Empty Spray Bottles For Cleaning

...: Anyone can recommend effective mould cleaning liquid for toilet/bathroom? Preferably... spray. Magiclean for deep mould removal. Daiso red bleach for regular cleaning... price. I have like 10 empty bottles in my toilet cause I..., magiclean bathroom cleaner trigger. Yellow spray bottle. For toilet floor cleaner...

...in arc, knocking a few bottles of cleaner over, "Do...this bar. We're not cleaning up your corpsesss." Wheezing....why." He took the spray from me to sprinkle liberally ...before going back to cleaning, "Junk hearts, trash minds, ... once we're done cleaning…" He mumbled as he mixed the cleaning solution, soaking the...as I swish back, cleaning as I go… "Ugh. Disgusting.".... Due to how empty it is, with a group ...

... based spray is suitable for all your home, office and professional cleaning... Grapefruit scented multi surface cleaner spray is completely free from VOC’s... FRIENDLY: Our allergy free anti-bacterial spray is free from chemicals, readily... your forever bottles with this 5 litre refill; the empty packaging from refills...

... out for some reason. Just empty metal stands without their torches... pack was often filled with bottles, and he downed one after... Kakashi to teach me a cleaning jutsu. Thankfully, it was a... last spasm punctuated by a spray of blood from his mask. ... watched me. I used the cleaning jutsu on myself. Visualizing the ...

...of the Normandy's injection containment bottles, a reinforced cylinder designed ... racks, most of them empty now, their contents distributed ...her, hands moving through the cleaning and reassembly sequence with muscle... burst apart in a spray of green-black ichor. And the ...the tentacle rupturing in a spray of ichor, the Thorian's scream ... apparently fixed on the empty darkness. When she spoke again, ...

...bleach. And then went to spray down an outdoor concrete slab ... the earlier attempt with the cleaning spray must have either microscopic explosions, ... yanked out a few cleaner bottles. "Normally, these kinds of items ... said, still busy with the bottles. "Well, we're not technically in ... moments, multiple bottles had their caps unscrewed, and merged together leaving one completely empty bottle, which he...

...bleach. And then went to spray down an outdoor concrete slab ... the earlier attempt with the cleaning spray must have either microscopic explosions, ... yanked out a few cleaner bottles. "Normally, these kinds of items ... said, still busy with the bottles. "Well, we're not technically in ... moments, multiple bottles had their caps unscrewed, and merged together leaving one completely empty bottle, which he...

... Styling, Cleaning, Plant, Water Mist, Salon, Use Travel Spray Bottle Travel Spray Bottle... 37.9% Fine Mist Spray Bottle, 50ml Empty Empty Mist Travel Mist Atomizer... Water Spray Bottle, Spray Bottle, Atomiser Spray Bottle, Small Spray Bottle, Plastic Water Spray Bottle, Empty... Pack 5ML Perfume Atomiser Spray Bottle Mini Perfume Bottles Luxurious Mini Perfumes...

... cheaper decisions, vanilla body spray fighting a losing battle against...exasperation. "They're throwing notes at empty air out there, Sara." ... sofa smelled like cheap cleaning products and decades of bad...unpaid invoices and half-empty liquor bottles lining the shelves. The ..."Your manager's definitely deducting dry cleaning fees from your tips," she...when they knocked over an empty Jim Beam bottle. "That...

... next to my house is empty. For the last few months... people have taken to dumping empty paint cans, cinder blocks, used... ties, tires, cinder blocks, glass bottles. It’s unacceptable. Great workout So, ... form of poison ivy from cleaning all this shit out and... with bendadryl and numbing, anti-itch spray - I just wanted some ...

... apples, some snacks and water bottles. Leaning against the crate that's... the middle of the almost empty room were two figures, the... his X-Servant carefully . "That several spray paint cans and other items ... enemy tricks or whatever while cleaning up, captain buzzkill?" Jinx said... really just going to be cleaning up after that battles in ... suit like the others from cleaning the corpses. "But if they ...

... the case. Glass bottles shattered across the ground in a spray of liquor and... crushing force. Havetii lurched, eyes empty, and toppled to the deck ... injuries among them. Ike started cleaning his blade, and he gave ...

... the girls helped Sarah finish cleaning the kitchen, Dale and Andy.... After that, I want to spray foam insulation between the ribs ..., Dad. Thanks.” Andy gathered the empty concrete mix sacks, carried them ... to the house to finish cleaning and applying a dry rub ... the full bottle into an empty crate. These already had Sparkalloid ... ended up with thirty clear bottles of mead and two cloudy. ...

Il start off by saying as a child I would build really complex Lego’s and airfix models the last time I touched an airfix model was when I was 13, it’s a 1:24 scale spitfire with electric motor. My paint jobs were shit but it is what it is, and it’s probably why I jumped straight into this. I’m not saying mine is the best but I’m damn happy with it, and feels good to reconnect with a past hobby. I didn’t do any painting either only some markers panel lining water decals and lots of top coat! Also if anyone knows where I can get a good display case let me know thank you! I’m going to include all the tools I purchased for this because I think if any novice wants to get into this it’s perfectly ok to start here and better to know total cost to achieve this result than doing what I did which is thinking it would only cost me what I paid plus some minor tools. The build was extensive. I really enjoyed the details of building the inner frames. It’s a really therapeutic process too. Finding the runner, the. Cutting the part off, sanding it making sure it’s good before placing and snapping to fit. Organisation is key also. Once I got to the amour stage I got aluminium trays and cut each body part into a dedicated tray. Left leg and another one for right leg ect. The reason I did this was that after I did the water slides I would be able to get a body part topcoateded and the. Place back into the same box and repeat. So I would know what each part is and where it belongs. Once all the pieces were sanded and clean I went and rescribed the panel lines to make deeper grooves. I did not add new lines but I did purchase panel line tape to make sure I didn’t get scratches (I had scratches) I used the pour type panel line markers and 70iso alcohol with a cotton bud to clean the excess. I would say the scribing was annoying only when coming to oddly angled lines and cleaning the crud is not easy. However cleaning the ink was way worse as too much liquid and your ink goes and not enough but poor cleaning technique and the ink goes too. Take your time sanding with the Gunprimer raser and also use the grey sanding stick and white where needs be. The grey I used 2 sticks in my build and also the sandloop flex 800 grit on the red shield part as it comes kinda scratched and with injection squiggly thingy so if you sand it with the 800 grit then go over with the grey balance stick then the white stick use the Gunprimer cloth and then go over with the grey stick again dust all the parts and cloth it again you’ll be good to go! That brings me to things I did not like. DECALS! Man they were a pain in the ass to align must use a toothpick to align after taking out of water with tweezers. I found that certain decals would move around even when rolling your cotton ear swab thingy (not all the time but enough that it would happen multiple times per section. It’s kinda hard to align decals that need “connect” to another side or look uniform across opposite sides but getting as close as possible to perfect is good and an accomplishment. Also do yourself a favour and order two decal sheets. Keep in mind sometimes using the mr mark setter or softener will make your ink leak or disappear even if it has been days so less is more! Also what is great with the extra decal sheets is you can add extra decals to your gundam I added decals onto his sword gun and left leg since it felt iquite empty. That said by far the worse the worst part was using topcoat. Few things I will say. I did not have a spray booth. I used a cardboard box I had the GSI Cross GT90 clips and sprayed each part in that cardboard box. My doors or windows were not open due to the cold weather in london I had the heating on and my kitchens extractor fan on that was too far away to do anything. My god does this thing go everywhere the dust will spread across your house even if you’re spraying in a box. Like I said I’m new to spraying I also did not think it would be so bad or that I would end up creating a dust sandstorm. If i was to spray again I would get one of those fancy boxes with a fan that sucks all the air out too. So a few things about spraying. You will need more than 36 clips, I only bought one pack and while I was good to go for each leg. If you leave one part drying for 12h and want to spray another part you won’t have enough clips for all the parts you need like an extra 5 clips or so. Just get two packs. Find a place to put those sticks. I just shoved them through another box to keep them upright. Second point. I highly highly recommend you get the MR TOPCOAT PREMIUM MATT UV! Firstly the uv protection is great but the premium Matt is wayy smoother and cleaner looking than normal Matt and the premium Matt. This can is worth the price. And thirdly get more bottles than you think you need. I had originally purchased two cans… then I purchased 4cans… then I purchased an extra can.. to only realise that’s not enough and it’s the weekend. Thankfully there was a gentleman selling on eBay who was 45mins by car. Drove to him and purchased two more cans only to get to the last body part and there was not enough spray. I drove to him the next day once more to purchase another can. And I still think I could have purchased one more to be safe as that did run out. So in total 10 cans+1 small can… when spraying it’s toxic and kn95 masks are useless. Also definitely do a light coat first make sure it’s wet but not that wet and those dots disappear also blow on parts and dust them off before spraying. Any dust will stick to the part permanently unless you scratch it out! After 15 min passes usually it will take you longer to spray each section, you can then spray once again slower and more wet than before. This is your final layer. Leave to dry 12h plus. Important to note. Warm can first spray away from part before onto part and a distance of 20cm or so. Second pass can be closer but not that much or you will get forsting. I unfortunately had on a few parts. To fix this mistake I waited 12h purchased a small can of premium topcoat glossy sprayed it and let it cure. After it dissolved some of the frost I went over it with matt twice or 3 times depending on how it felt to touch. The top coat is a game changer makes the biggest difference and it takes your toy from looking like a toy to a display piece and custom. Using the premium gloss can I had I decided to spray only the guns sight finder in it. Covering any internal parts either yellow tape. Before attaching each part onto his body I sort of soft placed parts to see what clips are visible as there are clip holes visible from the outer armour. These I used a thicker GM marker in gold silver or gun metal for accent lining. Really simple go over that section with said marker like a sharpie and wait to dry 45 mins and place part ontop. What is left is like bolt parts. And pegs that go through colour. I did mostly gold his body. Some areas I forgot to do and had already placed body panels on him. These will nap if you are not careful. Make sure you test before fully securing! Anyway build enjoy and display. Also get the Gunprimer gate remover gate with the raser filer plus god hands these are a must. List of parts. I’m not including all the shipping but for all the items from OEShop I paid £13.47 and the ones where I paid a lot to have next day I’ve included it in the list. A huge thank you to OEShop. You made purchasing tools I knew nothing about simple. Your prices are the best and the customer service is above and beyond. Thank you for holding items and not sending things out so that I could add more to my order later on and save on shipping costs. You guys are great. Tamiya cutting mat A3 - £17.93 OEShop Tamiya 87066 Modelling Brush - £4.50 OEShop Tamiya 74093 Nipper - £12.99 OEShop Gunprimer gate remover set - £44.99 OEShop Gunprimer dust brush stick - £7.99 OEShop Gunprimer balancer white pack- £5.49 OEShop Gunprimer balancer gray pack - £5.49 OEShop Gunprimer sandloop flex 800 grit - £6.50 OEShop DSPIAE PT-TH PRO "WING" Tungsten Steel Broach 0.15mm (mainly use this) - £17.99 OEShop DSPIAE PT-TH PRO "WING" 0.2mm- £17.99 OEShop DSPIAE PT-TH PRO "WING" 0.5mm- £17.99 OEShop DAPIAE PT-TH pen holder - £9.99 OEShop DSPIAE CG Adhesive Backed Tape Measure with Hard Edges 30m 5mm + 2mm - £5.98 OEShop DSPIAE MT Washi Masking 20mm - £2.99 OEShop DSPIAE BOX Storage Box set 2+M1- £4.28 OEShop Bandai part separator - £3.99 OEShop GSI Mr.Hobby GM303 250 marker - £2.99 OEShop GSI Mr.Hobby GM301 250 marker - £3.49 OEShop GSI Mr.Hobby GM302 250 marker - £4.99 OEShop GSI Mr.Hobby XGM05 marker - £3.49 OEShop (gunmetal used only for under feet in my build) GSI Mr.Hobby GM04 250 marker - £2.99 OEShop (used for all gold detailing! Great marker) GSI Mr.Hobby GM05 250 marker - £2.99 OEShop (Used for all silver detailing) GSI Mr.Hobby GM12 250 marker - £ 2.99 OEShop (Did not use) GSI Mr.Hobby GM300P 250 eraser - £3.49 OEShop (Didn’t use much) GSI Mr Mark Setter - £4.85 OEShop GSI Mr Mark Softer - £4.85 OEShop GSI Mr almighty clip single clip type- £11.75 OEShop Mr White Putty R-P-123 low viscosity- £8.94 Jadlam EVO E-pg20 (uv) rx78 PGU decal- £4.48 x2 OEShop ChemLab isopropanol Alc 70% - £5.90 Amazon Godhand nipper 5.0 SPN120 - £39.99 Amazon (now being sold for 50 ish) Creahaus 12.5in 3 layer storage box £20.99 Amazon Mr Hobby B-604 Aqueous premium top coat matt smooth clear uv cut 170ml - £16.95 x2 (25% off on orders on two and above) so paid £25.44 - Jadlam Mr Hobby B-604 Matt x2 - £33.59 (paid extra for next day delivery so should have been £26.60) - hobby workshop Mr Hobby B-604 Matt x2 - £26.60 total - hobby workshop (added to previous order so shipping included on other order) Mr Hobby B-604 Matt -£13.30 - Hobby workshop Mr Hobby B-601 topcoat premium glossy 88ml - £10.99 - hobby workshop - total £31.28 Mr hobby b604 Matt - £13.30 x 3 total £39.90 - eBay seller “model-gear” (thank you you’re a life saver) if you have to get these cans please purchase from him. Great person. PGU RX78-2 Gundam set sealed - £229.50 - eBay seller. Total 713.52. submitted by /u/Particular_Lawyer_86 to r/Gunpla [link] [comments]

[UPDATE]: We have an update in the epic finale!! It is noted down below. We have a fresh pot of boiling hot tea here, so buckle up my fellow witches for some good shit. To add: I was not expecting to have an update so soon! If you read my first post on this, you'll know I have a neighbor from hell who tried to get me to take down my Pride flag. Malicious compliance ( and petty revenge) ensued. Original post can be found here: Original Post I guess she got tired of my twice daily wave and shit-eating grin as she walked to and from her car for work real fast, because there's been another complaint made with the flag. She actually came to my door and screamed and cussed at me about how my "flag was ruining her life and causing her undue stress." I responded through my Ring camera (cause fuck if I'm opening that door) that if her life is legitimately ruined over a flag, she ought to consider seeking professional help and to please not come to my door anymore. She fucked off and went to management. I'm not entirely sure what the actual complaint was, but management contacted me and asked me to reconsider where my flag was placed "for peace within the community". I told them I had adhered to their written guidelines, and unless they could prove I had violated the lease, the flag stays. I informed them I wasn't budging on this unless I was legally forced to do so. I also suggested that the continued complaints and the incessant screaming and cussing caused MORE of a disturbance than the presence of said flag, and that any further pushing of this issue could possibly be construed as harassment. The manager started backtracking so hard, I thought she'd trip and fall over the phone. As a bonus, I got video evidence from the cameras on my patio that she doesn't clean up after her dog. Management actually takes that pretty seriously now, and the fines are rolled into your rent payment so you have to pay them when you pay your rent. So, being a good tenant, I submitted video evidence of her violations to management. Not only are they done with the complaints about my flag (YAY) AND putting her on a lease violation for disturbing the peace of the community (a video of screaming and cussing at someone will get you that), but each violation for her failing to pick up after he dog is a $500 fine. I got 6 on camera just from last week, and she's still doing it (yes, I'm recording each incident). So, to the absolute, intolerable, and bigoted c*nt next door, thank you for making my weekend and enjoy paying that extra $3,000 on your July rent bill! To add: Rent amounts will be posted to tenant accounts on Monday, so if I manage to get a firework show early, I'll post an update. Edit: grammar Edit: thank you u/burningfoxfire2353, u/pinkrotaryphone, u/bottledredne, u/dracokain, u/emmmzzzz, and u/elizasea for the award! [UPDATE] The Epic Finale!!!! Holy shit...I honestly have no idea where to start with this update. Please grab some popcorn, a beverage of your choice, and smoke em if ya got em. Fortunately, I'm looking for a job right now (thanks NIH grant cuts) so I was actually able to deal with this. In short, my neighbor had set up her rent payments to "auto pay" and apparently woke up this morning massively overdrawn. I guess she took today off from work to pitch the most Karen-esque fit of rage at the apartment manager for "unauthorized charges". The manager showed her the video I had submitted. She had such a meltdown, the front office called the police on her, and she (regrettably) stormed out before they got there. By this point, you're probably wondering how the fuck I know this. Well, when she flew out of that office, she saw fit to come back to my front door. She was beating on my door so hard, I honestly thought she might be able to break in and scared the absolute shit out of my dogs. So here I am dressed in a T-shirt and underwear, raging bitch at my door SCREAMING every single derogatory and offensive thing you could think of, dogs going apeshit, and my phone is ringing because the apartment manager had the sense to call me. I answered the call to put the manager on speakerphone, mostly as a witness to the shit that was flying. Abruptly, my neighbor stopped screaming and beating on the door - I wondered if she'd given herself an aneurysm, and I checked the cameras. Come to find out, that psycho had vaulted over my patio railing and was actively breaking into my back door. I ran like a mother fu€ker to grab my mace, and yelled loudly enough my upstairs neighbors heard me clearly that if she didn't stop, she'd get sprayed. Guess what? She didn't stop. So I emptied the can directly into her face. The wails sounded like bells to my ears. The screaming and cussing kept on to be sure, but it was majestic. She scrambled backwards so hard, she fell back over the railing she had gotten over. By this time, the property manager, the property security, and the police showed up (huzzah). As for HER, she's facing charges of assault and battery (she had slapped one of the employees in the face), attempted assault on me, violating her fucking PAROLE, and a slew of other shit. She was arrested, and she's going to be in jail for a while. Management is evicting her. The police asked me how this all started. I said she wanted my Pride Flag taken down, and had she not been such a bigoted c*nt, none of this would've happened. As for me, I'm spending the rest of the evening with a bottle of wine, some takeout, and some really good herbs. Thank you to all of you who've been here thus far - it was truly amazing! Stay strong, stay wonderfully weird, and stay safe! Blessed fu€king be my beautiful witches!!! submitted by /u/Loki_the_Corgi to r/WitchesVsPatriarchy [link] [comments]

We had been friends for thirteen years and in those years I had not once slept at his house. “So, why the sudden invite?” I asked. I settled the duffel on my shoulder and he held the door. “My parents are going out,” he said, and the words came out of him in a rush. “Figured it’s about time you saw my humble abode.” The house was not a humble abode. It was a great white clapboard house that stood on the land as if it had been there forever and the town had grown around it. Old oaks stood guard over the grounds and their shadows fell across the yard. Inside the house there was a smell of old wood and polish and something more besides, a smell like turned earth after a rain. His mother was a woman built of small bones and she carried a frantic smile that did not touch her eyes. She moved about the dim rooms with a nervous energy, asking of drinks and of snacks. His father sat in a leather chair and he did not speak. He was a large man whose eyes were dark and still and they followed us as we passed. I heard his mother whisper words to him, urgent and low, but I could not make them out. At Seven O Clock his parents left. “So, what’s the plan?” I asked. I dropped my bag on the floor of his room. The room was a small island of the ordinary in that house, with its posters and its rumpled bed and the console set before the television. It was the only place that did not feel as if it belonged to the dead. “Pizza, video games, the usual,” Leo said. He knelt and woke the machine. He moved with a forced calm, but I saw the cording in his neck. We ate the pizza and played the games and for a time I did not think of the house or of the silence that lay coiled in its other rooms. For a time it was only the two of us and the sounds from the screen. Then near to Nine he paused the game. “Hey, man,” he said. He would not look at me but worked the controller in his hands. “There’s just… one weird rule my parents have.” “Weird rule?” “Yeah.” He raised his head and his eyes were serious as a stone. “After 9:00 PM, we have to be in here. In the bedroom. And we can’t leave. Not for anything. Not for the bathroom, not for a drink, nothing. The door stays closed until sunrise.” I stared at his face and looked for the jest that was not there. “You’re kidding, right? What if I have to pee?” “Pee now,” he said. His voice was flat. He gestured with his chin to an empty bottle on his desk. “And after nine, you use that.” The laugh I had in my throat died there. “Dude, that’s insane. Why?” He shrugged his shoulders but the motion was counterfeit. “They’re just… super weird about security. Old house, you know? They think it’s… drafty.” Drafty. I knew he was lying I just didn’t know why. Downstairs a clock began to chime the hour and his head snapped toward the door. BONG. BONG. BONG. He was on his feet before the ninth bell had sounded its note. He crossed the room and closed the door. He slid a heavy bolt of steel into its housing and the sound it made was final. “There,” he said. A sweat had bloomed on his brow and he breathed out the word. “We’re good.” “Leo, what the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Nothing, man. Just a weird rule,” he said. He would not look at the door. He turned up the sound of the game until it was a roar in that small room. But I did not see the game. I saw only the bolted door and I felt a coldness take root in my gut. The house was quiet again. But it was not the same quiet. This was a listening quiet. A waiting quiet. And in the dark heart of that house something waited, and we were locked in that room and waiting with it. An hour passed and there was no sound from the house. The fear went out of Leo slowly and he played the game with a feigned calm that did not sit right on him. We played on in that silence and a vexation grew in me at the foolishness of it all. “You really need to tell your parents this is a certifiable way to raise a serial killer,” I said. He gave back a fake smile. “Tell me about it.” Then came a sound from the rooms below. It was a soft and measured thumping on the boards of the main hall. “What's that?” I whispered. Leo played on. He stared at the screen and his fingers worked the buttons as if he did not hear. “It's nothing. House settling.” “That's not the house settling, Leo.“ The sound ceased. In the quiet I could hear the blood in my own ears. Then there came a new sound which was a dragging sound, a scraping of some great weight across the wood floor beneath us as of a heavy thing with broken feet. I muted the television. “Okay, that's definitely not the house,” I said. Leo set the controller down upon the carpet. His face was pale in the shifting light of the screen. “Just ignore it, Liam. Please. It goes away if you ignore it.” “What? What is it? What goes away?” Before he could answer, it spoke. The voice came from the hallway, faint at first, on the other side of our door. “Leo? Honey?” I did not move. The voice was his mother's voice. “Leo, sweetheart, your father and I came home early. I brought you boys some warm cookies. Open the door.” I looked to Leo and saw a boy cast in tallow. He stared at the door as if it were the gate of hell itself, and he raised a trembling finger to his lips and shook his head. “Leo, that's your mom,” I whispered. “Don't be silly, sweetie, we're inside," the voice said. It was just outside the door now. "I just baked your favorites. Chocolate chip. They're getting cold.” The scraping from below had stopped. There was only the sweet persuasion of that voice in the silent house. But the voice was wrong. There was a terrible perfection in its sound, like a memory of a voice and not the voice itself. Then came the knocking. It was a soft and wet sound on the far side of the door, as if a piece of meat were striking the wood. “Leo? Liam? Are you boys alright in there? You're being awfully quiet.” “Leo,” I mouthed, but no sound came. He sat upon the floor like a man made of stone, his eyes wide with a plea that had no words. He looked like something trapped. The knob of the door turned, once to the left and once to the right. Then it began to rattle in its fitting with a growing violence. “Boys, this isn't funny," the voice said. The sweetness broke in it then and it was replaced with a hard and ragged edge. "Open. The. Door." A great blow struck the door and the frame of it groaned in the wall. I scrambled away from it on my hands and feet until my back was against the far wall of the room. The voice changed. It spoke again and the voice was a ruin, a low and guttural thing that gurgled in its throat. “I k n o w y o u ' r e i n t h e r e.” The wet tapping began again, faster now and frantic. With it came a thin and keening whine, a sound like wind through a crack in the world. And from the dark gap beneath the door a black and viscous fluid began to seep into the room. It was thick as oil and it carried the smell of the grave, of wet soil and of things that rot in the earth. Leo moved. He crawled to the bed and pulled the blankets over him and became a small and shuddering shape in the dim room. He had gone into his own darkness. On the other side of the door the thing fell silent. I knew it was not gone. I knew that in my bones. It was there in the darkness beyond the door, and it was waiting. I kept my back to the far wall and I watched the door. My breath was a small and panicked thing in my throat. On the bed Leo was a trembling knot of blankets and fear. For me this was a night's journey into that darkness. For him it was the place he lived. A fool's curiosity which has been my ruin more than once warred with the terror. A need to see the shape of the thing that hunted us. A dreadful truth was better than not knowing. I went forward on my stockinged feet and the old boards did not whisper. “Liam, no.” came a voice from the bed, muffled by the cloth. “Don’t. Don’t look.” But I would look. I knelt upon the floor and the reek of the grave was stronger. I lowered my head to the cold brass of the keyhole. At first there was only the dim hall and the moonlight that fell in a pale blade from the window at its end. Then it stepped into the narrow view. It was not a man nor was it a beast. It was a thing that was built of sticks and of shadow, impossibly tall and thin. Its limbs were the limbs of a winter tree and its body was a gyre of dust and night that had no true form. It wore his mother's floral apron, the cloth stretched over a hollow space where a chest should be. It wore his father's hunting cap set upon a head that was only a clot of moving dark. It had no face, only a void. In one of its twiglike hands it held a picture I had seen on the wall, a portrait of the family. It held this picture before the void where its face should be and it wore the smile of Leo's mother for its own. From its body it put forth a long and blackened twig of an arm and it tapped upon the door. Thump. Thump. Thump. I threw myself back from the door and clapped a hand to my mouth to keep the gorge from rising. My mind could not hold the shape of what I had seen. This was no creature that had entered the house. This was the house itself, a parasite that wore the stolen keepsakes of the dead or the soon to be dead for its raiment. From the door a new voice whispered, and the blood in me went to ice. “Liam? Why are you hiding in there? Your mother is so worried about you.” It was my own mother's voice. Perfect. The voice she used when I was a child and sick with fever, the call to supper from a life I would not see again. A wave of homesickness and of horror washed over me for I wanted to be home and I was not. And the thing in the hall gave a low chuckle that was the sound of dry leaves scuttling on a stone walk. It knew it had found the part of me that was soft. “Let me in, Liam,” my mother’s voice whispered, a sound of love and of poison. “I've come to take you home.” I fell back to the wall and slid to the floor and I felt the heat of shame in my thighs where my body had betrayed me. I looked at the trembling shape on the bed. The bottle he had offered. It had not been a joke. It had not been a rule but a kindness. A tool for survival, for he knew. He knew all of it. The scraping began upon the door itself. A slow and patient sound, as of a claw being sharpened upon the wood. All the while it whispered my name in the voice of my mother, and it promised me an end to all this if I would but unlatch the door. The hours passed in that room and the thing outside did not cease its siege. It spoke in the voices of the living and of those I could not know, a gallery of ghosts at the door. It offered warmth and food. It promised an end to the long night. And all the while it scraped at the wood with a patience that was a madness to hear. The fear had burned away in me and left a hard and bitter anger. I was angry at the thing in the hall and at the people who had built for it a cage and called it a home, and I was angry at the boy who hid in his blankets and would not speak. Hours passed. “Leo,” I said. My voice was a dry croak in my throat. “Leo, wake up.” A shape stirred in the bed. He looked out from the pale fortress of his sheets and his eyes were raw with fear. “Is it gone?” he whispered. “No, it's not gone,” I said. “I need to know what this is. Now. No more lies. What is that thing?” He flinched from the sound of my voice. He sat up in the bed and hugged his knees to his chest and would not look at me. “I don't know what it is,” he mumbled to the door. “We just call it… the Nightman. It's always been here. As long as my family has.” The story came out of him then, a broken telling in the dark. His great-great-grandfather had built this house upon unhallowed ground. And from the first night there was a wrongness in the wood and in the walls. A bargain had been struck in that time, an unspoken covenant with the darkness. The family would have the house by the light of day. But from nine until the dawn the house was given over to that other. “It gets lonely,” Leo whispered. A tear cut a clean path through his face. “It likes to… play. It mimics people. It uses things it finds to try and make a body for itself.” The apron. The hat. The picture. “But it's getting bolder,” he said, and his voice trembled in the small room. “It used to just make noise. Now… it tries to get in. The rules were enough before. Stay in your room. Don't look. Don't listen. But now it wants more.” He finally met my eyes and I saw in them a guilt as deep and as cold as a well. “It wants someone new.” A cold truth settled in my soul, and it wound me. The sudden invite. The fear in his parents’ eyes. The heavy bolt on the door. “You… you brought me here for it?” “No! I didn't want to!” The boy's voice broke. “My parents… they said it was getting too strong. That it wouldn't be satisfied with just them anymore. They said if it had someone new… someone not from the family… maybe it would be satisfied. Maybe it would leave us alone for a while.” He had led me here as a lamb to the altar. His parents had not gone out. They were in this house, in their own locked room, and they were listening. They were praying that the beast in the hall would choose me. And then the scraping stopped. The whispers died. The house fell into a quiet so profound it was like the earth had stopped its turning. “What's happening?” I breathed. Leo's eyes grew wide. From the floor below a new sound came. The sound of feet on the stairs. Heavy. A footfall. And the dragging of a dead weight. Thump. Drag. Thump. Drag. It was not trying to trick us. The game was done. The footsteps ceased outside our door. The silence held for a count of three. Then a crack like thunder sounded as a great force struck the door. The wood splintered and the deadbolt shrieked in its housing. CRACK! A web of breaks spidered from the lock. A fine dust of ruined wood fell to the floor. “It's never done this before,” Leo whimpered. He crawled away toward the dark corner of the room. “It's never tried to break the door down!” CRACK! BANG! The deadbolt was torn from the frame like a tooth from a jaw. The door swung inward on its hinges with a sad and final groan. And in the blackness of the hall, I saw it. There was no void. It had filled itself. Its body was a terrible congress of things stolen from the house. Floorboards for shins and rusted pipes for arms. Its torso a twisted cage of stair bannisters, and within that cage I saw my own duffel bag, and it pulsed like some dark and foreign heart. Its head was the grandfather clock from the hall. It leaned upon its neck of twisted wood and the pendulum swung behind the glass face like a wild and frantic eye. From the clock a voice came, not one voice but all of them, a discordant chorus speaking as one. “T I M E . I S . U P.” The door swung open on its ruined hinges and the thing assembled from the house's bones stepped into the room. Its coming was a grinding of parts, a clicking of old wood and metal, and the air filled with the smell of sawdust and the deep earth of the grave. Leo cried out, a sound of pure terror that was lost in the noise of the thing's advance. A hot and primal fear seized me, not of a predator but of a thing that was wrong in the world. I took up a glass trophy from the desk and I threw it with all the strength that I had. It struck the face of the grandfather clock and the glass shattered in a spray of bright shards. The thing reeled back. It made a sound like all the clocks in the world striking some final and calamitous hour at once. It gave us a moment. "The window!" I screamed. I grabbed Leo by his arm and dragged him, for he was a thing of stone. My fingers were slick with sweat and they slipped upon the window latch. It would not give. It had been painted into its frame. The thing righted itself. The broken glass of its face caught the moonlight in a thousand crazed points of light. It came for us, its arm of rusted pipe raised up to strike. "The bed! Help me with the bed!" I yelled. Adrenaline found him at last and he moved. We set our shoulders to the heavy oak bedstead and turned it onto its side and made of it a poor and flimsy barricade. The creature stumbled into the mattress and its feet, made of chair legs and other things, became tangled in the sheets. It roared, and it began to tear the bed apart with its hands, ripping the guts of it out onto the floor. We were trapped in the corner of the room with the unyielding window at our backs. "The sun," Leo gasped, and his eyes were wild. "It's the only thing. It has to be inside before the sun comes up." I looked out into the night and the sky was a deep and starless black. We did not have hours. The creature tore itself free of the ruined bed. It came on, slow now, for it knew that we were its own. It raised a hand made of silverware from the kitchen, the forks and the spoons bound together to make a shining and terrible claw. And then I saw a thing tucked behind his television. It was a high-powered flashlight. A last and desperate thought came to me. I lunged and took up the cold metal of the flashlight. The thing was upon me. I smelled the dust of its body and I saw the brass pendulum swinging in its broken face. I found the switch and a great pillar of white struck it full in its head. It shrieked a sound of pure agony. The light did not burn it but seemed to unmake it from itself. The spoons of its hand clattered to the floor. A floorboard on its leg split and fell away. The light was a poison to the thing's very being. It shielded the ruin of its face with its pipe-arm and it stumbled into the shadows by the door. And in that room began the longest watch of my life. I held the light like a sword and the beam of it was the only thing that held the creature at bay. Leo huddled behind me and cried out when it scuttled at the edges of the room. We were keepers of a light against a great and pressing dark, and the strength in my arm burned away and the batteries that fueled our light would not last. The creature would lunge and I would drive it back with the beam and we would wait and listen to it breathing in the shadows. The hours passed this way, in a stalemate between the light and the dark. The beam of the light began to fail. It flickered. "It's dying," I gasped. "Just a little longer," Leo urged, his eyes fixed upon the window. "Just a little longer." The creature knew. It gathered itself in the dark as the beam dimmed to a sad yellow glow, and with a final and triumphant roar, it charged. In that same moment, a pale grey line was drawn upon the black horizon. It was the first sign of dawn. The thing struck me and the flashlight was knocked from my hand. I was on the floor and the monster stood over me, its clock face bent low, and I saw my own face reflected in the arc of the swinging pendulum. Then a single and pure ray of the morning sun pierced the window and touched the creature's back. It froze. A profound stillness came over it. Then it began to come apart. The clock head crumbled to a fine dust. The pipe arms fell from its shoulders and clattered on the floorboards. The bannisters of its chest unwound. The stolen silver and the splintered wood and my own duffel bag all collapsed into a heap of simple things. In moments, all that was left was this pile of refuse and a thin layer of grey dust that smelled of the grave. The sun streamed through the window and filled the ruined room with light. I lay upon the floor and gasped for breath. Leo wept against the wall, a sound of relief and of terror. We had lived. There were footsteps in the hall. Not of a monster, but of a man. The door to his parents’ room opened. A moment later they stood in our doorway. They did not look at the ruin of the room, nor at the pile of debris on the floor where the creature had been. They looked at me. And I saw on their faces not relief nor any gladness, but only a deep and bottomless disappointment. The horror was not ended. I knew then that the plan had failed. The sacrifice had not been made. The thing that was the house would be hungry when the sun fell again. I was the one who got away. And for this, they would never forgive me. submitted by /u/solardrxpp1 to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Drew and I had been married for 2 years when he got in the accident. Head-on collision. Drunk driver. Declared dead at the scene. That was back in 2020. Grieving him through the pandemic, completely isolated, was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I worked through it with my parents, with his mom. I’ve even started dating again. But then the texts started. I got the first one while I was on a date at some overfancy Italian place. A text, from Drew’s number. It was blank. Like someone had just hit the space bar and hit “send.” I got the next one a few days later, in the evening, while I was curled up with a book. It just had a period. “.” At first, I thought it was a prank, as cruel as that would be. Or maybe it was well-intentioned, by an older person or someone on the spectrum. Maybe they thought the texts would make me happy. I asked around, but no one knew. I thought about going to the police—but there was nothing threatening in them. Just strings of weird punctuation. Maybe it’s a glitch, I thought. Maybe the system had reactivated his number by accident and was sending bits of code to me. But the texts seemed to have a pattern. They were often sent when I was on a date, or getting ready for one. It seemed just enough to be more than coincidental. I tried telling myself I was being paranoid, that it was all just chance. As the anniversary of his death approached, though, the texts increased in frequency. They went from one or two a week to one a day. “…” “.,.” “,,:” “,…….”. Just nonsensical punctuation, every time. I was starting to get desensitized to them. The first one had made me cry. Now, they just annoyed me. On the anniversary of Drew’s death, though, the texts increased tenfold. I got five of them before noon. Over fifteen in the afternoon. And as the time of his death approached—9:11 PM—they came in faster and faster. This is way more than coincidence. Someone is fucking with me. I went to the police. They said they’d be able to trace where the texts were coming from, but they’d need some time to get in touch with the cell company. “Probably just a scammer,” the officer had said, even though I told him everything. “There are tons of scams now, with how bad the economy is...” “But they’re not trying to get anything out of me,” I’d told them. “And they’re texting me way more today than any other day. On the day my husband died.” “I’m sorry for your loss,” the officer had said, in a detached tone. “We’ll get in touch with you when we know more. Okay?” So what else could I do? I went back home to start the tradition I did every year. At 7 o’clock I put on his favorite movie, Stranger Than Fiction, and opened a bottle of wine. I patted the seat next to me, as if gesturing an invisible him to sit down. I liked to talk to him. Pretend he was actually sitting there with me. “Maggie Gyllenhaal is so cute,” I told the empty spot. “I’d totally date her if I wasn’t married to you. And if, you know, she wasn’t a movie star.” “Will Ferrell is so young in this. He looks like a baby.” “Haha, he’s so awkward. She totally hates him.” My phone pinged. “…;” I frowned at it. I decided to call the police station again. They told me they didn’t have any news. I looked at the empty spot. “I miss you,” I said, sucking in a deep breath. “I miss you so much.” I looked at the phone, waiting for it to ping. A small part of me wishing it would, like he’d heard me. What if the texts really are Drew? Somehow? I thought of that Twilight Zone episode. Where the old woman keeps getting phone calls, and then they find a downed telephone pole, the wires dangling over her husband’s grave. Was this sort of the 2000s equivalent of that? Had some spooky ghost EMF jammed the wireless cell communications? But the phone didn’t ping. Of course it didn’t. This wasn’t his ghost trying to contact me. This was someone fucking with me, someone playing a sick game. The only answer I’d get was from the police. I got up and refilled my wine glass. But my hands were shaking as I poured. As I tried to set it back on the counter, I dropped it— Crash. The glass bottle shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. Merlot wine like blood pooled on the floor. “Fuck,” I whispered. Fighting tears, I got a garbage bag and bent down to pick up the pieces— “Ow!” The piece I’d picked up had sliced right into my thumb. Never clean shattered glass while you’re tipsy and crying, I guess. Cursing, I stood up and ran my thumb under the faucet, staining the water red— Ping. I glanced over at my phone, sitting on the couch armrest. I turned off the faucet. Made my way over to it. My heart plummeted as I saw the text. “: )” Not a blank text. Not a string of nonsense. A fucking smiley face. After I’d just cut myself. And not any smiley face. A colon, then a space, then a parenthesis—exactly how Drew made his smiley faces. He never wanted autocorrect or Gchat or whatever program to turn it into an emoji or actual smiley face. Someone is watching me. And they really, really want to fuck with me. I ran over to the kitchen window, tiptoeing around the glass. I pulled the curtains shut over the sink. Then I ran around the house, checking every lock. I called the police. “I think they’re watching me,” I whispered. “What?” “They sent me a smiley face. Right after I cut myself.” “Okay… that’s probably just a coincidence—” “They’ve never sent a smiley face before! Or anything other than nonsense!” “Okay, calm down. You know what? I’m going to get in touch with the cell company right away. I’ll call you back in about… twenty minutes. Okay?” “Okay.” I glanced at the clock. 8:59 PM. 12 minutes before Drew died. I walked back to the couch, blood blooming on the paper towel wrapped around my finger. The phone was going off like crazy now. Ping. “…….” Ping. “..:;..:::” Ping. “Shut up,” I hissed. I looked at the empty spot. The paused frame of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Will Ferrell looking at each other. Ping. Ping. Ping. “SHUT UP!” 9:07 PM. Ping ping ping ping— I picked it up— One word was mixed in with the nonsense. …..:::;;;… RUN ;;;,,,,,,, ……::::….. RUN ::::::: …. RUN …::::;;;;;--- Pingpingpingping— The barrage of texts was cut off by my ringtone. The police station. Finally. “Hello?” I asked, my voice wavering. “Get out of the house.” His voice was low, coming through the speaker. “The texts are coming from inside your house.” All the blood drained out of my face. I leapt up and scrambled towards the front door— Hands pulled me back roughly from behind. I fell flat on my face. Pain shot up my back. I looked up, blinking… and found myself looking up at Drew’s mother. “Whore,” she snarled, spit spraying on my face. Her foot collided with my side as she kicked me. “You think you can just pretend like he didn’t exist, don’t you? As soon as he’s dead, you just go off and start dating again.” “It’s… been… five… years,” I gasped. “You never really loved him, did you?!” she shrieked. I tried to scramble up. She kicked me again. I coughed blood onto the carpet. “Stop,” I whimpered. “You’re nothing but a—” The door slammed open. A police officer was standing in the doorway. *** The police had enough evidence to arrest Drew’s mother. She’d been watching me, stalking me, sending the nonsensical texts to scare me. Security camera footage from various restaurants and establishments even showed she followed me to several different dates. She didn’t even have to break into the house—Drew had given her a spare key, when he was alive. She’d had Drew’s old number reactivated, and was sending me texts all the while, hoping I’d be spooked and stop dating. Stop moving forward. Stay with her in her cocoon of grief. She didn’t see all the nights I’d cried myself to sleep after those dates. Wishing it was him next to me, knowing no one else would ever measure up. One thing, however, remains unexplained. The police, when they confiscated her phone, said she only ever sent symbols and smiley faces. She never sent the word “RUN.” Sometimes I wonder if those texts were from Drew. Watching over me, making sure I made it out alive. submitted by /u/BlairDaniels to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Super embarassing, thus the throwaway - this happened at like 9:30am (so about 60 minutes ago as of me writing this), and I'm still just mortified, and unsure how to proceed. The very TLDR, I'm a relatively healthy middle-aged man, and I pissed my pants while driving to work, per the title. And not, like, "a bit of pee made contact with my seat", but "my entire bladder emptied as I sat in the drivers seat" (which is cloth). "But, you fool, why didn't you pull off and pee somewhere? You're a man, you can pee anywhere!" Despite literally having a list of spots of "where can I pee, if I feel I won't make it all the way to work?" (small edit : my commute is about an hour, and it's ~95% highway), various traffic conditions prevented me from reaching them in a safe manner, and obviously in a timely manner, as well. It was a full series of moments where it felt like the universe was actively conspiring against you. I'm currently at work (thankfully I have my own small office) sitting on a tall stack of sealed reams of paper and textbooks. My car seat (which is the same as this one) isn't soaked, but towards the front it does feel damp to the touch. I was basically 99% of the way to work when it happened, so I'm an hour away from home , but I do have leeway to leave, if I must. This is my first car, and I've never had to contend with cleaning liquids, before, let alone something like THIS. I truly don't even know what to do, what to buy, where to start, please, please advise. Thanks Update : I went home, obviously. Used a crapton of paper towels and half of an old Halloween costume from my trunk on the seat. Purchased a container of Nature's Miracle (the red bottle) on the way. By the time I got home the seat was basically dry, and I really went to TOWN, spraying the stuff, with the windows cracked to aid an air dry. I guess I'll let it air dry, and repeat after it dries, for the rest of the evening. I appreciate the comments and concerns regarding my health. I cannot discount that option, and will try to keep that possibility in mind, but for a number of reasons I think of this primarily as an error in judgement. I don't really wanna get into it here, since my primary reason for posting is for cleaning the car, but I do appreciate the concern and will try to remain cognizant of that possibility. Lastly, one person said "You really didn't answer the question of why you didn't pull over and urinate on your own car." TRUST ME, if there had been a safe place on the highway to do so, I would have! When I finally was off the highway, the number of people I saw, this morning, in places that are typically all-the-way-empty truly shocked me. Thank you all for the advice and kind words. I'm a little too overwhelmed by the whole situation to try and respond to all these comments, but I greatly appreciate you, today. submitted by /u/Throw-it-Away-710 to r/CleaningTips [link] [comments]

I am not The OOP, OOP is [deleted] Just do the dishes that are mine? Have fun with bugs infesting your dishes. Originally posted to r/MaliciousCompliance Thanks to u/Logical-Duck-1562 Editors Note: OOP gave the roommates names in the update so I put the names in the original for easier reading TRIGGER WARNING: hygiene, insects Original Post March 16, 2019 I'm a 27-year-old woman with three male roommates who are all grad students. I'm in the master bedroom and they all are on the other side of the house; they're all also about two years younger than me so there's kind of a "House Mom" role that I've fallen into. I don't mind it most of the time because I'm like, "Hey guys, don't forget to do X" and then they do it, but the cleanliness issue is one that I really can't get over. When I cook, I either clean the dishes as I'm cooking or I soak them in the sink for a little while and then clean them within the next couple of hours. My roommates... they just let that sit there. I got annoyed about two weeks ago because I went to make myself some pasta and there were so many dishes in the sink that I couldn't actually clean my pan. Out of frustration (and probably a little bit of passive aggression) I just cleaned all the dishes, then waited for a time when the guys were home to let them know. Me: Hey, I went to wash a pan earlier and there was no space in the sink. I know you guys are busy with classes, but there's got to be some way to get your dishes clean within 48 hours of them being dirtied that way we don't get this pile-up and I don't feel like you guys are leaving the household chores to me. The Guys: Oh my god, of course our dishes aren't your responsibility! We're sorry. From now on, you don't have to worry about it. Only do the dishes that are yours. Fast forward to about three days ago. Roommate 1(Nathan) is going out of state to visit family, roommate 2 (Luciano) is in South America with his labmates, and roommate 3 (Sanjit) is probably at his girlfriend's place. They all disappeared like a whisper in the wind, and I woke up the next day realizing that not only were none of the guys here, but they left a bunch of dishes in the sink. Now, we live in the South, and it's just starting to get warm outside. There are bugs, and those bugs get attracted to grossness that gets left out on counters. It's day 3, and all kinds of gnats and flies are gathering around their dishes. Normally I'd be so incensed that I would just clean it all, but you know what... I refuse to wash their disgusting dishes because they told me I didn't have to. I'm not even going in the kitchen right now it's so nasty. Thankfully being in the master bedroom means I have my own bathroom, and I've decided for the hell of it that I'm just gonna wash my dishes in the bathroom sink, which is (surprise surprise) BUG FREE. Tomorrow two of them get back from their trips. I plan to give absolutely zero craps when they realize that this is what happens when they leave all the kitchen work for the woman of the house to do. Update on 3/17 4:30pm EST - Not all the roommates are even back yet, guys! I'm getting so many PMs asking for updates. You gotta chill, people! Let the madness unfold so I can give you a full post tonight or tomorrow morning. Update March 17, 2019 UPDATE: Just do the dishes that are mine? ~The Conclusion~ HALT, TRAVELER. Before reading on, check out my previous post, if you haven't already. Done with that? Good. Let's continue... ~~~~~~~ WHEW. Well, hey guys! This really blew up, huh? I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting my post to get so upvoted and commented on, so I'm guessing that means I'm not the only one who's been in this situation. First off, to those of you saying I should just move the dishes into their rooms: That wouldn't be maliciously complying! Nobody told me to move dirty dishes. :P Also that would have required me touching everything, which I truly did not want to do. I'll keep this strategy in mind for the future when I'm in more of a "petty revenge" mood, though. To those of you who said I was just setting up my house for a bug infestation... it's an old rental house in the woods in the South. Bugs are an unfortunate inevitability that we have to stay on top of. Normally, they kind of hang around the trash can, which is gross, but whatever, it's trash, and I usually spray the can down with Raid whenever we take it out. Either way, it's not my job to prevent the house from getting infested. It's everyone's job! That's the whole point! Anyway, moving on. Because my roommates all came home at different times, you're going to have to know them individually, so here are some fake names: Roommate 1 who went to visit family is "Nathan" Roommate 2 who went to South America is "Luciano" Roommate 3 who was hanging out with his girlfriend is "Sanjit" Again, not real, just trying to keep them distinct so you don't get mixed up on who is who. So, first we have Sanjit, who came home last night with his girlfriend. As far as I can tell, they skipped the kitchen entirely and went straight to his room. This morning, though, I was unlucky enough to be woken up by my cat's claw in my foot at like 7am, so I was very awake and heard them shuffle into the kitchen for coffee. Sanjit said it was "fucking gross" in the kitchen, and his girlfriend agreed. Sanjit proceeded to say something like, "This is why I don't even want to cook in here." It's true; Sanjit doesn't cook very often, he mostly gets delivery. So, I could safely assume that the dishes did not belong to Sanjit. He and his girlfriend left the house not long after I heard this conversation. Next to arrive was Nathan, around 2 in the afternoon. I was actually out in the back yard hosing down my cat's litterbox (it is the other part of the house that commonly attracts bugs) when he pulled into the driveway. I heard him enter the house but I didn't want to be standing in the living room waiting for him, so unfortunately I didn't see the initial reaction. When I did go back inside, he was in his room unpacking from his trip. But there was still that gross little buzz buzz buzz around the dishware. I went into my room to reassemble the litter box, and then started browsing Reddit, like you do. After about two hours went by and there was zero kitchen activity, I started to get anxious. I gotta say, some of your comments worried me, folks. "They won't care," "They're YOUR bugs now," etc etc. I seriously started thinking, "What if they really just don't give a shit and these dishes get ignored for another 48 hours? What if I got myself worked up for nothing?" So I actually came up with plan B. Plan A, of course, was The Best Timeline, a beautiful moment of clarity where all the roommates recognized that communal living is a team effort and we all have to do our part to get by. Barring that, plan B would be to wait until all roommates were home yet again and corral them in the kitchen to say, "Look at this shit. This is bugs. You literally left your dishes for OVER THREE DAYS for me to do, and don't tell me you didn't. There's the bleach, there's the insecticide. Get to work." My blood was boiling a little just thinking about it, and I can be kind of scary for a little lady, so part of me was actually kind of hoping I would get to do plan B and let off some steam. Thankfully, at one point Nathan came out of his room and started making a frozen pizza in the kitchen. I heard some dishes clang, the oven door open/close, and the sweet smell of pepperoni filling the air. A few more dishes clanged, and then Nathan started coming by my room. I heard him before I saw him. Nathan: Hey, Witty! (that's me) Me: Hey man, how was your trip? Nathan: Good, I'm just jetlagged. What happened in here? Me: What do you mean? Nathan: Like, did something... is something rotting in the garbage disposal? Me: You talking about the bugs? I mean, that's what happens when shit gets left out like that and then everyone leaves town. Nathan: (makes a face as if to say, "gross") Me: Yeah, it's pretty gross. There's cleaning stuff in the cabinet underneath, if you're looking for it. Nathan: (sigh) Cool, thanks. He walked off looking very sullen, like Charlie Brown on a bad day. The nice part of the "House Mom" thing is that at the very least, when I do explicitly tell someone to do something, they do it. So, as pouty as Nathan was, he started cleaning while his pizza cooked. In my head I was just screaming, "HOORAYY!!!!" I did a little girly happy dance at my desk (I'm all elbows) and allowed myself to relax a little. Not only was Nathan cleaning the dishes themselves, but the surfaces in and around the sink. He was attempting to spray the bugs to death. I left him to it and kept browsing Reddit. I considered updating you guys at this point but not all of the roommates were back yet and I hadn't actually seen the finished product, so for all I knew he could have done a crap job. I actually did end up checking the kitchen not long after this conversation (I wanted to make myself some tea anyway) and to my great pleasure, there were no dishes in the sink, and very few bugs. We're still basically in a cabin in the woods, so some little gnats and fruit flies are an unfortunate inevitability, but it was nowhere near the thriving community that it had been a few hours prior. Luciano, the final roommate, got home around 8:00 at night, much later, in a wonderful mood. He's the party boy roommate, and he and Nathan are best buddies who often get drunk together. Our recycling bin is always full of beer cans and empty bottles of booze, and it's pretty much always because Luciano and Nathan stayed up late smoking cigarettes and drinking. So, Luciano gets back and starts unloading beers onto the counter. Thunk, thunk. "Nathaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Nathan, come here you bastard, let's drink!" Nathan had apparently been asleep, catching up from his jet lag, and stumbled out of his room. Two beer cans open. Nathan: Lou, you owe me like five beers. Did you make chicken last week? Luciano: Umm... probably. You want some? (the fridge door opens) Nathan: No dude, you didn't wash any of your shit. It was still sitting in the sink today when I got back. Luciano: (awkward pause; the fridge closes) Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Nathan: YEAH. Dude, look at this. (I'm assuming Nathan took pictures of the sink when he got back and started showing them to Luciano) This is what it looked like in here. Like, I know the baking sheet was mine from before, but... Luciano: Ahh, shit. At this point Nathan started whispering a little bit so I couldn't really make it out (I'm sorry, guys!), but I'm fairly certain I heard my name in there, so I can only assume it was somewhere on the spectrum between a charitable "We literally JUST told Witty she wouldn't have to do our dishes," and an angry "Witty was a huge bitch about it and I had to clean everything." Either way, whatever; I don't mind being the bad guy when I have a CLEAN SINK! A few minutes ago, I popped out to the kitchen to make myself more tea. Everything looked good, thank baby Jesus. Luciano and Nathan were out on the back porch chain-smoking, and Sanjit is probably still out with his girlfriend. For the sake of it, I gave the kitchen another good hose-down with the insecticide and then wiped it down to dry. The kitchen definitely smells like bug spray right now but honestly I'll take it. Maybe the lingering smell will be a reminder. I wish I could fast forward into the future here and tell you guys, "And they never left dishes in the sink again. The end!" but only time will tell on that front. It seems like the #1 culprit here was Luciano, and I'm a little sad that he didn't have to deal with the bugs face to face, but if big bro Nathan keeps him on track then we'll be fine. I'm sure some of you were waiting for there to be a big blow-out roommate brawl, and to be honest part of me was prepared to get into an argument with someone over this, but I'm grateful that the shit just got done without there being too much of an interpersonal issue. I'm definitely going to keep your strategies in my back pocket for the future, so if this happens again, they'll either get dishes on their pillows or I'll hide all the clean dishes so they can't use them. Thank you so much for reading my previous post and this follow-up, and for being so invested in the outcome here. Good luck in all of your maliciously compliant endeavors, and for God's sake, WASH YOUR DISHES. THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7 submitted by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 to r/BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]

[Real First] [first] [prev] [next] "Terrors: An enigma wrapped in hate and fury, candy coated with benevolence and longing. Quite decent people so long as you don't give them a reason to pick up their rocks." High Imperial Knight Chrkikit Trueblade "Terran have at their disposal the most dangerous, destructive, insane and mad arsenal than the infinite universe will never contain. But the source of their succes, their most terrifying, powerful, devastating, unstoppable weapon is not sommething their build. It's something they wear like a simple coat, shared with others as easily as they breathe, and so commonplace for them that they don't even notice it anymore. Freedom. Because once you've tasted Terran freedom, there's no going back to the illusion of peace you've previously built. With the taste of Terran freedom, even the most slavish and obedient caste breaks its chains, the most avid entrepreneur chokes on the new products it acquires, while the rulers are frozen by the multiplicity of choices available to them. And all of them will be ready to die, to buy, to negotiate, for more of this freedom. Freedom. Horrible, horrible freedom." -- Excerpt from "The unseen weapon of the Terrors", un_pogaz, New Telkan Press, 4,281 New Age. "BobCo! We provide what you need. Whether you know it or not." - BobCo slogan Rubbing her sensitive eyes, feeling the dry grittiness of exhaustion, Pratulpet moved through the corridors of the scientific vessel hidden within the Terror hulk. The corridor was silent, just the slow steady hum of hidden equipment hard at work. She passed by the sealed doors, all with labels to show who should be working inside. Offices, labs, computer server farms, everything a scientific expedition ship needed to root out and solve the mysteries of the universe. The door to the main command chamber whooshed open and she moved forward, to stare at the center holotank. The annoying Treana'ad was gone. Instead, there were a dozen other annoying streamers. All of them showing various scenes of primitive life that supposedly members of the scientific expedition were living on the planet below. The annoying Treana'ad had "Back in Five Hours" up, with a countdown. Pratulpet knew that the annoying insect must have gone offline during the 20 hours that Pratulpet had slept the sleep of the dead. She had been exhausted, staggering, when she had gone to bed, but her anger had been so great that she had been forced to chew three sedation tabs before she could sleep. With a smile, Pratulpet realized that she had a chance to perhaps counter the insect while it was asleep. One holotank caught her eye and she moved over to it. It was showing the smaller moon adjusting its orbit, slowing down and then moving in relation to the planet. She knew enough about orbital mechanics to understand that moons did not suddenly change direction, inclination, latitude, and speed. The smaller moon was now in a geosynchronous orbit over the middle of the largest continent on the planet below. Another tank had the four different Virtual-Streamers. One for the Emperor, one for Pratulpet herself, one for Chrkikit, and one for a scientific technician named Urtragu. All of them were done in cartoon style, with wide expressive eyes, big ears, glittering whiskers, and squeaky voices. Pratulpet hated her virtual self more than she had ever hated anything in her life. Currently, her virtual self was eating something called Countess Crey’s Crushed Cherry Sparkle with Shatter Berries Kettle Popcorn, her virtual nose buried in the brightly colored plastic bag, her eyes shining with happiness. Pratulpet wished she could figure out how to strangle her virtual self. After a long moment she turned and looked around. The Command Chamber was empty, except for her. Frowning, she moved around to the various terminals, seeing that they were all locked out, the users having logged off. She dug in her pocket and pulled out her communicator. She tapped it and waited for the Communications Section to pick up. It rang and rang. Her frown deepened as she began scrolling through her contacts list, ringing each of the staff officers that served her and the Empire on this scientific expedition. Each number went to messages after ringing. Bruxing her back teeth, Pratulpet left the command center, heading for the bridge. She would talk to the Ship Mistress and find out what was going on. ----- The breeze was nice, not too warm, not too cold, stirring just enough to carry the smell of the creek, the flowers, the berries, and sunshine warmed plants. There were a few puffy white clouds, blamelessly scooting across the clear blue sky. The grass whispered around his pantlegs as Urtragu strode around the corner of the path, his whiskers twitching at the scent of vine-ripened streppleberries on the bush the path wound around. Up ahead, by the creek, was a log that had fallen in decades past and hundreds of urgent discussions had polished and smoothed the reddish-brown wood. Flowers peeked up in the grass here and there, making the creek, the log, and the bushes a living painting. Sitting on the log, in a simple dyed wool dress, with a bonnet and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, sat a female. She was idly tearing flower petals off of one of the white flowers, tossing the petals into the languorously moving creek. "Draskik!" Urtragu called out. The female turned around, her expression turning from one of pensiveness to happiness. "Urtragu!" she replied, waving eagerly. She patted next to her on the log. "Please, come sit." Urtragu hurried over, hopping over the log and sitting down. He held out the flowers and the muffin he had brought. "For you," he said. The muffin had chewy honey dates and candy crunches in the fluff, topped with sweet golden raisins. The flowers were delicate pink petals with white edging, a thick green stalk, and shoots of fluffy leaves. "Thank you, Urtragu," she said. She took the flowers and the muffin, set the muffin on the log and nibbled at the stem of the flowers, closing her eyes and sighing with happiness. She nibbled for a moment then opened her eyes. "How was work?" she asked. "Slow. We had to grind wefflegrain twice to get it fine enough, the wind is slow today," Urtragu said. "But that doesn't matter now," he smiled as Draskik leaned down to the woven wicker picnic basket at her feet and produced a cool beer in a brown glass bottle, with a wax seal and ceramic stopper held in place by wire. He pushed the wire and the stopped lifted up and fell to the side, still held onto the bottle. The beer tasted good, crisp and clear. He smiled at Draskik as she nibbled at the leaves and stem. It made his heart leap with joy when she smiled back and reached over to hold his hand. ----- The clouds were low and heavy, the threat of rain punctuated by the threatening growl of thunder. The air smelled wet, heavy, the promise of danger and violence making Chrkikit's whiskers twitch inside her helmet. Up ahead she could see the red smoke from multiple chimneys. As her heavy mount crested the hill, its lungs heaving as it charged forward, she stood up in her stirrups, raising her pennant adorned lance. "RIDE! RIDE FOR A RED SUNSET!" she roared out. The shield maiden on her right lifted her horn and sounded out the call. Behind Chrkikit the horn blast was repeated to prepare her One-Fifty. Horns joined upraised voices as the female Dra.falten warrior caste roared out their approval and their anticipation of the coming battle. A few "FOR THE EMPEROR!" calls roared out, as well as "FOR DRA.FALTEN!" Below her the village had a wall, but there were farms outside the wall. Barns were on fire, fields that had been harvested smoked and glimmered with sullen coals. The fields around the walled village were covered by hundreds of hulking green creatures, all wearing leather or hide armor, or scraps of captured chainmail torn into strips and hammered into the leather. The weapons were crude, rebuilt castoffs or poorly forged, but the wielders still chopped at the walls, hacked at any Dra.Falten they could reach, or waved them in the air as they chanted and gave voice to a wordless war cry. Chrkikit leaned forward, tightening her grip on her mount with her knees and hocks, standing up slightly in her stirrups. Her mount responded with an eagerness of its own, snorting mucus and saliva as it roared and charged, the thick rubbery skin bunching with power. In seconds she had moved down the hill, her One-Fifty spreading out into a flying wedge. The shield maidens took the outside, bracing themselves, with the warrior caste sword angels leveling their pennant adorned lances. The lead greenskins, Awrks from the badlands to the west, gave a roar back, some turning to face Chrkikit's One-Fifty, the others still concentrating on the walls of the village. Chrkikit's arrival seemed to spur them further and they tried to climb over one another to assault the walls. On the walls, the town guard, what few of the Emperor's Glory remained, and common villagers fired bows and crossbows directly into the faces of the howling Awrks. Others used axes, hatchets, a sword here and there, and pitchforks to stab downward into the face, shoulders, and chest of a Awrks, yanking the weapon back before the vile greenskins could grab the weapon and snatch the defender off the wall. She gave a signal and her host split into three. The middle going for the besieged gate, the other two sweeping to either side. Fifty of the Emperor's Angels, one hundred Shield Maidens of the Emperor per group. Chrkikit hit first, her lance slamming clear through three of the Awrks before she let it go and drew her war-axe, laying about her with its keen edge and hammerhead. She held in both hands, chopping at the Awrks, kicking away any who got stuck on the cruel blade, even as her mount drove further and further into the mob. Her shield maidens were with her, blocking arrows, spears, swords, even as she ripped through the ranks. Their own blades stabbed around them, pulled free in a spray of blackish blood. "PUSH THEM BACK!" Chrkikit bellowed out, using her heels to kick her mount forward, to use its great weight and strength to force back the greenskins. She saw a gawblyn lift up the host, wearing rags that did little to hide its pot bellied and tattooed body, its hair whipping around it, grabbing arrows and crossbow bolts that were suddenly attracted to it. "WITCH!" Chrkikit called out. She stood up in the stirrups, pulling the axe behind her head. The foul gawblyn witch began waving her arms, witchcraft glowing in her hands and eyes, her hair snaking around her. Chrkikit threw the axe overhanded, the bladed weapon making a quail-like fluttering sound as it whipped nearly fifty paces. The witches hair reached out, reflexively, to stop it, as if it was a mere arrow or crossbow bolt. Eight pounds of blessed and hardened steel slammed through the protective hair and hit the witch between her saggy exposed breasts. Blood exploded from where the axe hit and from her back as the axe drove clear through her body. The witch fell from the sky as Chrkikit drew her sword and began chopping at the suddenly demoralized Awrks. "FOR THE EMPEROR!" she roared out, sweeping aside and Awrk blade and kicking the sword wielder in the face, her spur gashing the flesh to the bone, before chopping overhand into its skull with a spray of blood and brains. She was unaware she was smiling. ----- Pratulpet stood on the bridge of the Terror War Hulk, looking around slowly. It was empty. The computers, installed by the Dra.Falten Empire to replace the destroyed Terror systems, just chuckled right along. The lights were low and pleasing. The entire bridge was clean. Just... ...empty. She moved to the Ship Master's Throne and looked down. There, on the red leather seat, was a set of Ship Master rank tabs. They glittered silently in the light, the lights sparkling off of the polished gold. She looked around slowly. "Where is everyone?" [Real First] [first] [prev] [next] submitted by /u/Ralts_Bloodthorne to r/HFY [link] [comments]

Originally posted by u/thrrowaawayy4 in r/TwoHotTakes on July 31, '23 updated on Aug 1, '23. Bonus Post from r/Doodles on Aug 2, '23   Trigger Warning: Bugs   Original July 31, '23   AITA for refusing to get my dormmate a new pet cockroach after I unknowingly killed hers? I (20F) am taking summer classes at my college and living in a dorm of about 40 girls. A few weeks ago, my friend showed me a Snapchat private story post from “Alex” (19 or 20F), a girl on my floor. It was a video of a cockroach climbing her bedroom wall with the caption “tfw when your pet has the zoomies.” I assumed she was just making a joke out of a bug getting into her room, but my friend told me that no, she has a pet cockroach that she feeds, keeps in a “cage,” and lets out for play. We had a WTF moment but moved on. Flash forward to three days ago. I was walking down the hall to the bathroom when I encountered a massive roach on the wall. I HATE roaches, especially since there was an infestation the last time I was home. Instinctively, I smashed it with my shoe, flushed it, and cowered in residual horror for half an hour. I didn’t think much of it. Until now. Yesterday, my friends and I ran into some girls in our common room, including Alex. We stopped to talk for a bit. I was speaking with Alex and one of her friends when she asked whether I live on the floor. I said yes. Then she asked me, “Have you happened to see my roach around here?” before saying it has been missing for days. That’s when it hit me. The nasty roach I killed the other day was her pet. I froze but came clean. I said I believed I killed it, not knowing it was her pet. Alex FLIPPED out. I apologized, but it wasn’t enough. She wallowed about how she loved “Leggy” and would need to get a new roach now. She asked ME to get her one since I work with insects in my lab. I told Alex that while I am sorry for her loss, it is not fair, healthy, or hygienic to keep a pet cockroach when you live with 40 people. That they carry dangerous diseases and that breathing the air near them exposes you to illness. And that for those with asthma, roaches are very unhealthy. They will breed, and people will not want to deal with an infestation for years to come. Plus, we don’t even use roaches in my lab. Alex was livid. She accused me of animal cruelty, which was funny. One, I’m a biology major who has worked with arthropods; I know it’s unlikely roaches feel pain the way we do. Two, I’m a vegetarian, and to my knowledge, she isn’t. Her friends went off on me for being cold-hearted, accusing me of knowingly killing her pet. This was ridiculous. I said I didn’t know it was hers, but I don’t feel bad for killing a disease-carrying pest. Finally, I told her she was downright disgusting for keeping a pet roach in the first place. Alex started crying and left the room. Since then, her friends have been sending me nasty DMs. Alex has sent me tamer messages, including some insisting that I find a way to buy her a new roach if I can’t get one from my lab. Using my name, she bashed me on her private story to gain sympathy. She accused me of everything above: being a cold-hearted animal hater, knowingly targeting her, “dehumanizing” her pet, and showing no remorse. Maybe I was too harsh for calling her disgusting, but I don’t see how I’m wrong for refusing to get her a new roach and disagreeing that it’s okay to keep one. AITA here? EDIT: clarifying a few things - It was not an exotic roach bred to be a pet, it was a common house roach she found outside, trapped, and brought inside. She clearly was not taking care to ensure it wouldn’t get out. It wasn’t an actual enclosure she kept it in, it was a plastic container with a small opening. I’m just gonna assume that thing isn’t super well-secured since it got out while she was away. Or maybe it just got out during ‘play time’ when she wasn’t watching it properly. Yes, my school has rules about pets. Only fish are allowed explicitly. Dogs, cats, hamsters, reptiles, a bunch of common pets, etc., are not allowed because we live in close quarters where people have allergies and there can be sanitary issues. Roaches aren’t specified in the rules. Alex had Leggy for about 2 weeks before it went missing. We are all rising juniors. No one is a new student. Alex and I both lived in this dorm when it was more full during the school year but on different floors.   In the comments: It’s not a house, it’s a dorm shared by 40 people where doors are constantly opening and closing. I live all the way on the other side of the floor in a different wing from her and it got all the way over there. It’s a health hazard more than an inconvenience or something that just visibly grosses me out. . It was absolutely not an exotic roach bred for being a pet. She told me she caught it outside and brought it in. The enclosure isn’t an actual enclosure either, it’s just a plastic container. . She herself told me she found it outside and that it was the REASON she was so upset, that it would be hard to find one “authentically” like that again. The roach was definitely running fast in that video she posted of it on her wall. I don’t really know much about her habits or anything, and so I don’t really know what play time meant other than that video, hence the zoomies. . I DID ask her why I needed to be the one to get it, and she said that it was because it’s my responsibility since I killed the roach. If she wants to go get one of the docile roaches people are talking about from the pet store and keep it in a safe enclosure, that’s her prerogative, though I still don’t know whether those are allowed under school rules. Also if she had gotten that one from the pet store, I am certain they would have given her an actual secure terrarium to keep it in. . On the kitch or unique note: my friend who is on her Snapchat thinks she 100% caught the roach and kept it as the pet so she could make stories and tiktoks about it, which she has been. There is one of her DIYing the “cage” for it from when she got the roach a few weeks ago. Idrc about that because hey, if your life is crazy go ahead and document it if you want, but my friend is very bothered. . Look, I dislike roaches at much as the next person, but people love what they love. All the points you brought up were valid, but calling her disgusting for loving her pet (no-matter how ridiculous and disgusting you or I might find that pet) isn't okay. Especially not after you killed it. The damage was done, you should have just been firm that you were really sorry for her loss, but that you unfortunately don't feel comfortable from a health standpoint bringing another roach into the dorms, and left it at that. Offering to get her a fish might have been a decent compromise just to keep the peace, but if you weren't comfortable with that, that's fine too. Don't tear someone down when they're grieving, even if you can't understand that grief. OP: Thanks for this thoughtful comment - I will definitely apologize to her for calling her disgusting in the morning, I usually avoid ever showing my anger like that but she and the friends were really just hurling insults. Again, I apologized to her for her loss several times before this because I truly did feel bad she was hurting, and I only got reactive when they basically called me a cold hearted animal abuser and all those other things. But I definitely should have been in more control of my emotions with that. . I started with 30 Dubia. In three months, it turned into 500. Surprisingly clean and odorless, but I developed an allergy to their frass, and my lizard wasn't eating enough to keep the population down so I had to get rid of them. OP: That’s also what I think. I was very iffy about getting her/paying for an exotic one because of the chance she’d want more than one and they’d breed. Again, this is a shared space of 40 people and even more during the school year. They can still trigger allergies for people (assuming she doesn’t keep them secure, as she did with Leggy) if they get out. That’s why I’m frustrated with people saying I’m stupid + saying just one roach won’t do anything. It’s NEVER one because of how they breed and if you’re feeding it and keeping food out it will attract them during the day and expose people. Yes, the allergy thing was another huge issue. We had a roach infestation at home over spring break and it was horrible for my little sister. She had a hard time breathing a few months after the roaches first started popping up in the daytime. I think that there were a shit ton living in the walls for a very long time before they called in professionals. My family is rural and not rich so my dad thought he could “handle” it himself but clearly wasn’t the case. This dorm is old ask fuck like 150+ years old with a lot of dust and stuff and I’d imagine roaches love that. During the pandemic black mold started appearing in the walls after we were all out of campus.   Update Aug 1, '23   Update on my dormmate wanting me to buy her a new pet roach Thanks to everyone who gave me advice on how to handle this. I did respond to “Alex’s” messages this morning apologizing for calling her disgusting, because I would not have insulted her like that if the friends hadn’t attacked me first. I did not apologize for giving her reasons for why common roaches are not appropriate to keep in the dorm. I didn’t say those things to mock her grief, and I wouldn’t have gone into them had she not pushed back over and over again when I said I would not be buying her a new roach. She didn’t seem to be mad about either of these things though. Alex said sorry for her friends harassing me over DMs (nothing about her own private story post) but insisted again I get her the new roach. As some of you suggested, I told her that I didn’t personally have a problem with her keeping an exotic roach bred to be a pet in a secure terrarium where she did not let it out, but I would need to ask the RA whether this is even allowed. I still don’t think it’s a great idea for her to keep these because knowing the little I do about her pet-handling habits, she hasn’t taken efforts to make sure the roach is well-secured and it wouldn’t stop someone else from killing it if it got out. but that’s not my problem. My friend on the private story and I went to our summer RA about it this morning, and we showed her Alex’s post about me, the friends’ messages, and her TikToks with the roach as proof. As predicted, she said keeping ANY kind of roach is most certainly not allowed. She was appalled. She told me to sit the rest of this out and that she would handle talking to Alex. More context on all of this: I left a lot of info out about Alex because I didn’t want to make the original post too long, plus this situation is about my actions/her anger and not her herself. But I figured I’d give it now because it might be insightful into her state of mind + the Leggy stuff. I have never thought Alex was super weird or anything. It’s really just her friends who have that rep. My friend thinks she’s weird because of social media posts she’s made, but I’m not on Snapchat so I don’t see that side. I also hadn’t seen her Tiktoks until another friend (who was present when I told Alex I think I killed the roach) showed me them. Basically, she has made five or six tiktoks since getting Leggy two weeks ago including: the story of how she caught it her with her friends, making the cage + Leggy in the cage + “sealing” the gap under her door (this clearly was not effective), Leggy running around, and a short one most recently that was like “RIP Leggy.” I think she wanted these to go viral but they did not. For the few people who have said this is too crazy to be real, I WISH I could post screenshots here but I don’t want to open the door to doxxing her. There also seem to be MANY posts where people just have their pet roaches (mostly the exotic ones) out of the enclosures so maybe she thought it would be okay due to those. We take 2-3 classes in the summer so I guess she just has a lot of free time. I go to a small women’s liberal arts school, and for those of you who don’t have experience with these, people tend to be very… quirky. I was shocked at Alex keeping a wild roach as a pet (and even her having any roach at all in a shared dorm in the first place; I believed she had an exotic one before she told me it was wild), but not surprised. This is the craziest thing to ever happen to me here, but definitely not the craziest thing in general. People in the past year have done shit like letting a homeless man they made friends with camp out in an empty bedroom, TAKING SHITS IN THE SHOWERS, putting Nair in roommates’ shampoo bottles for stealing a girlfriend (definitely took idea from the Internet), etc. Also, I suggested she just catch another roach if she really wants another one ASAP since that’s how she got the first one, but she claimed she’d never seen one here before this. She asked me to get her one because of my lab work (I don’t think she cares whether it’s common or exotic), but when I said we don’t have those in my lab, she said I needed to be the one to get it because it was my “responsibility” since I killed the first one. I’m just not gonna do that no matter what, because again, this is a shared dorm where anyone would likely see a roach and just kill it, or in a few cases, maybe trap it and let it out outside. It’s also literally just against the rules.   In the comments: I made a new acc just to comment this bc omfg I think I know this girl. Like I went to a prep boarding hs and there was a semi crazy girl in my dorm who had a pet roach in her room that I learned about from snap. Idt it got out or anything bc it would have caused a big stir. I only saw it once on the story and never rly heard ab it again. I did not know her super well but some of my friends were formerly close with her and there are STORIES. anyways she goes to a womens college now and I am also a rising junior so could be the same girl. PS there have also been prolific shower shitters at my college. I go to Yale. OP: I’ve gotten a few private messages saying similar stuff. The names from the people in PM haven’t lined up with her actual name (it’s pretty uncommon), but one of them did name my school. I don’t know whether it’s people trolling but if it’s real, RIP for the fact that this is happening elsewhere. . I doubt this story is even real. But if it is, it's likely roach girl is trying to get you to move rooms, so she ends up with a single for the cost of a double. OP: I wish this shit wasn’t real but here I am getting harassed by crazy girls on Instagram. But anyways I don’t even live in a double with her, I saw the roach in the hallway. It escaped her room.   Bonus Post from r/Doodles by u/mcland Aftermath, me, pencil, 2011 (in response to RIP Leggy) Aug 2, '23   An image is posted of a pencil drawing. An exhausted woman is depicted in the floor, surrounded by cans of bug spray, and it's clear she has been in battle with an infestation of roaches. The drawing   After reading the post about Leggy the cockroach, from u/thrrowaawayy4, it reminded me of this old doodle of mine. Art with storytime The year is 2011 and I'm home from college and living with an acquaintance for the summer in his folks' house, and it is INFESTED with cockroaches. The kitchen at night looks like that bug tunnel scene in that one Indiana Jones movie. You have to wash clean plates before eating off them. There's half a centimeter of brown powder (💩) in all the drawers. They have become super mutant intelligent cockroaches from all the half-baked, unsuccessful attempts to kill them. They rappel off the wall to escape if you miss hitting them, the only way to poison them is if they eat it. I'm posting about this all summer and from a friend's comment, comes this absolute masterpiece of a sketch (art by me). I don't even have to dig up the comment. I finally escaped and went back to school for the next semester, but of course was leary of taking cockroaches with me in my stuff, so set several traps. Few months go by and I haven't seen a roach in weeks. One morning I can't find my glasses and in my frustration, throw and break my alarm clock. I'm very blind and can't see anything, but running late, go to my first class. When I come back to the dorm, I find my glasses and look at the devastation that was my clock only to find pieces of roach bodies cut up and mangled in the ruins. They crawled in there as babies, grew too big and got stuck ☠ I never did see another roach, as I kept my room very food-free, but who knows how many mutant roaches I set loose in that building. To this day I still have almost a phobia of cockroaches. Thanks for sticking in there til the end, reward yourself with a fruit snack or something 💚   The original OP is tagged in the r/Doodles post. u/thrrowaawayy4 comments on the post: I love this. Have to say it sounds MUCH more horrific than the Leggy chronicles. Does sound like the roach infestation formerly at my parents’ house though, which was unfortunately recent.   Reminder, DO NOT comment on the original posts or contact the original poster. I am not the original poster. This is a repost. submitted by /u/KittenDealinMama to r/BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]

A/N: Hey, guys! Got another one for you, and it hasn't even been like, 6 months even! And it comes in at 11,880 words, so that's probably like 3 comments it's continuing in (maybe 4, depending on how finicky the character count feels like being). EDIT: It was VERY finicky today. Today, we answer the long-awaited question of what happened to Baltimore. I won't say anything else, because spoilers. } : = 8 D When you're done reading, if you haven't already, come join us on the Retreat, Hell Discord! It's a great community, as crazy as they are. Current episode on Patreon if you don't like reading it in comment tree format. ​ Retreat, Hell – Episode 21 [First][Prev][Next] ​ “Joseph Taquan Freeman, I swear to God, if you don’t put yo damn jacket on, I will beat yo hide so damn raw, you’ll wish you caught cold!” Joey turned to look at his mother, walking into the field from the school parking lot, then slunk back to where he’d left his jacket at the edge of the park. He hated wearing it. It was a hand-me-down from his cousin Tyrel, who got it from another cousin before him. It was old, faded, and didn’t look cool at all. It’s not even that cold out, he grumbled to himself, wiping snot running from his nose on his sleeve. “My mom’s here, guys,” he shouted over his shoulder, picking up his jacket. “I gotta go.” The other kids waved at him as he walked over to her, standing beside their old, beat-up Explorer, still idling in the parking lot, talking to Mrs. Reed. She always stayed late with the kids whose parents couldn’t pick them up from school when it let out, so they didn’t have to walk home alone. “Thanks for the ball, Mrs. Reed,” he said, wiping his nose again on his jacket sleeve. His mamma might have to always work double shifts to support him and Ben, but she made damn sure to teach him manners. “You’re welcome, Joey,” she said, giving him a tired smile that still managed to always make him feel special. “Joey, go get Darrel. His mamma has to work late again, we’re takin’ him home for dinner.” “Yes, mamma,” he said, turning to sprint back into the ball field. “Hey, Darrel! You’re havin’ dinner with us again, tonight!” He was halfway to the dirt of the infield when his hair stood on end. He felt as much as heard an electric pop, and a giant window ripped its way across the field. He skidded to a halt, staring through a portal to another world, and at the massed ranks of soldiers in fairy tale armor standing on the other side. Time seemed to slow as the other kids shouted in surprise, and the whole of the army stared at him. A distant order was shouted, and the shining soldiers all took a step forward. Somebody grabbed him from behind, and time came rushing back as his mom threw him over her shoulder, grabbed Darrel’s hand, and dragged them all back to the parking lot. Mrs. Reed rounded up the other kids, and they all piled into the Explorer. Magic bolts started flying after them. “Hang on!” Joey’s mom shouted as a bolt of energy ricocheted off the hood. He heard her foot hit the floor, and the Explorer’s old engine roared. They all slammed into each other as she bounced over the curb and took off down Hornel Street, tires squealing as they left a trail of burning rubber behind them. He looked out the back window at the portal now towering over Joseph E. Lee Park as Mrs. Reed babbled to a 911 dispatcher, and his mom desperately tried to call his brother. He turned to look at Darrel. “School is definitelycanceled tomorrow.” ​ ***** ​ “Léon, stay back,” Clémence said, tugging at her boyfriend’s arm. He shrugged her off, and approached the dark, swirling wall that had appeared at the end of the street. The wall ran along the Boulevard de Grenelle, but was a little offset, cutting into the front of the buildings along the boulevard. “I just want to see,” he said, walking closer to the bizarre anomaly. Dozens of people already had their phones out, recording video. “What do you think it is?” Marceau asked, staying next to Clémence while Agathe, his girlfriend and her best friend, walked forward, only a couple paces behind Léon. “Do you think it’s another portal, like the one in America?” Agathe asked. “Maybe, but that one you could see through, no problem,” Léon said, creeping closer to the swirling shadows. “Could it be the back side?” Marceau asked again. “The back side of the American portal is a glowy green wall,” Agathe said, glancing over her shoulder. She waved at the swirly black void stretching into the sky before them. “This looks like … a … Rippling, black fog.” “Léon, be careful!” Clémence said. Her boyfriend was now right in front of the swirling mass, less than a meter away from it. “I wonder what it feels like,” he said, reaching out his hand. “Léon, no, don’t touch it! Get away from-“ He placed his palm flat against the rippling shadows, and was immediately yanked into the wall. A heavy mist puffed out as he disappeared. Agathe turned back to look at them, eyes wide in horror. Her entire front was drenched in red. Clémence screamed. ​ ***** ​ Artem took a sip from his Baltika, grumbling as he flipped from channel to channel, unable to find anything other than Comrade Supreme Commander’s televised live briefing from his staff. “Why are you trying to justify invading Ukraine?” He rolled his eyes at the television. “I have a cousin in Kyiv. They all hate us, there.” Shaking his head, he took another drink of his beer, as the camera cut away to show the full view of the Hall of the Order of St Catherine. “Why so far away, comrade? You need a loudspeaker to hear your ministers. Afraid they will catch you a cold?” He paused mid-drink as a commotion disrupted the live briefing. Shouting was heard. Putin stood to glare at something behind the camera, then the feed was cut. Violently. Artem frowned as the digitized blur was replaced by a standby screen. The faint thump of distant explosions rumbled through his window. “Blyat …” He set his beer down as the old air raid sirens started to wail across the city amidst the muffled sound of more explosions. I haven’t heard those since the old nuclear drills … Pushing himself up from his chair, he cursed his old bones as he hobbled to the window. There, by the river, framing his sliver view of the Bolshoi Theatre and the Kremlin, was a portal. “Jebat moi lisiy cherep,” he muttered to himself. He opened the window, and the old, familiar sounds of gunfire could be heard, echoing across the city. Through the portal, he could see several spindly forms of some kind of walking tower lumbering forward. With a deep breath, he straightened his spine and turned away from the window. Walking into his bedroom, he grabbed a ring of keys off his dresser, crouched down with a groan, and fished under his bed. Feeling what he was looking for, he pulled, dragging an old crate into the light. After fumbling and cursing for a few moments, he finally popped the old lock off and opened the crate. Inside, along with an old uniform and a few other mementos, sat his grandfather’s old Mosin Nagant, and an old spam can of ammo. Would have preferred my AK-74, but that got left behind in the mountains of Chechnya, a poor trade for the shrapnel in my knee. Grabbing the rifle and ammo tin, he hauled himself to his feet with another groan and carried them out to his kitchen, setting them on the table next to an open bottle of vodka. Bah. This old suka repelled Austrians in the First World War, and Nazis in the Second. It will do for these invaders, now. He picked up the bottle, taking a long swig. “Probably wouldn’t find anything better in the reserve depot, anyway.” He took another swig, then cracked open the ammo tin and began loading. ​ ***** ​ “Look, Officer, we weren’t doin’ nothin’ wrong, just hangin’ out,” Ben said, shrugging at the policeman standing in front of him and his crew. “That might be the case, but we got a call about a group of kids acting suspicious in the area,” the officer said. He was standing in front of his car, and was keeping his hands away from his belt, but his partner stood on the other side of the cruiser, and his hand was unmistakably resting on the grip of his pistol. “Yeah, but we ain’t doin’ nuthin,” he said again. “Just hangin’ out. That ain’t a crime.” Gunshots echoed in the distance, but nobody flinched. “Actually it is,” the officer said. “It’s called loitering.” He frowned as another police car pulled up behind the first. “Now, I’m going to have to ask to search you gentlemen.” “Nah, we ain’t done nothin’ wrong, we ain’t gonna consent to that,” Damron said, shaking his head. “We got rights.” The cop opened his mouth to talk again, but his radio squawked. “All units, all units, Dispatch. 10-16. Joseph E. Lee Park, Clay Hill Elementary. Signal 13. Officer down. Officer down. All units respond.” “Stay out of trouble!” the cop shouted, turning back to his car. “Wait!” Ben said, stepping forward. That’s Joey’s school! “My little brother’s there!” “Go home, kid,” the officer said, pulling the door open and hopping into the passenger seat. The window was still open, though, and he caught the next radio call. “All units, all units, Dispatch. 10-33. Massed elven soldiers sighted at Joseph E. Lee Park and John Hopkins Medical Cent-“ The police siren cut off the rest as both cars roared away. Moments later, everyone’s phones vibrated and chimed the emergency alert tone, and air raid sirens started to wail in the distance. Ben turned and looked at the others as he started walking backwards. “You guys go, I gotta get Joey.” “The hell you are,” Damron said, earning himself a glare. “We’re gonna get Joey,” he added, nodding at Terrence. “T’s car’s parked just ‘round the corner of the next block. We’ll get there faster with wheels.” “Right,” Ben said, nodding his head. Mamma was right, gotta stop and think or I’ll be an idiot. “Well, what are you waiting for?” Terrence said. “Let’s go!” ​ ***** ​ The door of the Roosevelt Room burst open and David Harkin, his new Secretary of Defense rushed in, several Secret Service agents on his heals. “Mr. President, sir, we have a situation.” “What’s going on, David?” Richards asked, standing up as more Secret Service agents piled in behind him. Two of them politely but firmly took hold of Richards’ arms and began escorting him from the room. “Sir, another portal just opened up, in Baltimore.” Middleton paused to take a breath. “They’ve already sent thousands of troops through,” he continued, half walking and half being dragged by his own agents. “My god,” someone said as a murmur rippled through the conference room. “That’s not the half of it,” Andreas said. The Secretary of State held up his phone, and nearly dropped it as he was grabbed by two more agents who started hauling him towards the door. “I just got dinged by my chief of staff. Two other portals just opened up in Paris, and Moscow.” “Well, shit,” Richards said, calling over his shoulder as he exited the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll have to continue this another time.” ***** “Damnit!” Ben punched the dash of Damron’s car. “Both mom’s phone and Mrs. Reed’s phone are going straight to voicemail.” He looked up as they took a corner hard, grabbing the door to keep from being flung across the car. “The school’s that way!” Tires squealed as they stopped outside of Damron’s place. He threw the car into park. “Yeah, we’re goin’ there, but we ain’t runnin’ in with just my carry piece.” He swung the door open. “C’mon, let’s go.” Leading them inside, and down into the basement, Damron opened up a locked closet and pulled out two duffle bags of guns and ammo. “Jesus, man,” Terrence said. “I knew you said you was packin’ plenty of heat, but fuck!” “Just shut up and help haul this to the car,” Ben said, grabbing a gun that looked like an MP-5, without all the CoD attachments and bling. He considered for a moment, then swapped it for the gun that was definitely an AK-47. Back in the car, rifle between his legs, Ben pulled his phone out again. This time, he was making calls to people he rarely spoke to, some of whom might try to kill him under different circumstances. He had a list of people who called the shots on their blocks, and he started calling every single one of them. “You tell them we got a truce. Whatever beef we got, that’s on hold. These elves think they can come into our neighborhood, take ourturf? This is a call to arms for all ‘a Baltimore. Call up fuckin’ everyone. East, West, Central, doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Call ‘em all. This is bigger than Bayview. They’re tryin’a take our whole fuckin’ city. We’re gonna show them they came to the wrong fuckin’ hood. The wrong fuckin’ city. Aight? Good.” He hung up, hit the next contact, and started the same conversation over again. Damron swung the car around another corner, and magic bolts started flying past. Half a block ahead of them, two police cars were parked across the road, forming a barricade. Three cops fired at a wall of elves marching in rigid lockstep towards them, barely ten yards away. Magic bolts from wizards further back zipped past them, one taking out Ben’s side mirror. “Get us up there!” he shouted at Damron, grabbing his rifle and pointing. Damron gunned the engine, then slammed the brakes, squealing them to a halt just behind the cops. Ben was hopping out before the car had completely stopped. “Hit those knife-eared bastards!” he shouted, sprinting towards the cop cars. He slammed into the trunk, next to the same cop who had been resting his hand on his gun earlier, and started firing. The man gave him a surprised look, then Terrence hosed down five elves charging the police cruiser, dropping them barely five feet away by spraying them with the full mag of an uzi. Damron came screaming in, spraying fire all over with an MP-5, and mostly missing. Ben looked up at the officer. “This is our neighborhood,” he said. “They want to bring the war here, we’ll give it to ‘em.” “Kid …” the cop said, dropping a spent magazine out of his M4. The street before them was littered with elven bodies as the remainder of their force pulled back. “What the fuck are you doing here? And where the fuck did you get all those guns?” “Hey, we just saved yo asses, didn’t we?” Damron said. “Yeah,” Ben nodded. “I think we’ve all got bigger problems right now.” A magic bolt slapped into the rear window of the police cruiser, shattering it and deflecting just past Ben. “Shit,” he cursed, dropping down as more magic bolts zapped past. Damron and Terrence both started firing, along with one of the other cops. Ben peaked his head up alongside the angry cop to see another wave of elves heading their way. Pushing himself further up, he braced the rifle on the car’s trunk, and took aim. This aint’ spray-and-pray Call of Duty. Breathe. Aim. Make them count. His rifle barked almost at the same time as the angry cop’s, and two charging elves dropped. Gunfire rippled across the street as the elves charged them. Terrence hosed his uzi down the street again, then Ben shouted at him to conserve it. “Hose ‘em when they get close!” Damron fired wildly, missing more than he was hitting. “AIM Damron!” Ben shouted, struggling to fit another mag into his AK before he remembered he had to rock it in. “Breathe and make them count!” The elves got closer this time. Terrence popped up and hosed a group of them down. He got most of them, before a magic bolt caught him and he fell back. An elf made it to the other cruiser and reached over the hood to stab a cop before he was gunned down. Ben put three rounds into a wizard standing in the open. When the first didn’t drop him, he fired twice more to make sure he went down. More bodies littered the street as the elves pulled back once more. Ben’s hands felt twitchy, but he clenched his fist to hide it. “Look, kid, you need to get the fuck out of here. We can’t hold them off.” He stood up and turned to glare at the cop, “I ain’t leavin’ until I’ve found my baby brother!” he shouted. “And what about all the people still in these buildings?” he added, pointing a thumb at the row houses around them. “How many of ‘em are huddled inside, or too old to run?” “You can’t do shit for them if you’re dead,” the cop said. An explosion thumped a couple blocks away. “And anyone who didn’t get out of that is already gone. They’ve got multiple walkers stomping down Kane Street and I-95. We stay here much longer, and we’ll be cut off.” Ben looked over at Terrence. He was sitting up and awake, but his side was coated in blood. Damron was pressing his jacket against the wound. The cop who hadn’t been stabbed was kneeling down and opening a first aid kit. The other cop was stuffing gauze into a hole in his shoulder and cursing up a storm. A flurry of gunfire echoed up the street, and two vans swerved around the corner, roaring up behind them before screeching to a halt. The doors opened and several people bailed out, toting a wide array of guns. A lean kid with wiry muscles walked up. “You Benny?” “Yeah.” “Taquan,” he held out his hand and Ben shook it. “We’re here to help.” “Great! I need two guys here with us, then get everyone else into these buildings and start haulin’ people out!” The angry cop looked over at Ben. “Who the fuck put you in charge, kid?” He looked over his shoulder to give the man an angry glare. “Well, somebody had to step up!” “Fuck,” he said, as more elves marched around the corner. “You heard the kid!” he shouted, firing on the advancing elves. “Start getting people outta here!” ​ ***** ​ Muffled gunfire echoed across the city, mixed with the wail of sirens. A military jet screamed overhead, so low it rattled the window she was looking out of. Puffs of smoke and fire flared several blocks away, followed by the shuddering thump of heavy explosions several seconds later. Several bolts of magic shot into the sky after the jet as it banked and climbed away. Her eyes tracked back to the source. She could see at least five of their walking towers, and lines of troops marching across the Champ de Mars, right in front of la dame de fer. Stomping feet echoed up the stairwell outside her aunt’s apartment, then Marceau burst through the front door. “We have to go. We have to go, now. They control everything from Grenelle and Jacques Chaban-Delmas to the Seine. Elven soldiers have been sighted on the grounds of Palais du Luxembourg, and a walker was just spotted four blocks away. We have to leave Paris.” Without waiting for a response, he rushed down the hall and pounded on the bathroom door. “Agathe! Agathe! You must come out and get dressed, we have to go! The elves are coming, we have to go!” Clémence watched her aunt and uncle race about the place, grabbing suitcases and rounding up children. She picked up her purse and phone with a detached calm, like she was just watching all of this happen to someone else. “We can go to Grand-Papa’s house, in Fontainebleau,” she said, barely hearing her own voice over the rushing sound in her ears. “He always complains that we don’t visit enough, anyway.” The building shuddered with the thump of a not-very-distant explosion just as Marceau finally coaxed Agathe out of the bathroom. She turned to see her aunt and uncle scrambling to fill several suitcases, and debating what valuables to take with them. The calm vanished, replaced by seething anger. “There is no time to pack anything!” she shouted. “We have to leave now!” ​ ***** ​ “You know, kid,” Angry Cop said, reloading behind his squad car next to Ben. “I never would have believed I’d ever be in a gunfight side-by-side with the local gangs, and glad to have two dozen Bloods show up as reinforcement.” Ben chuckled, stuffing more rounds from a box into one of the three magazines he had for his AK. “And I never would’a thought I’d be glad to see two cop cars roll up with more cops totin’ guns.” “Name’s Jim, by the way,” he said, holding out a hand. “Ben,” he said, reaching over to shake it, before going back to stuffing bullets into his magazine. Topping it off, he stuffed it into his pocket, next to his phone. Pausing for a moment, he pulled it out and checked the screen. Alerts for several missed calls and a text message from his mother popped up. He read the text, and leaned his head back against the fender of the car, breathing a sigh of relief. “Your girlfriend ask you out?” Jim asked, peaking over the driver’s door to keep an eye on the elves. “No,” Ben laughed. “My mom texted me. She and Joey are okay.” “Glad to hear it, kid,” Jim said as Damron slid into cover next to him. “Hey, we found these!” he said, holding up a bag of smoke bombs. “What the hell are those going to do?!” Jim asked, looking down at him. Damron said nothing, and merely pointed up as an attack helicopter roared low overhead, followed by the thump of a nearby explosion, barely muffled by the surrounding buildings. “We can use it to mark shit for the Air Force!” Jim shook his head as he ducked down to reload his rifle. “It’ll take all of those to put up any kind of smoke the flyboys’ll be able to see.” He slapped the paddle on the side of his gun, chambering a round. “But we could use them to mark our position, and tell them to bomb anything between us and the portal.” “What about anyone still in those buildings?” Ben asked. “Look, Ben, this is as far as we’re getting and still saving people. Your boys’ve said the last four houses everyone inside’s been murdered. And the portal’s right fucking there!” Ben followed his finger. Directly down their street, a little more than a quarter mile away, he could see it. And the armies still marching through it. “If they’re not encircling us now, they’re about to. We’re gonna pop that smoke, tell them to flatten anything between us and the portal, and book it the fuck out of here, ‘cause we ain’t holding back that!” He pointed again, and Ben saw his point. Thousands of elves were marching onto Gusryan, straight towards them. “Light ‘em up,” he said, grabbing a smoke bomb and fumbling in his pocket for his lighter. “Dispatch, this is 2-Charlie-14, request air support. Friendlies at multi-colored smoke on Gusryan Street, Bayview. Everything north of multi-colored smoke to the portal is hostile.” ​ ***** ​ “Madison-One-One, this is Monument. Local police forces are calling for air support south of the portal. Friendlies at multi-colored smoke. Everything north is hostile. Over.” Thompson glanced at the water below him as he and his wingman banked a circle over Chesapeake Bay, putting the setting sun off his port wing. His radio squawked again. “Monument, this is Madison-One-One, copy friendlies at multi-colored smoke. We’ve been trying to keep them from getting flanked. Have visual on smoke. Over.” “Madison-One-One, Monument, Phoenix-Two-One and Two-Two are five mikes out. Make one pass, then clear the area for their bombing run. Over.” “Monument, Madison-One-One, one run will put us Winchester. Turning in now. Over.” “Madison-One-One, Monument, copy all. Out.” Thompson steadied up out of the turn, Booster’s F-16 tight on his starboard wing, lining up on his approach heading. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever be dropping bombs on Baltimore. He keyed his radio. “Monument, this is Phoenix-Two-One, on approach, four mikes. Over.” “Phoenix-Two-One, Monument. Make low approach to drop ordnance through the portal, over.” “Monument, Phoenix-Two-One, copy low approach to drop ordnance through the portal. Out.” He switched channels. “Booster, Wishbone, dropping to angels two.” “Copy, Wishbone, on your wing.” Thompson nosed his F-16 down. We’re already low as it is. No need to get fancy to put us on the deck. “Monument, this is Madison-One-One, strike complete. We are Winchester. RTB. Over.” “Madison-One-One, Monument. Copy Winchester. Ground crews are standing by to re-equip. Out.” Easing up on the stick, Thompson leveled off at two thousand feet. He keyed his radio again. “Booster, Wishbone, Tally. Dropping to angles one.” “Wishbone, Booster, copy angels one.” No pre-planned mission, no target grid coordinates … Just ‘thread a needle and put it roughly here.’ Fucking FUBAR. “Monument, Phoenix-Two-One,” he called as they passed over the Francis Scott Key Bridge. “Commencing bombing run.” “Copy, Phoenix-Two-One.” “Thirty Seconds,” he called over his channel with Booster as the water beneath them turned to land. Industrial parks turned to parks and row homes, and the portal loomed ahead. He mashed the button on his joystick as they passed over I-95. “Bombs away!” ​ ***** ​ “Jim!” Ben shouted as the cop took a magic bolt to the chest and stumbled to the ground. He rushed over and pulled him to cover behind a tall concrete stoop, nearly falling with him down the stairs to a basement entrance. Blood oozed from his chest, his uniform and vest underneath scorched and charred. “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead …” The officer coughed. “Not dead yet. Fuck. That hurt.” “Here,” Ben said, ripping off his jacket and balling it up against the man’s chest. “Stay down. We’re about to get out of this.” “Hey,” Jim said, grabbing his arm. “You’re a good kid, Ben.” He coughed. “Don’t get yourself killed.” “Never planned on it,” he grinned. “You should worry more about yourself, old man. Might give yourself a heart attack running around like this.” Jim laughed once, then coughed, grimacing in pain. Ben reached the top of the stairs just as a pair of fighters flew overhead. He looked up in amazement at the eight bombs they’d already dropped flying overhead. Fuck, yeah, that’ll show ‘em! He turned to jog back towards his previous spot. “Damron! Call Darrel, we need that van over here now!” he shouted, just before his whole world became a searing bright light. Then nothing. ​ ***** ​ “The first flight of F-16s scrambled from Andrews are en route, and every airbase on the East Coast is scrambling attack aircraft. They haven’t shown anything that can challenge us in the skies. We’ll be able to bomb flat anything they send through.” I think this is the first time I’ve seen O’Conner not fidgeting with something, Richards thought. “What about the situation on the ground? What’s it looking like?” “Not good. Thousands of troops have come through already, and at least a dozen walkers. Local police forces are getting completely overrun, and the National Guard’s still at least two hours away.” He frowned at the map displayed on the table screen. A screenshot of google maps marked up in paint. Christ. “Can we contain this?” “Once our air power shows up, absolutely,” General O’Conner said. “Until then, the National Guard will be able to slow them down, but we’re still going to lose a lot of people.” He shrugged. “And we’ll probably end up flattening a good chunk of eastern Baltimore ourselves.” Richards nodded, looking at the screens in front of him. The plane shuddered through some mild turbulence as Air Force One continued to climb to altitude. “What about Paris and Moscow?” He looked up. “Jack? Janet? How are the French and the Russians holding up?” “It’s hard to say, yet, sir.” Andreas said. “The French have been openly communicating with us, and we’ve already ordered the Truman to come off station and head for the western side of the Med. The situation in Paris is similar to Baltimore. Local police are completely outmatched and being overrun, but NATO forces are scrambling anything with wings that can carry a bomb.” Janet Krenshaw held up her hands, shaking her head. “The Kremlin is in chaos right now. We have video of elven towers in Red Square, but we’ve heard nothing from the top, and nobody over there seems to know what’s going on.” “F-16s are making their first attack run now, sir,” O’Conner called out. “Good,” Richards said, nodding at him. Andreas continued, referencing his phone and laptop. “The keeblers seem to have sent the same sized force through all three portals. We don’t have exact numbers, and social media accounts are all we’ve been able to get out of Russia so far, but we’re looking at …” He frowned, shaking his head. “At least ten thousand troops and six walkers from each portal, with an unknown number yet to come through.” Static flickered on all the screens as lightning strobed outside. Hollywood couldn’t have asked for better weather … “We do have some videos that look through the portals, they show a large staging area, and pictures from Paris show part of another portal, we think-“ “Oh my god!” Richards turned to look at the staffer who spoke. She stood frozen in shock, staring out a window in horror. He stepped across the aisle and leaned down to look through the porthole at the clear sky outside. Ice ran through his veins as he spotted the mushroom cloud rising over Baltimore. He blinked, his mind freezing at the scene, leaving room for a single stray thought. I’m going to need one helluva speech … ​ ***** ​ Slowly inhaling a drag from his cigarette, Artem paused, let out half a smoke-filled breath, held it, then squeezed the trigger. The old rifle boomed, kicked his shoulder, and another knife-eared bastard dropped in the street. Letting the rest of the breath out, he worked the bolt. “Alexi! Those suka are coming again! Alexi!” he turned around in the silence, to find another knife-eared bastard stepping out of the shop Alexi had posted himself in. This one carried a glowing blade that smoked and spat fire as she dragged it through the door frame. “Blyat.” Spinning, he fired his rifle from the hip. A shield flared as it collapsed around her, and she stumbled back from the blow, but it was not a square hit. He cursed as she pushed herself back to her feet. Blood trailed down her side, but she charged forward, fury written across her face. I’m always pissing the ladies off, he thought as he cycled the bolt. She raised her sword to strike, and he brought his rifle up to parry with the bayonet he’d stupidly thought would be a good idea to attach. She sliced clean through it. The impact with the blade was just enough to divert it, though, and he tumbled to his left with nothing more than a scorched sleeve, though the tip of her blade sliced deep through his thigh on the back swing. Cursing and shouting in pain, he scrambled away on his back as she turned toward him, sword raised once more. He met her eyes. “Suka,” he spat, and squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed, and she staggered back from a hit to the center of her chest. She dropped her sword, the glowing edge extinguishing as soon as it left her hand, and fell over backwards. Cursing in pain, he pushed himself up and hobbled back to his chair, using the Mosin for support. Grimacing, he dropped himself back into the chair, and looked down at her as she struggled to take her last breaths. “It was a good attempt, but it’ll take more than that to kill me, suka,” he said. He set the rifle on the table and picked up his now mostly-empty bottle of Vodka. “But it’s worth a drink.” He tilted the bottle over to drizzle a few splashes onto her face as she took one last, half breath. “Maybe you won’t be so angry at me in the next life.” He raised the bottle in salute, and drained the last of it. Slamming the empty bottle down on the table, he could just barely see the top of the portal in the distance. It flickered. Then the world turned to light. ​ ***** ​ Clémence coughed. Pavement dug into her cheek as she moved. Why am I lying on the pavement? She coughed again. Why are my ears ringing? Somebody was shouting something, but it was muffled, far away, down a long tunnel. Why does everything hurt? What happened? She remembered a bright light … Coughing again, she lifted her head. Her aunt was lying beside her, not moving. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Getting her hands under her, she pushed herself up to her knees, and the world came rushing back to her. “Agathe! Agathe! Please, wake up! Come on, wake up!” Turning, she saw Marceau on his knees, holding her best friend in his lap. She wasn’t responding, and blood covered the whole left side of her face. Turning back to her aunt, Clémence crawled over to try and wake her up, but stopped when she realized there was a two-foot pole from a stop sign sticking out of her chest. Further up the street, she saw her uncle setting her cousins against a broken wall and checking them for injuries. She didn’t see any blood, and they were both crying. Pushing herself to her feet, she turned to look back the way they came, and stared in mute horror at the mushroom cloud rising over her beloved city. ​ ***** ​ “Sir, I have to say again, this is a really bad idea.” Callahan gave him a look that was professionally angry. Bracing his arm against the door as his SUV jostled over more debris, Richards turned to the Secret Service agent. “I appreciate your concern, Jim, but I told you already that I don’t care. We confirmed that all the elves just toppled over dead after the portal collapsed. The fires are out, and there’s no radiation. I’m going to see this with my own damn eyes, and that’s final.” “Yes, sir.” He turned back to Middleton. “Still nothing from Russia?” “Nothing concrete, sir,” his Chief-of-Staff said, shaking his head. “It’s chaos over there. It isn’t exactly clear what’s going on, but all signs point to the President and his ministers all being killed in the opening attack.” He snorted. “The elves couldn’t have asked for better timing to achieve a decapitation strike. Nobody knows who’s actually in charge over there.” Richards frowned. “Are we looking at a power struggle?” Middleton shrugged. “Probably, but nobody knows who’s alive to struggle for power, yet.” “Is there anything we can do?” “Right now?” He shook his head. “No, sir. All we’ve been getting from anyone we’ve been able to get ahold of over there is ‘hold on, we’ll get back to you.’” “Great,” Richards said, rolling his eyes. “I’d rather deal with them invading Ukraine.” He sighed, looking at his watch. “What time is the NAC meeting, again?” “Sixteen hundred, sir,” his Chief-of-Staff said. “And you’ve got a meeting with the Ganlin Ambassador and some of their experts at fourteen hundred. General Butler leaned forward. “Lee wants to know how we’re going to retaliate, sir. I recommend an overwhelming nuclear strike. If they’re going to hit us with city busters, we need to hit them back even harder.” Richards gave him a sidelong glance. “Calm down, MacArthur. They didn’t nuke their own forces on three brand-new beachheads they just established on purpose. As much as I hate to give the bastards any credit, this wasn’t intentional.” He sighed. “Besides, if we start throwing around nukes now, what kind of precedent do you think that sets for every other nuclear power on the planet? I’m not going to be the man who normalizes the use of nuclear weapons in warfare, and the last thing I want my presidency to be remembered for is enacting nuclear Armageddon.” Brakes squealed as the motorcade came to a stop. “This is as close as we can get, sir,” his driver called back. “Debris and emergency vehicles are blocking the road.” “Thank you, Jeremy. We’ll go on foot from here.” Richards nodded at Jim, who opened his door and stepped out, eyes scanning for threats. The rumble of the Marine Corps helicopter on overwatch thundered overhead. After getting a reluctant all clear, Richards opened his door and stepped out of the SUV into the shattered remains of Ground Zero, Baltimore. Around him, search and rescue personnel dug through rubble, looking for survivors. A triage tent stood nearby, and alongside it a line of bodies covered in tarps. Turning away, he and his entourage moved further down the street, picking their way around debris and volunteers. The closer they got to the portal site, the worse the damage became. Most of the buildings were completely demolished, and rubble was piled everywhere. Some bodies had been uncovered; a few survivors found. “How many people did we lose here?” Richards asked. “It’s not clear yet, sir,” Middleton said. “The portal opened up right next to Johns Hopkins Bayview, and the casualties there were high. It was also right next to an elementary school, but it was after hours, fortunately.” “Thank god for small miracles.” “There was also a partial evacuation of the surrounding neighborhood.” Butler said, waving at the rubble around them. “The elves didn’t push into the narrower streets here right away. They assembled most of their forces out into the wider open areas, mostly splitting off in two separate pushes towards I-95 and I-895. Baltimore PD and a band of local gangs who formed an impromptu militia were able to hold them off here before the detonation.” They passed the twisted, upside-down, burned-out remains of what was once a police cruiser. A dog barked, the search and rescue canine alerting on a pile of rubble. Workers rushed over and started digging, but slowed as they found more broken, charred remains. They reached the edge of the residential blocks, and Richards looked out over the crater that was once Joseph E. Lee Park. A makeshift flag pole stood above the crater, the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the light breeze. Richards walked over to inspect it, and the football field-sized crater. He stared at it for a long moment, then turned to look up at the flag. Taking a breath, he turned and stepped down from the crater. “I’ve seen enough,” he said, and could almost see the relief in his security agents’ posture. “Let’s go. I want to stop at Ravens Stadium before the meeting with Ganlin.” “Yes, sir.” As they picked their way back through the rubble, another dog barked and started digging at the far side of a building that was little more than foundation. Workers rushed over and started moving debris. “We’ve got a live one!” Turning on instinct, Richards took a step forward and began pushing his jacket sleeves, but Callahan immediately stepped in front of him. “Sir,” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll only get in the way.” Richards nodded, pulling his sleeve back down. “Let’s let these people do their jobs,” he said, and headed back to his motorcade. ​ ***** ​ Eléa was crying again. Clémence hiked her up, giving her a comforting jostle out of sheer habit. Her arms were tired. Her feet hurt. Her knees hurt. Everything ached. The only thing keeping the ringing from her ears was the sound of hundreds of feet around her, shuffling onward in a dull, dirt- and blood-stained mass. Like a horde from a zombie apocalypse movie. She trudged forward in a haze, the sounds, the pain, her surroundings all blurred by a buzzing numbness. We never got to do our Christmas shopping, she thought. Léon’s face flashed in her mind. His smile. His plans for a surprise holiday vacation. His blood spraying Agathe as he was sucked into the swirling black mass of the back of the portal. Agathe was still there. Marceau carried her limp body over his shoulders, stubbornly trudging forward despite the weight. Twice they stopped for rest during the night, and twice he had insisted she was fine, she just needed a doctor. ((Continued in the comments ...)) submitted by /u/Ilithi_Dragon to r/HFY [link] [comments]

For weeks, I knew I was being stalked. It started with my bras. Everything I’d meticulously sorted by color had been sifted through and returned out of order, unwrinkled, but… changed. And they felt different. Like they’d been washed with the wrong detergent, or touched with soapy hands. But it wasn’t just that. There was a wrongness in my apartment. The floor creaked randomly. One day I found a large handprint on my mirror that hadn’t been there when I left for work in the morning. There was an odor, too, one I’d only smelled at funeral homes before. Then one night I woke up to the feeling of hot breath in my face, like a dog was inches away, panting at me. I sat up and heard a thump and something landed on my floor. “Go away!” I screamed as footsteps retreated into the distance. I turned on all the lights and found the room empty, but I never did go back to sleep. The next morning, I stepped out of bed and felt a sharp pain in my foot. Looking down, I found a sharp, needle-like object embedded in the floor. I took it to the bathroom to look at it under stronger light and realized that the needle turned transparent when viewed from certain angles. I tried to look online, but I couldn’t find anything like the needle. Then, in the middle of my next search, my router went out. The sounds mostly came at night, but then things started happening in the daytime too. A pair of my running sneakers disappeared right after a jog. And then, when I was showering, I heard someone whisper, “Oh my god, you’re so beautiful.” I screamed and screamed and screamed. The next morning, I bought a gun. The guy at the store, a bearded fatherly type, tried to sell me on a 9mm that looked like a toy, but I sprung for a Sig Sauer 365, complete with a 10 + 1 magazine. I hadn’t gone shooting since my dad had taken me to the range back in my teens, so I figured I might need a few shots. That night, I slipped the gun under my pillow and went to sleep. I woke up to the feeling of someone stroking my bare shoulder. My hips felt pinned to the mattress. I cried out in panic and pushed up as hard as I could. I heard a grunt, and then something grabbed my wrists and pushed me down. I felt the wet of lips on mine. Then I swung my knee up and felt it collide with something soft. I heard a groan, and then something thumped on the hardwood beside the bed. I reached over, grabbed my gun, and shot at the groan until my clip was half-empty. There was a hacking cough. And then a voice begging. “Wait. Please. Don’t. I love you.” I emptied the rest of the clip and the voice was gone. There’s a warm wet pool on my bedroom floor now. I’ve been trying to mop it up, but it’s hard, because there’s nothing to see. Then there’s the invisible thing. It’s a little bigger than me, and I’m not sure how I’ll possibly lift it. A few minutes ago, as I was looking for my mop in the garage, another strange thing happened. My front door slowly opened and closed. I heard a few sets of footsteps enter. They walked to my bedroom. Since then, I’ve been hearing the sound of tape unrolling and bottles spraying. They’re cleaning up, I realize. But what I don’t yet know is if I’m part of the mess. submitted by /u/scarymaxx to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

I’m not homeless. I have a home. I just don’t own it. But it’s mine and I work to keep it. Every city has its fair share of abandoned buildings to squat in, but usually you gotta deal with either cops or shitty neighbours. The Annedale High Rise has neither. Police stay away, so do the locals. As a stranger from out of town I stumbled across the place on my first night in the city and thought it a little strange that a 28 story tower block had been left to rot. Every window black. Every light in the courtyard smashed. No cars in the lot. No booth for a guard. Not even barbed wire on the fence. Barely half-a-mile from a playground filled with shouting drunken teenagers but none of them strayed in the direction of Annedale. No fires or music or bottles hurtling through the air. It was silent. Inside, I found that the lobby had been torn to shit. Double doors ripped open and left that way for what looked like years. Easy access for the curious, but I was the only one there. Most of the first story had collapsed. Waterlogged ceiling tiles turned to mulch by shitty British weather. I know water is invasive, but it had practically fucking colonised the place so bad algae was growing up the walls. Even the elevator shaft was flooded. My own reflection looking back at me as I peered through brackish water and caught a glimpse of the old rusted carriage just a few feet below. I couldn’t help but think about standing on top of it, waist high, and reaching down to pull open the emergency hatch. Only natural to wonder what was down there. Little metal box soaking in pitch black water for years and years. I thought about pressing the button, calling it up and seeing the elevator rise in spite of all logic. An image I still think of from time to time. Meanwhile the empty shaft loomed above, cables whistling in the wind. I’ve learned not to linger by it. If you look up you’ll sometimes see something ducking out of the way, pulling its head through the doors before you get a good look. It finds it awfully funny, even tries to make a game out of it, like peekaboo. Play too much though and it starts to pop up elsewhere. Any open door becomes an invitation. Sent more than a few people running for their lives in the middle of the night, but bad news for them. That thing is more than free to leave this place if it’s part of a game. If you ask about Annedale most people just shrug or laugh. Kids’ll talk about it same way they talk about any haunted house. Difference is no one dares anyone to go up there. No one uses it to get pissed or high. No one sneaks into the basement to have a risky little fuck. No one hides their stashes there. It has all the hallmarks of your classic urban legend, only people actually stay away. They’ll laugh and joke and tell scary stories, but they treat the soil its on like it houses a radioactive leak. And the council, I’m surprised they haven’t knocked it down but they, out of everyone in the city, have the most to lose by talking about it. They built it in the mid fifties as government housing. Only a lot of the young mothers who moved in there found their children’s health taking a turn for the worse. Started with newborns. Babies that wouldn’t wake after a peaceful night’s sleep. The kinda deaths that got written off as either negligence or abuse, screaming teenage girls hauled off to prison on the words of doctors who didn’t give a shit. It’s always the mother’s fault in some people’s eyes, and these girls had no one to stand up for them. Two in the first year, four in the next, and they kept on coming for every year until it closed. Wasn’t until 1982 that someone traced the source of deaths to tainted water storage on the roof. Toxic metals leeching into the supply. Not enough to kill an adult, but bad news for anyone with weak immune systems. Thirty eight women had been imprisoned by then. Another twenty three had killed themselves before they could be sentenced. And those are just the ones accounted for. Not all the deaths were from the water. Annedale has a way of being bad for any child’s health, no matter the circumstance. More than a few toddlers starved to death as their parents rotted in the tub from an overdose. Even more were lost when they found their parent’s stash, little bodies wracked with agonising fits as their panicked mothers screamed for help. One tripped down the elevator shaft because the doors opened as if the carriage was right there. And those are the ones who were found. Plenty more went missing, written off as runaways. In the end Annedale’s reputation as a cursed place got so bad the only way out was to shut the whole thing down. Board it up. Erase it from the records. Pretend it never happened and just forget. But Annedale kept on killing even after the doors were officially shut. If anything it only got nastier. Talked to one cop who told me he found a guy dead from sepsis on the sixth floor couple years after the place was shut down. No one could fucking believe it. They reckon this guy scratched himself on a nail and caught gangrene like it was the 1800s. Never went to the hospital. Just laid there and died slowly and painfully as the infection spread, but not before he took every last bit of furniture in the room and shoved it against the door. Strange enough on its own, but it was the flag he’d made out of his own clothes that freaked everyone out. He’d scrawled HELP on it, like he wanted to get someone’s attention down below even though the lock was on his side. He could’ve left anytime he wanted. Cop I spoke to said he was there when they kicked the door down. Still remembers the look in dead man’s eyes. He was glaring at the door two days after he’d passed, white knuckled fists gripping a blanket that smelled sickly sweet from all that infection. There were others too. Lots of people falling, many of them without a good reason. Got so bad they bricked the roof door but by the time I arrived someone had cleared it all away with a sledge hammer. I still don’t hang out up there. Not after I first went up and saw pale fingers gripping the ledge, like someone was hanging off it and holding on for dear life. I reckon a lotta people see something like that and think a person needs their help. They go rushing over to offer a hand. But when I saw it something about those grimy nails set alarm bells off in my head. Fingers looked all wrong. So I took my coat off and used a broom handle to move it closer to the ledge. Sure enough those ugly hands snatched at the coat and ripped it outta my hands, sending it hurtling to the parking lot below. I’ve thought about taking a closer look from time to time, but I got a thing about heights and could never bring myself to investigate it much further. You’d think I’d leave, but it’s my home. I own it as much as it owns me. People even refer to me as the caretaker now like they forgot I wasn’t always here. Police treat me the same, can you believe that? Any reports of a break in and they call me on my number to go take a look, like I’m some sort of official. Only other guy who was here as long as me was the philosopher. I don’t know his name, just call him that because of the books he left behind. He came here back when the block was still just a place to live and he stuck around for a few years after its closure. Lots of notebooks in his flat. Thousands of pages talking about child sacrifice made to gods who don’t like being named, along with pictures of strange things frozen in ice and medical photos that look fake. At first I thought he came to document the curse. He has dozens of books just recording all the strange things he saw, like birds with too many wings or milk that turned to clotted blood in the bottle. But after going through every thing he owned I found letters to a wife who’d died in childbirth. He kept her death certificate way at the back of an old looking box filled with the letters he’d kept writing her long after the date. Another box, just a row over, had the letters she’d written back. Awful things scrawled on random scraps, shit and blood for ink. He dated them himself and sometimes wrote notes about how they came to him. Delivered by a rat that was cannibalised in front of me. Pulled by my dentist from a cavity in my mouth. Written in the web of a spider with thirteen legs. Anyway, he gives away the real reason he moved to Annedale in one of the letters. Says that Annedale was the key to helping her, that he was weeks away from figuring out how to open the door. Told his wife he’d bring her back. Told her he knew how. I’ve never figured out where he went next or what happened to him, but his apartment was locked when I found it and likely would’ve stayed that way if the key hadn’t turned up in my inside pocket on the first morning. Now I live in his old place. It’s safe in there. He’s written things on the wall that keep everything well behaved. Symbols that I don’t understand but which are easy to trace so that’s what I do. I go over them every couple of months and so far they’ve kept me safe and sane. Because you do need protection in Annedale. I don’t know when in its history the curse went from something mundane to something very real and very dark. It wasn’t all just bad luck or poverty, not by the end and certainly not anymore. You can’t just go strolling around Annedale, certainly not at night. It’s dangerous. For one thing, it attracts a constant rotation of the deeply unwell who are likely to attack on sight, if you’re luckly. They usually turn up dead in the halls come morning, although sometimes it’s just bits of them that I come across. Strips of skin floating on the brackish water that floods the basement stairwell, or bloodied fingernails embedded in the ceiling plaster. Weirdest one was a single tooth in a lightbulb, bloody gum still attached to the root, the glass all around it somehow intact. Many of them come here with business, something a little like the philosopher’s. Rituals. Bargains. Things like that. It’s not a good idea to interrupt them, or to give them even the slightest hint you might be a problem. Every night I lock my door and wait for Annedale’s business to finish and come morning I do a sweep, floor by floor, and clean up whatever’s left of the tower block’s strange pilgrims. Most of the rituals don’t look real to me. In fact, I reckon a lotta people who come here just end up as victims of something or someone else. There are a lot of reasons to stay out of Annedale at night, and most of its visitors strike me as a little naïve. Most of what I see looks like it got stolen from a bad death metal album. I once found a book called “Satanism and Witchcraft in the 21st Century”. It’s hard to imagine that the secret inner workings of the universe can be found in something with an ISBN number and 3000 Amazon reviews. Of course, not all attempts at exploiting Annedale’s energy are so hackneyed. I had one guy turn up at my door and pay me three grand in cash just to show him the darkest corner in the building. I wasn’t sure what he meant at first. Thought he meant light and shadow. “Sort of,” he replied when I explained this to him. “Darkness like that can be part of it. But I’m looking for a corner, has to be a right angle or more acute. Ideally, more acute. You understand that term right?” He’d seemed arrogant and that last sentence confirmed as much. Good looking guy in his late twenties, nice suit. Looked like the stereotypical banker. Acted like one too. “Plenty of places like that,” I said. “Lots of funny rooms in Annedale. People trying to make the most of limited space. Sometimes the walls meet at tight angles, sure. But I don’t know what you mean about dark. There’s the basement. It’s flooded. Can’t think of anywhere darker than that.” He bit his lip and hesitated for a second or two, as if he was actually contemplating it. “Not a bad suggestion actually, but no, too difficult to reach. And I don’t just mean dark as in the absence of light. I mean dark like under the bed. Dark like that one chip in a wall that leads to a hollow space between the bricks and as a child you can’t help but wonder what lives there. Somewhere that just inexplicably feels… like it’s not got as much of God’s attention on it as everywhere else.” I thought about this for a second. His words were vague but damn if I didn’t know what he meant. “A corner?” I asked. “Has to be an acute corner?” He nodded. “I think I know the place,” I said and he smiled like real creep. I took him to a flat on the eighth floor. It was rundown like everywhere else but there was still enough of its old furniture lying around. You can pull open random drawers in there and still see the cutlery people once used. There’s even an old analogue TV on an old stand. You can perch on what’s left of the sofa and stare at that TV and get the feeling you knew the people who lived there once. Run your thumb over the dials on the toaster, the handle of the fridge, or the yellowing plastic of a light switch, and feel an aching loss that creeps up on you out of nowhere. Look up and you’ll see that the light fixture has been torn out of the ceiling, like someone had tried swinging from it. Not a big place, by the way. Three rooms. A bedroom with a double bed all rumpled up. A living room slash kitchen. And a tiny little spare room that looked like it once would have been used for storage, or a washing machine maybe, if you were single and childless. A slither of space, a triangle carved out of whatever room was left over when other more important walls had been put up. That sofa I mentioned, the TV, they were all placed so whoever was sat down could always keep an eye on that room and its contents. You see they’d put a cot inside and it’s still there, bluebottle flies circling overhead. You can’t see inside the cot, not unless you went in and actually pulled the blankets out but it’s been decades and no one has managed it yet. It’s dark behind those old blankets, a heavy shadow that dissuades a closer look, like there’s something in there no one needs to see and it’s spent a long time sat there eating what little light there was. Even with a window in that room, daylight doesn’t really filter down. “Perfect,” the businessman said when he saw it. He gazed around the flat one detail at a time, his head pausing for a moment and a smile creeping across his face as he laid his eyes on the broken light fixture. And the cot, the sight of it, the flies that still circled above faded Winnie the Pooh blankets, it made the breath catch in his throat. “Oh this is… yes this is good,” he told me. “Dark like under the bed. You’ve earned that money. I could have had a dozen men sweep this place and they wouldn’t have understood the brief as well as you have.” “Thank you,” I replied even if that wasn’t really how I felt. Quietly the man sat down and began to unpack his leather satchel. No pentagrams to be found, although he did unpack seven strange looking candles. He caught me looking at them and smiled. “Home made,” he said. “Each one shaped by my hands. I’m not a good artist, but it’s the effort that counts. Took forever to rend the wax. Of course that was the easy part. The hard part was getting the fat to make it. Did you know there can be a surprisingly high level of security around a hospital’s medical waste department?” “I didn’t,” I replied as he took out some flimsy bits of wood and a few small nails. He oh so carefully began to nail the splinters of wood together into what looked like random shapes. “Oh well,” he sighed after a few quiet moments, his fingers nimbly gripping the tiny hammer as he tapped away. Already he’d put together at least six of the strange little wooden polygons, and with each new one I felt a strange sensation. “Would you like to stay and watch?” he asked. “Absolutely not,” I answered. He stopped tapping and smiled once more. “Oh you’re clever,” he said. “That’s the correct answer, by the way. And if I’m to respect it, I should inform you that now is the safest time to leave.” I made my way to the exit just as he lit the first candles, but not before I looked towards the cot one last time. I was surprised to see a hollow blackness that extended beyond the doorway, like a curtain had been draped across it, only there was depth to it that drew the eye. The businessman paid it no attention, but after a few more seconds he eventually looked up at me expectantly. “Can I ask what is it you want?” I said. “Everyone who comes here, I don’t get the sense it ever works out for them.” “I’m looking for a new kind of afterlife,” he replied. “Do you need one?” “We all need one,” he said with a wry chuckle. “But only those of us willing to take a few risks will get a better deal. Everyone else…” He grimaced. “It’s worth the bother. But look who I’m speaking to.” He looked to the darkness that enveloped the doorway. Shapes could be seen floating past. “You should leave now,” he said. I pulled the door shut and, noticing that the sun was rapidly setting, ran to my apartment where I knew the walls would keep me safe. When I returned the next day the man’s satchel was still where I’d last seen it, propped against one arm of the sofa. The candles had burned down to the very end of the wicks and left a lingering smell that’s still there all these years later. And of the man himself, well in the room with the cot—which still has bluebottle flies orbiting overhead—there is now a shadow burned into the wall. It’s blurry and diffused, but vaguely recognisable as a man on his knees, his head pressed to the floor in a gesture of supplication. I’ve known it to occasionally move, to turn its head and look towards me at which my point my temples throb, my ears pop, and a darkness begins to encroach upon the edges of my vision. I never exactly considered that flat to be Disneyland before, but now I avoid it like the plague. Still, it could be worse. Not every ritual ends so cleanly and at times I’ve had to personally intervene, something I hate bitterly. If people want to go poking around in the universe’s undercarriage that’s their business. It’s one thing if I’ve got to sweep what’s left of them up afterwards but at least that’s a one and done job. Sometimes it isn’t so clean. One guy turned up and told me he’d be a new “resident”, my neighbour, and we’d get to know each other. A bumbling old man with an upper class accent and the look of a professor who was down on his luck. He set up in the room next to mine and no matter how little I spoke to him, he never really got the hint and kept trying to act like a good friend. Few times I did initiate conversation it was to tell him the place he’d chosen didn’t have much in the way of protection. He pointed to some funny little rashes and told me they were his protection. Over the next few weeks I’d bump into him from time to time, always on his hands and knees, scraping some dank corner or mouldy pile of bumpy growths. He collected fungi, told me on the first day, and I’d often see him wiping his samples onto petri dishes that he whispered quiet words to whenever he thought I wasn’t around. I don’t think he was sane, but he probably wasn’t completely barmy because he lived long enough to get a sense of Annedale and only come out in the day. Meanwhile his apartment filled up with a growing collection of chittering terrariums and pickle jars, their specimens hidden by murky fluids. All over, he planted and cultivated strange mushrooms and moulds. Encouraged them to soak up the darkness of Annedale and set them to grow in the rife conditions he’d cultivated. Towards the end his living room had mushrooms growing out the walls. Plaster crumbling beneath microbial armies until there was only concrete and rebar, and even then mould continued to grow and thrive. A few times I peered in and found him feeding meat to the frilly growths that exploded out of the old furniture. During this time the symbols on our shared wall would often grow hot, and I found myself having to replace them on a nearly daily basis as he tinkered away on the other side. I asked him once or twice to tone it down. “This is important work,” he growled, an unseen darkness creeping into his voice. “I’m not some ditzy crackhead trying to summon the Baphomet! I’m not looking to get high. This is science. Progress! That is what I am working towards.” “Yeah well your progress is trying to eat its way into my flat. Can you ask it to stop?” He stopped, froze in mid gesture like I’d said something either profoundly stupid or insightful, or likely a bit of both. He looked at the rashes on his arms that had, by now, started to sprout some of their own strange fruit. When he finally spoke again it was sly, like a lecherous old man propositioning a nurse. “This fungi,” he said. “They had samples of it in the university for thirty years! Can you imagine? They never even realised what they had until I found it and unlocked its potential. Now I’ve finally found the source and I can do things no one else thought possible. This entire time my thesis has depended upon the idea that the fungus has… a capacity for information processing way beyond anything we’ve considered before. And your idea is a good one, you know? Asking it just might be an option…” He scuttled off without another word and for the next few days he set about the building like a furious little honey bee in Spring. Poking and prodding, setting trap after trap and cleaning them vigorously of any rats or mice he caught. When I did my morning sweeps I’d find him hovering over Annedale’s latest victims, scraping what was left of them into transparent bags for his own purposes. “Don’t mind me,” he’d mutter. “It’s worthless to you, but these poor souls could help me achieve great things.” This persisted for another month. He no longer scraped mould or mushrooms off old apartments. He became interested only in meat, and by the time it came to an end I can say confidently that I have never smelled anything worse than the prickly musty odour that wafter out from under his locked door. It became so bad that I began to wonder if I might have to ask for police help and have him removed when, finally, he simply disappeared from Annedale’s halls. One morning he was there, annoyingly shooing me out of the way as he lowered jars into the flooded basement, and then the next he was gone and Annedale’s halls were silent once more. But that didn’t mean he had moved out. Far from it, actually. It took two days before I decided to just go ahead and break his door down. I kicked at it with a short sharp blow only to find my leg immediately disappeared through wood that had the texture of sodden cardboard. I freed my foot and tried a different tactic, grabbing the handle and pulling so hard that it simply popped right out of the rancid wooden frame. Free to move, the door swung open with an eerie creak and fetid air, hot and damp, blew out of the room. Inside I found that the man’s specimens had gone wild. Terrariums had shattered, their contents spilling outwards. Frogs as large as footballs glared at me from behind furry fronds, and insects with human eyes scuttled away before the amphibians could snatch them up. In one corner rats had built a hive out of old cardboard, their backs covered with fungal growths that resembled human fingers and other appendages. In another corner something that looked a little like a black rubber sheet slapped furiously at passing vermin and it took me a few seconds to realise it was a slime mould. When it finally caught something it dragged the strange creature squealing into the dark corner where it grew and constricted around its meal like a fist. I stared at it horrified until one by one black orbs unveiled itself from within the strange mass and I realised it had eyes to stare right back at me. It was a cacophony of God awful terror, so gripping that it kept me from hearing the muffled noise of a human struggling to speak. Eventually it did reach my ears and I used my torch to light up the far wall without having to actually step inside. I found the scientist half-grown into the wall. Algae and moss coated him head-to-toe so that he was no longer recognisable, but I had to assume it could be no one else. Wide eyes glared at me with terror and pain as nasty little critters nibbled away at what was left of his shins, meanwhile strange tendrils probed at his ears and head, never resting for a moment. He kept trying to speak, but the algal growths kept driving their way into his mouth until, one-by-one, they pushed too far and something snapped. His eyes went wider still, his squeals became hysterical, and his jaw slowly slid further down his chest until it hit the floor with a sodden thump. “Finally made contact?” I asked. “An awful idea if I’ve heard one. What would a mushroom have to say even in the best of circumstances? Let alone one that was grown in the ruins of Annedale? I can only assume you never got around to telling it to stay off my wall, did you? No you probably had your own reason or doing all of this and that’s what took priority.” That made me wonder what it was he’d asked for. As the thought entered my head I took a quick look around and tried to see if anything particular stood out to me. Something was growing on the sofa that looked strangely human-shaped. It might have been just my imagination, but in the dark it seemed to turn towards me. Meanwhile the scientist continued to shiver in agony, his eyes focused on me and begging for help. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said before slamming the door. Something about that strange pile on the sofa had deeply unsettled me. I put the word out, asked for a gun, but got a crossbow instead a few days later. A nervous looking sixteen year old boy ferried it to my door. I was surprised he’d entered the building, but who knows who’d ordered him to do so. I’ve acquired a strange sort of respect amongst the locals and it comes in handy. This boy looked like he would have stamped on my head and robbed me blind any other day, but when he spoke to me he did so with more respect than I ever imagined I deserved. I thanked him, took the crossbow, spent an afternoon practicing with it, and then used it to kill the scientist the next morning. Took a few hits, but in the end one thumped into his forehead and shut down his whimpered moans. I didn’t see anything on the sofa this time, at least not anything human-shaped, which I was thankful for. After that it was a simple case of calling the police and beginning a long chain of events that ended with half-a-dozen men in hazmat suits spraying the room with noxious chemicals. For a while there I’d been worried that they’d find a corpse and ask questions, but by the time anyone actually entered the room there was nothing left of the scientist save a splotch on the floor. I never did figure out exactly what it was he was after, although it is not uncommon for my morning sweep to turn up a body (or part of) covered in fungal growths. And I have been known to occasionally catch glimpses of a strange person lowering themselves into the floodwater of the elevator shaft. Of course I might just be making connections that aren’t really there. All sorts of things live in that water. The entire level is flooded and if something was down there, it’d have free reign over quite a large space. It's a strange world down there. I should know on account of one visitor who gave me a very bad time. I’ll call him the fisherman since he came to Annedale because of the flooded basement. Saw a photo that’s been circulating around for a while now, if you know where to look. God knows who took it and how, but it shows the flooded stairwell leading to the basement and beneath the brackish surface is a hand that’s all out of proportion. Fingers splayed with perfect symmetry like a starfish, it is reaching up out of the depths and resting gently on the third step below the water. When I first met him he was sitting happily with his feet over the edge of the flooded shaft, water up to his knees, with a rod and line set up beside him. It was quite a surprise at first, seeing him there with a little fly-fishing hat. A chubby but healthy looking man in his forties with an egg mayo sandwich in one hand and a phone playing candy crush in the other. I called out to him as I approached because, in my experience, startling someone in Annedale is bad for your health no matter how sane the visitor appears. He looked up when I caught his attention and smiled amiably. “Hello,” he waved with his sandwich. “You’re the caretaker?” “Yes I am,” I answered. “And you are?” “Just a tourist,” he smiled. “Care to join me?” The sun had risen only moments ago. “You weren’t here when it was dark, were you?” I asked more than a little suspicious. “Oh no you’ve only just caught me, been here barely ten minutes before you showed up. I was told you’d be willing to help in exchange for a small fee.” “What sort of help?” I asked. “Oh just give me a nudge if any of the lines start moving,” he said while pointing to a rod he’d set up beside the basement stairs. The door was propped open and the line led down into the darkness below, water gently lapping just out of sight. Another line had been set up in a corner of the lobby where the floor had been torn away revealing a hole straight down into the basement. “I can’t keep an eye on them all at once, you see. I have bells ready but, well, two heads are better than one.” “What is it exactly you’re hoping to catch down there?” I asked. “Are you familiar with the primordial ocean?” he said. “The abyssal waters that God split into light and dark, all that? It’s not a physical location, per se, but it does connect to certain bodies of water depending on the time and place. Last recorded manifestation was in a glass of old whiskey underneath a forgotten bar in Mexico City. Some poor fellow knocked it over and didn’t notice until the following day when half the bar was suddenly underwater. Quickly rectified but some of the things swimming in that water were something else, and all from at the bottom of a glass no wider than my wrist. Imagine what we can do with this!?” he said while gesturing at water by his feet. “You think there could be fish alive down there?” I asked. “At least,” he replied. “I’d be willing to pay for any reliable information, of course. Do you have any idea what might be down there?” “Not really,” I shrugged. “But I’d guess it wants to be left alone.” “Hmmm you might be right there,” he said while looking at his other rods. “I didn’t exactly put down any old lure, you know?” He reached into his pocket and took out a strange tuft of fur and ivory, holding it up for me to squint at. “A tooth from a man who drowned in the sea. A drone collected it off a shipwreck near the Norwegian coast. The fur is actually red algae that was found growing on his bones. I have plenty of these and, well, other things that might appeal to what’s on the other side. My research was thorough and expensive. Come on, take a seat. Flat fee, one thousand, just sit here until the sun starts to set.” “I just have to sit?” I asked. “And let me know if you hear or see anything.” I groaned and sat beside him, folding my legs instead of letting them dangle in the water below. Despite my reticence, we stayed like that for several hours. He’d brought lots of food, good homemade stuff, along with plenty of cold beer. We sat there and spoke very little, but we did eat and drink a tremendous amount. Not the kind of thing I do normally, but I was being paid to be there, and I didn’t really have anywhere else to be. It was, all in told, a very pleasant afternoon. Until I fell asleep. When I awoke it was with a terrible gasp. My chest was tight like something had been sitting on it, and judging from the terrible giggling and scampering feet I heard running off into the darkness, it might not have been just a feeling. Already panic was setting in as my eyes darted to the open doors and saw that the moon was out and had been for hours. I fumbled for my torch and turning it on saw that there was no sign of the fisherman. All his stuff had been left behind yet all that remained of him was his hat that still floated on the water. Even as I watched, a smooth glistening shape curled beneath the water and plucked it off the surface. I recoiled and crawled away from it as fast as I could. This was bad, I knew deep in my heart I’d never been as at risk I was in that moment. The open doors that led outside were tempting, but just beside them were the stairs that led downwards and I swore I could hear something approaching. I couldn’t help but picture the fungal man I’d seen in the scientist’s flat. Then again, that basement was huge and who knows what lay down there. I decided to go for the stairs. The entire time my heart was in my chest. I had never been caught outside my room at night, not since my first night when I’d slept in the lobby with my coat pulled over me. You don’t get lucky twice, not with Annedale, so I knew had to be careful. I had to be quiet. My only hope was to go unnoticed. I took to stealth, climbing each floor in perfect silence, hiding in well known spots at the slightest hint of footsteps, human or otherwise. Annedale comes alive at night. Whispered mutterings from strange children who descend from air vents, living there for God knows how long. Other times I saw apparitions including one, a toddler, the sight of whom made my stomach growl with an insatiable hunger that hurt just to contemplate. She stared at me with pleading eyes as I slunk away from her open door. I might have been tempted to help her were it not for the sight of the moon peering through her translucent image. And yet, despite all this, I somehow made it to the fourteenth floor alive. Only it was there right at the final hurdle, so close to safety, that I came across something out of my worst nightmare. A woman stood outside my apartment door. Silent. Pale. Dirt covered fingernails. It was all too often I’d open my door and find muddy impressions on the floor made by a woman’s bare feet. Now I knew who left them every night. I couldn’t see her face from where I hid, but something about her seemed profoundly familiar. When she finally turned towards me I remembered. I recognised her, even though most of her face was missing. It was the philosopher’s wife. He had succeeded, it seemed. But I couldn’t imagine at what God awful price, because the woman who stared at me had clearly weathered some years in the grave. It was only the poor lighting and her long hair that had covered up just how bad a state she was in. A lipless grin stared back at me below sunken cheekbones and hollow eye sockets. And yet, I could tell that in another life she had been beautiful which only made the sight all the more gut-wrenching. “My darling,” she whispered, and there was something about her voice that I found hard to stay sane in the face of. I don’t know why. Over a decade in that place and I’d borne witness to living nightmares, but it was this walking corpse that pushed me to my limits. The inescapable feeling of loss weighed me down and without realising it I found myself taking steps towards her even as my knees buckled. By the time I reached her I was crawling until I could clutch her grimy icy leg, and that was the last thing I remember before I woke up in my bed the following morning. Everything seemed normal, so completely mundane that I could’ve written the whole thing off as a bad nightmare. But there were footprints leading from my bed to the door. And later on I found the fisherman’s things much as he left them, although when I finally reeled his lines in I found the lures gone and replaced with bits and pieces of the man who’d first set them up. I threw it all into the water below and decided it would be best to forget him. Every now and again, of course, I can’t help but check my peephole at night. I never did before that, but now I do. I see her every single time. She looks sad. Hurts me to think of her out there. It ought to be terrifying but it’s more like someone’s ripped out my stomach and heart and let all my insides fall out the bottom. Each time I see her I wonder what exactly was it he did to bring her back? He leaves only one hint. A final letter, I think. It’s not like he dated them. In it he says he would give everything to have her in his arms once more. Not only his life, but everything he’s already lived. Every sunset. Every good dream. Every nightmare. Every victory. Every loss. Every little memory that makes him who he is, he’d give it all just to save her. Sometimes I wonder about him, figuring we’d probably be about the same age. I’d like to think back and imagine what it would have been like for the two of us to meet as young men, but for some reason whenever I try to remember what my life was like before I came to this city, before I woke up with that coat pulled over me… well, I don’t know… It’s just hard, that’s all. It's almost like there's nothing there. Like something reached in and took all the years away. I guess it's just one of those things I'm better off not dwelling on. submitted by /u/ChristianWallis to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

I am NOT OP. Original post by u/petewentz-from-mcr in r/askwomenadvice trigger warnings: don't read while you are eating, animal abuse in comment section mood spoilers: positive ending EDIT: New (WILD) update from today 6/22/22 at bottom of post!   My new flatmates (19F, 22F, 21F) are absolutely disgusting. I just moved in Wednesday, and I’m already frustrated enough about it to cry. I’m not a neat freak, it’s just really bad. How do I address this? - submitted on 05 Apr 2020 I live in student housing now. It is a 4 bedroom with 2 bathrooms, so we share a bathroom with one other person and all 4 of us share the kitchen, living room, and dining area. The leasing period is normally August-July, but someone left early so there was an open room. I got lucky because I would have otherwise been homeless, but this also means the other 3 girls have lived together all year. I don’t think they have cleaned anything since they moved in, and honestly it’s a fucking state. There is food and grease splattered all over the walls, dishes have been left in the sink long enough that they smell weirdly like vinegar, and the bins haven’t been emptied for at least as long. We have a massive fruit fly problem, and walking into the kitchen makes my eyes water from the stench of rotting food. I did finally empty the bin myself. I have never walked into the kitchen and not needed to move popcicle wrappers from the counters and table to the rubbish bin. I have never even seen anyone eat one, but there’s somehow a never ending supply of the wrappers to leave around. The bathroom is even worse. When I took a shower my first night, the buildup on the bottom of the tub was so thick it felt like I was standing on sandy concrete or something. The texture on my feet made me cry, it was so nasty and I had only decided to shower to help myself calm down. When I tried to clean it after my shower, the girls told me not to and assured me that it was as clean as it could possibly be. The next morning I just grabbed shit and said no I’m cleaning it, that’s not at all okay and just ignored them when they told me not to. It’s a different colour than I thought. I thought it was light grey with patches of dark buildup, but it’s actually cream coloured and just had that much grime all over. It took me 2 hours to scrub it out. I did that the day before yesterday. Today I went to the toilet when I got back from walking my dog and found that the girl I share it with had bathed her dog and left the hair all over the goddamn tub. She made no attempt to rinse it. She also left her menstrual cup on the side of the sink, and it’s not even clean! It’s as clean as the rest of the fucking flat! This is insufferable. I almost wonder if I’m meant to call someone? I think having millimetres of thick grime buildup is actually hazardous? I know the mould is definitely not safe. It’s honestly driving me nuts. I don’t want to leave my bedroom because it upsets my stomach to see the state of the common areas of the flat. I definitely need to do something, but I’m basically an outsider and I can’t imagine they’ll be thrilled to have someone just waltz in and boss them around. I don’t think I could even implement a chore wheel or something because I’m really not involved or invited into their circle. I’ve barely spoken to them because I’m just always in my room and frustrated. Last time I tried to be social with them the one girl pulled her dog’s tail to get the dog near her and then hit her just because she got up to get water. I’m just so afraid I’ll make things even worse. I grew up with only brothers, I don’t really know how to communicate well with women. Thank you! Edit: I’m trying to respond to everyone because I really appreciate your help, I’ve just massively fallen behind! I ultimately decided to say something since I’d been sneaking around and cleaning all week. I mean, the menstrual cup is the exact line of things I can’t fix alone. I also felt like it would be different if it were moved at some point as if she’d just forgotten, but when I said something it’d been there for at least 5 hours and that’s only since I’d seen it. I was very careful about what I said and how I said it, and I practiced a few times first. I asked her to rinse the tub because I thought it was really disrespectful after I had just cleaned it and asked her to please move her menstrual cup because this is a shared space and it is a biohazard. I said it very calm and still very submissively, like exactly how I’d talk to my parents when I needed something because they were so volatile. Her face turned bright red, she rolled her eyes and sighed, and then said “okay” with an eye roll and sigh like what teenagers do on tv. I went back into my room, and her dog tried to follow like always. She screamed the dog’s name with urgency I’d only used with my dog when he got out and was in the road with a car coming, except it was driven by anger instead of fear. I hope she didn’t hit her again, but I honestly don’t know. I went back to my room and she was slamming doors and shit. She was still slamming doors 2 hours later. Eventually I had to pee and I was going to take my dog out one more time too and just have an early night. I reached for the toilet roll and found that she’d gone into the bathroom and removed all of the toilet roll just to be petty, but had also not rinsed the tub or moved her cup. After I had waited to drip dry, I went to take my dog out and saw that her hair was wet. She seriously used the other shower to avoid rinsing the tub at all. I was less diplomatic, I’m not going to lie. I was not at all diplomatic. The conversation goes as follows: “are you fucking serious?” “What?” “You seriously walked into the bathroom and took out all the toilet roll without warning me, and then didn’t rinse the tub or remove your biohazard? That’s so petty.” “You just moved here 3 days ago and already we all have a problem with you.” “For what? I’ve been in my room.” “You’re using all our shit! Like our milk! We all have our own milk so we don’t have to share.” “I asked first and you all said it was okay. You said ‘use whichever you want, we have plenty.’” At this point she repeated what I’d said in a mocking voice. “Seriously, that’s it? You’re just being childish.” Again with the childish mocking repeat. “Whatever, just move your biohazard.” “It’s my bathroom too!” “It’s fucking nasty.” “It’s natural!” “It’s a biohazard.” “It’s no different than putting used tampons in the trash” “yes, it really is.” “Just leave, bitch.” So I did, I mean I was standing by the front door and my dog was on his leash like I was literally about to leave and there wasn’t anything helpful to say. It could really only get worse. I pretended to take a phone call as I walked back in and waited for them to leave the common room, and then I moved my food into my room. Thankfully everything can stay in here, I didn’t have anything in the fridge. I’m going to talk to the landlord when I wake up tomorrow. I spent all week cleaning because I decided not to tell the landlord because they’d be fined and potentially evicted per the lease and I didn’t want them to hate me. They hate me anyway so I’m definitely not going to protect them and I really want the professional clean they’ll have to pay for. I made things exponentially worse by saying something anyway... although I honestly didn’t expect the pettiness like that was unprecedented. Edit 2: I have posted my next update as a separate post because this one was getting long and my question has entirely shifted from what this post was asking. Thank you guys so much for your support!! https://www.reddit.com/r/askwomenadvice/comments/fw7zsu/update_my_new_flatmates_19f_22f_21f_are/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf   OOP Comment re: Current Living Situation I ran away from my abusive parents’ house on 1st February while they were out of town. I was staying with my friend and her husband, but I had to leave because their home is a parsonage and the like boss pastor kicked me out... over rumours some church ladies were spreading that I was having an affair with my friends husband (the youth pastor). It doesn’t matter that it isn’t true because just the rumour existing is bad enough. The boss guy gave me 2 weeks to find somewhere else to go, and stressed that it didn’t matter if I had nowhere else to go because I couldn’t stay there. When corona got bad and the state said churches cannot meet, he had a meeting with all of the church worker people to discuss it, and at that meeting he made sure to tell my friend that it doesn’t at all change my move out deadline. If I didn’t find this place I would literally be homeless. I also signed a lease, but mostly the part about not having anywhere else to go   OOP Comment re: not being able to see the place first I couldn’t tour the property first because of COVID. They aren’t doing tours for social distancing and technically I was on quarantine because I’d just returned from Europe. I had 2 weeks to find somewhere to go or I’d be homeless... I was being thrown out for a rumour I’d had an affair with the youth pastor. The main church guy said it didn’t matter if I did it or not because he can’t have rumours like that about his staff, basically   OOP Comment re: microwave radiation The same girl says we can’t use the microwave because she can feel the radiation and we can’t use any chemicals because it’s a shared space, only the essential oil spray she has. She’s insufferable all the way around. I was definitely planning to get a mini fridge, an electric kettle, and a microwave or something like that when I can. I’m waiting for the gift cards I got for switching cell phone carriers... I switched carriers specifically for the $500 gift cards to the supermarket. They take 2 weeks so it’s coming up this week. They mail them. I also pay less per month than my old plan and got a new phone, but the real incentive was the food money. I don’t mind staying in my room, that’s how I’ve lived for 22 years   OP Comment Re: Roommate Hitting Her Emotional Support Dog It’s horrible. I had no idea what to do, I mean I didn’t think I could do anything. The first time I saw it she was sitting on the couch and her dog stood up to get water and she pulled her back by the tail and then hit her, and the dog laid back down. It’s sort of no wonder the dog is always begging to come into my room with me. I try to help her when I can but I rarely get the chance. When her human left her to go out Friday night she didn’t even put her in her kennel and she came to my door and begged to come in. I was actively teaching a class so I couldn’t let her in right away, and she went from whining and scratching to jumping against the door. I felt awful, I wanted to let her in so bad but I had to finish the 25 minute class like I couldn’t walk away. It was hard not to cry I mean she was so desperate and I just wanted to hug her and tell her she’s safe   [Update] My new flatmates (19F, 22F, 21F) are absolutely disgusting. I just moved in Wednesday, and I’m already frustrated enough about it to cry. I’m not a neat freak, it’s just really bad. How do I address this? [And new question- how do I go about the new weirdness of this??] - submitted on 06 Apr 2020 I am posting my update as a new post rather than an edit to the last because there is a new question and because the other post was getting ridiculously long. I will add the link to this post as an edit to the last. I went to see the landlord when I woke up, and she was absolutely horrified. She said there are absolutely things that she can do, and that nobody should have to live like that. She asked me to send her all of the photos I had shown her and to email her everything I had just told her, and she would start working on it as soon as she got the email. I felt really hopeful and had a false sense of relief. I walked back into the flat and decided to pee before sitting down to type my email because I needed to go. That sentence makes it sound like I’d thought about it at all, which I didn’t. I needed to go and went with no thought at all. It smelled like piss and I just thought like oh of course I mean the rest of the place is a fucking state. Then my feet were wet. I guess it had taken a second to soak into my socks. I saw there was a puddle of it in front of the toilet and kinda wondered how she’d managed, but when I stood up I realised my back and thighs were also soaked. She had peed all over the seat, all over the lid, and an entire ring around the toilet itself. I was absolutely horrified because I was literally covered in piss like how else would I feel. I took my pants the rest of the way off, grabbed my soap, and stepped into the bathtub to wash off. It was also full of pee. I don’t even know how she got it to stay so well, I mean it wasn’t warm and bathtubs inherently drain so I have no idea how she had gotten pee to stay like that. I also don’t know how she managed to pee all over everything like that, because like one time I tried to pee in a bottle but instead it got all over the floor because I don’t know where my urethra is well enough (?) and I had to blame my dog. I have no idea how you would line yourself up to spray the seat and lid. At that point I just called the office crying. The girl I had talked to had gone to lunch so I talked to someone else, and I just told her about the pee and asked if she had anywhere I could shower and she let me shower in the show room. The entire room smelled like piss when I left, and I felt legitimately bad about that. She said she’d ask her boss what to do when she got back from a meeting. That was 5 hours ago. I have spent that time in my bedroom. They have a room they can transfer me to without fees or anything, and I signed that lease (online). I’m meant to move in tomorrow. While I had her on the phone I asked where I could pee when I inevitably needed to and she said she’d ask her manager. That leads us up to about now. I went to go heat up some food because I’ve not eaten today, and found that they were all sitting outside on the small porch and taking photos of me in the kitchen through the blinds. One opened the door and said wow you’re really taking photos with them (my dog was with me) right there and the other said yes. I looked incredibly confused and tried not to look that way. When I was back in my room I called the office to follow up about my ability to pee and to tell them about the weird photo thing, and I heard them walk into the kitchen giggling and say “yeah she just stood there all confused and shit.” I said look what are we going to do because I can’t even leave my bedroom to put rice in the microwave for a minute and I still will eventually need to pee. She said unfortunately there is nowhere else for me to pee, so I asked if she could make my flatmate clean her piss off the toilet so I could go there and she seemed shocked that she hadn’t done so yet. I asked if I could move in today, and now we wait. Literally what can I even do here? I mean I considered all sorts of weird options so far and none of them are remotely helpful. Edit: I’m so sorry guys, I fell asleep typing my update! Almost right after I posted this, the office called and said I could get my keys right then and there. I think they probably also recognised the danger in people who continue to escalate after literally peeing all over a toilet. I moved as fast as I could. It took me a few hours still, but I really just ran back and forth. The girls did try to fuck with me one more time, and I have no idea what the goal was. I walked into the flat after my third trip carrying things over, and the one girl screamed really loud like a horror movie scream. Like a banshee, just full on squeal. I’m sure they did not know this, but I have cataplexy. It’s part of narcolepsy, like I have type one which is narcolepsy with cataplexy. Cataplexy is basically sleep paralysis, it feels just like it. Strong emotion triggers cataplexy, and it’s sort of a sliding scale so sometimes it’s just tingling and sometimes it’s like being on Toy Story when someone yells “Andy’s coming!” I’ve only had full drop cataplexy a handful of times so my cataplexy isn’t super severe. So when she squealed, my knees buckled and I fell onto all fours. I’m not sure what the goal was here. I just yelled “what the fuck” and she said she’d gotten scared. I didn’t believe her because it just didn’t sound like any of that. When I went back to my room to grab the last of my things though, I heard them all giggling about it and how it was better than they’d hope. I’m not 100% certain, but I think they recorded it. So if you see a video going around about where a girl falls to her knees after someone screams, that’s me. My only theory is that they knew I hadn’t been out to pee and wanted to get me to pee myself? But I mean it didn’t work. It was just totally bizarre. My new flat mates are lovely! We really hit it off socially even! The flat is clean, like there’s nothing gross going on at all. I feel like I can eat in the kitchen without catching salmonella or E. coli or something. It’s such a huge difference! Thank you guys so much for the support!! I wanted to get to respond to comments, but when I woke up comments had been disabled. Thank you so so much!! This was such an unbelievable nightmare, and you guys really helped with your advice and keeping me sane. I did take photos when I moved out because even though there is a locking door knob you could easily open if with a credit card I’d something. That was really solid advice! Thank you so much!!   Update From OOP - from June 22, 2022 Oh wild, I had no idea!!They did not get evicted. The longer I was in the complex the more I realised how dodgy management was! I ended up living with some super Christian girls, or so they claimed but never acted, who didn’t like me for wearing black clothes and being more goth-vibes. They constantly complained to management about me, saying I was having seances? Which like, 1 no I wasn’t but more importantly 2 there’s no reason I couldn’t? Like?? Religious discrimination, but okay. Management tried to evict me over this, citing the roommates from hell story as proof I’m an awful flatmate. She said yeah, nobody does shit like piss all over everything, so you must have really deserved it. It was… impressive, for lack of a better word.My dog is doing great! I’m… in acceptable condition. I will be okay. Im still getting through the hard part, I guess. Places you can afford when you’re poor are always terrible, you never know what you’ll get. It’s still better than there, tho.   Reminder - I am not the original poster. submitted by /u/joshually to r/BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]

Title pretty much sums it up to be quite honest. Worked at a Burger King for a few years and I was usually the one to wipe down tables when the storefront got a little empty a few times a day. The typical procedure for this was to wipe the table with a dry paper towel to remove crumbs, sanitize with a spray bottle, then wipe down with a wet towel. One day a customer came in and saw me wiping tables. He sat there and watched me wipe all the tables till I got to the one next to him and he says to me "You should be wiping down the chairs too, customers like to sit on clean chairs just like they do eating on clean tables". I told him that we do clean the chairs, but we usually do this only once a day unless one has a spill or something and I usually just shake off any crumbs that are on chairs. I go to the next table after saying this and he goes "GREAT! So you aren't going to wipe down the chairs after I just told you to!". Obviously I would not use the same towel to clean tables as chairs, but because he said it in a rude tone, I did not want to say that I will gladly come back and clean chairs (what my manger would want of me), so I told him that I had only had one towel for now and that was all. I do not think he understood that I meant I shouldn't use the same towel, and goes "WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING??!!". I then ask him to stand up so I could wipe his chair, and he gladly complies. I also asked him to lift his food and wiped his table directly after with the same towel and told him and put his food right back saying: "GREAT! Now you shit where you eat". submitted by /u/EDBTZ619 to r/MaliciousCompliance [link] [comments]

Does anyone who has been working from home have a similar style of working where they they just do maybe 1o to 30 seconds of a task and then leave it and start another task, and then keep circling around multiple times? I find it keeps my motivation level up... because although I can't be bothered to do a task for a good solid unbroken 10 minutes, I know if I keep moving around I can chip away at it. I find that there is some logic to it - like, if it involves waiting for something to dry, or boil, or render, or I need to rest etc. Also, when I leave things out, it's self evident that I must do something with them when I get back. Do some work on the computer then wait for it to do something Then go clean out the bathroom for 10 seconds Get the vacuum out and then plug it in Walk to the kitchen and take a couple of dishes from the machine Start the kettle and get a cup out Walk back to the bathroom and clear the floor to vacuum Go back to the computer and work Remember kettle Go back to kitchen and either start the kettle again poor pour your tea Empty some more dishes Move vacuum Go back to computer and work Facebook Reddit Clean bathroom floor and drop of mug Empty more dishes Fill up water jug for plants Start kettle again Spray cleaning fluid on the bathroom sink Carry bottle into room Work on computer Start a video Stop it Start a podcast Stop it Reddit Water a couple of plants Check task list Ignore task list Go to bathroom and wipe down sink Vaccuum hallway Empty more dishes from dishwasher Move kitchen chairs Check kettle Stare into fridge Vacuum kitchen floor Unplug vacuum Go back to work Reddit Facebook Tinder Texting go to bathroom and spray toilet Glass cleaner on mirror Wait Water etc etc etc And this will go on all day until the end of the day when you have cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed some floors and done some work and done a couple of other tasks? submitted by /u/letsgocrazy to r/ADHD [link] [comments]

[first] [prev] [next] Oddly enough, Vuxten recognized the barely visible name on the tank's barrel. Black Betty was barely visible through the black carbonization, the soot, and the warping of the warsteel, the barrel twisted and sagging slightly. There was a hole clean through the tank, silently showing everyone that the crew compartment had been completely blown out. The armor was pierced in three other places, not counting the jagged teeth formed when the engine had blown out through the back deck. The tank was still smoking, the insulation, molycircs, and other synthetics still burning inside the heavy 1,000+ ton hull of the heavy tank. It was surrounded by destroyed PAWM, sitting in the middle of a crater that Vuxten could see the striations of, showing that the crater had been pounded deeper by no less than four other detonations. Barrel bull? Something new? Vuxten wondered as he opened the channel. "All troops. Ahead slow, keep an eye out. Whatever's tough enough to take on Third Armor could eat us like popcorn," he warned. One by one the icons flashed. His men were rested, heat and slush were back down, repairs taken care of. The Division had taken 297 casualties, all WIA, not a single KIA, although Second Lieutenant Yrektarm had made a good attempt at it when a Whipsnapper Dwellerspawn had broken the Telkan's neck. Another tank slid by, then another. Then a pocket of a half dozen, all backed up together, facing outwards, all of them missing their tracks. They were in the middle of a cluster of craters that were full of the slowly liquifying bodies of the Dwellerspawn. "Something bad happened here," Vuxten said softly to nobody in particular. --bad feeling boss-- 471 said. "You and me both, buddy," Vuxten replied. He looked around. Here and there were the sprawled bodies of troops of V Corps. He frowned, looking at them. None of them were in heavy armor. Not even adaptive camouflage with protective plating. They were all wearing OD green cloth, white name patches, large rank on their sleeves, and what looked like metal helmets. "Recognize that gear?" Vuxten asked. --nope nope helmet steel not warsteel steel steel-- 471 sent back. --no armor no personal protective fields some wearing gas masks most not weird weird weird-- "All units, stay back from the dead Terrans. There's something weird going on and I don't like it," Vuxten sent out. One by one the CO's blinked their icons affirmative. Vuxten glanced over at the big human and saw he had stowed his cutting bar and heavy weapon on his hips. He was opening and closing the clawed hands of the suit, electricity snarling through his fingers. Something about the whole thing was making Vuxten's combat antenna go off. "I think that's a live one," one of the Marines in the lead flitter Vuxten was riding in yelled, pointing to the side. Vuxten saw a human get up, clumsily, uncordinatedly, staggering a few steps and falling. The medic vaulted over the side, jogging toward the injured human, which had gone face down again. Vuxten frowned and followed, waving a pair of Privates to join him. "I got you, buddy, I got you," the medic said. They knelt down. "Where are you... by the Digital Omnimessiah!" Vuxten saw it and skidded to a stop. The Terran's ribs and spine were visible. The internal organs were bloated, swollen, blackened and foul looking. The back of the skull was visible, the flesh torn away. The Terran looked up and the medic swore, scrambling backwards. The Terran's face was greyish, the eyes white, the jaws were gnashing, black teeth clashing together in a constant clack clack clack clack. Black blood ran out of the jaws and down its chin. It lunged forward, fingers scraped but not bleeding, two fingernails missing, underneath the fingernails black. The medic got up one arm as the Terran lunged for his face. Vuxten knew that the Marine was wearing warsteel laminate armor capable to shrugging a main gun round from a Lanaktallan tank, or even medium caliber PAWM fire. The Terran knocked the Marine down, onto his back, pressing one hand against the Telkan's chest, the other grabbing the Telkan's wrist. Vuxten heard the Telkan Marine's armor servos scream as the Terran pulled the Telkan's wrist forward and bit the forearm. --DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH PRESERVE US-- 471 screamed over the link. The jaws bit deep, the Terran pulled his head back, and the wiring and internal systems of the suit's forearm stretched between the Terran's chewing mouth and the forearm of the armor. Kinetic gel flowed out of the torn hole, steaming in the cold air. Vuxten could see the hand pressing against the chest of the armor clench, see the warsteel laminate bunch like warm clay. Vuxten stepped forward and kicked, catching the Terran in the ribs. He knew the kick was strong enough to dent battlesteel, he expected his boot to rip a hole through the Terran's body like it was tissue. Instead there was a solid thump and the Terran tumbled off the Telkan, rolling to a stop and facing up. "STAY AWAY FROM THE BODIES!" Vuxten screamed over the comlink, nosing the 'Command Push' icon. The Terran sat up, still chewing, black blood and steaming red hydraulic fluid pouring out of its mouth and it chewed up warsteel laminate and internal systems, including the thin aerogel liner of radiation protection and sensor systems. Vuxten lifted up his stubber and raked the Terran. The antimatter mass reactive gyrojet shells hit with dull thumps, slamming the Terran back down. Vuxten noticed that the uniform had patches of scorched and blackened cloth, bruised looking flesh explosed, rather than the gaping holes that a ten round burst of antimatter rounds should have caused. It sat up again. Vuxten just stared as it opened its jaws and hissed. A stubber barrel came in from the side, pressing against the side of the Terran's head. "Mors est in gloria," Casey's voice sounded out over the speakers. A single shot blew away most of the Terran's head. The body slumped down. "You have to shoot them in the head, sir," Casey said, turning and moving away. "Sergeant!" Vuxten snapped, backing away from the body. Casey stopped. "Yes, sir?" "What in the name of the Digital Omnimessiah, was that?" Vuxten asked. He glanced over and saw that the medic's greenies was spraying sealant on the armor breach. "A myth, a legend, something that some people whisper about at the table at the back of the NCO Club at two in the morning," Casey said, stopping. "Tell me. My men, and you are one of them, are marching into this. What is it?" Vuxten asked. "It goes by different names. Shiva Protocol, the Pale Horseman Project, the Black Cauldron Doctrine, Raccoon City Blues," Casey said. "It's all the same, though." "What's al the same?" Vuxten asked. Casey stepped forward, put his boot on the back of one of the dead that had begun crawling toward one of the flitters. He aimed his heavy magac and pulled the trigger. The soldier's helmeted head exploded. "The walking dead," Casey said softly. Vuxten looked around for a long moment. He tabbed the icon again. "All CO's, make sure your men know that only a shot directly to the head will drop these guys. They aren't the Terrans we've fought with, they're something else. They're already dead." The icons blinked, some showing disbelief, as Vuxten walked back to the flitter. "Move out, but take it slow. Don't engage, don't go to help, don't dismount the vehicle to provide assistance. Keep at least 10 meters from any armored vehicles, hell, any vehicles," Vuxten said. "Headshots put them down, that's about it." There was a crackle of cloud borne thunder and drops started falling. Sporadic at first, more spitting than anything else. It started in spits and spats, the odd drop there and there, and slowly gained momentum until the heavy-metal and debris laden drops were everywhere. Vuxten kept one eye on Casey even as they kept moving forward, trying to link up with whatever was left of V Corps. "How the hell did he bite through warsteel?" Vuxten asked. --not know-- 471 admitted. --bad bad juju-- ----------------- The Atrekna watched with cold satisfaction as more and more of the mammal bipeds slumped to the ground, as if they were puppets who's strings had been cut. More and more of the tanks clattered to a stop and started smoking, the crews slumping in death. The pressure was less and less, but still there. i saw the black dog The primitives were all around them, encircling them, drawing closer and closer. The Atrekna, down to just a handful, noticed that the closer the primitives got, the harder it was to stay aloft. With the beginnings of concern, they realized they couldn't lift higher. They couldn't shift out through temporal mechanics. They tried drifting to one side, hoping to just move above the slowly constricting ring and get beyond it to escape the pressure they were feeling. A multitude of cold whispers reached them. i cried like i was going to die when i realized that i'd never own a kitten my mother refused life extension procedures and died before i was fifty i wish i had died with my wife and children when the mar-gite attacked my mom always said i was never worth a shit i never loved anyone as much as i loved my husband hungry i'm so hungry so cold and you are warm let me touch you saint lentimat burned with white fire as they am-bombed it to eradicate the mar-gite i was nine as i watched being a woman is my favorite part of garrison but i'll be damned if i won't reskin as a male during deployment i saw the black dog on that hilltop The Atrekna pulled away, the thoughts receding, sliding off of them like cold porridge down an iron plate. They shuddered at the cloying, greasy feeling of those thoughts, how they left a physical taste in the Atrekna's mouth. They had been pulled even further down. One attempted to rush the thickening line. It screamed as it flew forward, its feeding tentacles whipping crazily, its eyes bulging, forming a wedge of psychic power in front of it. It tumbled from the sky, landing in the mud. The others watched as it started to get up. It was halfway up when a single bullet hit it on the top of its head, the hydrostatic shock exploding the eyes from the socket even as half of the brain was pulled out the hole by the suction of the round passing through. The dead feet trampled it underfoot into the mud. Look. Look. one said, a thin trickle of hope in its thoughts. More and more were dropping, just slumping to the ground. Two of the great tanks coughed and wheezed, the engines at the back exploding, sending up shards of rent armor and plumes of greasy black smoke. The Atrekna struggled to hold themselves aloft. The line moved closer, the ring tightening. One broke ranks, wrenching itself free of the communal mind, lashing out at the primitives with his psychic power. He was hundreds of millions years old, had survived the ever encroaching darkness, had survived the death of the universe he had been hatched within. The psychic lashings did nothing. He attacked the ground at their feet, turning it to soup. They marched into it and slowly thrashed their way across. He hardened it, trapping them. Still more advanced. A tank ran those over, crushing them. Emboldened, the others joined him in lashing out. Attacking, not the primitives, but the ground they walked on. Hardening the air on either side to slam together two great plates of hardened air. They picked up rocks, using their telekinesis for more than keeping themselves aloft and other minor things. They strained as they began to fight for real. Trying to remember ancient methods, or trying to learn on the fly as they struggled against the primitives advancing. Still they drifted lower. Half of them kept up defenses, deflecting attacks by tank guns, small arms, heavy guns. i just want a pink golfball daddy The others kept attacking, genetic memory and the communal mind guiding them at first, then they grew more and more skilled as they kept fighting. They had rediscovered what had allowed them to overwhelm every race in their galaxy one by one until only the Atrekna reigned supreme. Even so, more and more of the primitives kept just slumping down, collapsing. Tanks exploded for no reason. But they kept fighting. Even as their feet touched the ground and they gathered close, shoulder to shoulder, back to back. hungry i'm so hungry i'm so cold and you're so warm i saw the black dog pink golfball smokey no cheats at cards i can taste nipplegloss and blood i miss hearing the ducklings sing the most wonderful thing i ever heard was a broodcarrier song when i was in icu we're space force we don't die we burn up on reentry for lost terrasol my mother died when i was fifty ------------ Cry Little Sister gave it up with an explosion that threw Trucker against his gun and bounced the front of his helmet off the butterfly trigger of the quad-barrel. Black smoke billowed from the jagged tooth hole in the back deck as the engine started to burn. He climbed out, drawing his pistol, and moved to the front deck. The barrel of the main gun gave a groan as it sagged like warm taffy. Trucker looked around. There was no other tank nearby. His datalink was full of hash, but as near as he can tell, Cry Little Sister had driven four more miles than any other tank. He dug out a pill bottle and took two more. A combination of anti-biotics, immunosuppresents, and nanites. He dry swallowed them as he tucked the bottle back into the pocket of his Legacy Uniform. "Old Blood," he said, his voice a dry rasp. He leaned against the cupola, undid his canteen cover, and took a long drink. The bite of lemon juice helped clear the sticky gross feeling from his mouth. He pulled out his can of chew and repacked his lip, feeling the fever burn through his body. His datalink told him that his fever had dropped to 102.87F, that he was on the mend, his body having fought through the cyberware and bioware rejection. He struggled to his feet, moving over to the pennant snapping in the wind, blinking as rain water ran into his eyes, the cyber eye lenses clicking. He pulled down the pennant that signified that he was the 3AD CO. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket before moving over and sitting down. He sighed, closing his eyes for a long moment. He knew it had been close. Knew that they almost hadn't made it. But he could tell now, through that feeling he had, that "In the Zone" feeling he got, that he'd done it. V Corps had done their part to break the back of the enemy. He tapped his comlink and activated his emergency beacon, signalling that he needed a pickup. ------------- The Atrekna fell one by one, exhaustion, weapons fire, or psychic backlash dropping them one after another. The last one, ankle deep in the mud, shrieked as it fought. It knew it was over, that there was no escape. Dead hands clawed at his protective shields, magac rounds sparked off his protections, the pounding cold waves kept his abilities pinned. He was alone against a thousand. But he refused to go down easily. -------------- "Got a beacon, sir," Vuxten heard. "Who?" Vuxten asked, straightening up from where he'd been staring at the surrounding scenery. "Third Armor Division Commander." "How far?" Vuxten asked. "Fifteen miles," the Lance Corporal said. "Divert course. Let's see if Trucker's still alive," Vuxten said. He saw Casey swerve to keep pace with them. ----------- Trucker reached up and touched his implant. "All units, all units," he gasped, feeling the fever twist his guts. "Gurgi is," he coughed and spit juice over the side. "Gurgi is brave and bold." ---------- The Atrekna was beset on all sides. Moaning, gnashing jaws, clawing hands pressing against the psychic shields that should have torn apart any who got too close. It had retreated into a building, its back against the wall, as more and more pressed in, moaning and gnashing, trying to reach the Atrekna. There was a cold wind that the Atrekna felt in its bones. It tasted rotting blood and bad meat. With a sigh, the primitives all collapsed. Not one at a time, but all at once. It stood there for a long moment. It felt cold satisfaction as it managed to lift itself a few inches up and glide from the house. ----------------- Trucker saw the blinking warning on his implant. DECOMMISSION FAILURE - ONE (1) UNIT He tried again. "Gurgi is brave and bold." The warning kept flashing. He sighed. One out of tens of thousands wasn't bad. He struggled to his feet and moved over to sit on the edge of the tank. He could see one of the Telkan Marine fast grav-lifter strikers heading toward him, see the markings of First Telkan Marine Division on it. He squinted and frowned. There was what had to be a Novastar power armor jogging alongside. Which was strange, since it was a court martial offense to even have the templates in a database. The ground effect grav lifter slid to a stop and Trucker's implant ID'd the highest ranking and the Novastar pilot. "Lieutenant Vuxten, Sergeant Casey," Trucker said, standing up. "General," Vuxten said. He shifted to the side. "Looks like we're your ride." "I'm gonna need a medical clinic," Trucker said, accepting the assistance of getting down from the tank and into the lifter. It bobbled a bit as he got his feet out from under him. "First, though, I have to take care of something." "What, sir?" Vuxten asked. Trucker pointed in the direction Cry Little Sister was pointing. "There's a Black Cauldron failure that way. About two miles. I need to fix it." "Oh," Vuxten said. "Follow the General's direcctions." ----------------- The Atrekna glided out of the house, through the doorway, satisfaction filling him. He could tell he'd be able to take to the sky again, be camouflaged again. The oppressive pressure was gone. He could feel more enemy approaching, but they'd take almost a full minute to reach him and by that time his psychic powers would have moved him beyond their reach. The Atrekna gathered its power. From the shadows of the doorway one of the primitives lunged out. Bluish face, eyes covered with a white film, black teeth clacking as the jaws gnawed on empty air. The Atrekna screamed as those cold hands grabbed him, pulled him down. He struggled, and only succeeded in landing in the mud with the primitive on top of him. The pink enamel on the nails flashed as it tore away the Atrekna's feeding tentacles. The teeth sunk deep into flesh and ripped away mouthfuls that the primitive chewed and swallowed. The Atrekna screamed again as the pink painted nails sunk into his flesh and pulled out a double handful of things the Atrekna would have preferred to remain inside. hungry so hungry i just want a pink golfball i'm so cold and you're so warm i'm so hungry ------------------ "Only one decommisioning failure," Trucker said, leaning against the side of the lifter. The big General was sitting on the bed of the vehicle, being checked over by one of the medics. "Not bad, but by Chromium Saint Peter, I wish I hadn't had to do it." Vuxten just nodded, his mind reeling at what Trucker had explained. "I'm going to have to resign my field command," Trucker said, his voice exhausted. "I'll never command men in combat again." "Why?" Vuxten asked. "Because of what I've done. My men will never trust me again," Trucker said. "Not ever. They'll all know just how far I'll go to attain victory." Vuxten wasn't sure he understood, but stayed silent as Trucker kept talking, the fever loosening his tongue. "They've always wondered. Just how far I'd go if I was pushed to the wall," Trucker said. "It wasn't for me. It wasn't for some stupid medal or commendation or a ribbon to attach to the guidon, it was always about one thing." Vuxten just nodded. "Save the civilians, stop the war as fast as possible, apply firepower with precision," Trucker half raved. "But my men will never trust me to lead them into combat again after what I've done." "I'm sure they will, sir," Vuxten said. seeing a cluster of ruins drawing closer. There was a single building that the grav-lifter angled toward. "Not after this, kid. Not after this," Trucker said. The grav-lifter slowed and came to a stop. Vuxten could see an OD green clad figure, the cloth almost black in the rain and the fluids that soaked it, crouched down next to a torn apart purple form. "I'll handle it," Casey broke his silence. "I'll come with you," Vuxten said. "If you insist, sir," Casey's voice was cold. "I would not advise this course of action, Casey," Lozen said, appearing in a window. "I need to be the one to do it," Casey said slowly. "I can see who it is from here." --you get sudden pucker feeling-- 471 asked, "Yeah, real bad," Vuxten said softly on the private channel. Still, he vaulted over the side, landing with a splash in the water of a puddle. The heavy Novastar power armor suddenly unfolded and Vuxten stared. Casey was wearing a body suit that was soaked with sweat. As Vuxten watched Casey reached up, grabbed the memory metal cable embedded in his eye socket, and slowly withdrew a three inch long needle. He turned and opened a small panel, removing a pistol. "Let's go, sir," Casey said. Vuxten was quiet as they walked up to the crouched figure. When they got close the dead face raised and the figure hissed, an inhuman sound made all the more horrible by the white filmed eyes, the blackened purple tongue, the black teeth, and the cold bluish skin. But Vuxten recognized her. Casey stepped forward and put the barrel of the pistol to her head. "Goodbye, Peel," Casey said. "Mors est in gloria." The sound was muffled, a small thing after just over four days of constant fighting. The back of her head exploded, a blackish fan of blood, brains, and tissue. The woman dropped on top of the dead Atrekna as Casey stood there. He fired twice more into the back of her head. --ooooh boy-- 471 said. Vuxten followed Casey silently as they walked back. Casey paused, turning and looking into the back of the lifter. "Trucker," he said. The General looked up. "I'm applying for a transfer out," Casey said, his voice empty, dead, leeched of all emotion. "Out of V Corps." Trucker just nodded, his eyes shielded. "I see you again, Trucker," Casey said softly, but perfectly audible even over the low rumble of thunder, the hiss of rain, the pinging of cooling and heating metal. "I'll kill you." Trucker just nodded as the lightning in the sky was reflected by the lenses of his cybereyes. Vuxten suddenly understood. [first] [prev] [next] submitted by /u/Ralts_Bloodthorne to r/HFY [link] [comments]

http://imgur.com/gallery/852uIvd I remember being a total homebrewing newbie. I was so excited about my new hobby that I wanted every day to be a brew day -- and I'd make it one if I could get away with it. The only problem was that I was making beer way faster than I could drink it, and I had yet to amass a collection of bottles to create a comfortable margin between my input and output. Hell, I still try to gather bottles when it is convenient. And, when I asked for help, I got a few totally great suggestions but none of them really seemed to work very well for me in my circumstances. So, I thought I'd share a few more tips that I don't see mentioned often on the internet. Getting bottles: Besides drinking beer, looking on craigslist/Facebook, asking friends, or hitting up the neighborhood bar, here are a few suggestions I figured out on my own. One is your local homebrew shop. Mine has a "free pile" by the door. Of course you could buy some new bottles from them if you want, but when you're just starting out and you need like 50 or 100 of them before you can rack your next batch, it helps to have some free ones to supplement. The next best suggestion I have: the recycling center. Our curbside recycling service doesn't allow glass in the can that the truck picks up, so occasionally i have to actually drive my glass jars and such to the recycling center. If you have a self-service recycling center where you just sort it yourself into various dumpsters, you can find a lot of bottles just by picking whatever is within arms reach. One final suggestion that isn't as efficient but doesn't require a special trip is to just keep your eyes open when you go for a walk. Lots of places where I like to go for hikes or nature walks are also frequented by adolescents (chronologically or just mentally) who like to drink beer and leave their empties behind for other people to clean up for them. If you can find some that they didn't break (rare, since those types of folks apparently find breaking empty bottles to be irresistibly entertaining), you can clean up some litter AND bolster your collection. A win-win! Cleaning bottles: So you've got a bunch of bottles, but they have labels stuck with them. They're probably also full or dirt, sticks, stagnant water, piss, cigarette butts, etc. They might also have hepatitis or something on them, who knows. Gross. Get yourself a couple of buckets or garbage cans. The first one should just be plain water to use for pre-soaking to get some of the yeast, dirt, and used condoms out. This isn't strictly necessary but it helps. Here is a trick no one told me: fill the other container with a solution of water and oxyclean. You can also use one-step sanitizer; I assume oxyclean is cheaper but if you use one-step for sanitizing the leftovers can be used for soaking bottles. Then, sink all of your bottles in this solution and let them soak for a while. Eventually, the oxyclean/one-step will remove almost anything; labels, leftover adhesive, petrified yeast. It will even strip or at least soften up the really sticky kind of adhesive, or some painted-on labels. Once spring time hits, and it isn't freezing overnight, I keep a big 30 gallon garbage can with a lid outside my back door for empties. I fill it about 2/3 full of water and mix in an entire large tub of oxyclean. Then whenever I empty a bottle of beer I just throw it in the can to soak until I feel like washing bottles. Oxyclean at that dilution will clean a lot of material off of your bottles but it will also leave a little bit of a film/crud behind. Also, after a while, the solution will start to become kind of gross even though it is still potent at removing labels and stuff. So, I like to give them a quick once-over with soap, or at least a good scrub and rinse with clean water. There are a couple of tools that are useful. The first is a bottle brush. These are cheap and way better at reaching inside the bottle than just spraying water or shaking. The second tool, and another trick no one told me, is steel wool. This stuff is awesome. Steel wool will get almost anything off of glass, but it won't scratch your bottles. Hopefully a long soak in the oxyclean will strip off or at least loosen up most of the stuff, but if not, steel wool for the outside and a bottle brush for the inside should finish the job. The recycling center, oxyclean, and steel wool were three things no one suggested but they make amassing and cleaning a bunch of bottles a low-cost, low-effort task. I hope this is helpful. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. submitted by /u/MiciousVammal to r/Homebrewing [link] [comments]

I work at a rest-stop diner in a town people pass through as quick as they can on their way to something, or someone, better. It’s called Lucky’s, which is a little ironic because if you’ve ended up here you’re anything but. If you stay too long the dust settles. Working at Lucky’s you never see the same licence plates twice, or faces for that matter. I’ve lost count of the amount of times the answer to my “Where you heading?” has been “Anywhere but back.” The lights flicker more often than not, and the jukebox sometimes spits out songs that aren't on the index cards, but the coffee’s hot, and most people who try them say the pancakes are the best they’ll ever have, and I’m inclined to agree. The embroidered name tag on my uniform reads Isabella, but that ain’t even close to my real name. It was my mom's. Lucky’s has been here a long time. I wear it because I like hearing her name said by other people. It’s like she’s still here, still coming up in conversation. Like she might walk through the door any second and isn’t buried in the cemetery just past the strip club. Lucky’s is also always open. Always. Working long shifts serving drifters and truckers and runaways, those who have become impermanent out on the highways, you get to know how to read people pretty quick. When you move around that much, always on the road, you leave parts of yourself behind sometimes, lost between the miles. Sometimes, people are just driving because there’s nothing else left to do. Working at Lucky’s I’ve seen all sorts of lost things. I once saw a man hit a deer with his truck and pull over to bury it in the red dirt, digging as the sun went down, tears a steady flow down his face as he fought the ground to cover up what he had done. I once had a man I recognised from the news leave me a blood stained $20 as a tip, sad-eyed in a denim jacket that barely hid the gun taped to his ribs. I once saw a one-armed girl no more than sixteen stand up on the roof of her car and sing, until a coyote came and sat in front of the hood, howling along. I once saw two women fistfight in the parking lot in the night outside, until one was spitting blood and teeth and then they kissed in the blue lights of the police car that happened to pass them by, faces lit up red and shining. I’ve seen the highway on fire, lines of flames between tires as the asphalt set itself alight in the heat. I’ve seen roadside baptisms, preacher pulled up with a van and a kiddie pool. I’ve seen things walking out in the desert just beyond reach of the neon sign for the motel that don’t look quite like people, shifting out in the blue night. I met a woman who showed me a photograph of the place she was buried. I often meet people who you talk with a while until their faces start to flicker, can’t quite hold up the pretence that long. I’ve met people who have to be invited inside, before they can cross the threshold. I’ve met some lovely members of a sacrificial cult who tipped well and were oh so polite, even when they asked me if I’d consider letting them harvest me. But this is a story about - well, you read the title. It was a Friday and I was working a night shift. I prefer nights, because when I drive home I can pretend for a while that I’m going to follow the taillights of the car in front until I leave everything in my rearview mirror, until it gets light and the desert changes to ocean, like if I rolled my windows all the way down I’d taste salt on the air. That, and I’m one of the only waitresses, shall we say, qualified, to deal with the night customers. Besides, tips are always better when the moon is out. We only have three true regulars in Lucky’s, and only two had showed so far. Rose-Marie, our first and most frequent regular, was sat by the window in her brown fur coat, always drawn about her shoulders come rain or shine. Not that it ever rained here. Her hair was long and white down her back, like the moon through a glass. She waved over to me, gracing me with a wink that made her crows feet deepen, all the more beautiful for it. Rose-Marie liked whiskey in her tea. Sometimes, she fed cake crumbs to the voodoo dolls she carried in her pockets. She was also a chronic insomniac and liked the company of Lucky’s when sleep was hiding from her. She continued to shuffle through the deck of cards she had already set up on the table top. I watched her thumbs flipping over two jokers. Rose-Marie liked to divine the future, when she had the time. She used a frayed pack of hotel playing cards, and if she was in a good mood she’d read your coffee grounds. I didn’t ask her too much, because those coffee grounds had a startling way of coming true. Table 6 was empty, and spotless as usual. It was the only table without a salt shaker, and the only one I never placed cutlery on. Only one person ever sat there. Our second regular, Jones, was sat in his usual booth, dregs of his black coffee held tight between his hands, badge resting on the table. He had his eyes closed, head bent down like he was repenting, steam curling off the lip of the mug and wrapping round his fingers. Jones was my favourite of our customers, not that I’d ever tell him. I walked past the booth and slid a bowl of sugar packets along the tabletop until it hit the mug with a soft clink. He jumped, reaching for his holster out of habit, until his eyes focused and he saw me. He smiled, embarrassed, and it changed his face, dragging him back to life. When he smiled it was like a storm in a drought, made you want to stand and watch, and maybe stay out in it just a while longer. I wanted to put my hands over his where they had resumed their place on the mug, to feel the second hand heat through his palms. Sometimes I can sense the sad in people just by the feel of their skin. They carry it around with them, bone deep, trying to hide it from the world. But sometimes you can lift it from them for a minute or two, if you have enough kindness spare. It doesn’t take much, most times. Jones was too young to be that sad. And yet. “Tired today?” I gestured with the coffee pot to his half empty cup. Everyone knew about the little girl he’d pulled from the dumpsters outside the swimming pool last week. She was the fifth one missing in three months. I could tell from the shadows like purple thumb prints beneath his eyes he’d been dreaming about her. She’d been found without her shoes on. He’d carried her to the ambulance in her socks, pink with little daisies on ‘em, small in his arms like she was asleep. Lou the fry cook had cried when I’d told him that the other day. I really liked Lou. He was almost too big to fit through the service door, and had a tattoo of his dog just below the one of the angel of death on his shoulder. Lou sheds a tear for most things. The dead racoons we’re always finding by the backdoor with their hands missing. Whenever there’s a new missing poster plastered over the cracked glass of the phone booth in the parking lot. Every time he hears I Will Forever Hate Roses when it decides to pop up on the jukebox. Big guy, bigger heart. “Always tired,” Jones said as I poured. Another girl had gone missing yesterday. As I poured, I made sure to brush his thumb where it rested on the cup handle with the inside of my wrist, lifting out that sadness as far as I could. He smiled up at me, shy, and I smiled back before I could stop myself. I walked on to the next booth, two truckers with faces that had seen too much sun. One was showing the other the photos of his new baby in his wallet. He had tobacco stained teeth, a scab on his cheek and wind-chapped lips - and his smile was the most beautiful damn thing as he talked about his kid, lit up like christmas morning. He showed me too as I refilled his coffee, and I stayed and talked to them a while. The other trucker, with gold back teeth, told me how he’d used to drive pigs, but couldn't handle the guilt when he handed them over to the slaughterhouse. Said he’d look right into their pink faces through the slats and their eyes looked right back, bright and pleading like they knew what he’d done. Said he still dreamt about them. Now he drove freezers of seafood, specialty deliveries for fancy hotels. He’d never seen the ocean. Lou slammed the bell from the depths of the kitchen and I got back to work, taking orders from a woman with a Labrador who ordered hot dogs for them both, and three teenage boys in their blood-stained varsity jackets in the corner, who had ten dollars between them and asked for as many waffles as they could get. They often came in on full moons, leaving their bikes chained up in the parking lot. They were always hunting something, with their baseball bats, backpacks filled with bullets and their daddies’ guns, but they were nice kids so I always gave them extra scoops of ice-cream. Besides, I knew they needed the energy, because when they were hunting they had to run fast. Real fast. There used to be four of them. I cleared the table from the two women at the next booth on my way back. They looked to be twins, both dressed in long silk skirts and hiking boots, red hair piled up messy on top of their heads. Neither acknowledged me, not out of rudeness but because they were too preoccupied, packing up their bags, overspilling with maps and notebooks. I spied a roll of duct tape and a bottle of vodka in there too, along with some stakes and crucifixes. They were deep in conversation, waving their hands and I caught a little of it as I stacked their empty glasses, lipsticked round the rims. “I know where I buried him Sylvia-,” “You don’t know jackshit! We dug for hours, and-” My mom always taught me eavesdropping was rude, so I left them to it and headed into the kitchen. But I got the sense that wherever they had left, whoever he was, he certainly wasn’t there no more. I felt like telling them, but like my mom said, it’s not polite to listen to other people’s conversations. You never know what you’ll wish you hadn’t heard. Lou was dancing to the radio, swaying his hips to Sugar Hill as Dolly sang down the wires. He waved at me with the spatula he was using as a microphone. Carlos handed me a plate of pancakes. Carlos had worked here so long he’d known my Mom, and was the only one who new my real name. He sometimes came with me on the weekends to change the flowers on her grave. He always brought her desert flowers, growing from the same earth she was. Carlos was also the only one who knew the recipe for the Lucky’s pancakes, and the only one that could cook them right. On days when he wasn’t working, we had no pancakes. Simple as. That was just the way it went. I’d learnt that the hard way, but that’s another story. Along with the pancakes, came a warning. “He’s back.” He gestured through the doors. “Table 6.” Our final regular had showed. It had been a while since he’d been around. I hadn’t even seen him come in, but that wasn’t unusual. He moved in mysterious ways. I raised an eyebrow. Shit. Carlos raised one back. Oh shit. He tossed me the salt with a grimace, and I filled the pockets of my apron. Lou banged around in one of the staff lockers for a moment, until he emerged triumphant, waving a bible that had definitely seen better days. He placed in on the counter next to the syrup jugs and flipped to a random page. We leant over his huge shoulders to read what it said. “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked.” Lou shrugged and patted me on the shoulder. I don’t get paid enough for this shit. I took the pancakes to table 6, which had been empty the last time I’d looked. It was now very much occupied. The man sat at table 6 was smiling as I walked over. If you could call it a smile. It was more like rictus, lips straining deep red at the corners of his face. His eyes kept darting from side to side, too fast to count, like his pupils couldn't make up their mind where they should be. His hands shook as I got closer, hovering like flies on a carcass. I tried to lean as far away from him as I could as I placed the plate on the tabletop, but as I pulled my hands away he darted his neck out fast, whipping his head up and tilting his face towards me. He sniffed in, hard, eyelids fluttering. He giggled, shrill like it was stuck on the roof of his mouth. I recoiled, trying to hide the urge I had to run back to the kitchen. There’s something about hearing a grown man giggle that makes the skin crawl. “Can I get you anything?” I asked, faking bright. “I’d take your name.” He gripped one of the pancakes in his fist, turning it to mush. I tapped the name tag on my uniform. He shook his head, grinning, shoulders almost vibrating with this strange fluid roll as his smile slipped for a second, front teeth jutting suddenly, tongue sharply poking out. Filth was caked under his nails, red like the dirt on the sides of the road. Then he was smiling again, swaying slowly from side to side, feral, in his hunting jacket. His hair hung in greasy strings around his ears, like blonde rattails, and they swung with him, back and forth. “Isabella, Isabella, Isabella. It don’t suit.” He suddenly slammed his hand up to his face, shovelling the crushed pancake into the gaping hole of his wide mouth. I jerked back, the movement was so sudden. I shoved my hands into my apron, reaching for the salt, and his eyes narrowed. “There’s no need for that,” came a voice from behind me. It rolled across my shoulders, deep, to the bone. Mr Prince. I turned to face our third regular, relief mixing with fear in a swirling pit in my chest. Kinda like that feeling you get at a fairground in midsummer, when you’ve been on a carousel too long, and part of you knows you need to get off, but the other part doesn’t want to leave because you know as soon as you stand still you’re gonna be sick. Mr. Prince had that effect on people. Mr. Prince was dressed, as always, in his black pinstripe. His stetson was darker than the night outside, and his boots shone like they were wet. If you didn’t notice the upside down crucifixes embroidered daintily onto his custom lapels, you’d think he was just a man with money, maybe mixed up in something a little shady, like oil, or pharmaceuticals. He was handsome by the way of his jaw, with his bone white smile, but his black sunglasses were balanced on the bridge of his nose, silver rimmed and gleaming, hiding his eyes as usual. When he spoke it was a drawl, dragged up from the depths of the South. “I’m sorry for my… acquaintance. He’s a little…” Mr Prince glanced at the man sat at table 6 as he panted with his tongue hung out, like a dog. “…over excited.” Mr Prince sat down and the lights above the booth flickered. He tilted his hat back on his head and the jukebox coughed and skipped, and suddenly Robert Johnson was on and singing about that damn crossroad again. Mr Prince popped a Marlboro Red between his teeth, and pushed the window open a sliver with the knuckles of his left hand. The silver pentagram ring on his wedding finger clacked against the glass. Mr. Prince smiled, the way snakes do when they’re watching you from the grass on their bellies. The cigarette was now smoking between his teeth, although he hadn’t moved. “Besides, Leroy ain’t the type for salt. He’s just a man.” He looked him up and down and his top lip curled. “Barely.” He turned to Leroy. “I see you started on my pancakes. But what’s the point of good food if it ain’t for sharing.” Leroy giggled that strange high sound that made me want to run, and shook a little. Everything about Leroy made me nervous, fight or flight getting ready to flood my system. Mr Prince handed Leroy a menu. “Order whatever you want.” He leant forward and the lights flickered. Leroy ordered four cheeseburgers, and glass of milk. “Well, if that’s all!” I managed. I could feel Leroy’s eyes clinging to my back as I left. Rose-Marie waved me over before I could get back to the safety of the kitchen. “I wouldn’t worry about him, darlin’.” She crossed herself, and tapped the card on top of the pile. The Jack of Spades. It had its eyes scratched out. But not by Rose-Marie. It looked like it had been printed that way for years. “We won’t be seeing him again.” She wasn’t talking about Mr. Prince. She cupped my cheek and I leant into it, her hand rough with age, but warm. I could tell she thought I looked tired. She paid for her tea and toast, and walked out into the warm night waiting outside the doors. I finally made it back into the kitchen and was immediately attacked. Cold water doused me in the face and I threw up my arms on instinct, trying to protect my hair. Lou aggressively squirted me in the face with the spray bottle we also kept in the staff locker, the kind you use for tending house plants. Ours was filled with holy water. “Lou! Jesus fuckin’ Christ, get off I’m-“ I sputtered, and he sprayed me again. I spat holy water out, dripping down the front of my dress and wiped it from my eyes, makeup running a little. I grabbed the bottle from his hands. “I think I’m good.” I wasn’t really mad though, better safe than sorry, especially when it comes to possession. “Sorry! Just checkin’.” Lou sheepishly handed me a dish towel. “Already did me ’n’ Carlos.” He looked down at his shoes, awkward. He was a foot taller than me and a decade older, and I hid my smile because he was twisting the toe of his boot back and forth like a little kid been kept after class. Carlos kept his eyes firmly fixed on his hands as he started flipping patties, but I could sense him holding back a laugh, desperately clenching his teeth. I narrowed my eyes and aimed the spray bottle at him. “Maybe you need some more,” I threatened. Lou snorted and then Carlos was laughing and I was too, and that heavy feeling that had hovered over us since Mr. Prince had walked in lifted. Sometimes when things get too dark, all you can do is laugh. Mom always said that when shit gets rough, you can either choose to laugh or cry. I never saw my mother cry. It was coming up on 3 in the morning as I took the burgers back to table 6. Leroy visibly drooled and clapped his hands as I walked over. I put the plate in front of him as quick as I could but as I pulled back, his head darted forward and he licked the inside of my wrist. His tongue was long and wet against my pulse. I recoiled like I’d been bitten and he laughed, shrill and manic. “You taste better than they will,” he said, grinning and gesturing to the burgers. Mr. Prince watched this unfold, calm and unreadable like the sky before summer lighting burns down a tree. I frantically wiped my arm on my apron, but I could still feel that tongue on my skin as if I’d left my hand in his mouth. I fought off the tears that suddenly burned at the corners of my eyes, because something told me Leroy would enjoy them just a little too much. I shuddered, and cleared Mr. Prince’s plate. “Tell Carlos the pancakes were… good as hell,” he said, from behind his sunglasses. Then he chuckled, low and raspy, as if something he’d said was funny. He popped another Marlbro between his teeth and it started to glow, as Leroy shovelled meat down his throat. I tried not to gag as I watched it clog beneath his long nails. I walked by Jones on my way back. He waved me over, eyes creased with worry. He ran a hand over his face, as if he was trying to wipe all the bad things away. “Is he botherin’ you?” He gestured over to Leroy who was rocking back and forth drinking his milk. Jones suddenly looked so tired, uniform creased as his face, looking fifty instead of his twenty two. “Nothing I can’t handle,” I shook my head and thought about Rose-Marie. “We won’t be seeing him again.” It felt like hours waiting for Leroy to finish. I took the order of a man with a butterfly tattooed on his neck, and some truckers pouring Jim Beam into their coffee. They asked me for an extra cup which they placed at the empty seat on their table, for absent friends, they said. I cleaned down the counter top, restocked the sugar packets, and took out the trash, ignoring the man in the rabbit mask that often waits out by the dumpsters. As long as you don’t look at him, he doesn’t bother you. I refilled coffee cups, and took the orders of the large group of biker girls that came in, leather clad and road weary. At 3:03am, Mr. Prince stood. Leroy had licked his plate clean and was sitting still, staring up at him with his teeth bared in a smile, hands gripping the table top so hard his knuckles were going white as milk. Mr. Prince handed me a roll of bills wrapped in black plastic that I knew better than to count. He tipped his hat. “See Leroy. We all gotta pay eventually,” he said. He leaned in and spoke softly. “For I will not acquit the wicked,” he smiled. He held out his hand to Leroy, palm flat, waiting. Leroy’s hands shook as he reached into his hunting jacket and pulled out a pair of shoes. A child’s shoes, small enough that both could fit in one hand. Little pink sneakers, dirty, with brown stains on the toes that I knew could only be one thing. Mr Prince considered them a moment, under the lights, and shook his head. He seemed like he was sorry, before he handed them to me. “For your man over there. Tell him to dig deeper where they looked last.” He nodded to Jones, who was watching us, his badge gripped in his hand. But Jones knew better than to come over. Mr. Prince turned to Leroy and grinned around his cigarette. “We’ve got a ways to go, the road we’re takin’. They say it’s paved with good intentions.” He chuckled, and I felt sick to my stomach. He took Leroy’s hand, like a child, and they walked out into the night, warm and waiting. The doors swung shut behind them, even though nobody had touched them. The jukebox sputtered, and Chris Rea was on, singing about that road again. I placed the shoes on the table by Jone’s empty coffee cup, and passed on the message. He sat still for a long time after, just watching them on the table top, trying not to cry or scream or punch a hole in the plaster. All I could do was refill his coffee, because when someone is trying to hold themselves together like that, there’s nothing left to say. My shift ended, and I drove myself home, following the taillights in front of me. I knew when I woke up it would be dark, and it would be time for my next shift, but for now, I just drove, dreaming about the ocean and watching the sun come up, like it always does, despite everything. submitted by /u/Coney-IslandQueen to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Throw away account. I know I seem like the asshole but here is the background. I’m 17, I live with my dad and his wife. Fashion is a hobby I have, I like to buy and sell designer clothes. I love to shop for people, I actually make ok money doing this as a part time job. My dad and stepmom make fun of me for it, and call me vain. They don’t think it’s a valuable use of my time, but I don’t care. It’s what I like. Despite making fun of me for my hobby, my step mom constantly borrows my clothes. Often times without my permission. I have told my dad about this, he says not to be selfish. It’s her house, she helps to take care of you. This pisses me off but whatever. I recently saved up a bunch of money and bought a white silk lined Burberry blazer. This is a pretty expensive jacket. My step mother borrowed it for what I’m assuming is thanksgiving, and put it back in my closet with a huge STAIN on it. Like she didn’t even tell me she stained it, and she let the stain SET IN for a day or so in my closet. I went directly to her and said, “what the fuck did you do to my coat?” And she LAUGHED and said she spilled a bit of wine on it and it was no big deal. I could just have it dry cleaned. I asked her if she was going to pay for it, she she said NO!!! And even if I get it dry cleaned, there might be permanent discoloration in the area of the stain. I demanded that she pay for dry cleaning, and if it didn’t work she had to buy me a new jacket. And she laughed again, and said “tough luck”. I fucking lost it at her, cursed at her and got grounded by my dad. I plotted and came up with the idea to empty some wine in a spray bottle and spray some of her white blouses with red wine. I did it. And when she noticed she was furious. She is even telling my dad that she wants me to go live with my mom, even though I only have one semester of high school left. My dad wants me to apologize, but I’m not going to until she pays for my coat. I don’t think I’m in the wrong here, AITA? submitted by /u/throwawayaccunt17 to r/AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]

Obligatory on mobile, not my story, but my mom’s. My mom is very blunt, straightforward, and doesn’t take crap from anyone. When she was a junior in college, she moved into an on-campus apartment complex. What she found when she opened the door were roaches. Lots of roaches. She called the manager of the complex to complain and ask them to come spray. The manager smugly replied, “cockroaches aren’t a problem. And besides, there’s nothing we can do about them.” Later that night, Mom was horrified to find a roach on her toilet paper roll. She had almost used a roach to clean herself. At this moment, she snapped and planned her revenge. She emptied a bottle of applesauce and poked holes in it. The holes were large enough for the roaches to breathe; but small enough so that they wouldn’t escape. She then spent the rest of the weekend collecting every single roach in her apartment. Come Monday morning, mom went to the front office, holding the jar behind her back. Asked to speak to the manager. Manager came out. Mom: hi, I’m (name), I spoke to you Friday regarding my roach problem? Manager: right, and again, it’s not a problem. Mom opened the jar of roaches and dumped them on the managers desk. Manager jumped up and screamed bloody murder. Mom; what? I thought you said roaches weren’t a problem? The manager immediately called an exterminator and mom never saw another roach in that apartment. Edit: my first gold!! Thank you kind stranger! submitted by /u/dancinqueen678 to r/pettyrevenge [link] [comments]

A paranormal circus wasn’t really my kind of thing, but I didn’t have any performances that evening and an anonymous benefactor had sent me a front-row ticket. The sparkling black-and-purple circus tent was packed with people. I admit that I can be a bit skittish sometimes, and the macabre costumes of the undead clowns that would roam the aisles startled me an embarrassing number of times, but the show was a spectacle well worth the scares. The acts were at once chilling and captivating. I found myself holding my breath as the vampiric knife-thrower stabbed silver blades dangerously close to her prey, and gasped with the rest of the audience when the ghoulish acrobats clung precariously to each other in their aerial act. Among the extravagantly dangerous performances, though, the show-stopper was none other than the circus magician. Small and lean and dressed in a purple satin suit, the magician didn’t look any older than seventeen or eighteen. It wasn’t uncommon for young prodigies to enter the performance scene so early, but something about him was different. He exuded a kind of confidence that most wouldn’t learn to have until well into their career, and wore a slightly crooked smile that made him at once charming and dangerous. As for his tricks, they were nothing short of breathtaking. With a wave of his hand, he turned the flowing purple drapes around the aerial silk dancer into fluttering rose petals and effortlessly caught the dancer in his arms. He called a volunteer to the stage, whispered something in his ear, and made him dance like a puppet on its strings. At one point he simply walked onstage and snapped his fingers, instantly engulfing himself in deep violet flames that rose high into the air before slowly sputtering out as he took a small bow, completely unscathed. I rarely found much of a challenge in puzzling out the secrets of other magicians’ routines, since my own familiarity with magic usually made it easy to reason out how others would craft their own tricks. The silk turning into petals was a work of clever setup and practiced timing backstage. The volunteer who got hypnotized was most likely planted there. And while a full-body burn was a bold move, these circus performers were probably used to risking their lives daily. I only began to suspect something was strange when the young magician began to perform a classic stage trick. A slender lady accompanied him onstage and lowered herself into a long wooden crate. Conventionally, the crate would be placed on a specially designed table, but the table onstage was plain. The crate was also commonly wide enough to fold the body into, but this one was a tight fit. The feet sticking out of one side of the crate wouldn’t usually move, but these bobbed as the lady adjusted herself. Mildly impressed, I was beginning to think of what clever trick the young magician had devised when the giant carpenter’s saw bit deep into the crate and the lady began to scream. I gripped the edges of my seat and told myself it was just an act as the magician hacked into the crate. The screams grew louder and more frantic, and the crate rattled as the lady twisted in what appeared to be pain, her feet twitching spastically. Thick red blood began to pool underneath the crate. The magician didn’t so much as blink. His blade and now his hand were stained, and blood dripped from the table as he relentlessly drew the saw back and forth, back and forth. The audience was silent and the lady just kept screaming, until there was an audible crunch and she went completely still. That was a lot of fake blood. I wondered if they had concealed a jug of it somewhere. They must have gotten assistance from some big-shot Hollywood artists to get the black bits and chunks in there. The magician put down his saw and turned the severed halves of the crate towards us to see. The audience gasped and murmured at the very realistic-looking torso-halves. I peered into the crate itself. Other than the grotesque severed body, it seemed to be empty and plain. The magician swiveled the crate-halves back together and smiled. His eyes glittered strangely as he took in the suspense. Then he placed his hands on the crate, closed his eyes, and simply breathed for several long moments. The lady’s eyes snapped open. The audience cheered wildly as the magician opened the crate, helped her to her feet, tidied her now blood-soaked dress, and led her offstage. As the lights dimmed and the stagehands swooped in to clean up the props, I could have sworn I caught the metallic scent of blood. Of all the people who could come up to me, I was intercepted by a demonic clown on my way out. He smiled wide with slit lips and jagged teeth, gesturing for me to follow. “I don’t really need more pictures,” I said. He kept gesturing. I let out a small sigh and followed him through the crowd to one of the side exits. We stepped out into the night and he began to lead me around the back of the circus tent. “Where are we going?” I asked, beginning to grow uneasy. The clown just smiled back at me. I followed as far behind him as I could without seeming rude, which really wasn’t very far at all. Before I knew it, we were removed from the crowds at the very back of the circus yard littered with swampy puddles from the afternoon’s rain. Square black tents about the size of typical New York bedrooms occupied the grounds. The clown turned to me and pointed at one. “You want me to… go inside?” He nodded. I swallowed. The clown stepped back in a comically exaggerated manner, as if to pantomime to me his intent not to harm me. Somewhat encouraged by this, I stepped up to the tent and gingerly brushed the drapes aside. Sitting in the tent at a table with two slender wineglasses, surrounded by glittering yellow fairy lights strung along the walls, was the young magician. Upon seeing me, he smiled, got to his feet, and held out his hand. “Mr. Herring,” he said. “A pleasure to finally meet you.” In retrospect, it was incredibly rude of me to not shake his hand, but hearing him speak for the first time combined with the fact that he knew my name caught me off guard. I blinked, dumbfounded. “You know me?” “Of course. From the Bellagio escape act, right?” “Ah,” I felt myself blush a little. “That was a long time ago.” “Certainly not long enough to forget. Please, come in. I’ve always wanted to speak to you.” Somewhat awkwardly, I took my seat at the table across from the young magician. The clown walked in carrying a tall bottle. “I do hope you like champagne.” I raised an eyebrow. “Are you old enough to…?” The magician laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” “Ah, apologies.” “No, no, it’s really fine.” As I sipped the rose-colored champagne, I couldn’t help but study the young magician’s face. Some of his stage makeup was still on, making his angled jawline and high cheekbones stand out. He wore unsettlingly vivid purple contacts that were covered only by the tips of his long thick eyelashes. He certainly didn’t look old enough for any of this. “Forgive me,” he said quickly, noticing my staring. “I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself. My name is Alexander Chase. On the stage they call me The Mirage.” Hearing those words rang a bell at the back of my mind. I had probably heard some of my colleagues talk about him. “The Mirage,” I echoed. “That’s in the name of the show, isn’t it? The Mirage Carnival.” Alexander smiled. “Yes. This is my show.” “That’s very impressive. Leading an entire circus troupe.” “Thank you very much. I couldn’t have done it without you.” “Without me?” “You inspired me to begin performing. The Bellagio escape struck a deep chord, and since then I’ve followed all of your work. I’ve always wanted to be like you.” This was completely unexpected. I could feel myself swell with pride. “I dare say you may have already surpassed me,” I said. “The tricks today were very impressive.” “You don’t know how much those words mean to me, Mr. Herring.” “Please, just call me Bryan.” Alexander smiled. “Bryan.” The way his tongue formed the sounds sent a quiet chill down my spine. In his voice, my own name became mysterious and dangerous. I was startled off my train of thought when a dozen heavy footsteps broke through the nighttime air, sprinting towards the tent. “What is that?” Alexander cursed. “They found me.” “Who-” “Quiet.” More footsteps scrambled to meet the disturbance. There were shouts of alarm and a loud, resounding crack. I looked to Alexander. He narrowed his eyes at the drapes covering the entrance to the tent. The commotion drew closer with every second. A spray of gunfire tore through the grounds. “Run,” Alexander said. “Don’t let them see you.” Before I could process what he said, he grabbed me by the wrist, turned to the back wall of the tent, and swept his other hand through the air. The black fabric wall rippled and peeled open like a flower blooming. “W-what…” He waved his hand and the fairy lights blinked out, plunging us into the night. As the last of the glow faded, I thought I saw him take something small and shiny from his pocket and toss it on the floor. Then he leaped out through the hole in the wall, yanking me through behind him, and began to run. “Alexander-” “I said quiet,” he snapped in a hushed tone. “And call me Alex.” Voices shouted behind us, the heavy thudding of boots in pursuit. Another round of gunfire tore through the air. I almost dropped to my knees and scrambled for cover, but Alex kept me running. We ran out of the circus yard through a break in the fence and onto muddy dirt roads. My joints cramped up and I almost slipped and fell several times, but my adrenaline kept me going. I risked one look behind us but saw nothing in the dark. Police sirens wailed in the distance. “Bryan,” Alex said. “Huh?” “We’re going to jump.” I strained to see the ground in front of us. Closing in fast was a puddle spanning the entire width of the road, filled with muddy rainwater. “Wait, Alex-” “Jump.” Something in his voice instantly compelled me to leap into the air, hurtling straight for the puddle. I yelped and held out my free hand, bracing myself for a face-first impact into inch-deep mud. Then we broke the surface and sank deep into the cold murky water. It was dark. I couldn’t see anything. I was somehow submerged from head to toe, tiny bubbles swirling around me like I had just dove into a pool. I stretched my legs downwards but couldn’t feel the bottom. Alex squeezed my wrist. Buried in the sounds of rushing water, I could hear my crashing heartbeat. I held my breath and long seconds passed, until we heard the sounds of boots splashing through shallow puddles directly above us. Then they were gone. Alex swam upwards, pulling me along. We broke the surface and pulled ourselves onto a strangely smooth and supple floor. As I caught my breath, soft yellow light flooded the small cubical space. We were back in Alex’s tent, surrounded by fairy lights. Alex’s purple satin suit was dry, and so were my clothes. There was no trace of water on the floor. There was a click behind us. We turned to see the man in full body armor and a helmet with a reflective visor. He held a pistol pointed at Alex. Embroidered on his jacket was a patch that read NSF. “Come peacefully,” he said. Perhaps I was mistaken, but his voice sounded like he was shaking. His pistol wavered, trained between Alex’s eyes. Alex chuckled. “Ah, you’ve got me. I really didn’t want to put Bryan Herring in danger, but you just had to choose today to storm my town.” The armored man’s finger trembled on the trigger. He began to reach for the radio at his hip. I swallowed. “Alex…” “Now that you’ve seen Bryan with me, I guess it’s gotta be either you or him. Easy choice.” Alex snapped his fingers. Deep violet flames sprang out of thin air and engulfed the man. I gasped and scrambled away as the man’s armor caught fire like kindling. Wild gunshots rang out, but the bullets went wide as he twisted and screamed, the flames slowly consuming him. Alex stood still, watching. A thin smile tugged at his lips. His eyes flickered with the flames, barely concealing something deadly behind them. I cowered in the corner, only watching because I couldn’t tear my eyes away. There was no heat to the flames, and instead of the stench of burning flesh, the sweet aroma of roses filled the air. The burning lump of a man crumpled to the floor. Slowly, the screaming diminished to small choking sounds, and after what felt like an eternity, it was quiet. The flames flickered out. There was nothing left but a smudge of soot on the tent floor. “Alex,” I whispered. As the adrenaline sputtered, a million questions filled my head. The young magician let out a small, contented sigh. “Alex,” I managed, this time loud enough to be heard. I was trembling. “You killed someone.” “It was you or him, Bryan.” “How?” “They saw you with me, which put you in danger. I don’t want you to live my life of being pursued. Not that you could survive long.” “But…” He turned to me and put a finger to his lips. “No more.” "Alex, I really need some answers." He stared me down with his unsettling gaze. I don’t know what came over me, but I refused to falter. After a few tense moments, his eyes softened. “One question,” he said. I thought hard, but the million questions overlapped and echoed in an unbearably confusing chorus. In the end, I could really only ask one question. “You’re not human, are you?” Alex smiled. He held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. I looked down at him now, waiting. “No,” he said simply. I nodded. “It’s time for you to go,” he said. “I would love to spend more time with you, really get to talk, but… not today.” “Will I see you again?” “One question.” I pursed my lips. “When you get home, no telling anyone and no calling the police. Got it?” I nodded, again. “It was a true honor meeting you, Bryan. Something I’d looked forward to for years.” Alex stood on the tips of his toes and leaned in close to my ear. “Now, be on your way.” I don’t remember anything after that. When I came to, I was lying in bed in my house. I had a pounding headache, and I wasn’t sure what day or time it was. It felt like I had been asleep for a long time. A quick look around the house revealed that the power cord on my landline phone was cut and the antennae on my Internet router broken off. On my kitchen table was a sticky note with something written on it. Albeit shaky, I could recognize my own handwriting. 1. No telling anyone 2. No calling the police See you again soon. ​ Next submitted by /u/magpie_quill to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Super edit: ok I get it, bleach is amazing. I meant this as an alternative to things you have to use with gloves that works for a ton of stuff in your house, not in a hospital. I don’t keep anything in my house that requires a barrier to use it, just my thing. This is a very handy multi use substance and not a cure all. Please excuse the ghost of Billy Mays; he gets very excited. And yes, we all love dish soap, vinegar and baking soda :D they’re your other best friends Guys! Stop spending money on cleaners that hurt you. 3% Hydrogen peroxide is effective and breaks down into water and oxygen. Got ugly stains or buildup in your toilet? Dump half a bottle of that shit in the bowl and let it work. Norovirus? Peroxide. Mold? Peroxide. Shit you’ve never been able to get out with fucking anything?! Peroxide. Stains in your carpet? Peroxide. Literally (not literally) anything, and it outperforms shitty cleaners that leave residue. It’s also like $1 a bottle. Seriously, keep a few bottles around. Put a spray nozzle on from an empty bottle of something and bam! Sprayable magic cleaner that won’t gas you or create superbugs. No mixing with other shit other than water, nothing smelly. Clean your toothbrush after you’ve been sick, use it as a mouthwash and clean your ears. It’s the ultimate substance for anyone, but especially for the frugal. Cheap, safe (use common sense!), multipurpose, and extremely effective Edit: be warned, if you spot clean your carpet, it will clean that spot very well and make it obvious that the rest of your carpet is dirty! Get a rug doctor, fill it with diluted peroxide and water, and do the rest :D also I have whitish carpet, so maybe not for everyone and not all the time! Edit 2: someone mentioned it can bleach fabrics, so just be careful! Hard surfaces for sure Edit 3: lots of good info in the comments! Read through before using. ONLY USE 3% please! No need to melt your fingertips off. Like all things, good in diluted moderation submitted by /u/switchbladesally to r/Frugal [link] [comments]

So this happened about a month ago and I'm writing this now because I had a nightmare about it last night. I invited 3 of my buddies over to my house for a LAN party, and I prepared for it with tons of snacks and alcohol. I even went and bought a different friend's old Xbox One off him just so I could stop feeling left out (I was a PC and PS4 person beforehand with no one to play with :[ ). The night went extremely well, and in fact, it was one of the best nights I've had in a while. We stayed up all night drinking and playing Monster Hunter, PuBG, and Fortnite in my basement where I have a man cave set up. Now, I am NOT a drinker. I probably drink a beer about once a month when I'm super bored. My friends always joke about it by asking me if the beer in my fridge is the beer they brought over a month ago (it is, but I don't admit it lol). So when I woke up that next morning, I awoke with the biggest hangover I've ever had. I essentially slept through that entire next day on my couch. The thought of cleaning up the beer, liquor, and soda bottles, along with all the chips, dip, and salsa strewn around me didn't even cross my mind, let alone getting off the couch. I just locked the basement door that day (so my SO, Mary, didn't see the tornado wreck in there) and tried sleeping off my hangover. I figured I would clean it up the next day and no harm would be done. Well, actually, a few days go by and I go down into the basement to clean up. To my surprise, I found the door unlocked and slightly ajar. I just figured that I had forgot to lock the door. I was hungover after all and Mary would have said something if it was her. While I'm cleaning, I noticed that my gaming desk was surprisingly clean, which wasn't right because I had definitely spilled crumbs and alcohol all over it two days ago. I credited my dog Rex for the cleanup of my desk and just continued cleaning. After finally finishing, I sat down at my gaming desk and prepared to hunt some beasts with a buddy on Monster Hunter. To my surprise, however, my Xbox wouldn't turn on! I tried plugging it into a different wall outlet but it still refused to turn on. I tried turning on my Xbox manually by pressing the button on it instead of using the controller, but again, it didn't work. Then, I noticed that the power brick had no light on. "Well at least I narrowed the problem down to the power block." I thought to myself as I grabbed the block and unhooked it from the Xbox and outlet. That was my biggest mistake. Right as I unhooked the block from the wall, I felt a burning sensation all over my hand. When I looked down, I saw the most horrifying sight of my entire life. ANTS! ANTS!! ANTS!!!! Hundreds, thousands of tiny ants were pouring out of the power brick! So many, in fact, that I couldn't even see the brick. On top of that, I could barely see my fingers. I was holding it in a cradle fashion so the brick was touching my stomach/chest area as well. Ants were swarming my hands, arms, chest, and pants at this point! As soon as I realized what was happening, I literally jumped up in the air (dropping the block of course, scattering at least 1000 more ants all across the floor) while shouting "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!" I shook my hand hard while using the other to swipe off as many as I could. Then, still screaming and swearing at the top of my lungs, I proceeded to literally rip off my clothes while simultaneously running up the stairs. Mary and Rex had just run over to the top of the basement stairs when they saw me screaming, running, and tearing my clothes off. I ran up those stairs so fast and I plowed right through them as they both let out little yelps as they fell down on opposite sides of me. I proceeded into the garage and grabbed the bug spray. It said it was for flying insects but I figured it would work anyways, and thank God it did. I sprayed my arms and brushed off the last remaining ants. I stood there, catching my breath and watched the remaining ants as they shriveled up and died. I was furious. I always got and hated the feeling of something crawling on my skin when watching insect documentaries and such but this time, it was real. And they killed my Xbox. Now, I was going to kill them all. As I went inside with the can of bug spray and a rubber mallet in hand, I heard a scream at the top of the basement stairs and then proceeded to get plowed over by Mary and Rex (guess I deserved that). She ran upstairs into our bedroom with Rex in her arms and hid in there with him for the next few hours. I got back up and proceeded to spray my pants which where lying on the basement stairs and then went into the basement to unleash vengeance. I moved slowly inward determined not to miss a single ant. I smashed all the stragglers with the mallet before moving on to their base of operations, my Xbox power brick. It was still COMPLETELY covered in those tiny motherfuckers. Even around it, a carpet of ants ran around looking for whatever had disturbed them. It was here that I unleashed my weapon of mass destruction upon them until the supply was all but empty. The ones outside the block got blown away as they got hit by the gas of death, but I didn't care. I was going to insect bomb the whole house no matter what and then deep clean the place afterwards. I watched as the ones inside the block came crawling out before curling up and dying. Vengeance was so very sweet at that moment. A few hours later, I washed out the remaining dead and dying ants with purified water at the sink and watched with a grin as their lifeless bodies spiralled into the drain. After drying the block I decided to try and see if it worked because why not? And to my surprise, my Xbox booted right up! It was a small victory during that horrifying experience but one that I gladly took. The only bad part was, my left hand was bitten to shit and I couldn't play anyway. Plus, the feeling of ants crawling on my skin was ever present for the next few days. Even today, while writing this book, I've had to swipe across all parts of my body because I keep feeling those little shits all over me. EDIT: Formatting, gave name to SO. EDIT 2: Wow this blew up! Thank you for the support, tips, and taking the time to read through my harrowing story! I left out some details because I felt the story was long enough as it was, but due to popular demand, here is some more information: It's been over a month since the traumatic event. Right after making sure my Xbox was still working, I made absolutely sure that there were no more ants inside any of my devices on top of the table. My PC, PS4, Xbox, router, and monitors were all completely disassembled (I didn't find any signs of life within them). As for the power brick, I stripped the crap out of two screws so unfortunately, I was not able to clean it out thoroughly. Instead, I left the brick submerged in purified water for a couple of days to make sure that it anything living inside it would drown (more dead ants floating in the water the day after). I also bug bombed the entire house before we left for work about a week later. Both before and after, I did not see a single live ant anywhere in the house. As for the door, I still don't know how it got open but I've come to the conclusion that I had opened it sometime during the next day while I was still drunk/hungover. More formatting. TL;DR: I didn't clean up after a small get together which fed a colony of ants that ended up moving into my Xbox. Proceeded to get covered in ants while trying to find out what was wrong. submitted by /u/JL3KGT to r/tifu [link] [comments]