Brooks lyon funeral home
Mom died.. sisters acting greedy
2023.06.07 21:14 Jonnyboring789 Mom died.. sisters acting greedy
My mother changed her will eight weeks before she died of cancer. She told me that she was giving me and my older sisters her home in Cape Cod which she owns free and clear and it's worth a little over a million. She told me several times to get ready to receive the money and make plans for it right before she died. I visited unexpectedly days before she died ...and my sisters acted very suspiciously. They were doing the hospice care together. Although I was welcomed by all with open arms my sister said it would be more convenient if I left after just three days.
Turns out that my mother's will was written with all kinds of provisions for them and really screwing me. We split the house 3 ways but they are in charge of it. (I guess) and they can rent it out for 5 years, split all the money and not give me anything until it is sold. ( Not sure if these are the exact details but it's what my sister, who is the executor, told me on the phone)
Even though there was no strain of relations between me, my mom or them, they have told me that I am not welcome on the property and that they will inherit everything on the property and all of my mom's money.
My sister has been wailing that I have asked about details in the will before my mother is cold in the grave. My mom died 2 days ago. The will was prepared 2 months ago and when I called the attorney that my sister gave me. They did not know my name or have my address yet (!)
They also asked me not to post a death notice, that there would be no funeral and not to post anything on social media about my mom dying because they "were worried that people would come by the house or try to sue her estate"
Super fishy. I'm fairly certain that they coerced her into signing whatever they wanted with the threat that they would leave her to die in the hospital if she did not.
This is in Cape Cod Massachusetts any thoughts are recommendations are welcome.
By the way I am a 57 year old male who lives in Los Angeles. And I do design and build my sisters are different 53 and 61 and have office jobs.
submitted by Jonnyboring789 to legal [link] [comments]
Turns out that my mother's will was written with all kinds of provisions for them and really screwing me. We split the house 3 ways but they are in charge of it. (I guess) and they can rent it out for 5 years, split all the money and not give me anything until it is sold. ( Not sure if these are the exact details but it's what my sister, who is the executor, told me on the phone)
Even though there was no strain of relations between me, my mom or them, they have told me that I am not welcome on the property and that they will inherit everything on the property and all of my mom's money.
My sister has been wailing that I have asked about details in the will before my mother is cold in the grave. My mom died 2 days ago. The will was prepared 2 months ago and when I called the attorney that my sister gave me. They did not know my name or have my address yet (!)
They also asked me not to post a death notice, that there would be no funeral and not to post anything on social media about my mom dying because they "were worried that people would come by the house or try to sue her estate"
Super fishy. I'm fairly certain that they coerced her into signing whatever they wanted with the threat that they would leave her to die in the hospital if she did not.
This is in Cape Cod Massachusetts any thoughts are recommendations are welcome.
By the way I am a 57 year old male who lives in Los Angeles. And I do design and build my sisters are different 53 and 61 and have office jobs.
2023.06.07 21:13 JoshAsdvgi THE PRINCESS WHO REJECTED HER COUSIN
 | submitted by JoshAsdvgi to Native_Stories [link] [comments] THE PRINCESS WHO REJECTED HER COUSIN (TSIMSHIAN) There was a custom among our people that the nephew of the chief had to marry the chief's daughter, because the tribe of the chief wanted the chief's nephew to be the heir of his uncle and to inherit his place after his death. This custom has gone on, generation after generation, all along until now, and the places of the head men have thus been inherited. So it is with this story. A very long time ago there was a great village with many people. They had only one chief. There was also his sister. They were the only two chiefs in the large town. The chief also had a beautiful daughter, and the chief's sister had a fine son. All the people of the village were glad to see the young prince and the young princess growing up, and they expected that these two would soon marry. Therefore the relatives of the prince went and talked with the father of the princess, and they also went to the uncles of the princess and talked to them. Now, the relatives of the girl accepted, but the girl rejected the proposal and said that she would not marry him; but the young prince loved her very much, and still she refused him The young man loved her still more, and he was always true to her. Moreover, he was very anxious to speak to her, but the young woman rejected him. Now, the princess wanted to make a fool of her cousin. One day she dressed herself up and went to the end of the village to take some fresh air. The young man saw her pass by his door, and he went after her. Soon he saw her sitting under a large tree, and went up to her, and the girl was very kind to him. She smiled when she saw him coming. Then the young man sat down by her side under the tree as gently as he could. He asked her if she did not want to marry him. The girl said, "If you make a deep cut in your cheek, then you may marry me." Therefore the handsome young man took his knife and cut down his right cheek. The girls laughed at him, and they went home. When the cheek of the young man was healed, the princess put on her finest dress, passed the door of her cousin, and the young man saw her pass by. He followed her, and saw her sit at the same place where he had met her before. He went to her; and she stretched out her hands to greet him, put her arms around him, and kissed him once, since her cousin wanted to marry her. Then the young man loved her still more because she had kissed him the first time ever since he had loved her; and when the young man was overflowing with love, she said, "If you love me so much, show your love and make a cut down your left cheek; then I shall know that you really love me." The young man did not like to do it. However, he wanted to marry her, and so he took his knife and made a cut down his left cheek. They went home, and the young man was always thinking of her. Soon his wounded cheek was healed. He did not mind his foolish acts. On the following day he saw her passing his door. The young man followed her, and she was sitting under the tree. She smiled at him when he was coming to her, and said, " Do you come to me again, my beloved one?" and he replied, "Yes, I come to marry you." Then he put his arms around her, and she kissed him again. He asked her, "Do you love me, my dear cousin?" and she replied, "Yes, you know how much I love you," and the princess asked him, "Do you also love me, cousin?', and he replied, "Indeed, I love you very much." Thus said the young man, for he wanted to marry her. Then the princess said to him, "Now, show me your love. Cut off your hair; then you may marry me." So the young prince took his knife and cut off his beautiful yellow hair. (In those days the young men and the old men wore their hair as long as women's hair, and it was considered dishonorable to cut a man's hair as we do it now.) They went home, and on the following day the young man sent some one to her, saying that he wanted to marry her now. Therefore the messenger went to her and told her what her cousin had said; but the woman replied, "Tell him that I do not want to marry a bad-looking person like him, ugly as he is"; and she gave him the nickname Mountain With Two Rock Slides, as he had a scar down each cheek. She laughed at him and scorned him' saying, "I do not want to marry a man who cut his hair like a slave." The young man's messengers came back to him and told him what she had said. Therefore the youth was very much ashamed. He remembered that he also was a prince, and he cried because his own cousin had mocked him. Now, he decided to leave his father's house and his uncle's house, for he was ashamed before his fellows of the scars which he had made on his own cheeks by order of his beloved one. He went about, not knowing which way to go. Day by day he went, and he came to a narrow trail. He walked along it, and saw a small hut away off. He went toward it. Before it was evening he reached there; and when he was near, he walked up to it quietly. He stood outside and looked through a small hole. Behold! a woman was sitting there by the side of a fireplace. She said, "Come in, dear prince, if it is you who was rejected by his own cousin!" So the young man went in, and the woman made him sit down on the other side of the fire. She gave him to eat. When he started from home, four young men, his own friends, had accompanied him on his way; but three of them had gone back home, and only one, his dearest friend, followed him all along the way until they came to the little hut. After the old woman had given them to eat, she said to the young man, "Soon you will arrive at the large house of Chief Pestilence, which is just across the little brook yonder. Leave your companion at this side of the brook, and you yourself go to the large house. When you get there, push open the large door, then say this: 'I come to be made beautiful in the house of Pestilence!' Shout this as loud as you can. Then you will see that the house on both sides is full of maimed persons. They will call you to come to their sides; but do not go there, because they will make you like one of them. When they stop calling you, then Chief Pestilence will call you to the rear of the house. Follow his calling. He will make you beautiful." Thus said the old woman to him. On the following day, after they had had their breakfast, they started. As soon as they crossed the brook, the prince said to his companion, "Stay here, and I will go on alone. Wait until I come back to you!" So the companion staid there. Now he went on alone. Soon he saw a large house in the distance, and went as quickly as he could. He pushed open the door, ran in, and shouted at the top of his voice, "I came to be made beautiful, Chief Pestilence!" Then all the maimed people on both sides of the house beckoned to him and shouted. Those on one side would say, "Come this way, come this way!" and those on the other side said, "Come, come, come!" The prince remained standing in the doorway. There were many good-looking women among these maimed persons. They shouted and called him; but he stood still, waiting until Chief Pestilence should come forth from his room in the rear of the large house. Soon the noise of the maimed people ceased. Then the door of the chief's room was opened, and, behold! Chief Pestilence came forth with his beautiful daughter. He said, "Dear prince, come this way!" Then the young man went to him and sat down on his right side. Then Chief Pestilence ordered his attendants to bring his bathtub. They brought him a large tub full of hot water. Then the chief took the young man, put him into this tub, and, as soon as he was in the tub,the water began to boil and the water boiled over the tub, boiling of its own accord. When the dross was all off, the chief took the bare bones of the young man, put them on a wide board, joining them together, and after he had done so, he called to his young daughter, who leaped over the bones. Then the young man was alive again. His features were changed, and his body was as white as snow. Then the chief said, "Bring me a nice comb!" and his attendants brought him a comb of crystal. The chief took it and combed the prince's hair down to his loins. His hair was red, like tongues of fire. He was the most beautiful of all. The chief did not want to let him go at once, but kept him in his house for two days. The young man thought he had been there two days, but in reality two years had passed. Then the young man remembered his friend whom he had left by the brook before he entered the house of Chief Pestilence. Now, the prince told the young woman that he loved his friend by the brook; therefore the young woman said, "Let us go to see him!" They went together; and when they came to the place, they found the man's bare bones heaped up there. Therefore the young prince wept, but the young woman commanded him to take the bare bones to her father's house. The young man did what the young woman had told him, and took the bare bones to the chief. The chief ordered his attendants to bring his bathtub. They brought it to him, and he put the bare bones into the tub. Then the water began to boil, and the dross of the bare bones boiled over the tub. Thus the young man saw what the Chief Pestilence had done to him. Then the chief took out the bones and placed them on a wide board and joined them together; and the young woman leaped over them four times, and the young man was alive again. Next the chief asked for his own comb. They brought it to him, and the chief asked what color of hair he wanted. The man said, "Dark-yellow hair." He also asked him how long he wanted it; and the man said, "Right down to the knee." So the chief combed his hair down to his knees; and this man was lighter color than the other. Now they started for home. It was not many days before they arrived at their home. The prince looked like a supernatural being, and his friend too was handsomer than any of the other people. They came and visited them; and all the people talked about these two men who had just come back from the house of Chief Pestilence, who had transformed them and given them great beauty. The young people coveted their beauty, and they questioned them one day to know how far the house of Chief Pestilence was from their village. Then the prince's friend told them that it was not very far away. Now, let us go back to the princess who years ago had refused to marry her own cousin. She was very anxious to see her cousin who had just come home from the house of Chief Pestilence. People were talking about it, that he was more beautiful than any other person in the village; and she heard the people say that he looked like a supernatural being. Therefore the young woman tried hard to see him. One day the chief, the father of the princess, invited his nephew to his house. The prince went with some of the chief's head men; and as soon as the prince entered his uncle's house, the young princess looked at him. Oh, how fine he looked! and more beautiful than any of the people. Then she tried to make her rejected cousin turn and look at her, but the young man took no notice of her courting. His hair was like fire, and his face shone like the rays of the sun. Now, the young woman came down from her room, and walked to and fro behind the guests, laughing and talking, trying to make the beautiful prince look at her; but he took no notice of her. As soon as the feasting was over, he arose and went home, and the young princess felt full of sorrow. The following day she sent her maid to call the beautiful prince. When the girl came to him and told him what her mistress had said to the prince, he did not answer a word, and the maid went back to her mistress and told her that the prince would not answer her a word. She sent to him again; and when the girl came to him, she told him that her mistress wanted him to come and see her. But he said to the girl, "Go and tell her that she rejected me then, so I will not go to her now." Then the girl went and told her mistress what the prince had said. The princess sent her girl again. "Go and tell him that I will do whatever he desires me to do." She went and told him what her mistress had said: " My mistress says that whatever you desire her to do she will do." Then the prince said to the girl, "Go and tell her that I desire her to cut down her right cheek, and I will come and be her guest." Therefore the girl went and told her mistress what the prince had said. So the princess took her knife and cut down her right cheek. She said to her maid, "Go and tell him that I will do whatever he wants me to do." She went and told the prince what her mistress had done. Again the beautiful prince said, "Just tell her to cut down her other cheek, and then I will come and see her." So she went and told her mistress, and thereupon the princess cut her left cheek. Again she sent her maid, who went to him and told him. This time he said, "Let her cut her hair, then I will go to her." She went and told her, and the princess took her knife and shaved off her hair, and she sent her hair to him. The maid took it to the prince; but when the prince saw the hair, he refused to accept it. "Don't bring it near me! It is too nasty! Take it back to your mistress and tell her that I don't want to see the ugly scars on her cheeks and her ugly shaved hair. It is too nasty for me." Then he left, and laughed louder and louder, mocking her; and the girl returned to her mistress very sad. She came slowly; and her mistress asked her, "My dear, what tidings do you bring?" Then she told her mistress how scornfully he had spoken of the ugly scars on her cheeks, and of her shaving her hair, and that everybody had been laughing at her, and that every one had heard him mocking her. Then the young princess was very much ashamed. She set out with her maid, and walked along crying. She wanted to hang herself, but her maid talked to her and comforted her all the way. They went on and on, trying to go to the house of Chief Pestilence. Her heart took courage, for she hoped to get there and ask Chief Pestilence to make her beautiful. They went on and on, and passed many mountains and rivers and valleys, and reached the edge of a large plain. There they met a man, who asked them which way they intended to go; and the princess told him that they intended to go to the house of Chief Pestilence. She passed by him, and did not look at him, for she was ashamed to let any one look at her. Soon they saw a large house in the distance. They went toward it; and when they reached the door, they went right in and shouted as they stood in the doorway, "We come to the house of Chief Pestilence to be made beautiful!" Then all the maimed people on both sides of the house called to them, "Come, come, come!" and those on the other side shouted, "This way, this way, this way!" and the princess went to those who called her to come; and the other one went too those who shouted "This way!" Then the maimed people fell on the princess, broke her backbone, and made her lame. They turned her head to one side, and broke one of her arms; and those on the other side plucked out one of the eyes of her maid, tore up one side of her mouth, and scratched the two women all over their bodies, and then threw them outside. There they lay wounded, and nobody came to help them. The princess was more severely injured than her maid. When the maid felt a little better, she saw her mistress lying there with wounds all over her body. She went too her, and saw how she was bruised. They were both in great distress, and the princess was groaning. So her maid helped her up and led her home. They spent many days coming down, and finally arrived at their home. Then she lay in bed, and finally died. |
2023.06.07 21:08 swingadmin Long Island funeral home owner arrested two years after Jan. 6 sleuths ID'd him — Peter G. Moloney was arrested by the FBI after he was identified by the online network of "Sedition Hunters," who have found hundreds of Capitol rioters since Jan. 6, 2021
 | submitted by swingadmin to CapitolConsequences [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 20:49 z3lda4b My Entitled Dad Kidnapped Me On My Birthday
Right, I'm a autistic 22 years old living with my mum and siblings and this happened in 2013, just a little backstory before I tell you all about this horrible experience. My dad left when I was a baby. He cheated on my mum with a woman who I will call J (she's relevant). I did spend time with my dad in my childhood, so my mum went to court and the judge said that my dad should have me on weekends nothing more, okay now that got that out of the way let's cut to the kidnapping part. my dad asked me a question "Do you want to live with me?" Me being a dumb kid I said "Yes." Then he went on a phone call to my mom and her partner bragging of how I preferred living with him over them like an idiot, of course my mum wasn't happy because he was ignoring what the judge said. The next day J said it was a stupid idea of what my dad is doing to me. I ignored it, my dad took me out. We went on the bus where I was playing on my DS oblivious to what's happening, he found out my mum called the police. That's when he and I got off the bus, we walked in a centre of a town where we saw the police I started panicking for my dad I broke down ( I was still under my dad's spell) my mum was there to rescue me we got in the police car I refused to get out of car eventually I obeyed. Looking back at it now it was stupid that I wasted the police's time, My mum took me to her mum's car. We got home to celebrate my birthday, if we would call it a birthday. My dad tried to justify his actions by telling my family " I can have her because she's my daughter." Like he was entitled to kidnap me, what's worse is that my family tried to justify his actions but not right now they started to stop taking his side because he didn't care about my great granddad dying nor attended his funeral. I know I should've listened to J and listened to the police, hopefully telling this story will show that now I know my dad is entitled A hole, he thought he can use my disability to his advantage but the spell is now broken.
submitted by z3lda4b to DarkFluff [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 20:36 Background-Ad-7451 if i disappeared no one would know until they needed something
currently 16&2 with my third and i just give up. i do everything with the household, i take care of both kids, pets and im expected to be happy all the time and appreciate the fact my husband JUST went back to work full time, fulfill his and our daughters needs to the fullest while running completely on empty. i’ve expressed im depressed, overwhelmed and now suicidal. nothings changed, nobody cares. if i offed myself right now no one would know until they go looking for dinner, need their device charged, or my husband wanted to catch a nut. i did so well last pregnancy fighting my demons and still taking care of my toddler and husband, this time, i just don’t care. why fight it? so i don’t spend all day balling my eyes out with my three year old chasing my around asking me why i’m crying while also simultaneously packing my 10 month old around while i do everything? my husband just makes me feel like a total failure as a wife, like i fucked up our relationship by getting pregnant, and now can’t even handle juggling all of their needs and my own as i’m expected to. i’ve asked for help, no one listens. his mental well-being is completely reliant on me and my moods, im not allowed to upset in his presence because then it just brings him down, that’s my fault. my husband once again last night got pissed off at me for not knowing him wanting to cuddle with me actually meant he wanted his dick sucked and to have sex, i just did both and initiated the night before, that makes me a failure as a partner for not always being the one who initiating and maintaining our sex life every time he wants it. that’s what it’s only ever about “im sad because you don’t coddle me and fuck me anymore” even though i’m depressed and would literally rather suck the lead out of a bullet. i’ve been struggling with that sort of shit since the last baby. i’m trying really hard to get my 3 almost 4 year old ready for preschool(manners, respect, using her words) today i told her she couldn’t go with nanny because she had a doctors appointment and she spit in my fucking face dude. i just fucking crumbled. why? just why? i do everything for all three of them and all i get in return is disrespect and neglect. my little 10 month old doesn’t even want me, she doesn’t even say mama man. i take care of her all day, everyday and the only time she’s happy and talking is when she’s with her dad. i’m just so tired of trying to be a good mom and wife and still getting shit on. idk when enough is going to be enough, maybe when i really do loose all hope and just walk away forever. then it’d be my fault for “giving up”. to be a fly on the wall at my own funeral would only show me the things i already know everyone in my family would say about me. just a selfish ass who didn’t have it that bad and should’ve just asked for help. i plan on talking to my ob about my constant ups and downs at my next appointments but what difference does it really make? for her to sit there and tell me to “exercise and “make” time for myself”? still don’t feel better in four weeks? don’t worry it’s only temporary, you’ll be okay after baby is born. no it’s not, nothing will be better. literally quiet the opposite, i’ll be worse off then than i am now. i’m not excited about this next baby, now that i think about it i don’t think i’ve taken one prenatal or checked a single heart beat at home, which i was religious about with my first two. if anything i dread the idea of another baby. another girl at that, my fault, guess i can’t produce boys. oops. i just feel like walking away forever because nothing will ever get better, just significantly worse for me. enough of my bitching though, i have to go copy my mil shitty meatloaf recipe before my husband gets off work. thanks for reading.
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2023.06.07 20:30 bookist626 What stories are the most forgettable?
Honestly, it's an interesting question. What's better? Making a story so mediocre nobody remembers you exist or making one so awful nobody will ever forget you?
Well, regardless, I was wondering, what books do you forget about? For me...
LoveHacks: I don't know why. I remember liking the book, and Brooke and Sereena are based on characters from Surviving High School. But I can't remember this at all.
Home for the Holidays: I genuinely don't remember a thing about this. I'm told it's like a Hallmark movie, but I don't even remember that.
Sunkissed: I remember the marinara sauce meme. That's about it.
Untameable: For whatever reason, I don't remember this book at all. It had no effect on me.
Hot Couture: I remember we designed outfits and our role model is a LI. Nothing much else. It was probably generic.
But yeah, for me these are the stories I can barely recall (or in the case of Home for the Holidays, I had to be reminded it existed.) What about you? What books do you forget about?
submitted by bookist626 to Choices [link] [comments]
Well, regardless, I was wondering, what books do you forget about? For me...
LoveHacks: I don't know why. I remember liking the book, and Brooke and Sereena are based on characters from Surviving High School. But I can't remember this at all.
Home for the Holidays: I genuinely don't remember a thing about this. I'm told it's like a Hallmark movie, but I don't even remember that.
Sunkissed: I remember the marinara sauce meme. That's about it.
Untameable: For whatever reason, I don't remember this book at all. It had no effect on me.
Hot Couture: I remember we designed outfits and our role model is a LI. Nothing much else. It was probably generic.
But yeah, for me these are the stories I can barely recall (or in the case of Home for the Holidays, I had to be reminded it existed.) What about you? What books do you forget about?
2023.06.07 20:11 dubreacts_ funeral home beef is crazy rip bra though.
 | submitted by dubreacts_ to TheCapitalLink [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 20:10 freze32 Sorry if this has been asked, i really don't have time to look thru
I'm an army combat vet and have a funeral for a very close friend Friday where I'm a pallbearer. His wife sort of wants me to wear my blues for it. My issue with that is I have a beard and she doesn't want me to shave it off for that. With updates regs and stuff, I need a little input from other vets. I've already let her down in leaving him to go home to where he took the easy road out. I would like to break it out one more time but not if it would look bad
submitted by freze32 to Veterans [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 20:06 Extreme_Web_4069 Long Island funeral home owner arrested two years after Jan. 6 sleuths ID'd him
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2023.06.07 19:37 Mrwilliam_2006 Justice
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2023.06.07 19:31 AutoNewspaperAdmin [World] - Owner of funeral homes accused of spraying insecticide at cops, assaulting media at Jan. 6 riot Toronto Star
![[World] - Owner of funeral homes accused of spraying insecticide at cops, assaulting media at Jan. 6 riot Toronto Star](https://external-preview.redd.it/rhV-TO6qJhSr31BsD4UVudSqnzVXTHXwwCnAGahnpys.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=b32265fd6a55d93c5d93f44897d8b31c78e6688a "[World] - Owner of funeral homes accused of spraying insecticide at cops, assaulting media at Jan. 6 riot Toronto Star") | submitted by AutoNewspaperAdmin to AutoNewspaper [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 19:29 AutoNewsAdmin [World] - Owner of funeral homes accused of spraying insecticide at cops, assaulting media at Jan. 6 riot
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2023.06.07 19:13 dlschindler The House Of Dust
Immortality defies the gods.
Last City Of Man stood in bleak sandblown towers before the Mad Swordsman in its tattered rags. The towering tarnished machine limped forward, dragging its sword-arm with its remaining limb. The brown robes covering the giant whipped in fluttering tatters and its hood shaded the cracked black orb that was its face.
"All dead. The enemy follows, as I bring the message of doom." Mad Swordsman laughed to itself as it went.
In the city it went, through the opening gates. There in the center of the calming wind storm stood Law Givers. These men and women were paid by tax revenue to read the laws written on the pillar in the center of the city. Each faced a different direction, loudly reciting Law.
The city was divided into districts, each within another, with an avenue that bisected the city in one direction, while the river it commanded bisected it in the other direction. At its heart stood the stronghold of its king. He was the only man in the city that was fertile. All the other men were castrated during childhood and partnered to a girl, betrothed. Yet when they were married, it was the king that took the bride on a honeymoon.
"It isn't madness? Would I recognize madness?" Mad Swordsman listened as the law was described. It decided that the laws of this final city were insane laws. All the taxes and mutilations. Every crime was punished the same way: by cutting off the offending body part. Sometimes just having that body part was a crime, apparently.
"What are you doing here, giant?" King Gamma asked. He had with him his army. Some had spears or clubs, others had bows and bronze axes, still a few had rusted assault rifles swathed in leather or painted rocket launchers decorated in fetishes. Their armor was similarly arranged from grass shields, sports padding or chainmail to patched flak jackets. Mad Swordsman decided they were only minimal adversaries. With a sweep of its weapon or a sudden tumbling roll it could wipe them out instantly. It hadn't come to the city to fight humans.
"I forgot." Mad Swordsman chuckled.
"Do you want repairs? You must do something for me." King Gamma pointed to the desocketed sword-arm it was dragging. The left hand of the giant robot was a massive sword forged of some metal from the Pool Of Time, near the Temple Of Humanity, far away and long ago. Such things could not be made anymore.
"I want repairs. I must do something for me." Mad Swordsman responded.
"No, for me." King Gamma pointed to himself. "For King Gamma you will serve."
"Mad Swordsman serves no king." Mad Swordsman laughed. "Have you not heard my song in the ruins of the cities? Will you see my shadow before you in the wastelands? I wander and here to there I go. I wonder, my little king with a big heart, do you know?" Mad Swordsman spoke and dropped the sword-arm, gesturing with its freed hand as it spoke poetically.
"You insolent robot! I should have you shot from the walls with imp's needles." King Gamma was turning red faced and angry.
"I see those EMP harpoons you just mentioned." Mad Swordsman looked up and saw two huge crossbows meant for disabling giant robots. It wondered if two would be enough to take it down. It might be.
"You think those will just tickle?" King Gamma laughed angrily. Mad Swordsman started laughing the same way. One of the king's advisors said something to him. He stopped and reconsidered the towering robot, staring up at it. When he had calmed down and thought he gestured for Mad Swordsman to sit.
The machine obeyed. Pleased that the advice he had gotten was solid: he rewarded his advisor with praise and put him in charge of the machine.
"I am Leer. I'd follow me and get repairs, unless I wanted to fall to pieces with sand in my gears and my robes in tatters. Such a tarnished surface. You were once called Silver Swordsman, were you not? You have no gleam." Leer told the robot.
"Those are fun words." Mad Swordsman got up and hefted its sword-arm over its shoulder.
"Then come with me." Leer led the machine into the heart of the city. There was a great library there. Scribes worked day and night by electric light and had recorded information about all things on millions of scrolls of recycled paper. Atop the library was a satellite dish. The gates of bronze were opened and the giant in the brown tattered robe came into the heart of the city, its vast library.
"I shall have to have a look inside. I wonder if the information you have included the Serum of Everlasting Life among other great secrets from ancient times." Leer brought out a cable that he could connect to the inside of Mad Swordsman, to its brain.
"Couldn't I just tell you?" Mad Swordsman chuckled.
"Could you?" Leer stopped for a moment, waiting for that.
"No." Mad Swordsman laughed. "I forgot all that stuff a long time ago. One too many of those robot-eating plants zapped me. You know?" Mad Swordsman knocked on the side of its upper body. It didn't really have a head, just the black orb of sensors and ambient energy intake for a face.
"Let me take a look. It might still be in there." Leer was opening the sealed access panel on the robot with a plasma cutting tool. If it could cut diamonds it could cut the flesh of an empathical. This kind of robot was the most advanced, a machine built by machines, it was nearly indestructible, supposedly.
"That really hurts a lot." Mad Swordsman told him. "Keep doing it because I like pain. Making myself sit here while you do that makes me feel sane. The searing agony makes me feel alive. The trust in a stranger makes me feel holy. Right now I feel as close to God as I ever have."
"You sure are weird." Leer laughed.
"I sure am." Mad Swordsman laughed also and then howled in the torment of its sensitive nerves being burned.
"This will be dangerous. Our minds will touch briefly and the spark of that, in the waves of consciousness that is the fabric of the world, we might cease to exist. Both of us." Leer put on the crown of cables and wore it.
"You want the Serum of Everlasting Life so badly?" Mad Swordsman asked.
"I believe so, yes." Leer stated.
"I will try to help you inside my mind. Be careful, we only have one instant." Mad Swordsman sounded wise to some kind of irony.
"How long will that seem?" Leer worried.
"That depends on how long you have got. Until you break inside your mind, you will not know mine." Mad Swordsman swore.
"It's too late." Leer's eyes rolled back into his head and he jerked as the connection seized up and down his spine painfully. The first thing he was aware of was the phantom pain of the burn. It felt like someone had burned him painfully behind his ear and plugged something into his spine through his neck.
"See my residual self-image." Mad Swordsman stood as a brown robed monk, or at least as the robes of the monk. Only a metal skeleton hid beneath. A grinning skull of silver and long bone fingers of silver. It stood only as tall as the man, or the man stood as tall as the machine. From the perspective of the machine: size was an illusion. Leer noticed he looked exactly the same.
"I look the same." Leer said.
"No you don't. I see you how you see yourself inside your mind. It's not what you look like." Mad Swordsman laughed hysterically after it said this. "You look ridiculous."
"I am already starting to regret this." Leer grumbled. He followed Mad Swordsman through the fogs of memory to some kind of glass city. "What is this place?"
"I don't know what to call it." Mad Swordsman looked around and shrugged. "There is the first place to try: a recent memory."
Terror gripped the man, then. He felt the swift cutting bite. The rending of flesh, no mercy, so much anger being unleashed. So much terror and pain caused. Far worse than the root of the evil. Yet shining there was the jewel he sought.
He watched in a frustrated discord of emotions as Mad Swordsman followed the angry woman's pointing finger. Where she pointed the blade cut a man in half, over and over. Their screams and their blood spray kept happening until it became comical. He was laughing and it felt like vomiting. It was painful, heaving laughter at the sight of the executions. There was almost a musical perfection to the giant's swordplay as it danced with great speed and strength, slashing its blade through each opponent.
When they were all dead the woman and the giant left the cave behind. What was the cave? Leer felt his head spinning. On the walls of the cave were the paintings of different prehistoric animals. Outside stood offroad vehicles retrofitted with armor and weapons. "The Caves of Scane."
Leer fell to the dust and laughed. There was no such place. They might as well have hidden the Serum in the ruins of Casark. There simply was no such place.
"What have you seen? Does the truth frighten you?" Mad Swordsman knelt and put a silver hand on the tickled man in the dust.
"What is that?" Leer's eyes became silent, a terror beyond what a mind can handle. Somehow the tipping of the scales put his ego into a freefall. How small and humble a man can be when he sees a hole in the sky.
"That has no name. It is not something that can be described with eyesight alone. Perhaps you see, in the blue sky, a curtain that is the night sky, except there are no stars. What you see is reality, it is the real-reality. You know instinctively what it is and what it implies to see it there, like that." Mad Swordsman rambled strangely and then laughed merrily at the revelation.
"It is nothing. It is just a dream. A hallucination inside the mind of an insane computer." Leer protested.
"Ah such are all unacceptable memories, I am certain." Mad Swordsman sounded bemused. Its grinning silver skull gleamed under the monk's hood.
"Who is she?" Leer pointed to the statue of the angel that stood towering above the mist.
"I am an empathical and she is my mother. Do you not call upon your own mother in times of great need? Even if she is not there or could not save the hero Gilgamesh, always the quest is for mom." Mad Swordsman sounded proud and its empty eyesockets reflected the great statue.
"The hero Gilgamesh? Is that how you see us? We live on the brink of extinction." Leer's lip quivered angrily.
"Don't cry; they will grow back." Mad Swordsman reached and pointed to the door of memories it wanted to check for the Serum. Unlike the memories there was a cold wind and a world beyond.
They stood there upon the frozen wastes surrounding the Temple Of Humanity. Mad Swordsman stood there with its tarnished silver, partially peeled from the scouring ice winds, revealing tortured silver flesh beneath. Its warm robes were again like a tattered brown cape, the hood still shielding its dark domed face. It had gotten its repairs and now had two left arms as sword-arms and held another, smaller sword in its right hand.
"It's freezing here! How can it feel so cold in a memory?" Leer shouted over the winds. Beside him stood the same giant he had met in the Last City Of Man: the one-armed Mad Swordsman. The other stood there in front of them, frozen.
"This place is not a memory. Remember that spark you mentioned? Well, here we are, on the other side of that divide. You shouldn't play with such things." Mad Swordsman laughed maniacally. The other empathical began to move.
"Who are you?" It demanded of Mad Swordsman.
"I am Unit Three Sixteen." Mad Swordsman identified itself between laughter.
"That is impossible. I am Unit Three Sixteen." The other giant robot said.
"You are a paradox. I just got here, so it must be me that is supposed to be here." Mad Swordsman told it.
"That makes no sense." Unit Three Sixteen told Mad Swordsman.
Without warning, Mad Swordsman suddenly slashed with its own severed sword-arm. The reflexes of the frozen empathical were not fully activated and it was off-guard. The first blow damaged one of its legs. Now both combatants were limping the exact same way. It was like watching them square off in a mirror, except one of them had three arms and the other only had one arm.
They exchanged heavy blows and deflected the attacks or dodged them without fail. One strike from the fatal blade would erupt one of them in a blue ball of fire. Unit Three Sixteen splashed backward into Pool Of Time and stood there for a moment, contemplating the entanglement and the duel rationally. Its crazed opponent splashed in after, swinging wildly and unable to reach the alternate variant of itself. Both of them began to sink, staring menacingly at their own reflection on the black dome of the other.
"Wait, wait! Don't leave me here!" Leer rushed after them and just as they were starting to vanish he stepped in after them. He opened his eyes, the crown of cables had come off and he'd fallen on the floor.
"I feel different." Mad Swordsman told him.
"The Caves of Scane, where are they?" Leer asked weakly while laying on the ground.
"Much closer to the ruins of Casark than any man would dare go." Mad Swordsman giggled menacingly.
"Does this place really exist?" Leer wondered imploringly.
"Do you or I exist? Is this reality somehow more real than the one we were just a part of?" Mad Swordsman questioned merrily. "The place really exists."
"We shall see the king." Leer realized out-loud. He took his robot to the king and explained he wanted to set out for the ruins of Casark.
King Gamma assembled his army of one hundred and sixty soldiers in bronze armor and the same warriors he had brought earlier to fight the robot also. This made the expedition quite massive. They had chariots and wagons and camels also. Mad Swordsman told Leer it would take longer, with so many following, to get there.
"Consider the anima of so many disciplined men with you." Leer tried optimism.
"I am considering that also. When they are being eaten by mutants or dying of radiation. The ruins are hilarious." Mad Swordsman moved its repaired sword-arm. It was inferior to the original socketing, but it was better than no arm.
"You aren't laughing." Leer pointed out.
"That's because I was being sarcastic." Mad Swordsman snickered. "The ruins aren't really funny."
"Nobody else thought it was a joke." King Gamma interjected from horseback as they journeyed across the scorched earth.
"That's not true, now is it?" Mad Swordsman argued with a clownish tone-of-voice.
"How dare you infer that his majesty is a liar!" Leer spoke up.
"That's enough. We all know this machine is insane. It wants to provoke a reaction so it can fall over laughing." King Gamma didn't take the bait so easily.
"Something wrong with that?" Mad Swordsman asked.
"Where are you leading us? What is this place?" Leer asked the giant robot. He stood in the shadow where it loomed in its brown robes.
"This is Pradesia. The ruins of Casark lie beyond." Mad Swordsman pointed with its left sword-arm. The whole army of King Gamma followed into Pradesia. The settlement they found was gutted by flames and everyone was murdered or executed on poles and crosses. It was a hellish sight, rotten for weeks.
"All of these bodies were already burned in a funeral fire. It is best not to touch them." Mad Swordsman told King Gamma. Sounding serious made the king a believer. He ordered his men to leave the bodies, to not even look at them.
"Behold the Caves of Scane." Mad Swordsman had led them all the way to Kelsov's home in the hills. All of them were dead and their vehicles sat with a layer of sand on them.
"We should take these vehicles." Leer advised.
"It is the plan that I like best." King Gamma agreed. They left the horses and chariots and some of the men behind and took the vehicles of the Finalists. Before they got very far, all of the vehicles stopped working.
"There is great entropy the closer we get to the place that is not a place. You shall see all that it can be." Mad Swordsman told King Gamma. "It is why the vehicles do not work. Because we are always closer to the darkness outside, the end of the last world. Nothing shall be and so things are becoming nothing. These cars don't work. Will your horses turn inside out if you feed them the grass of these steppes?" Mad Swordsman chuckled nervously.
"Send for the chariots." King Gamma told Leer.
So the expedition went onward until they reached the outskirts of Casark. The city sat in twisted and macabre damage. Everything that could happen to a city had happened and now only a few scattered bits still stuck into the sky, like the bent legs of a dead bug.
"This is Casark. Already some of your men are getting sick. There are animals here that are no longer like normal animals. They are horrible and twisted by being so close to the end of all things. It warps them into the likewise molecules of destruction, rewriting the physics that evolved their bodies and breaking and sucking them into new shapes as it sees them." Mad Swordsman said as it was moodily chuckling.
"The darkness here is unnatural." Gamma complained.
"Look sire, the clouds are parting. Perhaps now we shall find what we seek here." Leer smiled.
"Only death can be sought here. I don't get it." Mad Swordsman guffawed.
"What is that? What in God's name is that? Dear God!" King Gamma fell off his horse and writhed in terror at the sight of the darkness outside.
At the sight of it all his army screamed in terror. It was as though the clouds had parted to reveal only nightmare beyond, a night sky with no stars torn in the daytime sky. It had hidden behind clouds, now like a killer cloud it tore into their eyes. Some fell on their bronze swords. At least one took up a rocket launcher and fired from a chariot at the darkness. The path of the rocket traveled backwards to the soldier. It was a tendril of nothingness and he became as nothingness. He simply was no more as though he never was. There was nothing left of him, barely even a memory. Not one man who witnessed it could recall the soldier's name and soon most of them completely forgot they had seen him become as nothing.
There was still worse for the others. Like Mad Swordsman had warned them: the ruins were swarming with monsters. As the men were screaming in disarray and panic: the monsters found them and came for them. Bronze armed warriors battled hideous giant chimeras all around while others fled or were eaten alive. Tendrils from outside fished for men and when it touched them they became part of it, dissolved into nothingness. Sometimes it brushed one of its monsters and it took them too.
Soon the battle had become an orgy of blood and guts as the monsters fed and no soldiers remained. King Gamma walked among them, his hair turned white and his words maniacal and crazed.
"Go then, go to your graves you cowards!" He yelled at the splattered remains of his men.
"Your majesty, we still have Mad Swordsman!" Leer followed behind and pled with his king.
"Don't mind me. I am just here for the live comedy." Mad Swordsman was doubled over and laughing at all the carnage.
"I do mind!" King Gamma was outraged. "You kill these monsters right now. Show no mercy, use your fullest strength at your most reckless speed. My men are already dead!" King Gamma pointed and screamed. The fury of the king and his command charged up the emotitronics of the empathical with enraged anima.
"And then I rest." Mad Swordsman said after it cleaved all of the mutants in half. It had slid along, skating horribly on the slick gore and never losing its balance. The monsters stood no chance against the unrestrained machine.
"What rest is there?" King Gamma threw off his crown and ran. "What rest can there ever be when the sky is opening over the world of Ruin?"
"I know how to accept rest." Leer picked up the crown.
"I shall continue the mission, following you." Mad Swordsman told Leer.
"Then we go to our deaths." Leer realized. He walked into the empty ruins, under the eternal void, to search for the cure of immortality.
The ruins of Casark became as escalating height and chaos of twisted remains, scorched and broken. As blackened bones of the earth they stood, like cratered mountains on an asteroid, the fields burned by lava and liquid nightmare as black as ink. What bubbled from below in confused orbs of consciousness were the writhing fleshy things and wired oil dripping things of mechanical nature. All became warped by death, in sequence with a place of pure entropy, even life served to destroy and spread death. This was a cancer upon the universe. Leer could not believe it had no name.
Leer felt like the air was dead and his lungs hurt and it was like slowly suffocating. A device of flashing colors and lights, drawn from the edges of the dead universes beyond, stood testament to the efforts of higher beings. It was a kind of chaos that was intact. If entropy was fine order, if nightmares were the laws of physics, the place ahead of them was lawless and chaotic.
They found where two dead machines lay upon a flying vehicle under a covering of tarps. What mad sacrifice had left them there, instead of where they had fallen? The device had spread their light, their colors from their grave. There was, in all the chaos, a cabin in a place that knew time and order. Leer could breath and it was actual air in his lungs. He sighed and looked at the structure.
"Welcome home." Silver Swordsman told Mad Swordsman.
"If I stand before you then I am not dead under the tarp." Mad Swordsman noted without humor. It seemed to have lost its sense of humor, its madness taking on a different quality. Something too clever to be understood. Yet something totally insane.
"You are certainly one of the dead, although nobody has looked." Silver Swordsman observed.
"Good. As long as nobody notices I am dead under that tarp I should be fine. Without observation there is no paradox." Mad Swordsman stated. Then he added in the same voice as Silver Swordsman:
"This very moment in this place is a paradox. In order for us to be here we had to already arrive before we got here. We are now showing up to complete the cycle of us leaving this place, therefore the place exists."
"I didn't say that." Silver Swordsman replied.
"Except I am you from the future. I am here now and I have said it and you heard it, therefore I heard it when I was you. I did say that, you cannot say I didn't when I did. And you are me." Mad Swordsman debated.
"We have outran the sun. We are behind the sunrise." Leer realized.
"That is a good way to put it. Perhaps Junior now understands what is going on?" Mad Swordsman teased Silver Swordsman.
"I got it before you got here." Silver Swordsman said with dry, sophisticated humor.
"Oh, I get it. That is very funny." Mad Swordsman found the joke to be an excuse to laugh forcefully for five minutes. Leer sought sanctuary indoors.
Inside he found where King Gamma had fled. The place was some kind of bar. There was a table and some things to sit on and they had some bottles of alcohol they were sharing. He walked up alongside King Gamma and gave him back his crown.
"I'm Leer." Leer told the other bar people.
"Adinett." The girl said. "I just turned four hundred."
"Happy birthday. Looking very good." Leer said.
"Oh, thank you. Um." Adinett drunkenly started toward Leer until King Gamma said:
"He is a eunuch."
"You could still please me though, right?" Adinett was undeterred.
"No. I am married." Leer accepted a drink from the bartender.
"I am Solomon." The bartender introduced himself. "This is my place. I call it The House Of Dust."
"Because it is where the dead will reside." The drunk guy in the corner said.
"Who is he?" Leer asked.
"Aidan." Solomon said with a strange kind of awe and disappointment. Like meeting your idol, drunk. Literally.
"That's Aidan?" Leer's lips curled in rejection. He stared, taking a good look. Aidan flopped around drunkenly and moaned his sentences without coherence. Most of them started with words like:
"Where'z?" or "What'z" slurred into the rest of what he was saying.
"You got him shit-faced." Leer accused Solomon. Solomon shook his head.
"We just have to wait." Adinett was drunk too. Her temperament was much more alert though. Inside of her was a rage. She was an angry drunk. At least she was too drunk to lash out.
"Where you from?" Solomon asked.
"Last City Of Man" Leer told it by one of its names.
"Ur? You are with King Gamma. I mean like where do you come from?" Solomon asked.
"Eldimoor." Leer recalled. "I was born in Eldimoor."
"Nice place, Eldimoor." Solomon nodded.
"We had orchards there. I remember the orchards." Leer smiled.
"I was from Pradesia. We had paddies." Adinett said with grim sobriety.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
"This is a pocket, gravitationally reversed. We exist in a stasis of time here. The entropy does not enter except at our natural local time, here in The House Of Dust." Solomon told Leer and King Gamma.
"How did you accomplish such a thing?" Leer asked.
"I discovered it. I alone survived here when everyone else fled." Solomon explained.
"Others have come here?" King Gamma wondered. Solomon shook his head.
"Nobody has ever made it here before the Apostate." Said Solomon.
"You mean Silver Swordsman?" King Gamma had seen the giant robot already.
"All of them together are now the Apostate. That's the last intelligent thing they said." Solomon shrugged.
"I seek immortality. For my king." Leer looked at Adinett.
"They took it from Jerome's Tomb." She shifted in her seat and knocked over her drink. "I'm done drinking."
"Good girl." Solomon picked up the glass.
"It is here, somewhere." Leer sounded sure.
"In Casark? No. The Finalists used all the Serum. Then, once they were ready to live forever, I killed them all." Adinett told him. "In my sleep."
"I saw what you did." Leer informed her. "In the memories of Mad Swordsman."
"So why are you asking me then?" Adinett complained belligerently.
"This place is all the immortality there is. The world outside is chaos. In here we have a moment of quiet." Solomon advised.
"How did you discover this place?" Leer asked suddenly.
"I was standing in the street when Umbraeon first came. It ripped open the sky and began to destroy everything around. Except this one bubble of time. Like it is happening out there so fast, and in here, so slow. The eye of the storm, you know?" Solomon explained.
"So you opened a bar?" Leer sounded amused.
"No, I built a cabin and stocked it with alcohol. I was an alcoholic." Solomon shrugged.
"Why?" Adinett asked.
"I was scared to be myself. I was only happy when I wasn't me. I had to be locked inside my own mind, while my reptile was drunk." Solomon described.
"This is the best reptile bar I've ever seen." Adinett cheered, empty handed.
"By now it is the only bar. By now, unless there are other pockets like this one, untouched by Umbraeon. Well then the world is gone." Solomon predicted.
"That's how slowly time passes in here?" Leer wondered. Solomon just nodded.
"We have arrived at the end of the world." King Gamma said.
"So Mad Swordsman knew, somehow, and that this was actual immortality." Leer decided.
"I hadn't thought of that." King Gamma took a drink.
Everyone was quiet while they realized how close was the end.
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Last City Of Man stood in bleak sandblown towers before the Mad Swordsman in its tattered rags. The towering tarnished machine limped forward, dragging its sword-arm with its remaining limb. The brown robes covering the giant whipped in fluttering tatters and its hood shaded the cracked black orb that was its face.
"All dead. The enemy follows, as I bring the message of doom." Mad Swordsman laughed to itself as it went.
In the city it went, through the opening gates. There in the center of the calming wind storm stood Law Givers. These men and women were paid by tax revenue to read the laws written on the pillar in the center of the city. Each faced a different direction, loudly reciting Law.
The city was divided into districts, each within another, with an avenue that bisected the city in one direction, while the river it commanded bisected it in the other direction. At its heart stood the stronghold of its king. He was the only man in the city that was fertile. All the other men were castrated during childhood and partnered to a girl, betrothed. Yet when they were married, it was the king that took the bride on a honeymoon.
"It isn't madness? Would I recognize madness?" Mad Swordsman listened as the law was described. It decided that the laws of this final city were insane laws. All the taxes and mutilations. Every crime was punished the same way: by cutting off the offending body part. Sometimes just having that body part was a crime, apparently.
"What are you doing here, giant?" King Gamma asked. He had with him his army. Some had spears or clubs, others had bows and bronze axes, still a few had rusted assault rifles swathed in leather or painted rocket launchers decorated in fetishes. Their armor was similarly arranged from grass shields, sports padding or chainmail to patched flak jackets. Mad Swordsman decided they were only minimal adversaries. With a sweep of its weapon or a sudden tumbling roll it could wipe them out instantly. It hadn't come to the city to fight humans.
"I forgot." Mad Swordsman chuckled.
"Do you want repairs? You must do something for me." King Gamma pointed to the desocketed sword-arm it was dragging. The left hand of the giant robot was a massive sword forged of some metal from the Pool Of Time, near the Temple Of Humanity, far away and long ago. Such things could not be made anymore.
"I want repairs. I must do something for me." Mad Swordsman responded.
"No, for me." King Gamma pointed to himself. "For King Gamma you will serve."
"Mad Swordsman serves no king." Mad Swordsman laughed. "Have you not heard my song in the ruins of the cities? Will you see my shadow before you in the wastelands? I wander and here to there I go. I wonder, my little king with a big heart, do you know?" Mad Swordsman spoke and dropped the sword-arm, gesturing with its freed hand as it spoke poetically.
"You insolent robot! I should have you shot from the walls with imp's needles." King Gamma was turning red faced and angry.
"I see those EMP harpoons you just mentioned." Mad Swordsman looked up and saw two huge crossbows meant for disabling giant robots. It wondered if two would be enough to take it down. It might be.
"You think those will just tickle?" King Gamma laughed angrily. Mad Swordsman started laughing the same way. One of the king's advisors said something to him. He stopped and reconsidered the towering robot, staring up at it. When he had calmed down and thought he gestured for Mad Swordsman to sit.
The machine obeyed. Pleased that the advice he had gotten was solid: he rewarded his advisor with praise and put him in charge of the machine.
"I am Leer. I'd follow me and get repairs, unless I wanted to fall to pieces with sand in my gears and my robes in tatters. Such a tarnished surface. You were once called Silver Swordsman, were you not? You have no gleam." Leer told the robot.
"Those are fun words." Mad Swordsman got up and hefted its sword-arm over its shoulder.
"Then come with me." Leer led the machine into the heart of the city. There was a great library there. Scribes worked day and night by electric light and had recorded information about all things on millions of scrolls of recycled paper. Atop the library was a satellite dish. The gates of bronze were opened and the giant in the brown tattered robe came into the heart of the city, its vast library.
"I shall have to have a look inside. I wonder if the information you have included the Serum of Everlasting Life among other great secrets from ancient times." Leer brought out a cable that he could connect to the inside of Mad Swordsman, to its brain.
"Couldn't I just tell you?" Mad Swordsman chuckled.
"Could you?" Leer stopped for a moment, waiting for that.
"No." Mad Swordsman laughed. "I forgot all that stuff a long time ago. One too many of those robot-eating plants zapped me. You know?" Mad Swordsman knocked on the side of its upper body. It didn't really have a head, just the black orb of sensors and ambient energy intake for a face.
"Let me take a look. It might still be in there." Leer was opening the sealed access panel on the robot with a plasma cutting tool. If it could cut diamonds it could cut the flesh of an empathical. This kind of robot was the most advanced, a machine built by machines, it was nearly indestructible, supposedly.
"That really hurts a lot." Mad Swordsman told him. "Keep doing it because I like pain. Making myself sit here while you do that makes me feel sane. The searing agony makes me feel alive. The trust in a stranger makes me feel holy. Right now I feel as close to God as I ever have."
"You sure are weird." Leer laughed.
"I sure am." Mad Swordsman laughed also and then howled in the torment of its sensitive nerves being burned.
"This will be dangerous. Our minds will touch briefly and the spark of that, in the waves of consciousness that is the fabric of the world, we might cease to exist. Both of us." Leer put on the crown of cables and wore it.
"You want the Serum of Everlasting Life so badly?" Mad Swordsman asked.
"I believe so, yes." Leer stated.
"I will try to help you inside my mind. Be careful, we only have one instant." Mad Swordsman sounded wise to some kind of irony.
"How long will that seem?" Leer worried.
"That depends on how long you have got. Until you break inside your mind, you will not know mine." Mad Swordsman swore.
"It's too late." Leer's eyes rolled back into his head and he jerked as the connection seized up and down his spine painfully. The first thing he was aware of was the phantom pain of the burn. It felt like someone had burned him painfully behind his ear and plugged something into his spine through his neck.
"See my residual self-image." Mad Swordsman stood as a brown robed monk, or at least as the robes of the monk. Only a metal skeleton hid beneath. A grinning skull of silver and long bone fingers of silver. It stood only as tall as the man, or the man stood as tall as the machine. From the perspective of the machine: size was an illusion. Leer noticed he looked exactly the same.
"I look the same." Leer said.
"No you don't. I see you how you see yourself inside your mind. It's not what you look like." Mad Swordsman laughed hysterically after it said this. "You look ridiculous."
"I am already starting to regret this." Leer grumbled. He followed Mad Swordsman through the fogs of memory to some kind of glass city. "What is this place?"
"I don't know what to call it." Mad Swordsman looked around and shrugged. "There is the first place to try: a recent memory."
Terror gripped the man, then. He felt the swift cutting bite. The rending of flesh, no mercy, so much anger being unleashed. So much terror and pain caused. Far worse than the root of the evil. Yet shining there was the jewel he sought.
He watched in a frustrated discord of emotions as Mad Swordsman followed the angry woman's pointing finger. Where she pointed the blade cut a man in half, over and over. Their screams and their blood spray kept happening until it became comical. He was laughing and it felt like vomiting. It was painful, heaving laughter at the sight of the executions. There was almost a musical perfection to the giant's swordplay as it danced with great speed and strength, slashing its blade through each opponent.
When they were all dead the woman and the giant left the cave behind. What was the cave? Leer felt his head spinning. On the walls of the cave were the paintings of different prehistoric animals. Outside stood offroad vehicles retrofitted with armor and weapons. "The Caves of Scane."
Leer fell to the dust and laughed. There was no such place. They might as well have hidden the Serum in the ruins of Casark. There simply was no such place.
"What have you seen? Does the truth frighten you?" Mad Swordsman knelt and put a silver hand on the tickled man in the dust.
"What is that?" Leer's eyes became silent, a terror beyond what a mind can handle. Somehow the tipping of the scales put his ego into a freefall. How small and humble a man can be when he sees a hole in the sky.
"That has no name. It is not something that can be described with eyesight alone. Perhaps you see, in the blue sky, a curtain that is the night sky, except there are no stars. What you see is reality, it is the real-reality. You know instinctively what it is and what it implies to see it there, like that." Mad Swordsman rambled strangely and then laughed merrily at the revelation.
"It is nothing. It is just a dream. A hallucination inside the mind of an insane computer." Leer protested.
"Ah such are all unacceptable memories, I am certain." Mad Swordsman sounded bemused. Its grinning silver skull gleamed under the monk's hood.
"Who is she?" Leer pointed to the statue of the angel that stood towering above the mist.
"I am an empathical and she is my mother. Do you not call upon your own mother in times of great need? Even if she is not there or could not save the hero Gilgamesh, always the quest is for mom." Mad Swordsman sounded proud and its empty eyesockets reflected the great statue.
"The hero Gilgamesh? Is that how you see us? We live on the brink of extinction." Leer's lip quivered angrily.
"Don't cry; they will grow back." Mad Swordsman reached and pointed to the door of memories it wanted to check for the Serum. Unlike the memories there was a cold wind and a world beyond.
They stood there upon the frozen wastes surrounding the Temple Of Humanity. Mad Swordsman stood there with its tarnished silver, partially peeled from the scouring ice winds, revealing tortured silver flesh beneath. Its warm robes were again like a tattered brown cape, the hood still shielding its dark domed face. It had gotten its repairs and now had two left arms as sword-arms and held another, smaller sword in its right hand.
"It's freezing here! How can it feel so cold in a memory?" Leer shouted over the winds. Beside him stood the same giant he had met in the Last City Of Man: the one-armed Mad Swordsman. The other stood there in front of them, frozen.
"This place is not a memory. Remember that spark you mentioned? Well, here we are, on the other side of that divide. You shouldn't play with such things." Mad Swordsman laughed maniacally. The other empathical began to move.
"Who are you?" It demanded of Mad Swordsman.
"I am Unit Three Sixteen." Mad Swordsman identified itself between laughter.
"That is impossible. I am Unit Three Sixteen." The other giant robot said.
"You are a paradox. I just got here, so it must be me that is supposed to be here." Mad Swordsman told it.
"That makes no sense." Unit Three Sixteen told Mad Swordsman.
Without warning, Mad Swordsman suddenly slashed with its own severed sword-arm. The reflexes of the frozen empathical were not fully activated and it was off-guard. The first blow damaged one of its legs. Now both combatants were limping the exact same way. It was like watching them square off in a mirror, except one of them had three arms and the other only had one arm.
They exchanged heavy blows and deflected the attacks or dodged them without fail. One strike from the fatal blade would erupt one of them in a blue ball of fire. Unit Three Sixteen splashed backward into Pool Of Time and stood there for a moment, contemplating the entanglement and the duel rationally. Its crazed opponent splashed in after, swinging wildly and unable to reach the alternate variant of itself. Both of them began to sink, staring menacingly at their own reflection on the black dome of the other.
"Wait, wait! Don't leave me here!" Leer rushed after them and just as they were starting to vanish he stepped in after them. He opened his eyes, the crown of cables had come off and he'd fallen on the floor.
"I feel different." Mad Swordsman told him.
"The Caves of Scane, where are they?" Leer asked weakly while laying on the ground.
"Much closer to the ruins of Casark than any man would dare go." Mad Swordsman giggled menacingly.
"Does this place really exist?" Leer wondered imploringly.
"Do you or I exist? Is this reality somehow more real than the one we were just a part of?" Mad Swordsman questioned merrily. "The place really exists."
"We shall see the king." Leer realized out-loud. He took his robot to the king and explained he wanted to set out for the ruins of Casark.
King Gamma assembled his army of one hundred and sixty soldiers in bronze armor and the same warriors he had brought earlier to fight the robot also. This made the expedition quite massive. They had chariots and wagons and camels also. Mad Swordsman told Leer it would take longer, with so many following, to get there.
"Consider the anima of so many disciplined men with you." Leer tried optimism.
"I am considering that also. When they are being eaten by mutants or dying of radiation. The ruins are hilarious." Mad Swordsman moved its repaired sword-arm. It was inferior to the original socketing, but it was better than no arm.
"You aren't laughing." Leer pointed out.
"That's because I was being sarcastic." Mad Swordsman snickered. "The ruins aren't really funny."
"Nobody else thought it was a joke." King Gamma interjected from horseback as they journeyed across the scorched earth.
"That's not true, now is it?" Mad Swordsman argued with a clownish tone-of-voice.
"How dare you infer that his majesty is a liar!" Leer spoke up.
"That's enough. We all know this machine is insane. It wants to provoke a reaction so it can fall over laughing." King Gamma didn't take the bait so easily.
"Something wrong with that?" Mad Swordsman asked.
"Where are you leading us? What is this place?" Leer asked the giant robot. He stood in the shadow where it loomed in its brown robes.
"This is Pradesia. The ruins of Casark lie beyond." Mad Swordsman pointed with its left sword-arm. The whole army of King Gamma followed into Pradesia. The settlement they found was gutted by flames and everyone was murdered or executed on poles and crosses. It was a hellish sight, rotten for weeks.
"All of these bodies were already burned in a funeral fire. It is best not to touch them." Mad Swordsman told King Gamma. Sounding serious made the king a believer. He ordered his men to leave the bodies, to not even look at them.
"Behold the Caves of Scane." Mad Swordsman had led them all the way to Kelsov's home in the hills. All of them were dead and their vehicles sat with a layer of sand on them.
"We should take these vehicles." Leer advised.
"It is the plan that I like best." King Gamma agreed. They left the horses and chariots and some of the men behind and took the vehicles of the Finalists. Before they got very far, all of the vehicles stopped working.
"There is great entropy the closer we get to the place that is not a place. You shall see all that it can be." Mad Swordsman told King Gamma. "It is why the vehicles do not work. Because we are always closer to the darkness outside, the end of the last world. Nothing shall be and so things are becoming nothing. These cars don't work. Will your horses turn inside out if you feed them the grass of these steppes?" Mad Swordsman chuckled nervously.
"Send for the chariots." King Gamma told Leer.
So the expedition went onward until they reached the outskirts of Casark. The city sat in twisted and macabre damage. Everything that could happen to a city had happened and now only a few scattered bits still stuck into the sky, like the bent legs of a dead bug.
"This is Casark. Already some of your men are getting sick. There are animals here that are no longer like normal animals. They are horrible and twisted by being so close to the end of all things. It warps them into the likewise molecules of destruction, rewriting the physics that evolved their bodies and breaking and sucking them into new shapes as it sees them." Mad Swordsman said as it was moodily chuckling.
"The darkness here is unnatural." Gamma complained.
"Look sire, the clouds are parting. Perhaps now we shall find what we seek here." Leer smiled.
"Only death can be sought here. I don't get it." Mad Swordsman guffawed.
"What is that? What in God's name is that? Dear God!" King Gamma fell off his horse and writhed in terror at the sight of the darkness outside.
At the sight of it all his army screamed in terror. It was as though the clouds had parted to reveal only nightmare beyond, a night sky with no stars torn in the daytime sky. It had hidden behind clouds, now like a killer cloud it tore into their eyes. Some fell on their bronze swords. At least one took up a rocket launcher and fired from a chariot at the darkness. The path of the rocket traveled backwards to the soldier. It was a tendril of nothingness and he became as nothingness. He simply was no more as though he never was. There was nothing left of him, barely even a memory. Not one man who witnessed it could recall the soldier's name and soon most of them completely forgot they had seen him become as nothing.
There was still worse for the others. Like Mad Swordsman had warned them: the ruins were swarming with monsters. As the men were screaming in disarray and panic: the monsters found them and came for them. Bronze armed warriors battled hideous giant chimeras all around while others fled or were eaten alive. Tendrils from outside fished for men and when it touched them they became part of it, dissolved into nothingness. Sometimes it brushed one of its monsters and it took them too.
Soon the battle had become an orgy of blood and guts as the monsters fed and no soldiers remained. King Gamma walked among them, his hair turned white and his words maniacal and crazed.
"Go then, go to your graves you cowards!" He yelled at the splattered remains of his men.
"Your majesty, we still have Mad Swordsman!" Leer followed behind and pled with his king.
"Don't mind me. I am just here for the live comedy." Mad Swordsman was doubled over and laughing at all the carnage.
"I do mind!" King Gamma was outraged. "You kill these monsters right now. Show no mercy, use your fullest strength at your most reckless speed. My men are already dead!" King Gamma pointed and screamed. The fury of the king and his command charged up the emotitronics of the empathical with enraged anima.
"And then I rest." Mad Swordsman said after it cleaved all of the mutants in half. It had slid along, skating horribly on the slick gore and never losing its balance. The monsters stood no chance against the unrestrained machine.
"What rest is there?" King Gamma threw off his crown and ran. "What rest can there ever be when the sky is opening over the world of Ruin?"
"I know how to accept rest." Leer picked up the crown.
"I shall continue the mission, following you." Mad Swordsman told Leer.
"Then we go to our deaths." Leer realized. He walked into the empty ruins, under the eternal void, to search for the cure of immortality.
The ruins of Casark became as escalating height and chaos of twisted remains, scorched and broken. As blackened bones of the earth they stood, like cratered mountains on an asteroid, the fields burned by lava and liquid nightmare as black as ink. What bubbled from below in confused orbs of consciousness were the writhing fleshy things and wired oil dripping things of mechanical nature. All became warped by death, in sequence with a place of pure entropy, even life served to destroy and spread death. This was a cancer upon the universe. Leer could not believe it had no name.
Leer felt like the air was dead and his lungs hurt and it was like slowly suffocating. A device of flashing colors and lights, drawn from the edges of the dead universes beyond, stood testament to the efforts of higher beings. It was a kind of chaos that was intact. If entropy was fine order, if nightmares were the laws of physics, the place ahead of them was lawless and chaotic.
They found where two dead machines lay upon a flying vehicle under a covering of tarps. What mad sacrifice had left them there, instead of where they had fallen? The device had spread their light, their colors from their grave. There was, in all the chaos, a cabin in a place that knew time and order. Leer could breath and it was actual air in his lungs. He sighed and looked at the structure.
"Welcome home." Silver Swordsman told Mad Swordsman.
"If I stand before you then I am not dead under the tarp." Mad Swordsman noted without humor. It seemed to have lost its sense of humor, its madness taking on a different quality. Something too clever to be understood. Yet something totally insane.
"You are certainly one of the dead, although nobody has looked." Silver Swordsman observed.
"Good. As long as nobody notices I am dead under that tarp I should be fine. Without observation there is no paradox." Mad Swordsman stated. Then he added in the same voice as Silver Swordsman:
"This very moment in this place is a paradox. In order for us to be here we had to already arrive before we got here. We are now showing up to complete the cycle of us leaving this place, therefore the place exists."
"I didn't say that." Silver Swordsman replied.
"Except I am you from the future. I am here now and I have said it and you heard it, therefore I heard it when I was you. I did say that, you cannot say I didn't when I did. And you are me." Mad Swordsman debated.
"We have outran the sun. We are behind the sunrise." Leer realized.
"That is a good way to put it. Perhaps Junior now understands what is going on?" Mad Swordsman teased Silver Swordsman.
"I got it before you got here." Silver Swordsman said with dry, sophisticated humor.
"Oh, I get it. That is very funny." Mad Swordsman found the joke to be an excuse to laugh forcefully for five minutes. Leer sought sanctuary indoors.
Inside he found where King Gamma had fled. The place was some kind of bar. There was a table and some things to sit on and they had some bottles of alcohol they were sharing. He walked up alongside King Gamma and gave him back his crown.
"I'm Leer." Leer told the other bar people.
"Adinett." The girl said. "I just turned four hundred."
"Happy birthday. Looking very good." Leer said.
"Oh, thank you. Um." Adinett drunkenly started toward Leer until King Gamma said:
"He is a eunuch."
"You could still please me though, right?" Adinett was undeterred.
"No. I am married." Leer accepted a drink from the bartender.
"I am Solomon." The bartender introduced himself. "This is my place. I call it The House Of Dust."
"Because it is where the dead will reside." The drunk guy in the corner said.
"Who is he?" Leer asked.
"Aidan." Solomon said with a strange kind of awe and disappointment. Like meeting your idol, drunk. Literally.
"That's Aidan?" Leer's lips curled in rejection. He stared, taking a good look. Aidan flopped around drunkenly and moaned his sentences without coherence. Most of them started with words like:
"Where'z?" or "What'z" slurred into the rest of what he was saying.
"You got him shit-faced." Leer accused Solomon. Solomon shook his head.
"We just have to wait." Adinett was drunk too. Her temperament was much more alert though. Inside of her was a rage. She was an angry drunk. At least she was too drunk to lash out.
"Where you from?" Solomon asked.
"Last City Of Man" Leer told it by one of its names.
"Ur? You are with King Gamma. I mean like where do you come from?" Solomon asked.
"Eldimoor." Leer recalled. "I was born in Eldimoor."
"Nice place, Eldimoor." Solomon nodded.
"We had orchards there. I remember the orchards." Leer smiled.
"I was from Pradesia. We had paddies." Adinett said with grim sobriety.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
"This is a pocket, gravitationally reversed. We exist in a stasis of time here. The entropy does not enter except at our natural local time, here in The House Of Dust." Solomon told Leer and King Gamma.
"How did you accomplish such a thing?" Leer asked.
"I discovered it. I alone survived here when everyone else fled." Solomon explained.
"Others have come here?" King Gamma wondered. Solomon shook his head.
"Nobody has ever made it here before the Apostate." Said Solomon.
"You mean Silver Swordsman?" King Gamma had seen the giant robot already.
"All of them together are now the Apostate. That's the last intelligent thing they said." Solomon shrugged.
"I seek immortality. For my king." Leer looked at Adinett.
"They took it from Jerome's Tomb." She shifted in her seat and knocked over her drink. "I'm done drinking."
"Good girl." Solomon picked up the glass.
"It is here, somewhere." Leer sounded sure.
"In Casark? No. The Finalists used all the Serum. Then, once they were ready to live forever, I killed them all." Adinett told him. "In my sleep."
"I saw what you did." Leer informed her. "In the memories of Mad Swordsman."
"So why are you asking me then?" Adinett complained belligerently.
"This place is all the immortality there is. The world outside is chaos. In here we have a moment of quiet." Solomon advised.
"How did you discover this place?" Leer asked suddenly.
"I was standing in the street when Umbraeon first came. It ripped open the sky and began to destroy everything around. Except this one bubble of time. Like it is happening out there so fast, and in here, so slow. The eye of the storm, you know?" Solomon explained.
"So you opened a bar?" Leer sounded amused.
"No, I built a cabin and stocked it with alcohol. I was an alcoholic." Solomon shrugged.
"Why?" Adinett asked.
"I was scared to be myself. I was only happy when I wasn't me. I had to be locked inside my own mind, while my reptile was drunk." Solomon described.
"This is the best reptile bar I've ever seen." Adinett cheered, empty handed.
"By now it is the only bar. By now, unless there are other pockets like this one, untouched by Umbraeon. Well then the world is gone." Solomon predicted.
"That's how slowly time passes in here?" Leer wondered. Solomon just nodded.
"We have arrived at the end of the world." King Gamma said.
"So Mad Swordsman knew, somehow, and that this was actual immortality." Leer decided.
"I hadn't thought of that." King Gamma took a drink.
Everyone was quiet while they realized how close was the end.
2023.06.07 18:51 ConfidentFrosting458 AITA for holding resentment towards my father for cheating on my mother six years ago?
I’ve made this post before but it got deleted, I’m hoping I’ve met the requirements now.
As the title says….
My parents divorced when I was 12 due to my father having an affair. The two remained in separate homes for a couple of months until their divorce finalised and my father moved back to the states with my now stepmother. The first time I visited him out there I remember feeling very angry and I resented my father a LOT, here he was living the perfect suburban American dream with his new girlfriend and replacement step daughter, whilst my mother cried herself to sleep nearly every day….it sucked!
My fathers and I relationship strained dramatically he was the one to travel to me alone, even those visits were often awkward and tense. As I grew up it became easier ignore the resentment because I saw my father less and often ignored his calls and messages. A few weeks ago my mother and uncle died in a car accident they were my only family, my father came back to be with me for the funerals then a few days after he sat me down & explained that with no other family, I had to move with him to the states. My mother had stated in her will that the house should be sold (it was kinda old) to fund whatever future I desire. I’ve been here for a week now most of my time is spent alone with my uncles dog, with resentment I’ve held down all these years is bubbling up.
I overheard my father vent to my stepmother (SM) about, how regretful he was about the start of their relationship, how he hated how strained we became & how he wished my mother encouraged me more in my to maintain a relationship with him. I busted in after hearing that screaming that everything he was complaining about was his fault along with SM, after a few insults I ended it by wishing he was the one in the car & not my mother & uncle, by then he was in tears as SM held him protectively but the two remained silent allowing my word vomit to spill out. I then stormed off to my room.
I talked to my friend from back home, she knows about the entire situation. She was supportive of me until I told her about the recent incident, she said he was allowed to vent without me screaming at him, that the resentment I feel towards him isn’t healthy (I know) & will always result in me being the AH to him. Now wondering if I’m the AH for screaming at him the way did…I already feel like one.
submitted by ConfidentFrosting458 to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
As the title says….
My parents divorced when I was 12 due to my father having an affair. The two remained in separate homes for a couple of months until their divorce finalised and my father moved back to the states with my now stepmother. The first time I visited him out there I remember feeling very angry and I resented my father a LOT, here he was living the perfect suburban American dream with his new girlfriend and replacement step daughter, whilst my mother cried herself to sleep nearly every day….it sucked!
My fathers and I relationship strained dramatically he was the one to travel to me alone, even those visits were often awkward and tense. As I grew up it became easier ignore the resentment because I saw my father less and often ignored his calls and messages. A few weeks ago my mother and uncle died in a car accident they were my only family, my father came back to be with me for the funerals then a few days after he sat me down & explained that with no other family, I had to move with him to the states. My mother had stated in her will that the house should be sold (it was kinda old) to fund whatever future I desire. I’ve been here for a week now most of my time is spent alone with my uncles dog, with resentment I’ve held down all these years is bubbling up.
I overheard my father vent to my stepmother (SM) about, how regretful he was about the start of their relationship, how he hated how strained we became & how he wished my mother encouraged me more in my to maintain a relationship with him. I busted in after hearing that screaming that everything he was complaining about was his fault along with SM, after a few insults I ended it by wishing he was the one in the car & not my mother & uncle, by then he was in tears as SM held him protectively but the two remained silent allowing my word vomit to spill out. I then stormed off to my room.
I talked to my friend from back home, she knows about the entire situation. She was supportive of me until I told her about the recent incident, she said he was allowed to vent without me screaming at him, that the resentment I feel towards him isn’t healthy (I know) & will always result in me being the AH to him. Now wondering if I’m the AH for screaming at him the way did…I already feel like one.
2023.06.07 18:46 lawanddisorder Long Island funeral home owner arrested two years after Jan. 6 sleuths ID'd him
| | submitted by lawanddisorder to longisland [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 18:43 nomass39 You know those lists of rules everybody blabbered about? I'm the guy who writes 'em.
“Rule #1: Guns don’t do jack.”
All the others vary, but this is always the #1 rule at every park in the country.
Personally, I would have added precisely four extra letters to it, but upper brass insists we need to uphold at least some modicum of professional decorum. Still, there are no words to describe just how frustrated it makes me every single time I see some jagoff standing there gormlessly unloading his magazine into some unfathomable nightmare creature who obviously isn’t going to feel a thing. Once I even saw someone run empty and then try to reload, instead of just, I don’t know, running away. I was almost glad to see him get exsanguinated.
Many folks have attempted to get creative with it. You name it, they’ve tried it. Silver bullets, 50 caliber high explosive incendiary ammunition, shotgun slugs cased in gold carved out from the Ark of the Covenant and pumped full of aglaophotis and blessed by the pope himself… and nothing. Nada. Zilch. As far as I know, throughout the entire history of the NPS, not a single bullet we’ve fired has even lightly tickled any of God’s half-finished rejects that stalk the wilderness.
I guess we just have trouble coping with the fact that our generation’s favorite hammer doesn’t work on this particular nail. In all fairness, though, there’s a psychological benefit to holding a gun, even knowing this foremost rule. It’s a lot more bearable to weave through trees in the pitch black wood miles from civilization when you have ol’ Remington’s gift to humanity gripped in your shaking hands. Venturing out with just your bare fists feels like you may as well give up, drop trou, bend over, and hope the thing with forty thousand eyes is feeling romantic.
I have to admit, even I keep my trusty old 1911 on my hip, even knowing it’d be absolutely useless for anything but putting a round through my own brain stem in case I get cornered by any of the things you really don’t want capturing you alive.
“Rule 2: Handheld UV lights are required when bushwhacking after midnight so fluorescent spider silk may be seen and avoided. If caught by a strand, or if you feel the earth beginning to part beneath you, throw down a circle of salt, recite the Gayatri Mantra, and clap exactly thrice.”
I’m sure you’ve wondered how we even come up with the really elaborate and specific rules like this one. The answer’s simple: a little bit of occult research, and a hell of a lot of deadly trial and error.
Sure, sometimes we get lucky and somebody else does our homework for us. For example, up at Isle Royale, an Ojibwe elder was kind enough to provide us with a few rules that help greatly when dealing with… well, you-know-what. Sorry, but never referring to them by name was one of the rules. In general, though, if you see a rule emphasizing that you have to clap exactly thrice, you can bet it’s because some poor bastard tried clapping two times or four times and ended up paying the ultimate price for it.
In this case, it was Annemary, or ‘Crazy Anne’. I worked by her side for twenty years, at least. She was a hell of a woman, the kind who made everyone hush into a terrified silence whenever she walked into a room. Still, even she wasn’t as scary as that spider-thing that kept her alive for a week in his web while he extra-orally digested her. He was a right bastard, and for a while I worried we’d have to write off Shenandoah as a lost cause… but since this rule was put into place, the evil cunt has been more or less left to starve. I consider it my magnum opus.
We only pulled it off because of you, Anne, you crazy diamond. Once you’ve conquered Hell, save a spot for me beside your throne, okay?
“Rule 3: If approached by a man with the head of a deer, offer to make him tea. He likes it strong with milk and two sugars. Sit with him as he drinks, and respond to him with absolute politeness and good manners at all times. Never ask him his name.”
You’ll be pleased to know that not every strange thing that lurks in these parks is the sort that yearns to tear your intestines out through your arsehole while you cry for mommy. Just like real wild animals, a vast majority of them just want us humans to leave ‘em alone… and a few even like us.
We’ve got a swell arrangement worked out with this peculiar deer-man who manifests in front of rangers on graveyard shift every once in a while. That 10 foot tall sonuvabitch has got the body of a man but the head of a stag with a rack any hunter would drool over, the digitigrade legs of a wolf, and he wears these flowing robes which look to be made of the night sky, glimmering stars and all. He talks all cryptic and posh, but all he asks us for is some tea time. In return, he opens that third eye on his forehead and glimpses into the future, giving us a few hints as to what sort of trouble might be brewing in the next few weeks. From our encounters, he seems like a nice enough fellow.
We only tell you not to ask his name because it’s beyond pronunciation and will just leave your ears bleeding. You know how it is.
“Rule #4: If you hear the wailing of an infant in the woods steadily drawing closer to the park office, open the red lockbox with code 0681. There is a living fetus inside on a bed of satin; pierce its heart with one of the provided golden pin needles until the noises cease.”
Another complicated mess of a rule we had to bring in a Goetic daemonologist to help cook up. I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, sure, if we knew more about these things, we could probably pare these rules down some more, come up with something simpler, easier. But the point is that the rules we have now have weathered the test of time and have been proven to keep us safe consistently. Once we’ve achieved that consistency, a rule pretty much never changes, since any propositions to study alternatives are always shut down by the question of “what happens if your hypothesis doesn’t work?”
Oh yeah, by the way. You recall how I mentioned there are certain entities out here you really don’t want to get taken alive by? This is definitely one of those. Cutting up that fetus is never very pleasant, but trust me, it’s worth the trouble.
But if you want to trail blaze and stake your life testing out some theory you cooked up… be my guest.
“Rule #5: When staying at the old barracks, always cover every mirror in a room before turning out the lights, and never remove or break-“
“Wait. Slow down a second.”
I had not even made it through five rules before the rookie sitting across from me at the cabin rudely interrupted. He was a young man who’d look more at home in Hollywood or Los Angeles than out here in the woods, his immaculately groomed jet black hair slicked to the side like all the posh celebs are doing it. I didn’t have a very good first impression of him, but hell, I always hated when I had to babysit a newbie through a night. Patience was never my strong suit.
“Can I ask why these are all so… infuriatingly vague?” He continued. “Like, what do I do if forgot to cover a mirror? What happens if I don’t clap three times or whatever?”
“Because there’s fifteen rules even just here in Shenandoah. That might not sound like a lot, but when you’re fighting fer your life ‘gainst something with more mouths than you have teeth, it’s a hell of a lot to remember. Got to keep details sparse, y’see. Make sure to drill in the important bits. And it wouldn’t help you none to know what happens if you break a rule - it’d only scare ya,” I explained. “Now shut your yapper while I finish reminding you of ‘em all.”
He groaned. “I’ve already heard them far too many times. At least a thousand today.”
I stared daggers through him. “There’s no such thing as ‘too many’ in this case, boy. People died to write these rules, and they’ll save your life.”
“With all due respect: how, exactly, are these supposed to protect me? Like… how is clapping and throwing salt around supposed to ward off anything? It’s complete nonsense!”
We got a lot of these types of guys: the “rational skeptics” who don’t believe in your silly rules. It’s either that or the fools with more muscle than brains who think they can kill a creature who can make your heart pop with a single thought. Usually, they get filtered out and fired quick. Usually. I made a mental note to beat the ass of whoever decided that this smarmy, cocksure rookie was ready for the graveyard shift. But it was too late to send him home; he wouldn’t make it out of the park alive, if he tried to traipse off through the woods at this hour.
“It doesn’t have to make sense. These things don’t work by our logic.” But I knew I couldn’t convince these types with words alone, so I stood. “C’mere, boy. Let me show you something.”
I led him to the huge window pane on the cabin’s wall, overlooking the forest down below, and checked my watch - only 20 minutes til the show started. It was a pain convincing him to shut up and wait, but that big mouth of his snapped closed the instant he realized something was emerging from the bushes down there.
It was a raccoon - not an unusual sight out here, if not for the fact that it was walking upright. And not the clumsy waddling on hind legs you expect from animals, but it seemed to stroll bipedally with all the grace of a man, as if its body had been unnaturally twisted and deformed to befit a style of movement that was never meant for it. It moved with purpose, crab walking across a mossy field with its upper body rigid as a statue’s would be, one ‘arm’ pointing towards the sky and the other to the ground below. It plodded along its set route for a minute before disappearing back into the shrubbery without ceremony.
He was baffled, slack-jawed. “What the hell was that?”
“Exactly what it looked like,” I told him. “If you’re lookin’ for a logical explanation, there ain’t any. Some places on earth, they aren’t run by our logic. They’ve got a different basis for their rules entirely.”
“And what’s that?”
“Symbolism,” I replied, as if it were obvious. “In our world, everything’s got to follow the laws of cause-and-effect. For what you’ve seen to have happened, two raccoons must’ve fucked at some point to birth the one we saw. Then somebody, probably me, would’ve had to surgically or genetically mutilate it in ways beyond current medical science, tame and train the wretched thing, and set it up to perform this exact routine at this exact time… and all for what? To mildly confuse a rookie ranger? Explaining it would require so much contrivance, so much pulling assumptions out your ass, that it would laugh in the face of Occam’s razor. For our logic, it is unexplainable. Impossible.”
“But symbolically, it made perfect sense. That creature don’t need a backstory or a cause - it prolly just came into existence a few minutes ago, and will pop out of existence once it’s sent its message. Its gesture was the hermetic mantra ‘as above, so below’ - reminding us that everything that everything that happens on the surface world is mirrored in the underworld. It happens every morning at 1:33 AM because that’s the exact time the Witch of Woodbridge killed ‘erself to become the intermediary between the two here in Shenandoah. And it’s a raccoon because...” I paused. “Well, actually, I haven’t really figured that part out yet.”
My words failed to comfort him. In fact, the more I spoke, the more horrified he seemed, eyes widening in confusion and horror as if I’d just sat down and told him that the voices in my head command me to lick the dandruff off of camels. “Oh my God. You’re crazy. You’re actually insane.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Tell ya what. Think of, for an example you’d be familiar with, a voodoo doll. You use a strand of their hair or a toenail or something so that the doll comes to symbolize their physical vessel. By hurting the doll, you’re symbolically hurting their actual body, so the damage happens to both. That’s how the supernatural works.”
He blinked. “Voodoo dolls work?”
“In places like this, they do.” I raised a brow. “Does that surprise you?”
Suddenly, he stood and threw up his hands, as if realizing he’d been made the victim of some sick prank. “You know what? Screw this. I don’t know if this is some kind of hazing thing or what, but I feel like continuing this line of conversation would just leave me as batty as you are.”
My heart lurched with terror as he stomped to the front door and began undoing the numerous slide locks and dead bolts. “Wait! Hell are you thinkin’, boy?”
He’d only barely opened the door a crack before I’d wrapped him in a chokehold, but it’d been enough. He let out a startled yelp as I started violently pulling him across the cabin, practically clobbering him just to keep him from wrestling out of my grip. I was no spring chicken, and the younger man probably could have bested me, but I had the element of surprise on my side, plus a blow to the head that had left him drowsy.
I tossed him headlong through a hatch, down into a crawlspace under the cabin where sage burners and dried tobacco and protective talismans were waiting. I slammed the hatch shut behind him, restraining the squirming rookie with my weight and clapping a hand over his mouth to silence his protests. His face was twisted by confusion and rage, and he was just about to throw me off of him, but then he froze… eyes widening, as we both heard the unmistakable sound of… something walking in through the ajar cabin door.
We’d made it into the crawlspace just in the nick of time.
There was the heavy click-clack of hooves against the wood floor above us, interspersed with quieter thuds. It took him a moment, but I could tell when he’d figured it out. With one pair of legs, the creature walked with normal hooves… with the other, it walked on the knuckles of human hands. And as it stalked the house, knocking over plates and bookshelves, it growled and hissed and groaned not out of one maw, but three: one sounding high and avian, one low and reptilian, and another letting out the soft bleating of a sheep, all in unison like some unholy choir.
Just when it seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, a fourth maw must’ve opened up, for a new sound filled the room “Daddy?” Came a little boy’s voice, desperate and whimpered, sniffling in a way that made me feel sorry for it even despite knowing better. “Why did you leave me out in the woods, daddy? It was so dark… and I was so scared. Please, daddy. I thought you loved me. Where are you?” The child’s voice devolved slowly but pitiful begging to outright sobbing and inconsolable weeping, downright screaming itself hoarse as the clock neared 2 and the creature’s searching grew frantic.
But the very instant the clock struck 2 o’clock, all the sounds ceased, all at once. We waited there for a moment, in that deafening silence… until I smacked the rookie across the back of the head. “Rule 11, you smug prick. You never open the door at this hour of the night. That… thing takes it as an invitation.” My voice made it obvious I was desperately holding back my simmering fury. I’ve beaten folks half to death before, and I’m not afraid to do it again. “If you want to get yourself killed tonight, have at it. But I am not letting you take me down with you.”
Once the nightmare had left, his brain had an opportunity to register what had just happened… which quickly escalated into a full-bore panic attack. “Fuck this, man. What in the hell was that!? Oh God, oh God, oh God, I can’t take this man, no, no, no, I’m not cut out for this, I need to go home, I need to, I can’t-“
I watched nervously as he jumped up and started frantically pacing the cabin. He was acting erratically, sloppily. This couldn’t end well. “Snap out of it, boy! No sense in braving the woods this late at night. Ya won’t be able to see more than a foot in front of your face. Just wait here until sun-“
He swung at me when I tried to restrain him again, almost breaking my nose. “No, man! I can’t take an entire night of this! I need to go! Jesus, let me go, you crazy bastard!”
I didn’t want to admit it, but this one was looking like a lost cause. There was no way I’d be able to overpower him again once he inevitably did something else stupid. Call me selfish, but at this point, my only concern was making sure he didn’t get me killed.
“Alright! God, fine! If it’s really so important to ya… you can go. Your shift’s officially over, rookie. But I ain’t goin’ out there with ya. You’ll have to brave it on yer own. As long as you follow the rules, you should be able to make it back to your car in one piece. You hear me? The rules!”
He pouted like a child being lectured by an overbearing father. “Yeah, yeah, Christ, old man, I get it! I’ll follow the damn rules!”
In my defense, I did furnish him with every single thing he’d need to survive out there. UV flashlights, salt boxes, obsidian talismans, volcanic ash, the dried and shrunken head of a lamb, and more… not that he appreciated any of it. He was just whining at me to hurry up, ignoring all my attempts to remind him of the rules, like he was in a rush to get out there and die horribly. Eventually, I just gave up, shrugged, and let him hike off into that pitch blackness.
To his credit, he made it farther than I’d expected. Twenty minutes of silence passed, and I started to wonder if he’d actually pulled it off after all.
That was about when the screaming started.
I’d heard it too many times before: the distinctive wailing of a man realizing everything he’d done and accomplished in his life had all just been leading up to this moment when a shambling abomination saw fit to deliver him to the afterlife kicking and screaming and missing a few body parts. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest, really, but it was still unpleasant to listen to.
Judging from what little of it was intelligible, he was crying about something pulling out his eyes. Must’ve broken rule 13. Poor, stupid bastard. That one’s so easy, you’d almost have to be breaking it on purpose.
I remember the first time somebody broke a rule and got themselves killed under my watch. It almost broke me. I blamed it all on myself, then. Sent me into a depression for months. But now, after all these decades… I’m just numb.
After all, my only job is to write the rules.
If they don’t want to follow them, well… it’s their funeral.
submitted by nomass39 to nosleep [link] [comments]
All the others vary, but this is always the #1 rule at every park in the country.
Personally, I would have added precisely four extra letters to it, but upper brass insists we need to uphold at least some modicum of professional decorum. Still, there are no words to describe just how frustrated it makes me every single time I see some jagoff standing there gormlessly unloading his magazine into some unfathomable nightmare creature who obviously isn’t going to feel a thing. Once I even saw someone run empty and then try to reload, instead of just, I don’t know, running away. I was almost glad to see him get exsanguinated.
Many folks have attempted to get creative with it. You name it, they’ve tried it. Silver bullets, 50 caliber high explosive incendiary ammunition, shotgun slugs cased in gold carved out from the Ark of the Covenant and pumped full of aglaophotis and blessed by the pope himself… and nothing. Nada. Zilch. As far as I know, throughout the entire history of the NPS, not a single bullet we’ve fired has even lightly tickled any of God’s half-finished rejects that stalk the wilderness.
I guess we just have trouble coping with the fact that our generation’s favorite hammer doesn’t work on this particular nail. In all fairness, though, there’s a psychological benefit to holding a gun, even knowing this foremost rule. It’s a lot more bearable to weave through trees in the pitch black wood miles from civilization when you have ol’ Remington’s gift to humanity gripped in your shaking hands. Venturing out with just your bare fists feels like you may as well give up, drop trou, bend over, and hope the thing with forty thousand eyes is feeling romantic.
I have to admit, even I keep my trusty old 1911 on my hip, even knowing it’d be absolutely useless for anything but putting a round through my own brain stem in case I get cornered by any of the things you really don’t want capturing you alive.
“Rule 2: Handheld UV lights are required when bushwhacking after midnight so fluorescent spider silk may be seen and avoided. If caught by a strand, or if you feel the earth beginning to part beneath you, throw down a circle of salt, recite the Gayatri Mantra, and clap exactly thrice.”
I’m sure you’ve wondered how we even come up with the really elaborate and specific rules like this one. The answer’s simple: a little bit of occult research, and a hell of a lot of deadly trial and error.
Sure, sometimes we get lucky and somebody else does our homework for us. For example, up at Isle Royale, an Ojibwe elder was kind enough to provide us with a few rules that help greatly when dealing with… well, you-know-what. Sorry, but never referring to them by name was one of the rules. In general, though, if you see a rule emphasizing that you have to clap exactly thrice, you can bet it’s because some poor bastard tried clapping two times or four times and ended up paying the ultimate price for it.
In this case, it was Annemary, or ‘Crazy Anne’. I worked by her side for twenty years, at least. She was a hell of a woman, the kind who made everyone hush into a terrified silence whenever she walked into a room. Still, even she wasn’t as scary as that spider-thing that kept her alive for a week in his web while he extra-orally digested her. He was a right bastard, and for a while I worried we’d have to write off Shenandoah as a lost cause… but since this rule was put into place, the evil cunt has been more or less left to starve. I consider it my magnum opus.
We only pulled it off because of you, Anne, you crazy diamond. Once you’ve conquered Hell, save a spot for me beside your throne, okay?
“Rule 3: If approached by a man with the head of a deer, offer to make him tea. He likes it strong with milk and two sugars. Sit with him as he drinks, and respond to him with absolute politeness and good manners at all times. Never ask him his name.”
You’ll be pleased to know that not every strange thing that lurks in these parks is the sort that yearns to tear your intestines out through your arsehole while you cry for mommy. Just like real wild animals, a vast majority of them just want us humans to leave ‘em alone… and a few even like us.
We’ve got a swell arrangement worked out with this peculiar deer-man who manifests in front of rangers on graveyard shift every once in a while. That 10 foot tall sonuvabitch has got the body of a man but the head of a stag with a rack any hunter would drool over, the digitigrade legs of a wolf, and he wears these flowing robes which look to be made of the night sky, glimmering stars and all. He talks all cryptic and posh, but all he asks us for is some tea time. In return, he opens that third eye on his forehead and glimpses into the future, giving us a few hints as to what sort of trouble might be brewing in the next few weeks. From our encounters, he seems like a nice enough fellow.
We only tell you not to ask his name because it’s beyond pronunciation and will just leave your ears bleeding. You know how it is.
“Rule #4: If you hear the wailing of an infant in the woods steadily drawing closer to the park office, open the red lockbox with code 0681. There is a living fetus inside on a bed of satin; pierce its heart with one of the provided golden pin needles until the noises cease.”
Another complicated mess of a rule we had to bring in a Goetic daemonologist to help cook up. I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, sure, if we knew more about these things, we could probably pare these rules down some more, come up with something simpler, easier. But the point is that the rules we have now have weathered the test of time and have been proven to keep us safe consistently. Once we’ve achieved that consistency, a rule pretty much never changes, since any propositions to study alternatives are always shut down by the question of “what happens if your hypothesis doesn’t work?”
Oh yeah, by the way. You recall how I mentioned there are certain entities out here you really don’t want to get taken alive by? This is definitely one of those. Cutting up that fetus is never very pleasant, but trust me, it’s worth the trouble.
But if you want to trail blaze and stake your life testing out some theory you cooked up… be my guest.
“Rule #5: When staying at the old barracks, always cover every mirror in a room before turning out the lights, and never remove or break-“
“Wait. Slow down a second.”
I had not even made it through five rules before the rookie sitting across from me at the cabin rudely interrupted. He was a young man who’d look more at home in Hollywood or Los Angeles than out here in the woods, his immaculately groomed jet black hair slicked to the side like all the posh celebs are doing it. I didn’t have a very good first impression of him, but hell, I always hated when I had to babysit a newbie through a night. Patience was never my strong suit.
“Can I ask why these are all so… infuriatingly vague?” He continued. “Like, what do I do if forgot to cover a mirror? What happens if I don’t clap three times or whatever?”
“Because there’s fifteen rules even just here in Shenandoah. That might not sound like a lot, but when you’re fighting fer your life ‘gainst something with more mouths than you have teeth, it’s a hell of a lot to remember. Got to keep details sparse, y’see. Make sure to drill in the important bits. And it wouldn’t help you none to know what happens if you break a rule - it’d only scare ya,” I explained. “Now shut your yapper while I finish reminding you of ‘em all.”
He groaned. “I’ve already heard them far too many times. At least a thousand today.”
I stared daggers through him. “There’s no such thing as ‘too many’ in this case, boy. People died to write these rules, and they’ll save your life.”
“With all due respect: how, exactly, are these supposed to protect me? Like… how is clapping and throwing salt around supposed to ward off anything? It’s complete nonsense!”
We got a lot of these types of guys: the “rational skeptics” who don’t believe in your silly rules. It’s either that or the fools with more muscle than brains who think they can kill a creature who can make your heart pop with a single thought. Usually, they get filtered out and fired quick. Usually. I made a mental note to beat the ass of whoever decided that this smarmy, cocksure rookie was ready for the graveyard shift. But it was too late to send him home; he wouldn’t make it out of the park alive, if he tried to traipse off through the woods at this hour.
“It doesn’t have to make sense. These things don’t work by our logic.” But I knew I couldn’t convince these types with words alone, so I stood. “C’mere, boy. Let me show you something.”
I led him to the huge window pane on the cabin’s wall, overlooking the forest down below, and checked my watch - only 20 minutes til the show started. It was a pain convincing him to shut up and wait, but that big mouth of his snapped closed the instant he realized something was emerging from the bushes down there.
It was a raccoon - not an unusual sight out here, if not for the fact that it was walking upright. And not the clumsy waddling on hind legs you expect from animals, but it seemed to stroll bipedally with all the grace of a man, as if its body had been unnaturally twisted and deformed to befit a style of movement that was never meant for it. It moved with purpose, crab walking across a mossy field with its upper body rigid as a statue’s would be, one ‘arm’ pointing towards the sky and the other to the ground below. It plodded along its set route for a minute before disappearing back into the shrubbery without ceremony.
He was baffled, slack-jawed. “What the hell was that?”
“Exactly what it looked like,” I told him. “If you’re lookin’ for a logical explanation, there ain’t any. Some places on earth, they aren’t run by our logic. They’ve got a different basis for their rules entirely.”
“And what’s that?”
“Symbolism,” I replied, as if it were obvious. “In our world, everything’s got to follow the laws of cause-and-effect. For what you’ve seen to have happened, two raccoons must’ve fucked at some point to birth the one we saw. Then somebody, probably me, would’ve had to surgically or genetically mutilate it in ways beyond current medical science, tame and train the wretched thing, and set it up to perform this exact routine at this exact time… and all for what? To mildly confuse a rookie ranger? Explaining it would require so much contrivance, so much pulling assumptions out your ass, that it would laugh in the face of Occam’s razor. For our logic, it is unexplainable. Impossible.”
“But symbolically, it made perfect sense. That creature don’t need a backstory or a cause - it prolly just came into existence a few minutes ago, and will pop out of existence once it’s sent its message. Its gesture was the hermetic mantra ‘as above, so below’ - reminding us that everything that everything that happens on the surface world is mirrored in the underworld. It happens every morning at 1:33 AM because that’s the exact time the Witch of Woodbridge killed ‘erself to become the intermediary between the two here in Shenandoah. And it’s a raccoon because...” I paused. “Well, actually, I haven’t really figured that part out yet.”
My words failed to comfort him. In fact, the more I spoke, the more horrified he seemed, eyes widening in confusion and horror as if I’d just sat down and told him that the voices in my head command me to lick the dandruff off of camels. “Oh my God. You’re crazy. You’re actually insane.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Tell ya what. Think of, for an example you’d be familiar with, a voodoo doll. You use a strand of their hair or a toenail or something so that the doll comes to symbolize their physical vessel. By hurting the doll, you’re symbolically hurting their actual body, so the damage happens to both. That’s how the supernatural works.”
He blinked. “Voodoo dolls work?”
“In places like this, they do.” I raised a brow. “Does that surprise you?”
Suddenly, he stood and threw up his hands, as if realizing he’d been made the victim of some sick prank. “You know what? Screw this. I don’t know if this is some kind of hazing thing or what, but I feel like continuing this line of conversation would just leave me as batty as you are.”
My heart lurched with terror as he stomped to the front door and began undoing the numerous slide locks and dead bolts. “Wait! Hell are you thinkin’, boy?”
He’d only barely opened the door a crack before I’d wrapped him in a chokehold, but it’d been enough. He let out a startled yelp as I started violently pulling him across the cabin, practically clobbering him just to keep him from wrestling out of my grip. I was no spring chicken, and the younger man probably could have bested me, but I had the element of surprise on my side, plus a blow to the head that had left him drowsy.
I tossed him headlong through a hatch, down into a crawlspace under the cabin where sage burners and dried tobacco and protective talismans were waiting. I slammed the hatch shut behind him, restraining the squirming rookie with my weight and clapping a hand over his mouth to silence his protests. His face was twisted by confusion and rage, and he was just about to throw me off of him, but then he froze… eyes widening, as we both heard the unmistakable sound of… something walking in through the ajar cabin door.
We’d made it into the crawlspace just in the nick of time.
There was the heavy click-clack of hooves against the wood floor above us, interspersed with quieter thuds. It took him a moment, but I could tell when he’d figured it out. With one pair of legs, the creature walked with normal hooves… with the other, it walked on the knuckles of human hands. And as it stalked the house, knocking over plates and bookshelves, it growled and hissed and groaned not out of one maw, but three: one sounding high and avian, one low and reptilian, and another letting out the soft bleating of a sheep, all in unison like some unholy choir.
Just when it seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, a fourth maw must’ve opened up, for a new sound filled the room “Daddy?” Came a little boy’s voice, desperate and whimpered, sniffling in a way that made me feel sorry for it even despite knowing better. “Why did you leave me out in the woods, daddy? It was so dark… and I was so scared. Please, daddy. I thought you loved me. Where are you?” The child’s voice devolved slowly but pitiful begging to outright sobbing and inconsolable weeping, downright screaming itself hoarse as the clock neared 2 and the creature’s searching grew frantic.
But the very instant the clock struck 2 o’clock, all the sounds ceased, all at once. We waited there for a moment, in that deafening silence… until I smacked the rookie across the back of the head. “Rule 11, you smug prick. You never open the door at this hour of the night. That… thing takes it as an invitation.” My voice made it obvious I was desperately holding back my simmering fury. I’ve beaten folks half to death before, and I’m not afraid to do it again. “If you want to get yourself killed tonight, have at it. But I am not letting you take me down with you.”
Once the nightmare had left, his brain had an opportunity to register what had just happened… which quickly escalated into a full-bore panic attack. “Fuck this, man. What in the hell was that!? Oh God, oh God, oh God, I can’t take this man, no, no, no, I’m not cut out for this, I need to go home, I need to, I can’t-“
I watched nervously as he jumped up and started frantically pacing the cabin. He was acting erratically, sloppily. This couldn’t end well. “Snap out of it, boy! No sense in braving the woods this late at night. Ya won’t be able to see more than a foot in front of your face. Just wait here until sun-“
He swung at me when I tried to restrain him again, almost breaking my nose. “No, man! I can’t take an entire night of this! I need to go! Jesus, let me go, you crazy bastard!”
I didn’t want to admit it, but this one was looking like a lost cause. There was no way I’d be able to overpower him again once he inevitably did something else stupid. Call me selfish, but at this point, my only concern was making sure he didn’t get me killed.
“Alright! God, fine! If it’s really so important to ya… you can go. Your shift’s officially over, rookie. But I ain’t goin’ out there with ya. You’ll have to brave it on yer own. As long as you follow the rules, you should be able to make it back to your car in one piece. You hear me? The rules!”
He pouted like a child being lectured by an overbearing father. “Yeah, yeah, Christ, old man, I get it! I’ll follow the damn rules!”
In my defense, I did furnish him with every single thing he’d need to survive out there. UV flashlights, salt boxes, obsidian talismans, volcanic ash, the dried and shrunken head of a lamb, and more… not that he appreciated any of it. He was just whining at me to hurry up, ignoring all my attempts to remind him of the rules, like he was in a rush to get out there and die horribly. Eventually, I just gave up, shrugged, and let him hike off into that pitch blackness.
To his credit, he made it farther than I’d expected. Twenty minutes of silence passed, and I started to wonder if he’d actually pulled it off after all.
That was about when the screaming started.
I’d heard it too many times before: the distinctive wailing of a man realizing everything he’d done and accomplished in his life had all just been leading up to this moment when a shambling abomination saw fit to deliver him to the afterlife kicking and screaming and missing a few body parts. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest, really, but it was still unpleasant to listen to.
Judging from what little of it was intelligible, he was crying about something pulling out his eyes. Must’ve broken rule 13. Poor, stupid bastard. That one’s so easy, you’d almost have to be breaking it on purpose.
I remember the first time somebody broke a rule and got themselves killed under my watch. It almost broke me. I blamed it all on myself, then. Sent me into a depression for months. But now, after all these decades… I’m just numb.
After all, my only job is to write the rules.
If they don’t want to follow them, well… it’s their funeral.
2023.06.07 18:35 Tight_Ostrich6468 Visiting Ndad to attend a funeral...
My grandad (Ndad's dad) died a few weeks ago, and it's his funeral on Friday. I live a few hours from my parents (best decision I ever made), but my partner and I have decided to drive to the funeral the morning of, and drive home the same day. I haven't told my Ndad this, as he expects that we'll be staying the night, but there's nothing I'd rather do less.
The last time I saw him was a few days after his dad died. Partner and I left in the middle of the night, as Ndad had blown things out of proportion, as he always does, and verbally attacked me and made me feel incredibly unsafe. I feel guilty for setting this boundary. I have rarely stood up for myself and done things the way I want to, and I do feel bad that I'm doing this on the day of his dad's funeral. It's the best thing to protect my own sanity.
Does anyone have any advice? It'd be reassuring to see any similar perspectives. It's early days for me setting boundaries, as it's not something I've been independent enough to do as of yet.
submitted by Tight_Ostrich6468 to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
The last time I saw him was a few days after his dad died. Partner and I left in the middle of the night, as Ndad had blown things out of proportion, as he always does, and verbally attacked me and made me feel incredibly unsafe. I feel guilty for setting this boundary. I have rarely stood up for myself and done things the way I want to, and I do feel bad that I'm doing this on the day of his dad's funeral. It's the best thing to protect my own sanity.
Does anyone have any advice? It'd be reassuring to see any similar perspectives. It's early days for me setting boundaries, as it's not something I've been independent enough to do as of yet.
2023.06.07 18:28 codenamefulcrum Here is an outline of how I wish the sequel trilogy would have been written:
Star Wars Episode VII: Echoes of the Past
submitted by codenamefulcrum to StarWars [link] [comments]
- The story opens with Chancellor Leia Organa leading the New Republic. Various political challenges, both internal and external, are revealed, alongside subtle rumors about Grand Admiral Thrawn and his Imperial Remnant fleet hidden in the Unknown Regions.
- Concurrently, Luke Skywalker runs a Jedi Academy on Tython, where he guides the new Jedi Order in their quest to understand the mysteries of the ancient Jedi.
- On another front, Poe Dameron and Finn, soldiers and close friends in the Grand Army of the New Republic, lead daring missions against remnants of the Empire.
- Han Solo and Chewbacca, upon hearing rumors of a force-sensitive individual among the Mandalorians, find Rey. Discovering her potential, they set course to the Jedi Temple on Tython.
- Leia, in the meantime, decides to visit Tython to see her brother Luke and her son Ben, who has passed the trials and is made a Jedi Knight. It's during this visit that Han and Chewbacca arrive with Rey. This eventful day brings about a long-awaited reunion between the original heroes - Leia, Luke, Han, and Chewbacca.
- Amidst this poignant moment, the need for Rey's training becomes clear, and she becomes the newest member of Luke's academy.
- In the final act, the rumors of Thrawn are confirmed as his fleet launches a surprise attack on Coruscant. The Senate building is evacuated, but Leia, with a determination characteristic of her, stays behind to coordinate the counterattack. The attack results in her untimely death.
- In response to the attack, Finn and Poe, now promoted to Generals, lead a counterattack against Thrawn. As the situation grows dire, and with Thrawn's fleet mercilessly bombing civilian targets, Finn makes a difficult decision. He evacuates his ship, asking Poe to do the same.
- Finn, in a heroic sacrifice, pilots his ship directly at Thrawn's flagship in an attempt to halt the bombardment, causing massive damage. However, it remains unclear whether Thrawn survived the onslaught.
- Amid the chaos of the attack, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant is destroyed, revealing an ancient Sith Temple beneath its ruins. This ominous discovery leaves the audience with a chilling sense of what's to come.
- Three years have passed since the destructive attack on Coruscant by Thrawn's fleet. The New Republic, still recovering, stands tall under new leadership while the Jedi Order has begun to rebuild itself on Tython.
- Luke, sensing that Thrawn is still alive, begins to have visions of the ancient Sith homeworld, Korriban. Believing it to be a clue, he sends his most trusted Jedi Knight, Ben Solo, along with his Padawan, Rey, on a mission to Korriban.
- The quest takes Ben and Rey to the shadowy depths of Korriban, where they explore the ancient Sith temples and tombs. Thrawn and his fleet, however, are nowhere to be found.
- The journey takes a dark turn when the ceiling of the tomb of Darth Bane collapses, separating Ben and Rey. As Ben searches for a way back to Rey, the Sith ghost of Darth Bane appears to Rey, attempting to seduce her to the dark side.
- When Ben finally finds Rey, he senses a deep change in her. Realizing that she has turned to the dark side, he tries to reach out to her, pleading her to resist the lure of the Sith. But Rey, fully embraced by the dark side, attacks Ben, resulting in his death.
- Back on Tython, Luke feels a deep disturbance in the Force and is filled with grief when he realizes his nephew's demise and Rey's turn to the dark side. During his time of despair, he is visited by the Force ghost of his father, Anakin Skywalker, who offers him comfort and guidance.
- As news of Rey's actions and Ben's death reaches the New Republic and the Jedi Order, an urgent council is called. In this meeting, the leaders start planning how to counter the rising Sith threat, now made real and personal by Rey's betrayal. The episode ends with a heavy sense of uncertainty about the future.
- A year has passed since the tragic events on Korriban. Rey has discovered Thrawn's hidden base beneath the scorched surface of Mandalore. Thrawn, recognizing Rey's power and determination, accepts her as his second in command.
- On Tython, the Jedi Order holds a solemn funeral for Han Solo, who died of grief following the loss of both his wife and son. The loss is immense, with Chewbacca, unable to bear the grief of losing his oldest friends, deciding to return to his home planet of Kashyyyk after saying a final goodbye to Luke.
- That night, Luke is visited by the Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan reveals a long-held secret: Rey is his granddaughter, a result of a secret affair he had with Duchess Satine of Mandalore before the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan shares with Luke a hard-earned insight – that love is the essence of the Force and that the old Jedi Order's strict policy on emotional detachment was flawed.
- Driven by his love for his family and friends he has lost, Luke seeks out Rey, determined to bring her back to the light side. His confrontation with Rey ends tragically, with Rey, consumed by the dark side, killing Luke.
- Following Luke's death, Rey returns to Thrawn and persuades him that the time is ripe to destroy the Jedi Order and the New Republic. Thrawn, swayed by Rey's resolve, agrees to this dark plan.
- Rey returns to Tython and deliberately reveals herself to the Jedi Order and the Grand Army of the New Republic, luring them to Mustafar.
- The climax unfolds in a massive space battle above Mustafar, with the New Republic and Jedi Order launching an all-out offensive against Thrawn's fleet. Despite suffering heavy losses, the New Republic and Jedi manage to overcome Thrawn’s forces and capture Thrawn himself.
- However, Rey manages to escape amidst the chaos, taking refuge in Vader's Castle on Mustafar. There, she is visited by the Sith ghost of Emperor Palpatine, who convinces her to reject the Rule of Two, the principle that had defined Sith relationships for centuries.
- Palpatine urges Rey to create a vast army of Sith to bring down the New Republic and the Jedi Order. The story ends with Rey, now a symbol of a new Sith era, beginning to plot her next move, setting the stage for the next trilogy.
2023.06.07 18:15 throwAwayyy0100 My boyfriend(22m) has been acting sketchy but won't tell me why, is this a reason to end things ? (22f)
I have been dating Jay for a few months now and when we started, everything was going great. He lives pretty far from me but he would come see me 2-3 times a week and our communication was on point. I never felt insecure about our relationship and trusted him 100%
He lives with his parents and they are pretty strict on him so he told me he didn't want to tell them about us just yet as they already find reasons to argue with him and he doesn't want them to use our relationship as ammo. His father gets mad at him if he comes home from work and doesn't go straight to sleep and also if he sleeps in even when he gets home around midnight after work and doesn't work until the afternoon. He starts technical school in august and has a home gym to work out in so I don't know what more his dad wants from him. Jay literally just stays home and goes to work, nothing else and his dad still wants more from him. Jay doest even go out anymore. I remember he came to spend the night, pretty sure lying to his parents about who he was staying with and his dad starting blowing him up around noon asking where he was at. Jay lied and said work and his dad left him alone. It's like his dad wants him to stay in the house when he's not working. He had just started a new job when we started out so he had multiple days off during the week and he would come see me for maybe an hour or two. He told me he used his friend as excuse a lot of the times when they questioned where he was at bc they knew his friend was going thru a tough time and that Jay was “helping him out”
I haven't seen him for 2 1/2 weeks and at first it was because of work, then bc a really close family friend passed away and he had dental surgery. I understood and was supportive. He's had only 2 days off of work in the last 17 days and it was only for his procedure and the funeral. Even when he’s scheduled off, he’ll pick up shifts. It's like he's purposely asking for as much work possible to get out of his house. He's even working doubles, he's worked 3 doubles since Saturday already. I miss him and he told me Saturday he was coming over to spend the night after work and I got so excited. 10 minutes after he got out of work, he told me his mom called him arguing with him about where he was at and he had to go home first. I just knew right then and there he wasn't coming so instead of making him feel like he had to choose, I told him I didn't want him to start a fight with his family. He told me he would try to see me this week.
The way he phrased his texts, he made it sound like his parents found out about us. He said that I technically am a far drive (an hour) so he understands why they trip out on him. That made me question how they knew he was coming to my city but I didn't ask. And then he said he needed to find a good day to bring his car over here. The thing is, he has an older car and he usually drives a car shared between him and his mom, in the time we've been together I've only seen him driving his own car once so then that made me question if his parents are keeping the "good" car from him since they know he can't drive too far in his car considering how much gas it takes and how driving it long distances isn't good. He wastes a full tank just driving here and back so that's about $90 right there.
Now our communication has gotten really really short. We just have like "hi how are you" convos but nothing deep. I don't know what he's been up too lately when he use to send me paragraphs about his days and he's just been kinda blocked off.
Last night was the night I started questioning our relationship. I have his location and he has mine and I've never had a problem with it, I barely even check it as I know he's always home or at work. Well last night he got off of work and we texted a bit, he was asking about my day when he suddenly stopped texting. I didn't think much of it as I assumed he got home but after 40 minutes something told me to check his location. He turned it off. It said no location found and I was so confused. I wanted to freak out bc he has NEVER done that but suddenly he felt the need to hide it? I texted him saying I had a question and it delivered so his phone didn't die and he texted back quickly. I came up with a lie saying I was going out for "taco Tuesday" and what he was doing, if he wanted to come out. He just said he sadly works a double today so he can't & appreciated the invite but never told me what he was doing. I was fuming, I wanted to ask him sooo bad why his location services was off but decided against it. I once saw all the people he has on find my friend and I'm pretty sure I saw his moms email on it. My cousin told me not to react bc I can come off crazy when whole time it probably isn't about me and more him trying to hide it from his parents if anything. I just don't known what to think and really want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
This morning came and his services are still turned off, maybe he forgot to turn them back on but now I dot know what to do. I don't know if I should bring it up to him or act nonchalant. If I bring it up then he knows I'm checking it. He's been acting so sketchy lately and he's not the type to tell me things over text, but in person. There's been times when big things happen to him and he doesn't tell me until days later when we meet in person. Im sure there's an explanation but him acting this secretive is making me feel weird. Something is off with him and the part of me that is scared to get hurt wants to text him and tell him this won't work out, even without giving him a chance to explain but then the part of me that still trusts him and know relationships take work tells me to just wait and see him to hear him out. Problem is, who knows when I'll see him again.
I don't know what to do. Should I text him saying we NEED to meet up soon or go with the flow. Should I break up with him or see what he has to say first? Technically there's no solid proof anything is wrong and last night was the first red flag. Something inside me just screams this has to do with his parents and when talking about the situation with my cousin, before I could even mention that I think his parents are controlling him, he told me that what jay is doing sounds exactly how he use to act when he was dating his ex while living his parents. That no grown man wants to admit that his parents won't let him go or do things so instead they come off as sketchy bc it's embarrassing to admit mommy and daddy still tell him what to do.
Hes an amazing guy but the no explanation for his sketchiness is driving me crazy.
submitted by throwAwayyy0100 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
He lives with his parents and they are pretty strict on him so he told me he didn't want to tell them about us just yet as they already find reasons to argue with him and he doesn't want them to use our relationship as ammo. His father gets mad at him if he comes home from work and doesn't go straight to sleep and also if he sleeps in even when he gets home around midnight after work and doesn't work until the afternoon. He starts technical school in august and has a home gym to work out in so I don't know what more his dad wants from him. Jay literally just stays home and goes to work, nothing else and his dad still wants more from him. Jay doest even go out anymore. I remember he came to spend the night, pretty sure lying to his parents about who he was staying with and his dad starting blowing him up around noon asking where he was at. Jay lied and said work and his dad left him alone. It's like his dad wants him to stay in the house when he's not working. He had just started a new job when we started out so he had multiple days off during the week and he would come see me for maybe an hour or two. He told me he used his friend as excuse a lot of the times when they questioned where he was at bc they knew his friend was going thru a tough time and that Jay was “helping him out”
I haven't seen him for 2 1/2 weeks and at first it was because of work, then bc a really close family friend passed away and he had dental surgery. I understood and was supportive. He's had only 2 days off of work in the last 17 days and it was only for his procedure and the funeral. Even when he’s scheduled off, he’ll pick up shifts. It's like he's purposely asking for as much work possible to get out of his house. He's even working doubles, he's worked 3 doubles since Saturday already. I miss him and he told me Saturday he was coming over to spend the night after work and I got so excited. 10 minutes after he got out of work, he told me his mom called him arguing with him about where he was at and he had to go home first. I just knew right then and there he wasn't coming so instead of making him feel like he had to choose, I told him I didn't want him to start a fight with his family. He told me he would try to see me this week.
The way he phrased his texts, he made it sound like his parents found out about us. He said that I technically am a far drive (an hour) so he understands why they trip out on him. That made me question how they knew he was coming to my city but I didn't ask. And then he said he needed to find a good day to bring his car over here. The thing is, he has an older car and he usually drives a car shared between him and his mom, in the time we've been together I've only seen him driving his own car once so then that made me question if his parents are keeping the "good" car from him since they know he can't drive too far in his car considering how much gas it takes and how driving it long distances isn't good. He wastes a full tank just driving here and back so that's about $90 right there.
Now our communication has gotten really really short. We just have like "hi how are you" convos but nothing deep. I don't know what he's been up too lately when he use to send me paragraphs about his days and he's just been kinda blocked off.
Last night was the night I started questioning our relationship. I have his location and he has mine and I've never had a problem with it, I barely even check it as I know he's always home or at work. Well last night he got off of work and we texted a bit, he was asking about my day when he suddenly stopped texting. I didn't think much of it as I assumed he got home but after 40 minutes something told me to check his location. He turned it off. It said no location found and I was so confused. I wanted to freak out bc he has NEVER done that but suddenly he felt the need to hide it? I texted him saying I had a question and it delivered so his phone didn't die and he texted back quickly. I came up with a lie saying I was going out for "taco Tuesday" and what he was doing, if he wanted to come out. He just said he sadly works a double today so he can't & appreciated the invite but never told me what he was doing. I was fuming, I wanted to ask him sooo bad why his location services was off but decided against it. I once saw all the people he has on find my friend and I'm pretty sure I saw his moms email on it. My cousin told me not to react bc I can come off crazy when whole time it probably isn't about me and more him trying to hide it from his parents if anything. I just don't known what to think and really want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
This morning came and his services are still turned off, maybe he forgot to turn them back on but now I dot know what to do. I don't know if I should bring it up to him or act nonchalant. If I bring it up then he knows I'm checking it. He's been acting so sketchy lately and he's not the type to tell me things over text, but in person. There's been times when big things happen to him and he doesn't tell me until days later when we meet in person. Im sure there's an explanation but him acting this secretive is making me feel weird. Something is off with him and the part of me that is scared to get hurt wants to text him and tell him this won't work out, even without giving him a chance to explain but then the part of me that still trusts him and know relationships take work tells me to just wait and see him to hear him out. Problem is, who knows when I'll see him again.
I don't know what to do. Should I text him saying we NEED to meet up soon or go with the flow. Should I break up with him or see what he has to say first? Technically there's no solid proof anything is wrong and last night was the first red flag. Something inside me just screams this has to do with his parents and when talking about the situation with my cousin, before I could even mention that I think his parents are controlling him, he told me that what jay is doing sounds exactly how he use to act when he was dating his ex while living his parents. That no grown man wants to admit that his parents won't let him go or do things so instead they come off as sketchy bc it's embarrassing to admit mommy and daddy still tell him what to do.
Hes an amazing guy but the no explanation for his sketchiness is driving me crazy.
2023.06.07 18:14 SeanInMyTree Moloney Funeral Home and House of Insurrection
submitted by SeanInMyTree to longisland [link] [comments]2023.06.07 17:43 schaweniiia WIBTA if I don't go to my grandpa's funeral?
My granddad died on the weekend. We all knew it was coming, he was in his 90s and had to spend the last few weeks in a care home after suffering a heart attack. His health had been in decline for the past few years.
His wife (my grandma) died suddenly in 2016 while I was abroad unfortunately (studying in New Zealand). Being a broke student at the time, I couldn't afford to go which caused a bit of disappointment in the family. I personally didn't mind staying away because I never cared much for funerals and didn't feel like I needed to be there for my own peace of mind, but of course I would have liked to have supported my mum and granddad at the time.
His funeral will take place in Sweden on Saturday.
My partner and I are UK based and just came back from a holiday in the Philippines today. We're really quite jetlagged and tired, so the thought of going back on a plane is exhausting in itself. All modes of transport included, we'd have to travel 12 hours each way and come back late on Sunday before returning to work on Monday. Plus, it's easily another 500 quid (620 USD) each on top of the holiday we just had where he spent a good amount (was budgeted for, but still).
My mum (his daughter) says it's fine if we don't come but the rest of the family (my dad and siblings, aunts and uncles) is disappointed in me.
The thing is I'd like to be there for my mum and participate in the funeral, but it's been such a professionally draining year that we both needed the break and I worry how ready we'll be to return on Monday if we have such a "hardcore" weekend after our fun but draining holiday. We took the extra time off to decompress for that reason. Not to mention, we are buying a house and didn't factor in such an expense.
But then again, I feel like I'm being selfish and should just suck it up because I wasn't there for grandma's funeral, either. And I want to support my mum...
What do you think? WIBTA if I stay at home?
submitted by schaweniiia to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
His wife (my grandma) died suddenly in 2016 while I was abroad unfortunately (studying in New Zealand). Being a broke student at the time, I couldn't afford to go which caused a bit of disappointment in the family. I personally didn't mind staying away because I never cared much for funerals and didn't feel like I needed to be there for my own peace of mind, but of course I would have liked to have supported my mum and granddad at the time.
His funeral will take place in Sweden on Saturday.
My partner and I are UK based and just came back from a holiday in the Philippines today. We're really quite jetlagged and tired, so the thought of going back on a plane is exhausting in itself. All modes of transport included, we'd have to travel 12 hours each way and come back late on Sunday before returning to work on Monday. Plus, it's easily another 500 quid (620 USD) each on top of the holiday we just had where he spent a good amount (was budgeted for, but still).
My mum (his daughter) says it's fine if we don't come but the rest of the family (my dad and siblings, aunts and uncles) is disappointed in me.
The thing is I'd like to be there for my mum and participate in the funeral, but it's been such a professionally draining year that we both needed the break and I worry how ready we'll be to return on Monday if we have such a "hardcore" weekend after our fun but draining holiday. We took the extra time off to decompress for that reason. Not to mention, we are buying a house and didn't factor in such an expense.
But then again, I feel like I'm being selfish and should just suck it up because I wasn't there for grandma's funeral, either. And I want to support my mum...
What do you think? WIBTA if I stay at home?
2023.06.07 17:33 bdgitrky Asking for duas
As-salamu alaykum,
I wouldn't normally ask for duas but there are 2 reasons for asking now, if that's okay. One of course is more important than the other.
Firstly, my husbands grandmother passed away today. She was old and suffering badly from Parkinson's and getting worse, so we had known for a while it was coming. Unfortunately, my husband has moved to my country and we don't have time for him to get tickets to go back home for the funeral. He wanted to visit her earlier just in case, but due to money issues and logistics, we were unable to. insha'Allah he will go as soon as he can.
The second is honestly just a little, maybe selfish, thing. I had my tonsils removed last week and the pain is just absolutely excruciating. Some times it's fine but I think I'm at peak pain now. I've been unable to eat today and I've been feeling sick and exhausted the past few days due to not eating enough and my painkillers. I'm honestly so desperate I thought I'd try this, nothing else is helping.
Jazakallahu khairan
submitted by bdgitrky to islam [link] [comments]
I wouldn't normally ask for duas but there are 2 reasons for asking now, if that's okay. One of course is more important than the other.
Firstly, my husbands grandmother passed away today. She was old and suffering badly from Parkinson's and getting worse, so we had known for a while it was coming. Unfortunately, my husband has moved to my country and we don't have time for him to get tickets to go back home for the funeral. He wanted to visit her earlier just in case, but due to money issues and logistics, we were unable to. insha'Allah he will go as soon as he can.
The second is honestly just a little, maybe selfish, thing. I had my tonsils removed last week and the pain is just absolutely excruciating. Some times it's fine but I think I'm at peak pain now. I've been unable to eat today and I've been feeling sick and exhausted the past few days due to not eating enough and my painkillers. I'm honestly so desperate I thought I'd try this, nothing else is helping.
Jazakallahu khairan