
DragonKnight	Draconic Divide	4	1.5$
Disruptor(RARE)	Tremors of the Tandem Storm	5	3$
Bristleback(RARE)	Blastmitt Berserker	5	3$
Templar Assasin (VERY RARE)	Golden Seclusions of the Void	3	10$
Centaur Warraner (VERY RARE)	Golden Infernal Cavalcade	3	10$
Huskar (VERY RARE)	Golden Draca Mane	2	10$
Necrothos (VERY RARE)	Golden Sullen Sanctum	2	10$

You pay for the goods immediately, I book it and send it to you in 30 days. I accept payment on Paypal , Immortal or Arcana
My SteamRep My SteamRep
My steam profile My steam profile

Trading Robux or RHD for adopt me pets!
I have 1.5k robux and 200k RHD to trade, depending on what ur offer is i can add steampunk set, whimsy witch set, 30k dims and 2k robux. Please NYP as I don’t know the values, and please be fair! Thank you! I’m mainly looking for neons, fly and ride pets, but anything is good :) will be using a MM/MW from this subreddit!

Hello
I'm having an odd issue.
Lately i have been having a lot of AMD Driver timeouts when i try to play wotlk classic, but it ain’t happening in other games I play, and it's bugging me a lot. So much so i have reinstalled windows 11 pro multiple times (Fresh installs) with no luck. I'm running on the newest AMD driver the 23.5.2 driver. Still happening, changed to Dx 11 instead of 12, seems more stable but it still happens.
I'm playing on 1440p 165hz monitor. Got dual monitors, the other one is an 1440p 144hz Specs of my pc is:
5900x 64gb 3200mhz ram Corsair vengeance lpx RX 6800XT Red Dragon 1000w evga psu. Gigabyte Aorus x570s elite ax. Bios F6b Noctua NH-D15s Wd black sn750 1tb Wd black sn 750 2tb Samsung 870 evo 2tb Windows 11 pro 22H2 22621.1778 Gpu driver 23.5.2 Chipset driver 5.05.16.529
I'm not sure what to do anymore.

I have 1.5k robux and 200k RHD to trade, depending on what ur offer is i can add steampunk set, whimsy witch set, 30k dims and 2k robux. Please NYP as I don’t know the values, and please be fair! Thank you! I’m mainly looking for neons, fly and ride pets, but anything is good :) will be using a MM/MW from this subreddit!

I decided to buy the paperback version of Automatic Millionaire, by David Bach. The 2013 printing. It was very cheap and delivered fast.
This is because all the reviews I read online mentioned it being a fast, easy read (which he says himself was by design, in other words it's a feature, not a bug.) I need that because of my vision problems, and I'm willing to say that this seems to be a fair assessment so far.
I've read the preface, the introduction, and the first chapter, which tells his inspiration for writing the book. I've also looked through the book, and it seems to be not only a reading book, but also a bit of a workbook. You are meant to write in it, making it your own.
It is a bit dated, as it is pre-everything that has been a recent earthquake in our USian lives. However, it does deal with small amounts of money, and automation. BOTH of which are not only important AND DOABLE in our lives today, but also suits this sub, imo.
One final thought, because of the small amounts involved, the reaching millionaire status is incumbent on starting this way of thinking early, having plenty of time for the small increments to work and compound. As such, it is an awesome way of thinking for people who are younger than I am. Still, it was very cheap on Amazon, and very pertinent to this sub, which I love.
I look forward to continuing to read this, even with my eye/headache trouble.

Taking a look at the Thayan Enclave store on PC shows me the Next Emergence Event is in 2400 days. Considering that's 6.5 years from now the FAQ helpfully states the next one will be in August 30th, 2023.
A small but amusing bug in the system.

Is anyone else experiencing a bug with the green potato quest? I have collected 14 bottles, but the last two in the river in the Glade of Trust just do NOT seem to be there for me? I've watched a Youtube video and looked at maps. Those two river spots near the bridges are just NOT there for me. Restarted the game and all. Playing on PC.

I thought this was fixed.
Workarounds:

• If playing The Duviri Experience. There may be another chest nearby that should still count.
• If on The Lone Story. You may have to trigger a host migration for another one that works to appear nearby.

On side note. A question. Has there been any information from DE that they've fixed re-rolling decree causing a false ban? I've read the player got unbanned but hadn't heard if they've fixed what caused it. So I've been avoiding the re-rolling decree feature.

I posted a few days ago asking for aid in steadying my energy while I prepared to hear back from a life changing career change.
Someone PMed me and recommend I try making a witch's ladder. I love knot magic so I gave it a shot, tying 9 knots while pouring my intentions into it.
Well today I got an email saying I got the job! I want to that any who saw the first post and put any energy, even just up voting the post, my way. I felt a lot more secure after that night. I hope I can balance everything out and send this energy back to you all some day
May the road rise up to meet you on your travels

I had a meeting with my parenting coordinator a couple of weeks ago where he asked me, “do you think her disorganization is conscious or unconscious?” I told him I don’t give a shit. It’s predictable. And I know how to manipulate her to get more conflict and how to manipulate her to get less conflict. So, we agreed he would send out an update offering her my weekend with our kids before her vacation, tell her she must disclose the children’s health insurance to me, and provide a template for that we have to fill out after medical/dental appointments ($2k spent on the kids teeth with no update prompted the last one).
And, this asshole didn’t do it. So, I need to buy plane tickets for the vacation so I send out a bullet point list of the proposed dates explaining I’m offering her my weekend to make her travel easier.
Guess who was a cunt about it? She fucking exploded and threatened to object to the vacation because I objected to her taking the kids over Memorial Day weekend without proper notice (I withdrew the objection when she forwarded the email that was a wall of word salad with the notice buried in a bullshit sandwich).
Then, she sends another message saying, “everything I said is true bug I don’t want to create conflict for the children.”
And, the fucking PC writes back “I know you don’t want conflict.”
WTF asshole? I fucking told you exactly how that would play out. Now, let me tell you how your comment will fucking encourage more of this bullshit. She doesn’t have an internal sense of right and wrong. She does whatever she can get away with. You ducking absolving her means you’ll get more of that behavior.
Jesus fucking Christ, how easy is it to get a PhD in psychology.

I swear, every time I see a clip posted on this sub, I already know what the comments are going to be:
- The enemies were so bad...
- You were super ahead...
- You're lucky your team carried you...
- Etc...
...so, worthless clip
Like it's always the same. What bothers me the most is when all of the comments are like "That guy you killed made such a bad play and that's the only reason you got the clip" because, that's obvious! People often make mistakes, and it's your job to capitalize off of them. If everyone played perfectly, then nothing would ever happen.
I also often see tons of comments about how bad the op is, and that bugs me too. Everyone's skill level varies, so it seems so unnecessarily cruel to rip posters' gameplay to shreds.
And don't get me wrong, negative feedback is important and can genuinely help people improve. I just feel like I *only* see negative feedback in this sub lately. Its like there's this elitist tone to everything, and any mistake you make defines your skill level.

Yet another article by Man Yue Mo about exploiting the Arm Mali GPU driver.
Man Yue Mo used a race condition bug to make GPU access freed memory and gained root from the untrusted_app context on Pixel 6.

Last month, I was driving along the highway, coming back from a trip to my grandpa's house. I can't remember the exact second, but as I was driving, apparently a truck collided with my car and I was knocked unconscious. While I was out, I fell into a dream. One that will stick with me.
I need to type as many details as possible, so here's every single thing I remember.
I was a 7 year old boy, living in New Jersey rather than my real world home state of Massachusetts. My parents would drop me off at a school I never went to in the real world, and I would play with friends I never met.
2024 and 2025 were calm, upbeat years for me. I didn't care much for world events, so I barely paid attention to the news. It was just my toys, Disney Plus, and my friends, Josh, Emily, and Ryan. We played war and crime themed video games and watched hilarious videos on social media.
2026, however, was when things took a bit of a downturn. In March, my friend, Josh, died in a car accident, and they noticed his eyeballs were missing from their sockets after the wreck. I was shown a picture for god knows what reason, and I teared up as I saw my friend's red eye sockets and lifeless face.
That night, I kept my bedroom light on. I don't know exactly what time it was when this happened, but I was lying on my back, staring at the wall when a pair of black pants popped up out of nowhere at the foot of my bed. Sidetracked, I looked up and saw a rusted face. The thing, whatever I saw, vanished as I made eye contact with it. My heart dropped and I called for my Mom.
I chalked it up to the thing having been a ghost. I brought it up to my friends, Ryan and Emily, the next day. Emily told me she was in the car behind the one Josh was in, and saw a man with a rusted-looking face running towards the car, but for some reason she doesn't remember what happened next. Chills ran down my spine as I realized the man was real.
Together, my friends and I decided he was a ghost we needed to avoid. This pact made me feel less alone, and being as afraid of the ghost as I was, decided to never break it.
I slept under my covers to avoid seeing him, and I didn't see him again until the trip I took to Canada's Wonderland that summer. I was riding the Leviathan when I swore I saw a man a few rows ahead of where I sat, with a rust-coloured neck. The adrenaline I felt riding the coaster turned to panic. Time slowed and I wanted off the ride.
This man stole my friend's eyes and was probably after mine too. Once I was off the roller coaster, I looked around frantically for him. I managed to catch him walking into a bathroom. Was he following me? I begged my Mom to take me home as soon as possible.
My friends and I decided to go hunting for the man one day. I think before the end of August 2026. We walked into a nearby forest and waited for an hour. We didn't know where he came from, but Emily pointed out he was around at times we felt the most emotional, and we were telling each other how scared we were of him, which had to count.
Fortunately, he didn't show up. I was overwhelmed with chills, and told the two I didn't want to search for the rusted man anymore, and began walking home.
2027 and 2028 were my preteen years. I took my mind off of the rusted man by focusing on my favourite shows and musical artists. For the sake of getting all the details down, I watched a lot of Simpsons, Gumball, and this show called Camedon that went viral in 2027. The music I listened to was a rapper named Pestilence 40 and a pop singer named Rhonda Miller. In the Spring of 2028, I realized I was Asexual and Aromantic, meaning I didn't feel a sense of attraction towards anybody.
I spent a lot of time researching my favourite things while I'd overhear my parents freak out over a war that involved China. I have a hard time remembering anything more about said war.
The next time I saw the rusted man was shortly after I turned 13 in 2029. I was going through the pictures of my trip to Chicago, and, at the bottom of my camera roll, there was a picture of his face. I jumped.
When did that happen?
I went into the photo's details tab and found out it was dated February 5, 1950. Odd, considering there's no way the phone I was using was manufactured anytime around that year, but I sent it to my friends. Both of them responded by telling me the image was coming up blank. I went back to my Gallary, intenting to study the image closely, but it was gone.
A lot of the time after that were just casual memories of being dropped off at school, playing GTA 6 with friends, watching my favorite shows, listening to my favourite music, and joking about Secret Wars on Reddit and a viral app called BL. Nothing much about the man...
That is, until sometime in 2032, when I saw him walk by my bedroom window while I was right in the middle of a depressive episode. The chills I felt were one of the four emotional highs I felt that year. For the rest of the year, and for a lot of the following year, I felt numb, anxious, and mentally vacant. I barely cared about anything. Not even the man, or the flu epidemic going on at the time.
My friends were going through the same thing, so we exchanged affirmations and shared quotes from singers who were part of an indie wave trying to bring music back to its Billie Eilish phase. I was pretty much over the man at that point. I cared so much less about him, I considered seeking him out to let him kill me. I didn't think I was going to make it to 2034 anyway... so, why not?
Then in 2033, my depression began to lift, and I started to dread the thought of him again. I started drawing pictures of him and posted them on BL. Over the course of months, I gained a following who claimed to have seen him too. Some told me they saw him in their dreams, some told me they spotted him in a crowd, and others saw him in the window of a house they happened to be driving or walking by. Then there were a few people who told me they saw him running across roads and ripping eyeballs out of the heads of homeless people. By the end of the year, I had 10,000 followers.
In 2034, articles were being published about him. He became one of those big internet mysteries with dozens of videos and posts revolving around him and his actions, with some specific autobiographical drawings of mine being used as artistic renditions.
Some people made and posted highly vivid AI generated videos of him performing various tasks like midnight break-ins, murders, and to be jokingly relatable, cooking and cleaning. The videos looked like big budget movies, and, as I watched each of them, I got a deeper sense of dread. I avoided watching the videos altogether, as they began to scare the living shit out of me.
There was a popular form of technology at the time that let people share thoughts and feelings with others. Aside from, joking around with my friends, I used it to let people feel exactly how I felt during my encounters with him. I told them I hoped we'd get to a point where we'd be able to share memories with others, in order to give them the full observer experience.
In the fall of 2036, the FBI announced they were on the case of the rusted man after a string of murders across the US left victims without their eyeballs. I was overwhelmed with chills as I read the announcement. It was official confirmation of the rusted man's existence. I called the police, reporting my encounters with the rusted man. They told me they'd keep a look out for him.
Throughout 2037, 2038, and 2039, I'd hear reports about more victims being robbed of their eyes, yet no official photos or video of the rusted man ever surfaced. There were dozens of fakes all over the internet that were debunked, and I just wanted an official one. At the same time, however, I wanted it to be a hoax. I wanted it to turn out the man with a rusted face was just a murderer trying to become notorious by cosplaying an internet legend. I distracted myself from the whole fiasco by keeping up with the mission to Mars.
In 2040, the lack of photo and video evidence of the rusted man began to bug me. That was until that summer, when something was found. The FBI released security cam footage showing a man with a rust coloured face beating a police officer in a parking lot. His face resembled a mask, but looked organic at the same time. It was him. I knew it in my gut. Comments from other victims commented the same.
"That's him! I can't believe it took this long to get official footage of him."
"Yep. Definitely him. Right down to his eyes. I feel cold watching that."
"Yes, that is the man who stalked me when I was 7."
I too felt cold watching it. I deleted it from my search history and closed all my blinds. He was real. It was confirmed. I knew needed to hide away, even though I hadn't seen the man since I was 13. My friends told me they felt the same way.
The early 2040s were full of fear and doing as many things from home as possible. I made most of my money from making videos about music and movies. Occasionally, I'd make a video about the man, but only whenever he hit the news. I decided to share part of my revenue with my friends so they didn't need to go out as much and risk another encounter with the man. Luckily, most people just ordered food online anyway, which solved the hunger thing.
Sharing revenue with my friends became more important amidst a recession I only barely remember taking place in 2041 through 2043.
I began to go outside more in late 2043/early 2044. The man hadn't been in the news for a year, so I joked the FBI had caught him and found out he was an alien. It found it weird he was only reported in Canada and the US. Maybe it wasn't so weird in actuality, but it was as if something was missing. Like he was present in other places, but no reports had gotten out. I chalked it up to a random assumption and went along with my days.
In the summer of 2044, I discovered a conspiracy forum dedicated to the rusted man. I can remember some of the post titles quite vividly.
"The 'Rusted Man': what is his face really made of?"
"Is the Rusted Man the Last Resort for the US Government on Homelessness?"
"DNA CONNECTS THE RUSTED MAN TO DINAH CORTEZ"
I got out of that forum right away and blocked it from my search results. There was no reason to read any of that bologna...
Throughout 2045, Pop singers would insert references to the rusted man into their promotional music videos, but they usually either butchered him, had him get arrested, or portrayed him as a metaphor for the singer's own mental health issues.
While I was glad he was getting attention, I kinda regretted giving him so much coverage, as it meant I had to hear about him everywhere all the time. I brought it up to Emily.
"Yeah, but, I feel the same way," she said. "I sometimes wish I could hit a button and give everyone amnesia for a week."
While I kept hearing about him, I sure as hell hadn't seen him for a while. I thought I was free of him. Maybe he just left me alone... Maybe he leaves certain people alone after teasing them for a bit...
I was wrong. On one especially sunny afternoon in September 2045, I was jogging along the sidewalk on a road not too far from where I lived. I couldn't help but notice the sky looked like a painting. A really good one at that. As I stared up at the oddity, I bumped into somebody. My face colliding with theirs. Their complexion was odd. It was rough and almost felt like duct tape at the same time. I looked at him and told him I was sorry, but that's when I saw his face.
It was him. The fucking man with the fucking rusted out face. I went cold and felt I needed to force myself to step backwards. When I did, the man let out a chilling shriek. It sounded metallic, but like the climax of a sneeze at the same time. He stared into my eyes, which began to tingle. My heart dropped and I broke the stare, turning around and sprinting along the sidewalk.
Once I got home, I shut all my curtains, reported the man to the police, and texted my friends about the encounter. All I could think was, how long do I have to go through this? At least I was 29 years old, so people would believe it when I say it happened to me. I wasn't a kid anymore, but even then, I wished the rusted man was nothing more than a normal childhood hallucination.
I went to my doctor for my eyes, just to make sure they were alright. He found an odd transparent substance under each of my eyelids and referred me to a specialist. Some tests were done and I was told substance was the same one found in every crime scene involving the rusted man. They concluded I needed to be quarantined in my home for upwards of 20 years. I'm not kidding. That was the protocol.
During quarantine, the man never showed up at, or in, my house. I could only wonder what he was doing other than probably killing somebody. I dreaded the idea of him showing up. I had nightmares once a week... other than that, I still had access to the internet, so I watched as society developed while I was unable to go outside.
A political uprising happened in favour of conservatism in 2046, which was met with equal push from the liberal side due to proclaimations of violence towards those that wanted science to be taught in school.
In 2050, Russia collapsed and fell into a civil war, but was avenged by China and India.
By 2053, we were able to use MRI-like devices to project imagined images onto a screen. I ordered one for $100 and used it to recreate my memories of the rusted man and share them online. They were chilling to look at, so I considered not opening them for a while.
In 2056, a major cyberattack brought down various websites. Luckily, no archival sites were taken down.
Personally I just spent the years making content and building a fanbase that sent me emails all the time. The switch from foldable phones to perfectly flexible phones in the late 40s was fun. The phasing out of laptops due to phones becoming ever more useful was welcome.
Things were pretty normal for that stretch of time, aside from the quarantining. I got pretty used to it though, and developed a habit of jogging on the spot for exercise.
Throughout the 2050s, the rusted man made the news once a month. Throughout the early 2060s, he was making the news once a week. This I wanted to look at the news less often, but I had to because it was important. It didn't matter how dreadful the increased volume of attacks was.
Throughout the mid 2060s, reports came out about him destroying AIs, possibly because he didn't have high tech glasses that identified AIs as one of its features, so he likely thought they were human. This led to an upping of security around AIs and advancements in their security protocols. By 2067, a report came out stating less AIs were getting attacked by him.
The man spent the rest of the 2060s and the beginning of the 2070s continuing his murder spree without much to be discovered about him. He was still an unsolved mystery, and had become one of the most notorious figures of the 21st Century.
In 2071, reports about the rusted man's eye thieving became daily and worldwide. Major news talking heads began pushing the idea the rusted man is an alien who could attack a major celebrity or politician. Or course, celebrities and politicians upped their security ten-fold during the mid-2060s due to the weekly attacks, so nothing could go wrong, right?
That's what I thought, until May 2073, when a famous rapper named Fenny DON was found dead, inside his Atlanta mansion, without both his eyes. The security cameras caught the rusted man popping out of nowhere (in a very specific way that's difficult to explain. Either way, I went cold watching it,) restraining the rapper to their bed, removing their eyes, then vigorously ripping their brain out of their head. It was mortifying, and many people said they refuse to watch it, recreate it, share it, etc, but everybody had to have seen the screen shot of the man standing in the rapper's bedroom one second after appearing out of thin air. It was shared all over the internet for months. The video itself was proof this guy could teleport and move objects telekinetically.
The Pentagon released a report soon after, which included speculation about the rusted man's intentions. It was thought the rusted man was after people's eyes because they are impossible to reproduce alone and nothing beats them in terms of perception.
That wasn't the only thing I was wondering, however.
"Why he needs them is still very unknown and multiple theories so far haven't passed the merit test."
There it was. It needed to be figured out soon, because I wanted to know. I anticipated the day the truth came to be known. I needed the damn closure so bad.
In March 2074, I started to thinking of my life as wasted by the rusted man and my fear of him. I was 59 and rotting from the inside out. I didn't open up to my friends about it until I started slipping into a depression in May, despite my quarantine having just ended. That was when my friends told me the most assuring thing they could.
"Remember the little things, and we're here for you," Emily said.
"Yeah, all we can do now is whatever we want to do, because we're probably going to be killed at some point anyway," Ryan said.
It was cliche, but true. The emptiness lingered on through mid 2075, then it sorta lifted. Maybe I was desensitized, but at least I had my friends and the emotionally cathartic shows I was watching.
By the end of that year, I was thinking of upping my dosage of anti-depressants. Emily, Ryan, and I, were hanging out a lot more to make each other happier in spite of our emptiness and fear the rusted man would barge into our homes, randomly appear on the foot of our beds, or chase us down a road. And it was working. On December 29th, I felt the emptiness lift. Who needed pills? We just needed to stick together, like we always had. Emily suggested covering our heads to confuse the man, but I pointed out we'd need to know when he would arrive. We can't wear bags on our heads forever.
"We'll figure something out," Emily said.
In mid April 2076, I was eating dinner when I started hearing a loud rushing water-like sound coming from outside. I went outside to check out what was going on, but I couldn't find the source. I watched as my next door neighbor walked out onto their front porch, then the neighbor directly across the street stepped onto their porch, both of them looked up at the sky with looks of confusion.
I checked the news later on to find the sound was being reported all over Canada, all over the US, in the UK, Australia, Spain, Japan, South Africa, Chile... then pretty much everywhere else. The entire world was hearing this thing. The noise went on for days, then weeks, comments under articles were mixed about the sound. Some thought it was annoying, others enjoyed its fuzzyness. Both Emily and Ryan both told me they thought it was ear-piercingly horrible. Comedians joked about aliens, and NASA started to theorize it was actually extraterrestrial in nature. The sound finally faded in June 2076, and Emily, Ryan, and dozens of people across the internet expressed their relief.
Around August 10, 2076, I was mowing my lawn when I noticed him standing across the street from my house. The rusted man. He stared my way, not moving an inch. As he stared sinisterly into my soul, I was overwhelmed with chills. But that wasn't it. I noticed something off about the my surroundings. The trees, bushes, grass, were no longer moving in the wind. The man even looked static himself. I couldn't help but stare at the oddity. Everything that should've been moving just seemed so two-dimensional all of a sudden.
I pulled my digital glasses out of my pocket and attempted to call the police, but the numbers weren't in the right order. Attempting to dial 9-1-1 brought up a different combination of three numbers each time.
I sprinted back inside and shut all the curtains again, except for the ones in the kitchen, as they refused to move when I tried to shut them.
Over the following week, the fleeting rushing sound returned to the sky. This time, it sounded familiar. Not just because I heard it for two months straight not too long before. It seemed as if I had always known that sound. I realized it more and more as the weeks went on. In early September 2076, I went to the Museum. On my way to there, I noticed the trees were still static and fake looking. I tried my best to not even think about them, but rather on the technology of the early 21st Century.
When my phone decided to work, I texted Emily. Apparently, I had missed 20 messages from her, but I was too freaked out about my surroundings.
"Does anything seem off about the trees?" I asked.
"No? They look fine to me," Emily responded.
"They look fake all of a sudden. The grass too," I said. "Also, I feel like I've heard The Buzzy Static long before this year, and sometimes my phone looks off, which is why I missed your messages."
"Have you told your doctor about this?" she asked.
I hadn't, but I decided to make an appointment. On the day of the appointment, my doctor immediately diagnosed me with Schizophrenia, but I knew there was more to what I was experiencing. The day after my visit to the doctor, Emily and Ryan came over. I showed them the trees across the street and the grass on my lawn. I told them how fake it looked to me. They told me it all looked normal. They didn't notice anything unusual like I did, which only made my obsession deeper. I looked around at everything for a while. My friends tried to convince me to do stuff with them, but I refused. Eventually, they left, and I stood there, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
Every day, I stood in my front yard for two hours, looking at the trees, bushes, and grass. In late September, the Buzzy Static began to feel more localized to my heart, and I could hear a subtle wooshing along with the buzzing. It too came from the sky.
By mid October, the sound dissipated, but the ambient noise was still going strong. People would walk past my house like there was no sound coming from the sky at all. On October 15, 2076, I stood on my front lawn, listening to the wooshing noise, and watching the trees cease to convince me they were normal. Then, the wooshing sounded localized to my lawn, and then it hit me.
None of this is real.
Suddenly, I immediately alternated from standing to laying down on my lawn without having moved a muscle. I was staring up at the sky, which was getting brighter. I could feel my heart beating. I began to hyperventilate, as this was new to me.
Where the hell am I going?
I looked at the unrealistic trees, then everything went blurry. Pain erupted in my chest, then I was lying on a stretcher. I wanted to move, but I was in shock.
What the... hell...? What's happening right now?
Then I remembered my life. My real life. Then the drive... The crash... I fished my phone out and looked at the date. May 23rd. I checked the calendar for the year. It was 2023. I was overcome with a heavy feeling of sadness. I thought I had spent 53 years being friends with two amazing people, but I was really just... unconscious for a short time?
I can't stop thinking about Emily and Ryan. The whole thing about the rusted man was crazy, but some things will never make sense. Last Thursday, I was sweeping my room, still feeling like I had lost real friends, when I turned around to sweep near the door and saw... the rusted man standing right outside my room. I went cold. It was really him... that rust coloured face... those eyes... I thought I was hallucinating at first. I knew I wasn't dreaming though, as you know when you're awake when you're dead awake. The rusted man lunged at me, and, before I could react, I was being tackled to the ground.
This isn't a hallucination at all... Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Dread overcame me as I struggled. Pain shot up through my back. At some point, I managed to get him off of me, then I sprinted into the living room and out the back door. I didn't have my phone with me, so I couldn't call the police. I looked back and saw the man's silhouette in the door frame. He lunged at me through the dark of the night. My heart sunk and I sprinted away, but tripped and fell face first onto the grass. Not a second later, I felt a painful thump.
I woke up in the hospital with that unexplainable liquid under my eyelids. The liquid I had in the same spot in the dream. My heart sank even further. Great... The doctors told me I'd be going in for testing, and asked me what happened. I told them, describing the man to them as well, but in a plausible way.
"He probably had face paint on or something. Something that made his face look like rusty metal."
Later that day, one of the doctors told me my tests have been scheduled for the 9th.
Just yestarday, I heard Emily's voice in a dream, but she was nowhere to be seen. I woke up with tears streaming down my face, wondering why the rusted man had to be real, but not the two people who were always there for me, or the other victims of the man himself.
My curtains have been shut for days now, I've informed my neighbors of the madman, and the police told me they're still on the lookout. All I want to know is who this man is, what he wants with my eyes, how much longer I'm going to live with him stalking me, and how dreaming truly works.