Goodwill Furniture Store Near Me

... up as Christmas ornaments loitering near a shady warehouse. The guy.... "I ain't scared of the Goodwill Gojira." Something pinged off the ... might have once been a furniture store before someone gave up on .... There were stained carpets, mismatched furniture, old takeout containers, and enough ... you are. You'll wait for me. You'll fight me, Indomitable." My sparks crawled up ...

... they can remove all the furniture. It had to be done... near me. To an office I’ve never been to, to dismantle and record and store... calling me a hero at work. This is how I build up goodwill, and... all over know and trust me. But right now, I’m just ... tired. Just typing this exhausts me. Not looking forward to going ...

...I and others shop at Goodwill, Salvation Army and other .... Furniture for sale is displayed right outside the Thrift Store door... on the sides, for near my desk, $20 A small...very nice to have this store onsite. Other things I've bought... When the Thrift Store becomes too full, excess items are sent to Goodwill and The Salvation.... Reminder: If you want me to un-tag you, let me know and I'll kindly comply...

...the dock was behind me. ⁂ ​ I couldn't stay near the waterfront. Garrett's...meant moved out. Carpet with furniture indentations, walls pocked with ...from a pawn shop or Goodwill was a hundred-dollar proposition ... tax preparer and a store that sold cell phone cases ... memory. Anyone who'd seen me for less than five minutes ...paw was there. Helen knew me. Dee knew me. Rosa knew me. The people who mattered ...

...the dock was behind me. ⁂ ​ I couldn't stay near the waterfront. Garrett's...meant moved out. Carpet with furniture indentations, walls pocked with ...from a pawn shop or Goodwill was a hundred-dollar proposition ... tax preparer and a store that sold cell phone cases ... memory. Anyone who'd seen me for less than five minutes ...paw was there. Helen knew me. Dee knew me. Rosa knew me. The people who mattered ...

...from a historic vintage record store. The sign above the door... tasted like engine grease and goodwill. "You seem like decent people, ... whether I was food or furniture. "This is a security matter, ...back. Straightened his jacket. Gave me the look that says we'll .... Two students hunched over bowls near the window, performing the universal ...Seattle named Greaves. He told me Karma operates out of Berkeley. ...

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Rising up from poverty isn’t easy, but paths like healthcare and the trades offer a lift https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/how-five-americans-made-it-to-the-middle-class/ar-AA1Z760z The ability to climb the economic ladder has been a hallmark of the American experience. Yet children born to low-earning parents in 1992 had a harder time moving into the middle class than the previous generation, according to research from Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based institute that studies economic mobility. Today’s paths to the middle class don’t just run through college or traditional manufacturing work. The Americans who make it are open to change, persistent and jump at unconventional opportunities. Many find openings in hands-on fields such as healthcare, and they lean on short-term credential programs as steppingstones to new careers. Here’s how five people succeeded: From homeless to welder LeAngela Runels grew up poor in the Detroit area, at times living with her mother, who lacked steady employment, or her older sister. In high school, Runels was sometimes homeless and stayed with friends. She was determined to keep her grades up and took community-college classes in high school. To pay the bills at Eastern Michigan University, she worked two jobs, at the cafeteria and as student supervisor. “My fear of instability pushed me more toward working,” Runels said. In 2017, her junior year, she dropped out after a surprise pregnancy. She started a cleaning business during the pandemic, toddler in tow, but made only around $1,000 a month. In 2022, a cleaning client who was an executive at a local Goodwill told her about its job programs. One involved making outdoor furniture from wooden pallets. Her instructors there referred her to another program: welding. Runels, 29 years old, now makes $21 an hour welding for a metal-recycling company, and combined with her cleaning company, earns around $55,000 a year. She hopes to eventually start her own company repairing trailers and railings. She once wondered if poverty was inevitable. But having a child was clarifying: “I need to have a clear plan and structured life goals to provide for him and set an example.” Climbing the healthcare ladder Growing up in Philadelphia public housing, Jazmeen Chisholm didn’t have many career role models. Her father worked warehouse and sales jobs. Her mother was injured as a grocery clerk and received disability checks. Chisholm, 26 years old, hoped to become a doctor and help kids with asthma, which she also suffered from. But medical school was too expensive, so she chose a community-college nursing program instead. Shortly after enrolling, she had to quit to care for her grandmother, who’d had a stroke, and two cousins whose father had gone to prison. The next year, Chisholm got pregnant and started a certified medical assistant program at the for-profit Brightwood Career Institute. She was near graduating when it shut down, leaving her with $35,000 in debt and no degree. She worked fast-food jobs, while her mom watched her baby. She tried working as a home-health aide, but the $13-an-hour job was grueling and difficult by bus. In 2023, she learned about a nonprofit program that could pay for her to become a certified medical assistant, getting that career back on track. She jumped at the chance, though it meant juggling training with full-time restaurant work. Chisholm now makes $25 an hour at Temple University Hospital and is working on a bachelor’s degree in human-resource management, which her employer is helping fund. “I’ve been at the bottom,” Chisholm said. “I want to be able to change the rules at the top.” From prison to six figures When Alex Montoya was six years old, his father murdered his mother and then turned the gun on himself. He bounced for years between relatives’ homes in California’s Inland Empire, wound up involved in gangs and served prison time. “Fortunately I saw a lot of things in [prison] that I didn’t like, and that changed my mindset to further my education,” said Montoya, 46. He got an online associate degree in business management after prison, but his criminal convictions hurt his job applications. He eventually landed a role paying $21 an hour, cutting copper and aluminum wire. In 2019, Montoya realized he could earn more through Uber: up to $1,800 a week driving in Los Angeles’s tonier neighborhoods. He patched together other income, too, selling self-designed zombie-themed T-shirts, and working for the job board Jobcase, advising job seekers with criminal records. During the pandemic, Montoya used a workers’ compensation settlement from a prior work injury to take time off and study for his commercial driver’s license. The online course cost $3,000 and landed him a $130,000 salary driving fuel tankers for an employee-owned firm. At the same time, he is also looking at other earning opportunities, teaching himself to trade stocks and invest in real estate. “I just don’t believe in having one source of income,” Montoya said. The Lucky Break Melissa Gurule was 22, working as a restaurant server in San Leandro, Calif., feeling like she had no direction, when a manager for a nearby dental practice approached her. He was desperate to hire and asked if she would apply. “I was thinking, this is a scam, and I’m going to be kidnapped,” Gurule said of the 2021 encounter. But she took his card, figuring it was worth a shot. Her parents were grocery-store workers who put in long hours and hadn’t talked to her about college or given her much advice. “It was eat, sleep, go to bed,” Gurule said. She worked at the same store as her parents during high school. Gurule started community college after graduation and studied theater, thinking she would like to act. But she didn’t know how to apply for financial aid, and neither did her parents. She left after a year. It turned out the dental practice was real, and a way out. They hired her and connected her with a local nonprofit that paid for the three months’ training she needed to become a certified dental assistant. Gurule now makes $35 an hour as a pediatric dental assistant, and she hopes to become a dentist. Without her lucky break, she said, she would still be doing restaurant shifts. “I guess they thought I had the potential to be doing something else.” From tool shop to tech Timothy Wever, 40, wanted to build a different life from his parents. They worked for a false-teeth manufacturer and put food on the table, but the family of four lived in a run-down Tampa, Fla., neighborhood. “I just hated where we lived,” Wever said. After graduating high school in 2003, he welded for two years at the shipping docks in Tampa, making $14 an hour. The money was good, but the job was physically demanding. The sci-fi blockbuster “The Matrix” inspired him to get a computer-animation associate degree, but he couldn’t find work after graduating. He began a bachelor’s program, thinking it might help, but struggled academically and left early with $60,000 in student debt. Wever looked for work again, taking jobs that paid as low as $10 an hour handing out tools at a manufacturer and doing deliveries. Eventually, he job-hopped his way up to a $23-an-hour project-manager role in manufacturing. But he dreamed of getting back into computers. In 2021, Wever enrolled in a 14-week coding program that charged no up-front fees—just part of his salary if he landed a job. The company running the program, CodeBoxx, hired him to coach for two years before he landed a software-developer role making $77,000 a year. He wound up paying $14,000 for the program. “I actually have a savings account,” said Wever, who is married now with a child. “I’m living comfortably.” by Te-Ping Chen at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and Lauren Weber at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) submitted by /u/Live-Smile7983 to r/MiddleAgeMoney [link] [comments]

I didn’t know what to expect when I signed up to be a volunteer firefighter. It was something I had tossed back and forth in my head for a couple of years without actually pulling the trigger on it, until one night I finally mustered the courage to submit an online application to my local department. Fast forward almost a year to my Fire Academy graduation, when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that joining the fire service was the best decision that I had ever made. Following the academy, I was eager to put my training to the test and start responding to fire calls. The “problem” is that serious fires are (thankfully) much more rare than they used to be. Major, structure-engulfing fires only occur a handful of times a year in a community like mine, and as a volunteer, one really needs to be in the right place at the right time in order to make it on one of those calls. It is for this reason that several long months went by following my graduation where, while I did go on plenty of calls, I never actually made it to any of the “big” ones, so when I finally found myself in the prime position to go on one of these major fire calls, I jumped at the opportunity. God knows I wish I hadn’t. It happened in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday that I had taken off from work. With my allotted free time, I had decided to go to the grocery store to buy a few things before the rush hour crowd showed up later that day. I was less than a minute from the store when that familiar alarm on my phone went off, and seeing as I was at a stoplight, I quickly checked the notification. When I saw that it was titled “Fire – House”, I knew that my shopping plans would just have to wait. The grocery store is right up the road from my firehouse, so it didn’t take me long at all to get there. The paid guys were already rocketing out of the bay in the Engine as I was pulling up, but thankfully two other volunteers arrived at the station at about the same time that I did. One of them was Rudy, a long-time volunteer and certified fire apparatus driver, so with him in the driver’s seat the three of us were able to throw our turnout gear into the Ladder and take off, sirens screaming, hot on the heels of the career guys. Jack, the third volunteer in our truck, sat next to me in the rear of the cab. The two of us pulled on our gear while Rudy ferried us to the waiting blaze. Garbled sentences that I struggled to make out over the static and blaring sirens sloshed their way over the radio. I shared a glance with Jack. He looked about as nervous as I felt, the difference between us being that I was better at hiding it than he was. The SCBA straps over his shoulders were poorly fitted, and he had the look of an anxious child on the first day of school wearing a backpack that was too large for him. I extended a gloved fist in his direction. “We’ve got this.” Jack hesitated, then offered his end of the fist bump. “Yeah.” He sounded less confident than he probably would have liked; certainly less confident than I had wanted him to be. Jack and I started volunteering around the same time, and so had gone to fire school together. We had been partnered up during certification testing, and while we managed to pass all of the necessary skills on our first try, I wouldn’t have wanted to run them back again. Jack struggled through most of the skills, much like how he had struggled through most of fire school. To call him a liability feels too harsh, but he certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice for a partner. This was his first major fire call too, and while we were definitely both nervous, I was worried about his ability to overcome those nerves. I was surprised to see Jack at the station that day, seeing as I knew he also worked a typical 9-5, but I had no need to question why Rudy was there. Rudy works nights, so he has plenty of time during the day to make it to fire calls. I don’t know when the guy sleeps, but if he’s awake and alert enough to drive the apparatus during the daylight hours, I guess that’s good enough for me. I looked at him now. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I felt an air of normality from him that helped to calm my own nerves. He’s got a bit of a rough exterior, but there’s no question that he knows his way around a fire scene, so having him along helped me to feel a bit more confident. For him, this was probably just another routine fire call, just like any other that he had been on throughout his many years as a volunteer. He never could have known what was awaiting us. We turned down an old, well-traveled street and into a messily sprawled neighborhood that was surrounded by a dense collection of trees and filled with aging houses, some of which looked like crumbling tombstones ready to fall into ruin at the first moment of neglect. A thin, gray haze drifted on the air outside of our apparatus. Its smell entered our truck’s cab through the closed windows and made me think of cozy bonfires I enjoyed as a child. The sheet of smoke would have warned us of the waiting blaze had it not been easily visible through the truck’s front windshield as soon as we had turned into the neighborhood. A house on the far end of the street glowed a devastating orange that lit up the entire area, its radiance rivaling that of the bright afternoon sun. Its fully engulfed roof wore a twisting crown of flame that spat waves of onyx smoke up into the midday atmosphere. It looked as if Hell itself had opened up directly beneath the structure just so Satan could personally escort it down into the deepest, hottest depths. Even from several hundred feet away, I could tell that this fire was nothing like what we had practiced on at the academy. At the academy, we battled against thin steel cages filled with burning straw, which practically extinguished itself at the first suggestion of water. In comparison, the fire that we continued to draw ever-closer to was an uncontrollable entity of nature, one who told you through its very presence that it could consume the entire Earth if it felt so inclined to do so. “Jesus,” Jack muttered. “Big one, isn’t she?” Rudy said. “Not a bad first fire for you boys. I've seen worse, but this'll do for giving you boys your wings.” We passed by the Engine, which had stopped to let one of the paid guys pull the 5-inch line off the back of the truck and drag it to the only fire hydrant I’d seen since we turned onto this street. The Engine would be moving again in less than thirty seconds, but its delay meant that we in the Ladder would be the first to arrive on the scene. Other fire companies were en route, but our station, being the closest, had naturally made it there first. We’d have a good operation going by the time anybody else arrived to help us. The Ladder came to a stop in front of the burning structure, and the three of us disembarked from the vehicle. The house, a typical two-story, single-family dwelling, was positioned near a thick patch of forest that served as the natural border of this little, forgotten neighborhood. The good news was that it was far enough away from the other buildings that it didn’t pose an immediate risk to any of them, but the bad news was that a decent gust of wind could have easily sent rogue embers scattering into the nearby treeline, which could’ve resulted in a forest fire in addition to the blaze that we already had to combat. We needed to start getting that fire under control, and we needed to do it quickly. The next couple of minutes went by in a reflex-driven blur. Jack and I began pulling ladders off the back of our truck and throwing them up against second-story windows all around the building. Rudy acted as crowd control while he waited for Fire Police to show up. He used his years of experience to effortlessly keep the neighborhood’s many onlookers at bay while the rest of us worked. The Engine arrived not long after we did, and our fellows immediately pulled an attack line, which they used to start throwing water onto the blaze. The fire, continuing to grow and undulate, fought back against the aquatic stream; it almost seemed to have a malicious intent about it that sent a chill running through me despite the heat that blasted off of the building in oppressive waves. Soon a second Engine from one of our neighboring stations arrived, and with our combined hose streams, we finally managed to make some headway in the war against the raging inferno. Jack and I had just finished throwing up a ladder and were making our way back to our truck to grab another when Rudy approached us, bearing new orders. “Nobody has seen anybody come out of the building since the fire started,” he yelled over the sound of all the commotion, “which means there is a strong possibility that there are victims trapped inside. We’re going to send you two in to do the primary search. The Engine boys’ll keep attacking the fire from out here, then they’ll take their hoseline in through the front door once the fire is more under control.” “Which way are we going in?” I asked. “The fire looks to mostly be towards the A-side of the structure, so we’re going to send you in through the first floor on C-side. You guys up for it?” Jack and I shared a look. I could see the nervousness in his eyes, but they also told me that he’d follow whatever decision I made for us. I returned my attention to Rudy and nodded. “Yeah.” “Alright,” Rudy said. “Grab a set of irons. Remember to radio Command before you make entry.” He left us, and Jack and I quickly finished our walk back to the Ladder. We each grabbed one half of a set of irons (him a Halligan, me an axe) before rushing to the rear of the structure. Gray haze radiated from the house and danced through the air in front of us as we went. When we reached the house’s back door, we donned our masks and opened the cylinders attached to our SCBAs. The screens attached to our airpacks came to life, and the HUD in my mask glowed with the display that I had grown so accustomed to during academy training. Something about wearing that mask felt different now. Despite having done so countless times in class, I felt nervous taking my first loud, mechanical breaths from the regulator. It made me feel like I was about to step into something that I would not be able to return from. Jack and I affirmed to one another that we were ready, and we approached the entrance. Jack immediately grabbed the handle and tried the door, which came open with no effort. I was glad that we would not have to make forcible entry, but I was annoyed with Jack for his behavior. We’d had it drilled into our heads from nearly the first week of fire training that you need to first check closed doors for heat with the back of your hand, then open them slowly in order to prevent any built up smoke or fire from spilling out onto you. Jack had done neither of these things, and had instead carelessly thrown the door open in a way that, had fire been present, could have led to immediate and dangerous consequences. Thankfully the entrance was clear, so I didn’t bring it up — although as I reflect on this moment, I wish that I had. Instead, I radioed to Command that we were making entry, and then Jack and I stepped into the inviting wall of smoke that beckoned us from the other side of the threshold. We each turned on the flashlight strapped to our chest as we stepped inside, and I immediately realized just how little help they were going to be. The structure was lousy with thick, obsidian smoke which sapped any and all light that it touched, including the light from our flashlights, both of which barely projected a few feet in front of us before their essence was consumed by the swirling darkness. It couldn’t be helped; searches of this type were often done in pitch blackness, and one could not rely upon their eyes to guide them. We would do like we had done many times in class, and follow the wall with our hands. But the difference was that the flashlights had worked in class. The instructors had pumped the search structure with smoke, sure, but it hadn’t been nearly thick enough to completely swallow the beams of our lights, and we’d still had them to fall back on in the event that we lost touch with the wall or with each other. We’d clearly be awarded no such luxury now. This smoke, so alien when compared to that from the academy, did not award many luxuries at all, it seemed. I was the first one inside, and as such, was the one to lead the search. This meant deciding which way we went with it. “Right-hand search!” I yelled, my voice boosted by the amplifier attached to my mask. Then, to any potential victims: “Fire department! Is anybody in here?” My call was met with silence. Taking the axe into my left hand, I placed the palm of my right against the wall on the right side of the door, and once Jack and I both confirmed we were ready, we lowered ourselves to our knees and began our hasty, sliding shuffle along the wall. Guided by touch, we made our way through the inky blackness of the smoke, first through what seemed to be a kitchen and then into a dining room. The flashlights strapped to our bodies did their best to fight the darkness, but it remained a losing battle. I swept through the obsidian with the handle of my axe, searching for anything soft and flesh-like that might have been an unconscious — or worse — victim. It had bounced off the hard, unfeeling surfaces of furniture a few times, but did not touch anything that needed to be rescued. “What was that?” I heard Jack say from behind me. I turned around to look at him, then remembered that he only existed as a voice in that deep darkness. “What?” “I thought I saw something moving over there.” “Jack, how can you see anything moving in here?” “I saw it in my flashlight beam,” he said. “It looked like a person. I think there’s somebody in here.” “The smoke is probably disorienting you,” I said. “Let’s continue our search. If there’s somebody here, we’ll find them.” He reluctantly agreed, and we continued on. We made it out into a narrow hallway, something I deduced when my axe was easily able to reach the opposite wall from the one guiding my right hand. We went a few gloomy feet down the hallway before he spoke again, bringing our search to another halt. “There it was again!” he sounded more frantic, alert. “It just went around that corner!” “What corner?” I said, losing my patience. “You can’t see anything, Jack!” “Hello?” he called out into the darkness, ignoring me. “Are you alright? We’re the fire department! We’re here to help you!” He paused. “Did you hear that? It was a woman’s voice — she called for help!” I heard nothing but the sound of distant structures groaning with the weight of the raging fire. “You’re hearing things,” I said in a tone that no longer masked my annoyance. “We need to finish our search, Jack. If anybody here needs our help, we’ll find them.” “She needs our help!” he said. “She needs our help right now!” Before I could respond, I felt and heard sudden, frantic movement coming from behind me. A moment later, Jack’s vague form, largely obscured in the umbra, shuffled past me into the waiting darkness. “Jack!” I said, quickly feeling for him with my axe. “Jack, get back to the wall!” Silence. I heard my own machine-like breathing, followed by more protests from weakening support beams. If the fire wasn’t on this floor yet, it surely would be soon. I waited for so long that my SCBA’s PASS device — the system that automatically emits an alarm if a firefighter stays motionless for too long — began to sound. I instinctively shook my body in order to silence it. More seconds went by, and I called Jack’s name again. When he didn’t respond, I knew I had to make a decision. I certainly couldn’t leave him there alone, in his panicked, seemingly delirious state, in that dying house, but to go after him would be to break the golden rule of searches that, like the door rule, they had drilled into our minds again and again at the academy, the one that my partner had broken mere moments ago: never lose contact with the wall. I waited a few more moments, frantically trying to find a solution that did not exist, before I, too, broke that lifesaving rule. I left the wall behind, and went after my lost companion. Without the wall to anchor me, I was immediately disorientated in the blackness. The murk twisted my mind and fogged my brain. Were it not for the glowing HUD in my mask focusing my vision, I would not have even known for sure whether I still existed on Planet Earth, or if I was already lost somewhere beyond the firmament in the deep, dark reaches of space. I looked at this HUD now in order to check the status of my air cylinder. I was already more than a third of the way through the bottle, and was continuing to suck down air quickly. I knew I needed to find Jack and get him out of the building as soon as possible, before we both ran out of air. I blindly crawled through the gloom for several minutes, sweeping the handle of my axe and calling out Jack’s name with no result. The only thing I could be sure of was that I was no longer in the hallway where I had left the wall. This knowledge did me about as much good as knowing that I wasn’t in a public bathroom where I had taken a leak five years prior. I looked at my HUD. Half of my cylinder was gone. Had I really been searching for Jack for that long, or had I just been struggling to control my breathing? I suddenly remembered that I had a radio, and, after fumbling for the mic, sent a transmission to Command telling them that I had lost my companion and was attempting to locate him. After broadcasting my message, I waited for several seconds for a response that never came. I sent the same transmission again, and received no acknowledgement that my message had been received. It was then that I realized I had heard surprisingly little chatter on the radio since entering the house. In fact, I don’t think I had heard any chatter at all. There was no conceivable way that nobody had been communicating on the radio for the duration of the incident. The radio should have been abuzz with dozens of messages every minute, but it had been completely silent since we’d entered the structure. I had never even gotten a response when I’d told Command that we were beginning our search. Had I somehow turned the dial to the wrong channel? Not likely, since I didn’t think I had heard anything on Jack’s radio either, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to have also been on the wrong channel, or to have forgotten to turn on his radio altogether. I fumbled with my radio’s dial for a few moments, switching it to a new channel then back to the one I was supposed to be on. The radio’s robotic voice confirmed I was on the correct channel, and yet still I heard nothing. Something must have been wrong with the machine; I could get that sorted out later, but for now this meant I was on my own in my search for Jack. “Dammit, Jack, where are you?” I called, knowing that to do so was a waste of my most precious of resources. Every breath, every yell, every frantic shuffle forward used up more air. I was now more than halfway through my very limited supply. An orb of light cut through the darkness in a quick, short arc, so brief and so fleeting that I thought I had imagined it. I came to a halt and looked in the direction it had come from. For a long time there was nothing but further darkness, but just when I was losing hope that I’d see it again, another arcing sphere flashed in front of my mask. “Jack!” I said, hurrying in the direction of the light. “Wait up, Jack!” I rushed through the shadows, the swallowing smoke continuing to squeeze tighter and tighter around me with each passing moment. I knew I couldn’t let that sinister stuff enter my lungs, even if I ran out of air. I was better off sucking my regular to my face and passing out from lack of oxygen before I allowed that billowing death to take up residence inside of me. My axe smacked into a nearby wall. I immediately made my way to that lovely beacon in the darkness and firmly pressed against it with the palm of my hand. I still had no idea where I was in the house, but the lifeline of the wall gave new vigor to my long-deceased hope. I followed the wall for about thirty seconds before my hand suddenly lost its embrace and drifted into an empty space. I turned my torso toward this gap, and found that my flashlight’s beam actually managed to penetrate the darkness here. In front of me was a cavity largely free of smoke. Within it was a descending stairwell that appeared to vanish into the gloom of a basement, but unlike that of the smoke, this gloom could be vanquished by my beam. I could see downward for several steps, but more importantly, I could see the second beam at the bottom that was immediately lost as it turned a corner and vanished into the basement. “Jack!” I called again. “Wait!” Remembering my training, I turned around and descended the stairs backwards. I really should have tested each stair with my foot before putting my full weight on it, but I knew they had held beneath Jack’s weight, and since the fire had not been down this far yet, I felt confident enough in their integrity to move quickly. My confidence in them proved to be well-founded, because they held strong until I reached the bottom. Now standing up, I followed in the direction of Jack’s beam, allowing a quick moment to survey my new environment as I went. From what I could see of the basement, it appeared to be unfinished and composed entirely of cement and brick. It also appeared to be empty, devoid of any furnishings and not even in use as a place for storage. I had the fleeting thought that it was strange to leave such a valuable space in a state of disuse, but my preoccupied mind had too much to worry about to hold onto that notion for very long. As it turned out, I didn’t need to go far before I captured Jack’s form in the halo of my flashlight. He was also on his feet, his back turned to me, only a couple of yards from the short hallway that led to the stairwell. I caught up to him in a matter of seconds and threw my free hand onto his shoulder with no small display of force. “Are you out of your damn mind?!” I barked at him. “You could have gotten us both killed!” He only offered me a brief, disinterested glance before turning his head forward again. I followed his gaze to the end of his beam, where I saw the thing that so greedily monopolized his attention: standing in the middle of that basement, her back turned to us in the same way that Jack’s had been to me, was the figure of a woman. “Holy shit,” I said, dumbfounded. “You were right!” Jack kept his attention focused on the woman in front of us, who did not turn at the sound of my voice. It was hard to make out many of her details save for the fact that she was dressed in a set of dark blue flannel pajamas. Most of her other features remained a mystery to me, as I’m sure they did to Jack. “We’re with the fire department,” Jack said, his voice sounding uncertain and tired through the amplifier. His projected, mechanical breaths, much like my own, were shallow and clumsy. “We’re here to help you. Are you alright, ma’am?” When she didn’t respond or turn around, he took a cautious step toward her. “Ma’am?” he said. “Can you hear me? Are you hurt?” Another few seconds of silence passed before she began to slowly walk toward the rear of the basement. Jack watched her in confused disbelief for a moment before he followed after her. “Wait!” I yelled. He ignored my call. Jack made it to the center of the basement just as the woman neared the rear wall. My companion’s flashlight, which remained trained on the woman, now projected its soft ring of a beam past her onto the far wall of the basement, built into which was a single wooden door. The faded length of wood was shut in place and locked tight with a thick, rusty iron bolt. As the woman drew closer to the waiting door, her shadow grew larger against the wall. My eyes were so focused on the woman herself that I didn’t immediately notice how her shadow began to shift and change as it grew. When I finally spotted it, looming over the entire basement from the stone throne that was the back wall, I felt my mouth go numb. The shadow was, for lack of a better word, inhuman. To try to describe it much further than that would be a foolish, impossible task, but the one thing I am almost certain that I could discern from that dark, towering shape was a set of long, sinister horns resting atop its head. In the moment I thought these to be a trick of the uneven lighting in the room. Now I know better. Now I know them for what they really were. The woman effortlessly unlatched the heavy bolt. She wrapped a pale hand around the doorknob and twisted her wrist. The door swung open with an echoing, primordial creak. I only saw the blackness beyond its threshold for a brief moment before the woman disappeared inside and pulled the door shut behind her. Her hulking shadow remained in the room with us, resting against the wall even after she was gone. Jack never seemed to notice it looming over him. “Wait!” Jack yelled. He followed after her, rushing toward the door, his flashlight shaking wildly as he went. “Come back!” I, in turn, rushed after him. Something deep within my bones told me that I needed to stop him from opening that door. “Wait, Jack! Stop!” He once again, and for the final time, refused to heed my warning. I had barely made it halfway across the room before his gloved hand wrapped around that same knob, and he pulled the door open with a hasty, energized jerk. Where once was darkness now waited a blazing hell. A rectangle of saffron and gold filled the doorframe for the briefest of moments before it came spilling out into the greater basement. Infernal fire discharged from the portal in a violent stream of stygian puke. Jack was swallowed by the unholy broth faster than he could even scream, but though I am sure he never made a sound, to this day I can still hear his tortured, immortal wails in the deepest bowels of my soul. The force of the terrible excretion knocked me off my feet with such overwhelming power that I was sent sprawling onto my back. I landed several feet away from where I once stood with a violent crash, losing my axe in the process. My body rang with the pain of the collision, especially where my back landed on my SCBA. I immediately heard a sharp, hissing sound coming from behind me, and I knew that my air cylinder must’ve suffered a breach. Glancing at my air supply, I saw it rapidly pass below 30%. Fire gushed into the room and began to spread with impunity, despite the space’s stone composition not being conducive to the blaze’s new, zealous life. I was overwhelmed by a despicable heat that I had never known before, and which I hope to never know again. My distressed mind retreated back to those practice fires we fought in the academy — the ones fueled by straw and goodwill. I thought I knew what heat was during those drills, but now, as the essence of hell itself seemed to wash over me, I understood that those fires would never in countless lifetimes have been able to prepare me for the inferno that now threatened to reduce me to ash with a mere flex of its mighty suggestion. I needed to get out, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to rise to my feet on my own. The overwhelming pressure that flowed from that doorway kept me pinned to the ground. I anxiously searched for my radio mic, knowing that it likely wouldn’t do me any good, but desperately needing to find it anyway. When I found it, I brought it up to my mask and slammed my clumsy, gloved finger against the push-to-talk button. “Mayday, mayday, mayday!” I shouted, probably to nobody. I was supposed to wait for my mayday to be acknowledged, but in my panic, I skipped this step. I didn’t expect to receive a response anyway. “This is Search Team 1! We’ve been overwhelmed by flashover in the basement! Both firefighters are down! We need immediate rescue! Repeat, immediate rescue!” If I ever got a response, I didn’t hear it. My ears were suddenly burning with the sound of my SCBA’s low air alarm, which was soon joined in its song by my PASS device once again activating due to my lack of movement. I became lightheaded as the precious few sips of life that remained in my cylinder fled through its breach. I knew I didn’t have long before I would pass out from a lack of oxygen. Soon my world would become an even greater darkness than that of the all-consuming smoke, and that would be the end of me. But before consciousness slipped away from me, I felt an overwhelming urge to look in the direction of the spewing doorframe. The inhuman shadow, still looming there, had become so large that its tenebrous form covered more than half of the room — and it only continued to grow. The hissing and crackling of the inferno that deluged from that hellish aperture suddenly sounded to me like the many uncountable screams and wails of the damned, and as my world faded away, I thought I heard Jack’s tormented voice among them. I knew that soon my own voice would join that very same chorus. I dreamt of evil, and of unfathomable heat. For a while, all I could see was red. As my vision cleared and my mind came into focus, I saw that I was in a massive cavern of fire. Jack was before me, screaming, naked as the day he was born, hoisted onto a crudely-built crucifix. He was on fire. He burned for a very long time while I watched in horror, hopeless to help him. His skin fell away in long, goopy strings that looked like melted wax. Soon his muscles and organs did the same, until all that remained was his charred, blackened skeleton. He still had his eyeballs, though. Those lasted even longer than his bones, which seemed to burn for several eternities until they finally crumbled away. Before his eyes joined the soup that was the rest of his body, I could see in their reflection that great, terrible shadow — the one I was sure possessed a pair of long, sharp horns. When I awoke, the screaming form of Jack was replaced by the crying face of my wife. She hugged me with as much vigor as she dared to. The embrace lit a fire in my aching body, but it also filled me with an overwhelming sense of relief even before my brain was awake enough for me to realize where I was: not in a burning pit of damnation, but in a hospital room. I learned from the doctor that I had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours, and that my wife had spent nearly every single minute of that time by my side. I spent some time piecing together the foggy memories of my ordeal, which seemed to float in space as many individual fragments. When those fragments finally came together, a burning question rushed to the forefront of my mind. I asked the doctor about Jack. Her grim reaction to my question was all that I needed to confirm my companion’s fate. I knew what she would tell me before the words had even left her mouth. “I’m sorry, but… he didn’t make it,” was all she said to me on the matter. It was clear that I wouldn’t be getting any more details from her. My room was a revolving door of visitors for the rest of that day, including several of the guys from my firehouse, who came by as soon as they learned that I was awake. Included in that number was Rudy, as well as our deputy chief, who, after giving me all the good wishes of those at the station who couldn’t make the visit, steered the conversation to a rather uncomfortable subject that I was dreading from the moment he had arrived. He asked me what I remembered about that call. I was mostly honest with him. I told him about how Jack, in what I thought to be a panicked, hysterical fit, had abandoned our search to go after a victim that he had thought he’d seen in the darkness. I told him about how I followed after Jack, and how I’d found him in the basement. I left out everything about the woman with the inhuman shadow, as well as how Jack had followed her to that back room before he was engulfed in flame. In my spoken version of events, Jack, still hysterical, had haphazardly opened the door in the basement thinking it was the way out, which is when the fire came pouring in. That was when I passed out, and the next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital. In exchange for my story, I was given the details that I so desperately craved. Jack, having burned to death, was the only person to perish in that fire; no other victims were discovered in the house after they had gotten the blaze under control. In fact, nobody had been able to contact the owners of that house at all. They seemed to have completely disappeared off the face of the planet. Apparently Command had heard every transmission I had sent over the radio, but Jack and I had never responded to any transmissions that they had sent back. That one was chalked up to malfunctioning equipment. The other anomalies could not so easily be explained. The RIT team had found me unconscious in that dreaded basement. They had expected to pull me out of a raging blaze, but by the time they had gotten to me, there was no fire there to speak of. They knew the fire had to have been there at one point, because the room’s walls and floor were blackened by their exposure to the blaze, and because the state of Jack’s charred remains could only be explained by the presence of fire. They found him lying in front of the door that I had mentioned, but that door was not only closed shut, its wooden surface was completely untouched by the inferno that had evidently scorched the surrounding basement before disappearing entirely. How the fire had spread along the stone surfaces of the basement was anybody’s guess. In fact, it made even less sense for the fire to have reached the basement in the first place, because it had been determined with reasonable certainty that the fire had been started in either the attic or on the second floor, and the blaze hadn’t even made it to the first floor before it had been put out. Any fire that existed in the basement needed to have been independent of the original blaze, and it needed to have put itself out just as easily as it had started. Such matters were under investigation. After wishing me a quick recovery and a hasty return to the firehouse, the deputy chief and the others left my room. As he left, Rudy flashed me a troubled look that I didn’t understand at the time, but which would make sense to me soon enough. I wasn’t well enough to go to Jack’s funeral. I was not surprised to learn that his casket was closed. About a month has passed since that nightmare of a day. I’ve since been discharged from the hospital and have resumed my duties as a firefighter. Over this past weekend, Rudy and I volunteered to cover a shift because the paid guys had an event to go to. It was just the two of us at the station for an entire twelve hours. I didn’t mind; it was a quiet day, and Rudy is decent enough company. He keeps the conversation interesting, at the very least. The afternoon was unseasonably warm, so we pulled out a couple of lawn chairs and sat just outside the bay, taking in the nice weather. Our conversation meandered through a series of inconsequential topics, all of which felt like attempts to tiptoe around the subject that we both knew we wanted to confront. Eventually, Rudy saw it fit to just tear the bandage right off. “I’m glad that fire didn’t get the both of you,” he said after a brief lull in the conversation. The bluntness of his words had slightly taken me aback. “Thanks. I, uh… I guess I am too.” “A shame what happened to that kid.” Rudy paused to take a drag from his cigarette. The sight of the smoke leaving his mouth and nose made me want to vomit. “I hope you don’t blame yourself for what happened to him.” I sighed, my gaze focused on the road in front of our firehouse. “I try not to.” “You did all that you could for him. That’s all anybody can ask of you.” Another pause to smoke. “You know, that entire call still doesn’t sit right with me.” I turned to look at him now. His eyes were already there to meet mine. “What do you mean?” “I mean I’ve fought a lot of house fires in my day, kid,” he said. “A lot of them. And I’ve never seen a fire fight back nearly as hard as that one did. It was almost like it… had a mind of its own or something. I’m actually surprised we managed to get it put out before it took the entire house. We needed four fire companies and twice as many apparatus to finally kill that thing. And then there’s the matter of how that fire, which started and ended in the upper floors of the building, somehow reached a basement with no combustible material in it, only to vanish like it wasn’t ever there.” He paused. This time he didn’t bring his cigarette to his lips. “I haven’t ever said I thought a fire was alive before. Not in all my time fighting them have I ever even considered that they might be something other than what I’ve always known them to be: unthinking, unfeeling bringers of destruction. But that fire… well, I just don’t know what I think after what I saw that day.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at me. “You sure you told the deputy chief everything that happened in that house?” I frowned at this. For a moment I considered telling Rudy the truth, and I almost did, but then I considered the potential consequences of telling him what I think — what I know — I saw in that house, and I thought better of it. “Yeah. All that I remember of it, at least. Why do you ask?” He shrugged, looking unconvinced. “Just asking, is all.” He tossed the cigarette onto the ground and stomped it out with his boot. Weak streams of smoke drifted up from its ruined carcass. “But hey, if you ever find yourself remembering anything else about that day that you want to talk about, you come and find me, alright? I’ll listen. You better know I’ll listen.” I nodded. “Thanks, Rudy. I appreciate that.” “Of course,” he said. “We’ve got to support each other, kid. It can take a lot out of us, running into those buildings without knowing if we’re ever going to come back out. Sometimes, some of us don’t. Sometimes… ” He allowed a long pause. “Sometimes we wish we didn’t.” He let the conversation go after that. We finished the rest of our shift without talking about that day again, though I know it still weighed on both of our minds. Maybe I’ll tell him what really happened in that house one day; I haven’t decided yet. I haven’t told anybody what happened in there yet. I’m debating if I even want to post this or not. Part of me thinks it might be for the best that the truth remains buried with Jack. The selfish part of me really wants to get the truth of that day off of my chest, despite any consequences that may come as a result. I think that part of me is going to win. Regardless of what I choose to do, though, I know this for certain: I’ll never be able to forget what happened to me that day. I’ll never get the memory of Jack’s horrific end out of my mind, just like I’ll never be free of the image of that inhuman shadow looming over its court of dancing, sinister flame. Even as I write this, I feel myself tormented by a harsh, malicious heat: a constant reminder that whatever it is I saw in that basement is still with me, and its fiery anger burns red hot. submitted by /u/SteveMcNellyFiction to r/TalesFromTheCreeps [link] [comments]

[Previous Chapter | Next Chapter] The maglev dropped me in Oakland the way a river drops a stone: without ceremony and into whatever current was waiting. Jack London Square smelled like salt and fuel and the particular brand of ambition that clings to working ports the world over. Freight cranes stood against the late-afternoon sky like steel elephants frozen mid-stride, their Wuxing logos catching a sun that had no business being this bright in a city I’d always imagined as fog and argument. The Oakland Seaport hummed behind a fence line to the west, container ships stacked in the water like the filing cabinets of a god who’d given up on organization. Twenty-four hours a day, a education trid cast on the train had told me, every consumer good the California Free State touches comes through that port. I’m certain the Mafia knew it. Wuxing owned it. And the orks lived it. They unloaded the crates and got paid enough to keep breathing and not enough to call it living. I stood on the Embarcadero with my bag over one shoulder and no gun under the other, and I let the city introduce itself the way new cities do; through the soles of your feet and the back of your throat. The air was wrong. Not bad, just wrong. After a lifetime of Seattle’s perpetual rain pressing down on every surface like a wet hand on a sleeping chest, the California air felt unfinished. Dry. Open. The sky was a blue I’d forgotten existed outside of photographs and the light came from an angle that made every shadow sharper and every building more honest than it probably deserved. In Seattle the rain hides things. Here the sun interrogated them. Oakland, or Orkland, if you listened to the people who lived here and owned the name the way you own a scar, was San Francisco’s poorest district and it wore the fact without apology. The Japanese Imperial Marines had pushed the metahumans out of downtown San Francisco decades ago, herded them east across the bay like livestock sorted by the shape of their ears and the presence of tusks. The 2061 quake broke the city’s bones. The 2069 quake broke them again. Saito’s occupation broke the spirit. But the spirit, as spirits tend to do in the Sixth World, refused to stay broken. I could see it in the reconstruction. EVO cranes working a block where the facades still wore blast damage from the liberation fighting. Fresh concrete poured against old brick like a bandage on a wound that hadn’t agreed to heal. An ork woman pushed a stroller past a mural of raised fists and tusked faces that covered an entire building. The paint so vivid it made the construction scaffolding on the building next to it look embarrassed. A troll in an EVO hardhat sat on a girder eating a sandwich the size of my forearm, and he watched me the way construction workers everywhere watch strangers: with the calm assessment of someone who builds things and can recognize a man who doesn’t belong. I didn’t belong. I knew it. The city knew it. We were going to have to come to terms. I caught a bus at Broadway and Embarcadero that lurched north through streets I’d never walked with names I’d never heard. The seats were hard plastic in that universal transit shade of almost-blue that exists solely to hide stains. An ork grandmother sat across from me with three grocery bags and a grandchild who kept trying to hand me a soychip wrapper like it was a gift. I took it and folded it into a small crane. I swear Lauren had taught me how, years ago, when origami was something she did with her hands while her mind was relaxing in the quiet contentment of our company. Or that’s what I told myself about the empty space where the good memories of her had been. Since I helped Tucker come back to the world by breaking the grip of a fox that liked the way he fit, all of her happiness and warmth and love was gone. A price paid on a ledger with a sacrifice of love so a sister could hold her brother again. The kid on the bus stared at the crane like I’d performed magic. As I handed the crane back to the kid the grandmother nodded once, which in any city on any continent means the same thing: you’ll do. Twelfth Street City Center. The BART station swallowed me through turnstiles that took Nuyen wireless and didn’t care where I’d come from. The platform was clean in the way that public transit is clean after someone powerful decides the tourists need to feel safe: scrubbed tile, working lights, AR advertisements selling things I couldn’t afford in a city I didn’t know. A dwarf busker played saxophone at the far end, and the sound bounced off the tunnel walls with the patience of a man who’d learned that applause pays better than echos. The train arrived with an electric hum and I stepped into a car that smelled like recycled air and the ghost of a thousand commutes. I took a window seat because I wanted to watch. The BART train pulled out of Twelfth Street Station northbound and eventually climbed into daylight. Oakland unfolded beneath me like a wound someone had tried to dress in corporate gauze. To the west, the bay glittered under a sun that was starting to think about setting while framed by the Golden Gate Bridge. The silhouette of downtown San Francisco taunting the denizens of the East Bay. To the east, the Oakland Hills rose in a green that Seattle would have killed for: lush, unapologetic, and fed by a water table that didn’t need rain to prove itself. Somewhere up in those hills sat Halferville, the dwarf enclave that had stared down General Saito and his Imperial Marines by threatening to collapse the Caldecott Tunnel. No walls. No fences. No signs. Just a community that had calculated the exact cost of mutual destruction and used it as a handshake. I respected that. Leverage isn’t a weapon. It’s a performative dance. The train rocked through neighborhoods that changed names every few blocks but never changed their economics. Lake Merritt to the south east hid behind downtown. Apartment towers with EVO construction logos loomed. Balconies had laundry that hung like the flags from another country. Wage slaves in off-brand suits waited at platforms with the thousand-yard stare of people who’d made their peace with the commute the way prisoners make their peace with the yard. Different city, same arithmetic. The corps change their logos and their slogans but never their margins. In Seattle, I knew the math. I knew which streets belonged to which syndicates. I knew which buildings were Renraku and which were Ares. I knew where the shadows pooled and where the light was bought and paid for. Here the variables were different but the equation was the same: somebody owns the means, somebody works the means, and somebody falls through the space between. The names on the buildings were Wuxing and EVO and Ares and Mitsuhama, and the names on the wage slips were Rodriguez and Okafor, Takahashi and Chen, and the distance between the two sets of names was measured in zeros that only went in one direction. The train crossed into Berkeley and the light changed. Not the sun. The sun was the same merciless California interrogator it had been since I stepped off the maglev but what it fell on, that changed. The buildings got shorter. The murals got louder. The scaffolding gave way to structures that had decided to age honestly rather than submit to renovation. And the graffiti … the graffiti shifted from tags to manifestos. A warehouse wall read PEOPLE’S UNIVERSITY in letters three meters tall, and underneath it someone had stenciled a smaller line: THE CURRICULUM IS SURVIVAL. I felt the city shift beneath me the way you feel a conversation shift when someone in the room decides to stop pretending. Berkeley didn’t pretend. Berkeley had been the furnace of resistance since before Saito turned the bay into his personal empire. That heat hadn’t cooled just because the occupation was over. UC Berkeley still stood. The only surviving campus from the old University of California network, saved by ballot measure and spite. Around it the blocks breathed with the particular energy of a place where people had been told to shut up so many times they’d made dissent into a civic virtue. The fog was coming. I could see it building over the bay to the west, a gray wall moving with the patience of something that knows it will arrive regardless of anyone’s opinion. In Seattle the rain is a constant. You don’t notice it the way you don’t notice your own breathing. Here the weather performed. Sun all day, clear and confrontational, and then the fog rolled in at evening like a curtain call, softening every edge and muffling every sound until the city felt like a dangerous memory of itself. I watched it approach through the BART window and thought about how a man can spend his whole life under one sky and still be surprised by another. Downtown Berkeley. I shouldered my bag and stepped onto an underground platform. The air hit different than Orkland. Warmer. Salted with eucalyptus from the hills and under it the faint electric hum of a neighborhood that ran on caffeine and conviction. A student, human, young, wearing a UC Berkeley hoodie that looked like it had survived more semesters than its owner bumped my shoulder and didn’t apologize because Berkeley doesn’t apologize for occupying space. Fine. Fair enough. I walked south on Shattuck and turned east towards Telegraph Avenue, and Berkeley turned its volume up. Telegraph was a sensory negotiation between the old world and the new. Head shops sat next to AR arcades. A used bookstore with actual paper in the window shared a wall with a talislegger’s supply shop whose display case held reagent pouches and ritual chalk alongside commlink chargers and soyprotein bars. Street vendors sold handmade jewelry from blankets on the sidewalk next to drones delivering Stuffer Shack orders to students who couldn’t be bothered to walk two blocks. The buildings were low and old and stubborn, and the people who moved through them carried the energy of a neighborhood that had survived occupation, earthquake, and corporate gentrification by being too loud and too weird to absorb. I ducked into a smoke shop three doors down from a historic vintage record store. The sign above the door said Big Al’s in gold leaf that had been reapplied enough times to suggest the name had outlasted several owners. The window display held pipes, rolling papers, and a few humidor boxes arranged with the quiet pride of a man who took his trade personally. The interior was narrow and warm and smelled the way good tobacco shops smell in every city: cedar and vanilla and the ghost of ten thousand conversations held while something burned between the fingers. The man behind the counter was Turkish, mid-sixties, with a silver mustache that had opinions and eyebrows that had seen everything. He wore a vest over a pressed shirt and stood with the upright patience of someone who had learned to wait in one country and sell in another. “Good evening,” he said. The accent was Istanbul by way of decades elsewhere. “Evening,” I said. “I’m looking for a cigarette that tastes like earth after rain.” His eyebrows rose a fraction. It was not surprise, but recognition. The look of a man who can spot another expatriate of another land from across a counter the way a sailor spots another sailor in a landlocked bar. “You have expensive tastes, my friend,” he said. He turned to the wall behind him and reached for a shelf that held the inventory he didn’t advertise. His hand bypassed the Natural American Nation Spirits, Kamel Wides, the Lucky Pikes and the synth-stick cartons that made up the daily trade. He came back with a single pack in dark blue and gold. Dunhill. Imported from England. The real deal: Virginia tobacco, slow-cured, the kind of smoke that doesn’t shout but speaks in a voice that makes you lean in to listen. “Lucky for you. My last pack. I was beginning to think no one in Berkeley had the palate.” He set it on the counter between us but didn’t push it forward. Instead he studied me for a moment with the unhurried attention of a man who reads faces the way other people read newspapers: front to back, headlines first, then the fine print. “I hope you find whatever it is you are looking for,” he said. His voice had softened. Not pity. It was something more precise. The diagnostic kindness of someone who had crossed enough borders to recognize the weight of the ones you carry inside. “And I hope these fill the empty space that whatever memory is haunting you has left behind.” I stood there for a beat longer than I should have. The man had pegged me the way I peg other people. It was from posture and silence and the particular way a man asks for a cigarette when the cigarette is really a request to feel something familiar in a place where nothing is. It’s one thing to read a room. It’s another to be read by one. The feeling is like catching your reflection in a window you didn’t know was there. I paid. I took the Dunhills, refilled the silver case, and set it next to Alexis’s lighter. The weight felt right. “Thanks, friend,” I said. He nodded once. The universal gesture of men who understand that some transactions are about more than what’s on the receipt. I stepped back onto Telegraph with the unsettling sense that California was going to keep doing this to me: peeling back layers I hadn’t offered to show. I was looking for a ghost. Not literally though, because Berkeley probably had those too. This ghost was a technomancer named Ashley who’d told me she learned to listen to machines in this city at the People’s University of the streets. Last I’d seen her, she was holding Tucker Veyra’s hand in Seattle while his brain finished remembering it belonged to him. Alexis said they were going somewhere safe. If home was Berkeley, then Berkeley was where I’d start. And so I started the way I always start: asking questions that make people uncomfortable. The woman at the talislegger’s counter sold me a bottle of water and told me she didn’t know any technomancers and wouldn’t tell me if she did. An elf restringing a guitar outside a music shop said technomancers were either corporate assets or urban legends and he wasn’t interested in either. A troll bouncer leaning against the doorframe of a bar called Robby B’s looked at me the way you look at a stain on a shirt you’re trying to decide whether to throw away. “You’re not from here,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Seattle.” “That explains the coat.” He nodded at my jacket, which was in fact too heavy for California and a confession of geographic ignorance. “Technomancers don’t like questions from strangers. Especially strangers from Seattle who dress like they’re expecting rain that isn’t coming.” “The rain always comes,” I said. “The only variable is when.” He almost smiled. “Try People’s Park,” he said. “The encampment crowd knows things. Whether they’ll tell you is a different conversation.” People’s Park was four blocks south and a hundred years deep. The park had been a battleground since before the Awakening. The students versus the University versus cops versus developers versus the people who actually lived there. It wore every fight in its soil like rings in a tree. Tents and tarps formed a loose village along the eastern edge. A community garden occupied the center with vegetables growing in raised beds that someone tended with actual love. An AR overlay tried to sell me a historical walking tour. I declined. I talked to a dwarf who ran a soykaf stand from the back of a converted delivery van. He listened politely, shook his head slowly, and said, “Brother, nobody here talks about the weird. Not to outsiders. There’s a halfie enclave up in the hills where the weird ones go, but I don’t have an address and I wouldn’t give it to you if I did.” “Why not?” “Because the last outsider who went looking for technomancers in the hills came back without his commlink, his shoes, or his short-term memory. And he was lucky.” He poured me a soykaf without asking if I wanted one. It tasted like engine grease and goodwill. “You seem like decent people, Seattle. But decent doesn’t buy trust in Berkeley. Trust takes receipts.” I thanked him and kept walking. The fog was thickening now, rolling in from the bay and filling the streets with a soft gray light that turned Telegraph’s edges into threats. Streetlights clicked on with the tentative optimism of machines that had been promised the evening wouldn’t last long. Two blocks south of People’s Park, where Telegraph starts to quiet down and the storefronts get older and more honest, a security contractor was having a conversation with an ork teenager that wasn’t a conversation at all. The contractor wore EVO corporate security gray: clean uniform, clean boots, sidearm on the hip, the whole costume of legitimate authority. The kid wore a secondhand jacket two sizes too large and the expression of someone who’d been told to empty his pockets on a public sidewalk and was trying to decide whether compliance or resistance would get him hurt less. Two more EVO contractors stood behind the first one, arms folded, faces blank in the professional way that means they’ve been trained to look neutral while the person in front of them does the ugly part. The kid’s bag was open on the ground. Textbooks. A beat-up commlink. A bag of soychips. The evidence of a life being lived on a budget, spread out on concrete for inspection because someone in a uniform had decided this particular ork on this particular block looked like probable cause. A dozen people walked past. Eyes forward. Pace unchanged. The universal metropolitan agreement that someone else’s problem is a spectacle you can’t afford to attend. I stopped. The instinct is old and it’s stupid and it’s the only one I’ve ever trusted. My father died because of it. Lauren died because I followed it. Viktor died because he understood it better than any of us. The instinct says: someone is being pressed, and you are close enough to change the geometry. I wasn’t carrying a gun. I wasn’t carrying authority. I wasn’t carrying anything except a dead man’s brass, cigarettes that smelled like earth after the rain, and a lighter that felt like a woman who’d left me. I was standing in a city I’d never been to, wearing a coat that announced me as foreign, and an expression that I’m told by people who’ve seen it, could sour milk at thirty paces. I walked over. “Evening,” I said. The lead contractor looked at me the way thugs look at interruptions: annoyed, assessing, deciding whether I was food or furniture. “This is a security matter, sir. Move along.” “Doesn’t look like a security matter,” I said. “Looks like three grown men emptying a kid’s school bag on a sidewalk. That’s not security. That’s a shakedown with a dental plan.” The kid’s eyes darted to me. Hope and terror in equal measure. I kept my hands visible and my voice at the register that I’ve spent years calibrating. It was quiet enough to sound reasonable, flat enough to sound like I’d calculated every outcome and found all of them acceptable. “I’m going to recommend you let the kid put his things back in his bag and go about his evening,” I said. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.” The lead contractor’s hand moved a half inch toward his sidearm. Muscle memory. The kind of gesture that means he’s been in situations before where reaching was the right play. But his eyes were doing the other calculations: the new variable of witnesses, cameras, and a stranger who wasn’t flinching, meant the numbers weren’t adding up to a story he wanted to file paperwork for. “You don’t belong here, pal,” he said. “Neither do you,” I said. “SFPD holds the contract for the public San Francisco Bay. You’re EVO corporate. Which means you’re outside your zone, hassling a minor on a public street, and the only thing protecting your evening is that nobody’s called it in yet.” I paused. Let the math settle. “I’m somebody now. Calling it in is the easiest thing I’ll do all day.” The two behind him exchanged a look. The look said: this isn’t our problem anymore. The lead contractor held my eyes for three seconds. Three seconds is a long time when you’re unarmed and bluffing in a city you’ve been in for less than four hours. But three seconds is also how long it takes for a man to recognize that the cost of winning has exceeded the value of the prize. He stepped back. Straightened his jacket. Gave me the look that says we’ll remember your face, which is the same look in every city and every language and never once has it made me lose sleep. “Have a good evening, sir,” he said, and the three of them walked away with the measured pace of men pretending the retreat was always the plan. The kid was already stuffing his books back into his bag with the speed of someone who’d learned that windows of safety close fast. He looked up at me once. Didn’t say thanks. Didn’t need to. He just grabbed his bag and disappeared into the fog like a fish finding deeper water, and I stood on the sidewalk feeling the adrenaline drain and the mission reassert itself and wondering, not for the first time, whether the instinct that makes me intervene is the same one that keeps me alive or the one that’s going to get me killed. The answer, historically, is both. “You.” The voice came from my left. I turned and found a woman standing in the doorway of a noodle shop whose steam was doing battle with the fog and winning. She was human, late forties or early fifties with the kind of face that had been called warm so many times it had started wearing the word like a comfortable shirt. She had a dish towel over one shoulder and the posture of someone who’d spent decades feeding people who couldn’t afford to be picky. “You haven’t eaten,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “I saw what you did for that boy. Come inside. Eat.” The noodle shop was small and steaming and smelled like broth that had been perfecting itself since before the Awakening. A counter with six stools. Four tables. Hanging lights that made the fog outside look like a special effect. The menu was handwritten on a board in English, Spanish, and Japanese, and the prices were the kind that make you realize the owner cares more about feeding people than making margins. A trid unit in the corner played a Cal Free news broadcast with the sound off. Two students hunched over bowls near the window, performing the universal ritual of being young and hungry and temporarily safe. The woman steered me to a stool at the counter with the authority of someone who’d been directing traffic in this room for twenty years, and before I could speak, a bowl appeared. Thick noodles in a dark broth with greens and something that tasted like actual chicken, which was either a miracle or a crime, and I wasn’t going to ask which. “Your coat says Seattle,” she said, leaning against the counter with her arms folded. “Your instincts say cop. Your face says you haven’t slept in a way that isn’t about hours. I’m Mara. Mara Sato.” “Hart,” I said, between bites of something that was making my body remember it was a machine that needed fuel. “Michael Hart. Not a cop. Not anymore.” “Once a cop, always a cop,” she said, but her tone was diagnostic, not dismissive. “The way you read that situation. Three armed contractors, one kid, and you didn’t hesitate. You didn’t look for backup. You walked in and changed the script. That’s something people could call resolve.” “That’s stubbornness.” “Same thing, in my experience.” She smiled, and the smile was the kind that had been field-tested in protests and triage stations and the long quiet hours of feeding people who couldn’t tell you what was wrong because their internal language for it hadn’t been invented yet. A man came through the kitchen curtains with the quiet efficiency of someone who’d been listening and decided the situation was safe enough for his face. Late forties. Human. Wiry in the way that suggests either malnutrition or strict physical discipline, and his movement immediately told me which. He came around the counter the way water flows around a stone. There was no wasted motion, no announcement, every step exactly where it needed to be and not a millimeter further. His hands were the hands of a man who could chop vegetables and break wrists with equal precision, and the prayer beads on his left wrist were worn smooth in a way that spoke of years of discipline and not affectation. “Kenzo,” Mara said. “This is Hart. He’s the one who walked into the EVO thing outside.” Kenzo looked at me. A long look. The kind of look that takes in posture, breathing, the set of the shoulders, and the distance between hands and weapons and then, having found no weapons, recalculates the entire assessment based on the fact that a man walked into three armed contractors with nothing but his voice and his willingness to use it. “Eat first,” he said. “Talk after.” I ate. The broth was extraordinary. The kind of food that makes you realize you’ve been surviving instead of living, and the distance between those two things is measured in meals like this one. Kenzo moved behind the counter with the silence of a man who had made quietness into a martial art, which, I was beginning to suspect, was not a metaphor. Mara refilled my water without being asked and leaned back against the counter in the posture of a woman who was going to have a conversation and had all the patience in the world to let it arrive at its own speed. I set down my chopsticks. “This block,” Mara said, “has a way of noticing things. We’re part of a neighborhood watch. Loose. Unofficial. The kind of thing that happens when the people who live somewhere realize the people who are supposed to protect them aren’t going to.” I knew the model. Georgetown had something similar, if you squinted. Neighbors who watched. Shop owners who remembered faces. The invisible infrastructure of communities that had learned the hard way that institutional protection comes with institutional priorities, and those priorities rarely include the people who need protecting most. “EVO’s been pushing into this stretch for months,” Mara continued. “Reconstruction contracts give them a footprint. The footprint gives them security patrols. The security patrols give them leverage. It’s the same playbook Saito used, just with better branding.” “Different uniform, same dance,” I said. Kenzo spoke from behind the counter without looking up from the greens he was slicing. “What brings you to Berkeley, Mr. Hart?” I thought about how much truth to spend. In a new city, truth is currency, and you’re never sure of the exchange rate until you’ve overpaid or come up short. But these two had fed me without asking for a story, and the noodle shop felt like the kind of place where lies would curdle in the broth. “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “A few someones. One’s a technomancer who told me she grew up in Oakland and learned her craft in Berkeley. Finding her has been an education in how much this city doesn’t trust outsiders.” Mara exchanged a glance with Kenzo. The kind of glance that carries a decade of married shorthand. It was a whole conversation compressed into the space between one blink and the next. “Technomancers in Berkeley are protected,” Mara said. “Not by us specifically. By a culture that learned the hard way what happens when you identify the gifted to people with agendas. The People’s University isn’t a building. It’s a network. And the network doesn’t hand out addresses to men in Seattle coats, no matter how many teenagers they rescue.” “Fair enough.” I picked up my water. “The other person I’m looking for is someone I was pointed toward by a contact in Seattle. A talislegger and arms dealer. Name of Karma James.” The room temperature didn’t change. The lights didn’t flicker. But something shifted in the way Kenzo held his knife and the way Mara held her breath, and the shift told me that the name meant something in this room. “Who sent you?” Kenzo asked. Still not looking up. Still slicing greens. But the rhythm of the blade had changed. Fractionally slower now, fractionally more deliberate, the way a man adjusts his tempo when he wants you to know he’s paying attention. “An ork fixer in Seattle named Greaves. He told me Karma operates out of Berkeley. Waterfront. Old-school anti-corp activist who won’t sell you a gun without asking about your soul.” Mara let out a breath that carried something like recognition. “Greaves. That name goes back a ways. He came down from Seattle for a stint. He made a fortune with Karma running smuggling supply lines during the Saito occupation. Getting food into Orkland when the Marines had the neighborhoods locked down. Karma drove the trucks. Greaves found the routes. The East Bay Vermin provided escort.” She shook her head with the particular fondness people reserve for memories that were terrifying at the time and sacred in retrospect. “That was a long time ago. Before the liberation. Before the rebuilding. Before everything got complicated in new ways.” “So you know Karma?” “Everyone on this stretch of Telegraph has heard of Karma.” Mara said. “He’s not a myth. He’s principled, which in this world is almost the same thing.” She glanced at Kenzo again. The second glance was shorter than the first. Whatever decision was being made, it was being made quickly. Kenzo set down his knife. Wiped his hands on a cloth. Looked at me directly for the second time, and this time the look was different. Warmer but not warm. Warm is a word for people who’ve decided you’re safe. Warmer is a word for people who’ve decided you might be worth the risk. “Karma’s at the Berkeley waterfront,” he said. “Take University Ave west to the waterfront. There’s a salvage shop right across the highway with a painted sign that says RECLAIMED FUTURES. He works out of a converted shipping container and a ritual circle he’s been tending for fifteen years. Tell him Kenzo sent you. Tell him what you did for the kid.” “Will that matter?” “To Karma?” Kenzo’s mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile but occupied the same postal code. “It’s the only thing that matters.” I reached for my credstick. Mara’s hand covered mine before I got it out of my pocket. “The bowl is on the house,” she said. “You earned it on the sidewalk. What you do from here earns the next one.” “Thank you,” I said, and I meant it in the way you mean things when you haven’t been fed by a stranger’s kindness in long enough that you’d forgotten kindness had a taste. Kenzo had already turned back to his cutting board. Mara was already wiping down the counter. The noodle shop was already being what it was: a small warm room in a cold city doing the only work that has ever actually mattered. And what mattered was keeping people alive long enough to figure out why they should bother. I shouldered my bag and stepped back into the fog. Telegraph Avenue had gone quiet the way neighborhoods go quiet when the fog settles in and the day shift trades places with the night. The streetlights haloed in the mist. Somewhere down the block a door closed and a lock turned, and the sound was the sound of a city pulling its blankets up and deciding what it would dream about. I stood on the sidewalk with a full stomach and an address and the beginning of something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Not hope. Hope is for people who believe the universe takes requests. Something more structural. A foothold. A name. A direction that wasn’t just south but specific. Karma James. Berkeley waterfront. Reclaimed Futures. The detective’s instinct is simple and ancient and it works the same way in every city on every continent: you find one thread, and you pull it, and you follow where it leads, and you don’t stop pulling until the thread runs out or connects to something bigger than the hand that’s holding it. Greaves gave me the name. The Satos gave me the address. Tomorrow I’d give Karma James the only thing he apparently wanted: a reason to believe I wasn’t just another outsider looking to buy violence without understanding what it costs. In my coat pocket, Alexis’ lighter sat heavy against my thigh. The cigarette case rode beside it, silver and engraved and refilled with the smell of real tobacco. The BART ticket that was pristine, sixty years dead, with 0352 in Grinn’s handwriting pressed against the inside of my pocket where it lived like tenants who’d signed a lease on my ribs. The fog swallowed Telegraph Avenue the way the rain swallowed Georgetown, and for a moment the two cities overlapped in my chest. The one I’d left and the one I was learning. The difference between them was nothing and everything. Different sky. Different air. Different names on the buildings and the streets and the faces of the people who moved through them. But the same math at the bottom of every equation: someone owns, someone works, someone falls through, and the people who care enough to catch the ones falling are always outnumbered and always overworked. I started walking north toward University Ave to find a place to lay my head and my bag. The fog walked with me. Tomorrow I’d find Karma James and ask him to arm me for a fight I couldn’t yet name against a man I couldn’t yet find, and the price of his help would be a question about my soul that I’d have to answer honestly or not at all. I’d spent the day being a fish out of water. A Seattle detective in a California city. I was overdressed and underprepared, asking questions that nobody wanted to answer in a language of trust I hadn’t yet learned to speak. But the work is the work. The thread is the thread. And a bloodhound doesn’t need to know the terrain. He just needs the scent. The scent was all around. I just had to learn to ignore the ones new to me to focus on the only one that mattered. And Karma James was between me and all of it, waiting at a waterfront with a question I’d been answering my whole life without knowing anyone was asking. What’s your soul’s stake in this? Everything. The answer was everything. The badge. The lighter. The woman and the child. The memory of a city I’d left and the hope of a city I’d found. The old stubborn certainty that standing between a predator and their prey is not a choice but a condition, a diagnosis, a life sentence served willingly by men and women who’d rather die standing than live with the knowledge that they sat down when standing was required. The fog thickened. The night deepened. I was an unarmed, unaffiliated private investigator who was a very long way from home. I did the only things I truly knew how to do. I took a cigarette out of the silver case and lit it with the confident precision of Alexis’ lighter. The taste of earth after rain flooded me with memories of Alexis I could not let go. I lowered my gaze, set my shoulders, and I just kept walking. [Previous Chapter | Next Chapter] submitted by /u/civilKaos to r/ShadowrunFanFic [link] [comments]

Southern Trophy & Plaque, Inc. (STPINC) – A Legacy Business with Proven Growth Founded in the late 1970s in Homewood, Alabama—one of the most desirable suburbs of Birmingham—Southern Trophy & Plaque has been a trusted name in awards and recognition for nearly five decades. Originally established by a local entrepreneur and later passed to his son, the business was acquired in 2005 by Robbie and Brook Gibbons, both deeply rooted in the local school community. Their leadership strengthened long-standing relationships with area schools and organizations, creating a steady, reliable customer base built almost entirely on reputation and repeat business. In 2007, my father, Frank Lary, took over day-to-day management. Prior to that, he owned and operated successful award stores in Florence and Muscle Shoals for more than 30 years. His experience and craftsmanship helped solidify STPINC’s reputation for quality and service. In 2017, when rising rent prompted the previous owners to sell rather than relocate, my wife Anne and I purchased the business and moved it to its current, highly efficient 650-square-foot location just down the street. The move reduced overhead while preserving our loyal customer base. For several years, STPINC operated as a side business for us, with my father managing full time. In February 2025, I transitioned into the business full time after being medically disqualified from my career as an Air Traffic Controller. My father retired shortly thereafter but still assists during peak seasons and is willing to help a future owner during transition periods. Since stepping into the business full time, I’ve taken a more proactive approach to customer service, follow-up, and business development. The results were immediate: Revenue increased from a prior high of ~$160,000 to approximately $190,000 in the first year. Take-home profit runs approximately 40% of revenue. The business does no advertising—growth has been driven entirely by word-of-mouth and repeat customers. This year is already off to a strong start. This is a lean, efficient, owner-operated business with significant upside. A motivated owner could expand through marketing, online sales, corporate outreach, or extended hours. Operations & Workload Standard hours: 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Monday–Friday I typically work 35–45 hours per week depending on volume Closed on federal holidays Flexible enough to close for family vacations Currently one primary operator (myself), with part-time help available during busy seasons If replaced with a paid employee, profit would adjust accordingly depending on compensation structure, as I am the only employee. Equipment & Assets Epilog FusionEdge 60-watt CO₂ Laser (purchased 2022 for ~$23,000) Excellent condition Expected useful life well over 10 years Older Universal Laser (20+ years old) still operational Approximately $2,500 in inventory Computers, QuickBooks, furniture, tools, and fixtures included This is a fully turnkey operation. Lease Details 3-year lease began August 1, 2024 $1,100/month base rent No CAM or water charges Utilities limited to electricity and gas Highly desirable location with a waitlist for tenants Flexible exit likely possible if relocating operations Financials & Asking Price I’m asking $75,000 for the business. At current performance levels, that investment could realistically be recovered within approximately one year, depending on how the new owner structures operations. I’m selling because I am transitioning into a new opportunity in the home services industry—not because of any decline in performance. The business is strong, stable, and growing. If you’re looking for: A legacy brand with nearly 50 years of goodwill Strong margins Minimal overhead Built-in repeat customers Immediate cash flow Significant growth potential …this is a rare opportunity. Call me anytime with questions. Blake Lary - President Southern Trophy & Plaque, Inc. 1818 28th Avenue South, Suite E Homewood, AL 35209 Work: 205-871-1099 Cell: 205-454-4109 submitted by /u/Sad_Return6501 to r/SmallBusinessSellers [link] [comments]

When I was a Girl Scout, something magical happened at summer camp. For an afternoon activity, our troop leaders unloaded dozens of large cardboard boxes, cans of paint, and other supplies from the back of a van. They had been collecting these donations from local businesses for weeks. We were to spend that afternoon cutting the box lids off and painting them to look like cars, convertibles to be specific. We went all out. We got to paint them whatever color we wanted, drawing on handles and doors. We cut wheels out of cardboard and pinned them to the sides. We taped smaller boxes to the front to be hoods and painted them to match, used flashlights as headlights, the works. In a few hours a couple dozen girls had turned the outdoor pavilion at the park into a whimsical custom car lot. The reason came at night. After dinner around the campfire, but before lights out in our tents, we were told to grab our pillows and sleeping bags and meet back at our cars. Our troop leaders lined them up in rows facing one direction, and instructed us to set up a comfy nest inside our car and wait... Within a few minutes a white sheet was hung and a projector started playing the movie Grease for us! We gasped. One minute we were eating burnt hot dogs and then next we were at the drive-in! Little girls giggled and sang along while eating the cookies and popcorn that were handed out. It’s one of my favorite movie memories till this day. This was the kind of event that changed how I wanted to live my life, mostly because it involved three of my favorite things: camping, girls, and movies. But more importantly, it taught me that with a little creativity and effort, you can make the most mundane things in life not only better, but incredibly special. This idea didn’t cost much. Everything was donated, and I’m sure the movie and projector came from the local library or school. But the cost had nothing to do with the whimsy and magic of that night. It meant thinking differently about what a movie can be, what an event it can become. And I realized at a young age that luxury and quality experience wasn’t about money, but imagination. Money was the consolation prize for people that had to purchase entertainment because they were not capable of making it from scratch. I don’t know what person came up with the drive-in idea, but they were absolute geniuses. Everyone involved had a great time. The tired kids at the end of a long day of camp were contained, entertained, and content enough to allow the troop leaders (probably all in their southern thirties) to sit back and relax, too. Till this day, if I can make the everyday special like this. I do. It’s my whole vibe. When I first got out of college and started working a “real” job, I used to love driving to a cozy independent book store and buying a fancy coffee on the weekends. But it was never about purchasing books or coffee, it was about trying to feel like I was back at that cardboard drive-in again. Trying to discover the hardcover that transported me somewhere else, or changed my mind, or taught me something new. Making an whole day about adding another tome to my private library and celebrating what it held inside was the point. I so looked forward to the excitement of perusing stacks, reading back covers, and asking the staff for suggestions. I finally earned enough money to be able to buy one copy of any book I wanted, a dream of mine as a child. I’d buy the kind of coffee I could never make back at home, something with shots of espresso and foamed milk. It made me feel so grown and decadent. If the shop I found didn’t have a cafe, it was fun to explore a few city blocks and find one. Watch people, pet dogs, sit in a park or just enjoy being a part of the community. I live alone on a farm now, and my lifestyle is very different than it was out of college as a young professional. I am not going to go into detail about my current financial situation, (you can read about that on the About page), but let’s just say book store/cafe trips are a rare treat these days. They only happen once a year after my annual cancer screening in Glens Falls. DAVE at dusk after chores But if you think this farmhouse is some destitute place, you would be very mistaken. I have built a home where the everyday is always special. My biggest luxury is time. I refuse to even own a microwave because the idea of having to rush heating something up disgusts me. I never want a life that requires haste in my home. And while the furniture is used and the appliances are old; my life is ridiculously rich. Mornings here are slow, with good coffee and embers coaxed into fire. When I start my day outdoors with the animals it is in good sheepskin-lined boots and warm wool, all of it second hand but quality you can’t even buy today. I walk outside to my world of hay and firewood, feed and water rounds, horse blankets and egg collecting, and return to the work of art and words. The pay is shit. The life is gold. After chores I soak my feet in scented salt and herbs. I set a good thick towel on the heating rack my friend Katie found at Goodwill for my birthday, and while it warms up I line the shower floor with dried herbs, scented oil, and hang dried eucalyptus I grew at the shower head to fill it with luxury. I turn down the lights, light candles, play music I can sing or think along with, and take my damn time. Everything here is special, more so the more common and mundane it is. When being warm is a hard-earned comfort, you better believe things like movie nights are still an event to behold. When I am going to watch a movie, it is not a passive act anymore like it was when I was depressed, loafing in front of a computer screen. It is an event. I pull out my prize projector screen (which is 100-years-old collapsible portable marvel I found at the free section of the dump last year!) and set up speakers and make jiffy pop on the stove and serve it in red-and-white striped popcorn boxes. It feels like a cinematic experience - the volume, the hum of the projector, mindlessly grabbing the last buttery pieces at the bottom of the cardboard holder. I used to half-watch on my computer screen. I used to doomscroll the news just in case something horrific happened exactly when I decided to watch Jurassic Park again. I charge the phone in another room now. I feel like the kid watching Grease in a box. It is wonderful. Since I live for a living, and managed to do so for over a decade now, I have gotten better at it. I’m damn proud of how scrappy I’ve been. My life is very much this hut on chicken legs in the woods—magical place of wild things and foolish hope—but that doesn’t mean I still don’t miss those book store outings. I’m an American, after all. We are practically trained to consume. And even if I don’t miss the money beyond survival and my dream of solvency, I do miss the trip out of the house to be around books and people. So, I am doing what I have always done. I am opening a book store cafe here, at the farm, and I encourage you to do the same. I am a book collector. Always have been. I read, but not nearly as much as I collect. I have always been this way. I want paper. If your information comes from any source of electricity, it isn’t dependable. It isn’t dependable out here in the mountains, where power outages are as normal as thunderstorms, and it isn’t dependable looking at our collective future on the planet. Holding printed books always felt more real to me. I fear no organized clutter. I have been collecting over three decades now. This house contains around 2,000 books, 700+ in the three rooms I am looking at right now. I live in a library. A small one, but still, access to more titles than I could read if I spent 4+hours a day doing just that. I also have a stove-top espresso maker. A vintage Bellman, an Italian coffee pressure cooker/milk steamer that a friend gave me when cleaning out her mother’s house during a move. It creates several shots of amazing espresso and comes with a steaming element, exactly like in a coffee shop. I can make a vanilla latte, put it in my favorite mug, and start “shopping” whenever I want. If I can make a night at the movies part of my living room I can do the same with a book store. So I make a fancy coffee. I take the time, and make it with care. I add extra flavor and draw a heart in the foam. I put on a favorite record, grab a tote bag, and walk around my many shelves, stacks, and rooms finding a hidden gem I haven’t touched since someone lent it to me in Knoxville, or got it in a swap in college. I have books from when I lived in Idaho, collections of mountain horror stories and true crime. I have endless fantasy and fiction titles. I can fly with dragons or join the Fellowship in Rivendell. I can pick up any smutty romance novel for kicks, or start learning more about the Civil War. There are endless titles on farming, from Wendell Berry to modern goat-keeping guides. There is so much to read right here. And with Taylor playing on the turntable, steam swirling from my mug, and four titles waiting for me to set them on the end table by my recliner, a cat ready to join me under a heated blanket on my lap… nowhere to be, no one who needs me, just an hour or two to get lost in words. I know I can’t afford to get in my car and drive to Manchester and spend $60 on two hardcovers and a cappuccino, but I have spent my life creating something better than that at home. My winter may be spent mostly at this farm, but it is spent well. I am falling in love with the small patchwork decisions to make every moment richer, as opposed to trudging through my second half of life waiting for weekends and vacations on credit cards. We were not meant to live like that. We were not meant to heat dinner in three minutes on high. And if the home gets too confining there is a hawk that needs to fly and hunt, a horse that needs a brush and walk through the pines, a farm to tend, a wild winter pond to drill a hole and try ice fishing or go skating on. I have built a life that feels so wealthy, and all it cost was giving up the desire for more money than I need. If you have a coffee maker, a bookshelf of neglected spines, a cat, and a chair - you too can visit the Winter Book Shoppe. Dogs are allowed. Refills are free. And the only limit to the whimsy is your choice of passport, anything written down and within reach is possible. Middle Earth to the Battle of the Little Round Top. And after a few visits to my Book Shoppe this winter, what was once a luxury I thought I had lost became a celebration of the decision for a quiet life, and a million pages waiting to take me anywhere I want to go. I’m still painting boxes, still pretending the world is what I want it to be. It got me this far, and while I can’t tell if that’s something you envy or pity; I do not care. I am too busy preparing for an Unexpected Party and cloaks hung on the hooks by the door of friends coming in from the cold. submitted by /u/Cripetty to r/coldantlercritics [link] [comments]

3. The next morning, I woke up in a bad mood. I had to speak to an attorney that day, but to add insult to injury, I also had to use a day of PTO. The weather was a bit chillier than the day prior; however, the memo did not make it to Alex Pappas’ office. He rented out a two-room office space above Conor McAfee’s Pizza. The scent wafted upwards through the floor, or maybe after years of assaulting the foundation, there was almost a pizza residue. Whatever the case was, I could tell from one look from Alex’s stature that his presence over a pizza joint was a match made in hell. Through beads of sweat across his forehead, Alex fluttered through pages of documents and punched information in on his computer. “So,” he broke the silence, “your car is entirely in your name, and you got that how many years ago?” He flipped another page, “Two? Yeah, you can easily keep that.” I could feel my foot tapping anxiously and I was surprised the old chair I was in had not collapsed yet from my jostling, “Yes, two years old. Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but can we move on to –” “Mr. Fitzer, I told you not to worry about your daughter, she’s 17 and the court will always act in the best interests of the –” “Mr. Pappas, I know my daughter will choose to stay with me; her mother left us. I meant the house.” He winced, “The problem there is you got the house together and over the past 20 years, and you’ve only been making payments alone for three years. It looks like you both made similar amounts, co-parented, shared other expenses,” he shrugged, “I mean you’ll get a bit more than her, but unless she wants you to have it, you will not keep that house.” “What if I offered half custody in place of selling the house?” I was desperate. Alex gave me a look of professional pragmatism, but on the human level, I could feel his judgment searing into my skin, “If your ex-wife would even be receptive to that, Anna can shut it down immediately by voicing her opinion that she does not wish to see her mother.” “Alex, we’ve known each other for how long?” I could feel the vitriol slither out of my mouth. “Since like 4th grade or something,” he just stared at me. “All this history, and your titanic rates, and what am I paying for? I want my house,” the visions of my new hidden room and the sweet questions of wonder whispered in my ears. “What can we do to get the best outcome here.” After another half hour of his explanations, I realized he was right. During my car ride home, I erupted into tears three times. First, when I turned on my car, I refused to believe that what Mr. Pappas told me was possible. When I left the town center and drove through the Slate Strates, a large ditch lined with slate that was interesting to look at, I pulled off to the side and buried my head in my steering wheel realizing that even if I could convince Anna to placate her mother it might not even matter. By the time I pulled back into my house’s two-car garage with a raised ceiling to increase wall storage space, my tears told me one thing – no matter what happened, I refuse to lose that house without learning why I was gifted a secret sanctuary in my abode. If I lose my house, I will not let its secrets be murdered with it. I took the rest of the afternoon off. Fridays were not busy anyway. I sat in my leather recliner that is equidistant between my TV’s speakers and the vent and was set to a perfect height to always be able to reach my drink without straining. My new room beckoned to me, but the thought of answering its call made me sick. Eventually after what was apparently hours, Bappy’s head shot up, and voices and laughter could be heard outside the front door. The clock read 5:15pm, and I shot up, shocked that I had been sitting apparently motionless for several hours. Anna and a pristine young man about my height strode in through the front door. I hope I was not staring at him, but something about his hair that looked like it could have been painted on like a Ken doll or his pale-pink polo with embroidered surfboards irked me. Bappy seemed to like him, but she would sell belly rubs on a streetcorner at dirt cheap prices, so this told me very little. “Hi Daddy,” Anna beamed at me, “This is Jason.” Jason reached out his hand for a handshake, I pretended not to notice as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, “Did you text me? I didn’t know you guys were coming back here.” “Uh, I told you yesterday after the basement?” My head shot up at her. Why would she reveal something so private. Jason was running his hand threw his hair, his veneer like smile had not changed after I snubbed his handshake, “Sorry, we were busy. We stopped to get chicken. She told me sweet teriyaki was your favorite, so we got a bunch of boneless.” I turned my gaze to Anna, “You shouldn’t have spent money on chicken, I would have given you my credit card.” “No, I got it. It’s no trouble,” Jason lauded at me with his hand holding my dog in place behind her ears. “Sorry I didn’t text you Dad, even though we talked about it. I thought that was good enough. The game starts at 7:00 and we have studying to do,” she looked exasperated. I put my hands up, “Don’t let me stop you.” Jason piped up again, “Hey, Ann, what about the library.” I looked at her and she sighed, “Yeah, Dad, we stopped by the library. I didn’t want to spoil it, but we went to the reference section of the library, and I wanted to know if they knew anything about bar cellars. Apparently during the 20s, bootleggers would build cellars into houses near ravines and other steep drop-offs. They would hand-dig sub-basements then dump the dirt down nearby cliffs and people would have speakeasys inside their houses. Apparently, they were so common in New Columbia that several century homes discover these every year,” she sounded genuinely excited by the end. “I guess that would explain the paneled walls and the bar lighting setup,” it all made sense to me, “This house was build in the 1910s, and only restored like 30 years ago, so that would line up. I still have no idea how we’ve been here for so long and just now found it.” Anna shrugged and pulled a bag out of her backpack that instantly filled the room with an aroma that made me shiver, “I don’t know Dad, all I know is what they said at the library. If they’re so well hidden, it makes sense.” For the next hour or so, I sat in the living room watching the game while Anna and Jason sat at the kitchen table eating chicken and chatting about high school life with geology books as placemats. Anna’s research almost made sense to me, but I could not let go of the shaking feeling that something more had to be going on. Is it just a coincidence that I dreamed about the house having another room, only to find it? Were dreams about finding other rooms in your house common: common enough to signify something to me? It just seemed too cohesive; we found a previously unknown room that I had seen in a dream. Is it really possible that I had never noticed the cellar door in the way-back room? I could have sworn that I chose the rug in that room, or that I had vacuumed it before and therefore would have noticed the handle. However, Sarah could have been the one to pick out the rug. Of course! I felt my legs shake with energy. Sarah might have known about the room, and just never found the need to mention it. She certainly has some experience keeping secrets. I wondered if I could get Anna to text her and ask her. Part of me wanted to know more about Anna and Jason’s conversation when I heard some of the raunchy jokes she repeated to him – presumably that she heard from Mandy. My guess was that she was just trying to impress Jason, but that would be an issue for another time. “Anna, I don’t mean to interrupt you guys, but I was wondering when the last time you spoke to or texted your mother was?” I stood over the two of them at my maple dining table. She looked up at me, “She texted me last month to say happy birthday and that was it. Why?” “I’m just thinking that maybe you should talk to her more. I’d hate to be the reason you don’t have a relationship with your mother,” I could tell she and Jason were both feeling uncomfortable. “After she left and all those horrible things she said to you? I’m just not interested,” she shrugged. That was not the answer I was looking for, “Well, Anna, I think it might be good if you forgave her. I’m not going to, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t text her more.” “Dad, we’re going to go to the game soon. Can we talk about this later?” I nodded slowly, “We can. I was mostly just curious. She just says happy birthday and whatnot?” “Pretty much. I send her some paintings sometimes, but that’s about it.” “Well, have fun at the game you guys. Anna, I need to go grab some stuff from your room. I’m going to put on a load of laundry.” “Awesome, thanks Dad. I’ll be home around 9:00.” “No rush, just whenever.” My sienna-colored kitchen walls redshifted into the burgundy of my hallway staircase as I sped up the stairs. I was out of breath as I burst into Annas room. Sure enough, on her desk was an easel with a sharp and gloomy painting of a dark room. Grays and blacks scarred the canvas like the darkness itself was a product of its host medium. Scant wheezes of golden light cascaded down the ghastly staircase. It was a vindicating sight, and I could not take my eyes away. In a way I thought it was beautiful; it was painted from the perspective of someone already in the room. However, despite the subjective beauty it washed over me, it led me to two equally perplexing conclusions. Either, Anna had found out about the room and feigned surprise when I discovered it, or Anna had otherwise known about the room such as by being told by someone else – her mother. I needed to know, but its not like I could come out and ask her. However, if there was a chance I could lose the house or worse – it becomes a casualty of eminent domain; I needed to find answers. What better place than the room itself. I grabbed a few of Anna’s workout hoodies and t-shirts and tossed them in a basket that I set next to the couch as I turned on reruns of something mindless. I was getting impatient so at 6:30, I made sure to gently prod the two of them out of the house. I told Anna she can stay out as late as she wants, but to update me where she is. We shared locations, but just to be safe. My eyes followed the two visages of youth on their way to making memories they would cradle forever. My daughter had no idea that due to nothing in her control, she was likely about to become a bargaining chip in a brutal war. When they were out of sight, I whistled for Bappy and the two of us descended into the foundry of both wonder and fear. I would have sworn I stood at the gates of this forbidden kingdom for hours, but my watch buzzed with an email from Alex that I was going to ignore for the time being. The time read 6:44. I peeled back the carpet and heaved the handle open. My basement was well lit, and it caught the evening sun as it cut through the trees causing a warm and vibrant atmosphere. Sometimes it reminded me of how an evening before a royal ball might feel. However, the darkness of this room seemed to swallow the light whole. My flashlight clicked to life, and I began to descent. The hair on the back of my neck spiked until my head dipped below the surface. When your legs are in another environment than the rest of your body, you feel especially vulnerable. The room was almost exactly how I remembered it. I skittered over to the light switch and booted it to life. The flashlight remained on just for moral support. Some things I did not notice before was that the light sockets that held the extremely dim iridescent bulbs looked relatively modern, but then again, the standard socket has been in use for over 100 years. Naturally I ran back upstairs and grabbed four 60W white bulbs. I will admit my heart fluttered when I had to shut off the lights to unscrew the old bulbs and install the new ones. The difference in the room was enlightening. I could see everything in the room now, from corner to corner to corner. However, this only raised more questions. First, I noticed that the walls which I assumed were stone or at the very least concrete, were actually a dark gray colored drywall. The wood paneling was wood certainly, but drywall in a room like this was odd. Next, the ceiling was not concrete or dirt either, it was paneled with 2x4s and cross beams. Even the most unsavvy homeowner should know, this should be impossible. When I went up the steps partway, you could tell that the wood is visible only from under the lip where you enter through the cellar door. The entry was flush concrete. After sticking my head in and out of the room, I noticed that there was a severe inlet of air into the room that was intermittent. It would enter for several seconds, almost a minute, then stop before entering again. Inside the room I found HVAC registers along the wall. This would have to have been installed when the house was built. There was a large airflow in the room, but until I saw the registers I guess I ignored it. Lastly, there was a pile of tarps, blankets, and carpets on the ground. Two thoughts crossed my mind: my breaker box should have a circuit to this room and my HVAC system should be able to temperature control this room. Bappy was clearly confused and started to whimper at my constant and erratic movement. I made sure to bring her to the breaker box with me. With a loud click my basement was plunged into darkness when I flipped the two breakers that accessed my basement. To my confusion I could see across the distance of my basement to the way-back room where my secret new room was slumbering in a residential tomb. A dim halo shone across. I did not need to venture over to know that the lights were still on in that room. In defeat, I switched the lights on and marched upstairs with Bappy on my heels to change the thermostat aware that I already knew the outcome. I blasted the heat and sat on the steps at the top of the stairs for a moment, petting my friend until I could feel the temperature rising. Again, I descended the stairs, sweating already. I could feel my stomach lurch as I waded into the uncertainty of my new room and could feel an ambient temperature of room temperature. It was like the SI Kilogram or meter; it embodied room temperature. It was as if the head refused to enter a place like this room either out of fear or inability. I just sat there for a moment thinking until I heard Bappy whining. I could see her shadow as she circled the top of the staircase, but she did not come down. I called her, I whistled, I even pulled a piece of jerky out of my shirt pocket and tried to goad her down, but she did not budge – which was fine. As I moved towards the blankets in the corner and began to pull them, I could hear Bappy start to bark. My blood ran cold because she only barks when she sees another dog – or a person. “Bappy! Knock it off,” I yelled. “You’re coming down here so I can keep an eye on you.” When I got to the top of the stairs, my head jerked towards where she was barking only to see nothing of course, “you just got yourself all riled up.” I was unsure if I was talking to her or myself. I took the first step back down the stairs when Bappy began to squirm. She’s a 40-pound dog, which does not seem like a lot, but a 40-pound dog that is squirming like you are dragging her to hell is not easy to carry. In the blink of an eye, I could feel her falling and with a thud, her haunch slammed into the corner of one of the stairs. “Bappy! No, no no,” I reached to grab her again, but she was sprinting away from me towards the upstairs staircase. Hastily I slammed the cellar shut and followed the dog running on three legs, and limping on the other. I caught her before she went up the stairs and immediately began loading her up to go to the vet. Tears welled in my eyes as my house was filled with human and dog harmonizing their wails. We were out the door on the way to the vet in under 3 minutes. I obviously hurried to take care of my dog, but I am beginning to think something else drove me from that room. In particular, I think it was the fact that I caught a glimpse of a hatch that was buried under the pile of blankets. 4. My trip to the vet was more pleasant than getting skinned alive, but less fun than pretty much anything else. Thankfully, the local football game convinced all pets in the area to go on a hiatus from having medical emergencies, which I thought was very considerate. Bappy and I waited in a stew of disinfectant and our own tears for eight minutes until a petite young woman tall enough to be in middle school said she was the vet and was going to take excellent care of Bappy. It took only a few minutes for her to diagnose a sprain and inject my friend with a painkiller sedative combo. The 15 minutes or so that succeeded involved me waiting alone in an examination room while my drugged Bappy was getting an X-ray. I was proud of myself that my first thought was guilt for accidentally hurting Bappy. I was even more proud that my second thought was how I had to tell Anna, but that I should wait until she is not around a boy she likes – even though it would be very easy to force him to deal with a teary-eyed Anna. My third thought, however, was one that was more esoteric. Thinking about a mystery hatch in my mystery room felt almost inappropriate to me: like a guilty pleasure. I thought about it with the same reverence and shame that I used to think about prurient aspects of my teenage years. It might make sense, and be entirely natural, but there was something secretive about it and I wanted to explore it more than ever now that I was away. It gave me chills to imagine what is underneath that hatch. I still had multitudes of questions about my first mystery room, but two? There had to be something going on. I was jolted out of my stupor with a cheery vet and a sleepy poodle. I was given a list that basically consisted of allowing her to rest, carrying Bappy up and down any stairs, and giving her several pills per day. We left and went home. The ride home was as good a time as any to call Anna. The first thing I heard when she answered were squeals and laughter before her familiar, “Hi dad,” came through my SUV’s Bluetooth. I choked back tears, “Hey Mars Bar, where are you now?” We share our locations, but I try not to bother her, and give her privacy without monitoring her. She and her friends laughed on the other end again, “We’re just getting ice cream and it’s so cold, we’re all unprepared.” “Let me know if you need a ride, I’m in the car, I have something to tell you,” I paused, “I was carrying Bappy and when she squirmed, I dropped her. But we are on the way home from the hospital! She is fine.” I was met with silence, and Anna beat me home on foot. When Mandy and Jason saw me carry Bappy inside, they bid me farewell and left. After an hour of tears and hugging our dog, we both went to bed. Saturday was uneventful and we got into a groove of carrying for Bappy. When Anna offered to stay home and not see her friends, I knew it was a fake offer until I took her up on it and she stayed with us until we went to bed. Anna was a very smart kid, but she was not nearly as clever as myself. Whether she did it to break the mold she put herself in, or for any other reason, she would sometimes sneak out after I had gone to bed, thinking I was none the wiser. I guess she never stopped to wonder why my door was always left open a crack – or what my reaction would be when I woke up to find Bappy laying next to me. I never brought it up, and tonight was going to be no different. The door to my room stuck a bit. The tolerancing was so tight that when I stained the door, the milky layer of varnish on the top scraped against the door frame so in addition to my personal heating climbing into bed with me, the creak of the door would also wake me up. That night, a familiar groan in the night gently pulled me from my slumber. Bappy. I thought to myself, waiting to feel her jump into bed with me. Jump? Bappy was not allowed to do that with her injury! With my blinking eyes getting the message to blink from different zip codes and my head struggling to stay awake I began frantically leaning over the sides of my bed searching for Bappy to stop her from jumping up and hurting herself. It was to no avail so I began whistling to get her to come to me just so I could confirm where she was. I felt a head perk up next to me. Bappy was already here to my surprise, and by the looks of it, she had been there so long that she had no interest in waking up fully. I exhaled in relief as my head crashed back into my pillow. I reached for my phone and opened Anna’s location. She was at the gas station across the street from her friend Dani’s house, a place she and her friends would hang out on the nights she snuck out I surmised. Out of instinct, I switch on my volume and texted my mom that if she woke up for any reason, be prepared in case something happened. I trusted her, the area was safe, and she was with friends. I could go back to sleep. However, I did not. The gas station was over 20 minutes away, and the door had creaked open moments ago. Bappy was already here, and asleep. It could not have been Anna that opened the door and set Bappy down. Every bone in my body was screaming at me that this had something to do with my rooms in the basement. I felt a near gravitational pull to my basement to examine if anything was out of place. I resisted. Any number of things could go wrong. Even if I was alone, what if I fall or what if when I left Bappy alone she hurt herself? What if I got trapped inside the room? Most hauntingly of all, what if I was not alone. I sprung up and locked my bedroom door and flicked the switch putting myself under a blinding glow of knowing safety. I checked under my bed, my closet, behind all my furniture were locations where a person or critter could fit. Bappy’s eyes were open, but she refused to partake in any nonsense. My room was secure. As I stood there alone in the room, I weighed my options. I could call the police, but what if all of this was for nothing? Drafts blow open doors all the time. But not my constantly-stuck door. I had to do something, or else Anna would be coming home to a potentially dangerous situation. At that moment, I would have traded anything for a weapon, but alas, I owned none. The only ways she could possibly come into the house were the front door, the garage, or the deck door. The front door was presumably the only unlocked one as she likely left through it. I killed the lights and gave my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark. The next moment was one I held my breath the entire time even though I knew I was likely being ridiculous. I ran out, locked the front door, and checked the other doors, and shut Bappy and myself back in our room. You’re not in trouble, come home now. I texted Anna. About 20 minutes later, I saw two peering headlights creep into my driveway, and I pressed my ear to the door of my bedroom for the finale of my plan. LED light pierced into every orifice of my house and any intruder would be scrambling if they knew the jig was up. Alas, other than the crunch of tires on concrete there was not peep inside my house. She approached the front door, and Bappy and I rushed out of our room, flicking on all the lights and I flung the door open basically lifting Anna into the house in an embrace. “Anna, I’m scared.” “Dad, what?” “Bappy was already in bed with me, but the door pushed open, and then I thought someone was here, and they must be in the basement,” I babbled like a child. “I’m so sorry I left, please don’t be mad, I won’t do it again.” “Anna, I think the basement has something to do with this.” “What? Why?” “There’s another room beneath the basement,” I hissed at her. “I don’t know what’s going on.” “You sound crazy,” she looked afraid. She was right, I seemed like a lunatic. I took a breath, “Anna, I need to tell you the truth,” under the incandescent spotlight, my staircase was my stage. She was staring at me in fear, and I could not blame her. “I was examining our new room, and Bappy wouldn’t stop freaking out. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight, and when I tried to bring her down with me she squirmed and forced her way out of my arms and fell on her hip.” Anna looked like I just dumped a bucket of cold water on her, “wait, you hurt Bappy.” “By accident!” I pleaded with her, “I was freaked out.” “Why?” I could see the confusion bubble into anger. “There is another room,” the words felt like a chill crawling from my mouth. “What’s going on? I mean you’ve always been obsessed with this house, but you’ve been so crazy lately,” her eyes were sympathetic. “Anna, my door was pushed open,” I stood up and gave her an example of how only intentional force could have opened my door. “I just have a gut feeling that this has something to do with the basement. Under some of the old blankets down there was a hatch. I didn’t look, but I just know there’s another room.” “Dad, there are no blankets in there, there was just a mattress.” We looked at each other for a moment. “Have you been down there?” I asked slowly. “No,” she did not hesitate. The unsaid words that hung in the air between us were heavy. I knew about my secrets, but I could tell she had some of her own, “Astronaut,” I enunciated each syllable slowly. “Dad.” “Anna, have you been down there?” “What does it matter? I live here too!” She was indignant. I could feel the previously unseen depths of my visage create a fearful powerlessness in Anna. I did not take my eyes off her. “I think I was down there once,” she admitted. “You think?” “Yes, I don’t know for sure. It could have been a dream, that I just fit the actual room to, but right after mom left I just remember being in a haze for a few days, and a few days ago I had another dream about it and I sketched it out and just painted what I saw,” she shrugged, “it’s weird, but you’re scaring me now. I just don’t see what the big deal is about it.” “I just know something is going on with it with everything going on. I just know it’s connected,” I slipped, forgetting that I had secrets of my own. Anna sat on the floor with Bappy between us, “What’s going on? And just so you know, I’m going to say astronaut immediately.” She was honest with me, and in a fair world, it would have been right of me to be honest with her. The fact that the divorce was now officially going through along with all the issues we would need to confront was just as much her business as it was mine. On the other hand, her mother was allowed to contact her at any time, and chose not to. Maybe this was a sign I should keep quiet about that, “Anna, I’ve been keeping a secret from you. Three years ago, your mother did not tell me that she hoped I died from cancer. I was just so terrified that you would take her side, and I would lose you. I needed you to be against her.” I could tell that Anna was processing a deluge of emotions. When she finally spoke, it caught me off guard, “Well, dad, I don’t think she really needed to use any words. If you left for another woman, I would have stayed with mom. That was a brutal lie though.” Little did she know that it was not even my biggest one, “Listen, given that though, I really think you should have a relationship with your mother on your own terms. Her birthday is next Thursday. Just send her a happy birthday text. You never know how far that goodwill will go. Maybe she’ll help when you go to college, or she’ll help pay for a wedding or something like that.” Anna stood up, looking so much like her mother that my being proud of the person she was becoming was a double-edged sword, “I’ll think about it. Am I in trouble?” “What? No. I’ve known about you sneaking out forever. I know you’re not stupid. Go to bed, we’re seeing grandma tomorrow. We need to check the house first though. Just humor me, please.” We meticulously checked the house and found nothing, not a single carpet fiber was out of place. My secret room was still covered like I had left it. If only I would have been able to let it stay like that. 5. If you have ever been in a cave, there is a strange feeling you get when you squeeze through rocks. The walls of a cave passage are steadfast and unmoving. When you let your kid win a play fight and they sit on your back, you can move the compressing force with a deep breath – as if you are your own pneumatic jack. In a cave that is not the case. That described how my next week or so went in a figurative sense. However, one day while Anna was at school, that comparison described my life literally. Anna and I came to an agreement that neither of us would go deeper down the hatch, but that since we had already seen the first room, we would go through turning it into a room for recreation. It would be fun to have a functional bar for me, and Anna and her friends could play games and do whatever they like to do. On my lunches I would run to the hardware store and get started on the repairs. It was coming along nicely. It turns out that a lighter color of paint, bright bulbs, and removing the old blankets and towels made the room so much livelier. The room seemed to play by its own rules, but for some reason it stopped bothering us. It was our home. You love your children for their quirks – the times they stare into the distance or utter something spine chilling before you walk through the dark of your house. Why should your home be different? I moved Bappy’s dog bed to the basement so she would stay there and I could monitor her while I installed some new light fixtures onto the bar. I was taking a sip of my Mountain Dew and when I set my can down Bappy was standing at the top of the stairs, “Stay there girl!” I called out to her. As usual she had no self-preservation instinct. She began descending the stairs. With a sigh, I stood up to stop her and bring her back up. If I had been more careful, I would not have spilled my drink on myself in the rush. I found myself looking like a child who soiled his pants as a scooped Bappy up from the step and we went upstairs. I thought to myself I might as well do a load of laundry and went to go grab some of Anna’s clothes to put a load on. Every time I entered her room since the discovery of my secret room, my first instinct is to check her drawing desk. Since our first drawing, there has been nothing. My lungs emptied with giddiness when a mostly finished sketch presented itself to me. A perspective view down a lit hallway, but not with fluorescent lights. Rather it was lit with incandescent lights like the ones you find in a residential home. It did not match our home, and it was very different from our secret room in the basement. I dropped everything and ran back downstairs. There was no fear left in my body as I plummeted towards the gift my house had given me, and that my daughter had told me about. I flung the mattress off the hatch and ripped the hatch under it open so hard I could see its metal handle chip the concrete floor. There was a metal ladder leading into the mouth of this hatch. Almost hypnotically I found I was halfway down the ladder. When I reached the bottom, my feet – now bare from removing them at the top of the stairs and forgetting to put them back on coming down – touched carpet. Shag carpet should remain in the 70’s where it belongs, but that is what my feet touched. It appeared that I was at the end of a hallway with beige walls and white molding on the floors. It was suburban hell in the most literal form. I followed the lit hallway for what I imagined was going to be a near infinite passage, but about 20 seconds later I reached a corner. I would have seen it, but there were impressionist paintings on the wall every few feet. I did not recognize any of them. I reached the right angle and around it was more hallway, but at the end of it was a kitchen. Almost like the front of a public bakery. The lights shone overhead and that is where they stopped. I could see a void on my left and a void straight ahead, blending perfectly with gritty black and white tiles beneath my feet. The glass cases were open as if a cartoonish army of racoons had emptied them at industrial pace. The paths of darkness converging on myself were beyond intriguing. The only reason I did not venture down one of them was decision paralysis. I was brought out of it by Anna screaming, “Dad! Dad! Are you down there?” My bare feet plapped across the tile until I reached the carpet and I sprinted back towards the ladder, “I’m down here Anna! I went down the next room! It’s great.” “Bappy went down the stairs.” I ascended the ladder, “I left her up there. Is she okay?” “She’s not crying,” Anna was knelt on the ground hugging her. “Anna, there’s like an entire bakery down there. It’s like the one in your room!” She looked violated, “Are you talking about my picture? You weren’t supposed to be looking at that.” “I was grabbing laundry,” I sat down and hugged Bappy. She stood up. “You’re the one who made me see Dr. Mentors. You knew that she wanted me to do private creative works,” I could tell she was angry. Foolishly, I did not just agree with her, and promise to respect her privacy, “Then don’t leave them in the middle of your room if you’re not going to clean up after yourself. You didn’t care when I saw the first one.” She was clearly exasperated and pulled Bappy into a hug and went upstairs: leaving an increasingly hollow man in an increasingly hollow house. The next several days passed by with in the absence of trouble or joy. Like the moments before dropping ice into water, there was such an impermanence to the grinding of our shared space. We both knew the explosion was coming, but neither one of us was willing to instigate it. Over dinner we would discuss the bare minimum. On the bright side, Bappy was healing perfectly. She avoided all doorways in the house, though. There had been little update on the legal proceedings, Mr. Pappas had seemed to describe the whole ordeal as a “hurry-up and wait” situation. I now have two separate rooms under my house that I did not know about. It was joyful to be sure, but these blessings must not be of this world. Maybe the eyes I imagine in the dark are that of an angel. It was comforting to be graced with more house to love. I built my entire life here – I am not religious as it is not something I can measure and prove being an engineer. When it comes to two extra rooms that magically appear, however, I can measure every single aspect of these rooms. They are as real as I thought my love with my wife was, and I would make the most of them. Part of the joy of these rooms was the childlike wonder I got from the idea of what new discoveries could be around every corner. We were coming up on Thanksgiving when I had been taking advantage of my time away from Anna to continue exploring. Bappy was almost fully healed but refused to even enter the original basement. I had fully mapped out the bakery at the bottom. It was quite tall and had a lower level. Not like another separate space, but rather as if it were a two-story building. In the purest sense, this was a full bakery with a kitchen, seating, and storage. It was incredible – but ultimately I reacted with ambivalent surprise when I opened an industrial freezer to reveal a staircase traversing downward in it. I will be having another adventure. The goosebumps on my arms were partially from excitement, but they also reminded me that I was in a temperature-controlled basement surrounded by humming industrial freezers. I felt my health watch buzz, and I saw that Anna was calling me. Part of me felt like everything was going to be okay when she broke her walls and spoke to me, “Hello? Anna?” “Where are you? The chicken and garlic toast smells like it’s burning.” “Oh, I’m sorry I’m just working on the basement,” I hoped she wouldn’t come down and verify my location, “Give me a few minutes and I will be right back. You want to take them out for me? Please.” Her voice was distant and muffled like she was holding her phone away from her face, “Yeah, I can.” I made the way up the stairs of Le Grande Bappy, the unofficial name of my little restaurant. The concrete stairs merged into the black and white checkered floor which merged with the fluffy carpeted floors of my hallway leading to the ladder. I ran my hand along the walls – drywall with a pale blue paint and brass-framed photographs. It was the smoothest wall I have ever felt. All the drywall in my house utilized 280 grit sandpaper. This is higher than industry standards and makes your walls very smooth. However, the walls here could have been made from silk. It was so alluring, that I felt my hands caress them like a magnet drew me to it. Upstairs, Anna was clearly annoyed, and I could tell. My spaghetti was turned off and drained. Even the untrained eye could tell it was far past al dente. The sauce was already slathered on and the grilled chicken I made was tossed in, “You could have gotten started without me,” I urged, washing my hands. “It’s fine,” Anna’s voice was sweet and respectful, but her face and tone were monotone. Dinner went as well as it could – tense and quiet, but uneventful. I asked her about school and her plans for the weekend. The volleyball season was coming to a close, so she was really honing in on school and wanted to go look at universities soon. She said she would be going to one of our local parks on Friday with “a friend.” I knew what that meant, but I trusted her so I did not press her on it. She did say something that caught me off guard, “I was looking at schools. Can we go on a visit to Saint-Germaine U?” I slurped my spaghetti into my mouth, “That’s like two hours away from me. It’s about 20 minutes away from Archimedes, New Columbia. Your mother lives there, but you knew that right?” “I did,” she spoke slowly through gritted teeth like she was trying not to scare off a deer. “I’ve been talking to her again.” My heart started racing, “what has she told you?” I asked casually. “That she misses me and wants to see me more,” Anna reached for another roll. “Is that it? Like did she say anything else?” “She mentioned the divorce.” I froze, “Uhhh,” I stared at her dumbfounded. “It was only a matter of time. I don’t know what else to expect from someone who would wish for death on a spouse – no matter the circumstances. I just wish you had told me.” “Well, Anna, there’s a lot more at stake than that. But I shouldn’t be the one to keep you from your mother.” She just looked at me like she expected me to keep talking. Her eyes told me to fight for her, to prove my parental loyalty to her, to compete against the other party for her favor. I would not play such games, especially if I wanted our dynamic to continue to be built on trust and respect. I reached for another roll. “Should you be doing that?” she asked with venom in her voice. “Should you?” Her chair screeched as she forced herself upward. Bappy woke up and began pacing behind her. She chose to cut the wires keeping us bound, diffusing the situation at the cost of even more distance between us. I went back to the basement after dinner. submitted by /u/LimeSkittleFanClub to r/shortstories [link] [comments]

3. The next morning, I woke up in a bad mood. I had to speak to an attorney that day, but to add insult to injury, I also had to use a day of PTO. The weather was a bit chillier than the day prior; however, the memo did not make it to Alex Pappas’ office. He rented out a two-room office space above Conor McAfee’s Pizza. The scent wafted upwards through the floor, or maybe after years of assaulting the foundation, there was almost a pizza residue. Whatever the case was, I could tell from one look from Alex’s stature that his presence over a pizza joint was a match made in hell. Through beads of sweat across his forehead, Alex fluttered through pages of documents and punched information in on his computer. “So,” he broke the silence, “your car is entirely in your name, and you got that how many years ago?” He flipped another page, “Two? Yeah, you can easily keep that.” I could feel my foot tapping anxiously and I was surprised the old chair I was in had not collapsed yet from my jostling, “Yes, two years old. Listen, I don’t want to be rude, but can we move on to –” “Mr. Fitzer, I told you not to worry about your daughter, she’s 17 and the court will always act in the best interests of the –” “Mr. Pappas, I know my daughter will choose to stay with me; her mother left us. I meant the house.” He winced, “The problem there is you got the house together and over the past 20 years, and you’ve only been making payments alone for three years. It looks like you both made similar amounts, co-parented, shared other expenses,” he shrugged, “I mean you’ll get a bit more than her, but unless she wants you to have it, you will not keep that house.” “What if I offered half custody in place of selling the house?” I was desperate. Alex gave me a look of professional pragmatism, but on the human level, I could feel his judgment searing into my skin, “If your ex-wife would even be receptive to that, Anna can shut it down immediately by voicing her opinion that she does not wish to see her mother.” “Alex, we’ve known each other for how long?” I could feel the vitriol slither out of my mouth. “Since like 4th grade or something,” he just stared at me. “All this history, and your titanic rates, and what am I paying for? I want my house,” the visions of my new hidden room and the sweet questions of wonder whispered in my ears. “What can we do to get the best outcome here.” After another half hour of his explanations, I realized he was right. During my car ride home, I erupted into tears three times. First, when I turned on my car, I refused to believe that what Mr. Pappas told me was possible. When I left the town center and drove through the Slate Strates, a large ditch lined with slate that was interesting to look at, I pulled off to the side and buried my head in my steering wheel realizing that even if I could convince Anna to placate her mother it might not even matter. By the time I pulled back into my house’s two-car garage with a raised ceiling to increase wall storage space, my tears told me one thing – no matter what happened, I refuse to lose that house without learning why I was gifted a secret sanctuary in my abode. If I lose my house, I will not let its secrets be murdered with it. I took the rest of the afternoon off. Fridays were not busy anyway. I sat in my leather recliner that is equidistant between my TV’s speakers and the vent and was set to a perfect height to always be able to reach my drink without straining. My new room beckoned to me, but the thought of answering its call made me sick. Eventually after what was apparently hours, Bappy’s head shot up, and voices and laughter could be heard outside the front door. The clock read 5:15pm, and I shot up, shocked that I had been sitting apparently motionless for several hours. Anna and a pristine young man about my height strode in through the front door. I hope I was not staring at him, but something about his hair that looked like it could have been painted on like a Ken doll or his pale-pink polo with embroidered surfboards irked me. Bappy seemed to like him, but she would sell belly rubs on a streetcorner at dirt cheap prices, so this told me very little. “Hi Daddy,” Anna beamed at me, “This is Jason.” Jason reached out his hand for a handshake, I pretended not to notice as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, “Did you text me? I didn’t know you guys were coming back here.” “Uh, I told you yesterday after the basement?” My head shot up at her. Why would she reveal something so private. Jason was running his hand threw his hair, his veneer like smile had not changed after I snubbed his handshake, “Sorry, we were busy. We stopped to get chicken. She told me sweet teriyaki was your favorite, so we got a bunch of boneless.” I turned my gaze to Anna, “You shouldn’t have spent money on chicken, I would have given you my credit card.” “No, I got it. It’s no trouble,” Jason lauded at me with his hand holding my dog in place behind her ears. “Sorry I didn’t text you Dad, even though we talked about it. I thought that was good enough. The game starts at 7:00 and we have studying to do,” she looked exasperated. I put my hands up, “Don’t let me stop you.” Jason piped up again, “Hey, Ann, what about the library.” I looked at her and she sighed, “Yeah, Dad, we stopped by the library. I didn’t want to spoil it, but we went to the reference section of the library, and I wanted to know if they knew anything about bar cellars. Apparently during the 20s, bootleggers would build cellars into houses near ravines and other steep drop-offs. They would hand-dig sub-basements then dump the dirt down nearby cliffs and people would have speakeasys inside their houses. Apparently, they were so common in New Columbia that several century homes discover these every year,” she sounded genuinely excited by the end. “I guess that would explain the paneled walls and the bar lighting setup,” it all made sense to me, “This house was build in the 1910s, and only restored like 30 years ago, so that would line up. I still have no idea how we’ve been here for so long and just now found it.” Anna shrugged and pulled a bag out of her backpack that instantly filled the room with an aroma that made me shiver, “I don’t know Dad, all I know is what they said at the library. If they’re so well hidden, it makes sense.” For the next hour or so, I sat in the living room watching the game while Anna and Jason sat at the kitchen table eating chicken and chatting about high school life with geology books as placemats. Anna’s research almost made sense to me, but I could not let go of the shaking feeling that something more had to be going on. Is it just a coincidence that I dreamed about the house having another room, only to find it? Were dreams about finding other rooms in your house common: common enough to signify something to me? It just seemed too cohesive; we found a previously unknown room that I had seen in a dream. Is it really possible that I had never noticed the cellar door in the way-back room? I could have sworn that I chose the rug in that room, or that I had vacuumed it before and therefore would have noticed the handle. However, Sarah could have been the one to pick out the rug. Of course! I felt my legs shake with energy. Sarah might have known about the room, and just never found the need to mention it. She certainly has some experience keeping secrets. I wondered if I could get Anna to text her and ask her. Part of me wanted to know more about Anna and Jason’s conversation when I heard some of the raunchy jokes she repeated to him – presumably that she heard from Mandy. My guess was that she was just trying to impress Jason, but that would be an issue for another time. “Anna, I don’t mean to interrupt you guys, but I was wondering when the last time you spoke to or texted your mother was?” I stood over the two of them at my maple dining table. She looked up at me, “She texted me last month to say happy birthday and that was it. Why?” “I’m just thinking that maybe you should talk to her more. I’d hate to be the reason you don’t have a relationship with your mother,” I could tell she and Jason were both feeling uncomfortable. “After she left and all those horrible things she said to you? I’m just not interested,” she shrugged. That was not the answer I was looking for, “Well, Anna, I think it might be good if you forgave her. I’m not going to, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t text her more.” “Dad, we’re going to go to the game soon. Can we talk about this later?” I nodded slowly, “We can. I was mostly just curious. She just says happy birthday and whatnot?” “Pretty much. I send her some paintings sometimes, but that’s about it.” “Well, have fun at the game you guys. Anna, I need to go grab some stuff from your room. I’m going to put on a load of laundry.” “Awesome, thanks Dad. I’ll be home around 9:00.” “No rush, just whenever.” My sienna-colored kitchen walls redshifted into the burgundy of my hallway staircase as I sped up the stairs. I was out of breath as I burst into Annas room. Sure enough, on her desk was an easel with a sharp and gloomy painting of a dark room. Grays and blacks scarred the canvas like the darkness itself was a product of its host medium. Scant wheezes of golden light cascaded down the ghastly staircase. It was a vindicating sight, and I could not take my eyes away. In a way I thought it was beautiful; it was painted from the perspective of someone already in the room. However, despite the subjective beauty it washed over me, it led me to two equally perplexing conclusions. Either, Anna had found out about the room and feigned surprise when I discovered it, or Anna had otherwise known about the room such as by being told by someone else – her mother. I needed to know, but its not like I could come out and ask her. However, if there was a chance I could lose the house or worse – it becomes a casualty of eminent domain; I needed to find answers. What better place than the room itself. I grabbed a few of Anna’s workout hoodies and t-shirts and tossed them in a basket that I set next to the couch as I turned on reruns of something mindless. I was getting impatient so at 6:30, I made sure to gently prod the two of them out of the house. I told Anna she can stay out as late as she wants, but to update me where she is. We shared locations, but just to be safe. My eyes followed the two visages of youth on their way to making memories they would cradle forever. My daughter had no idea that due to nothing in her control, she was likely about to become a bargaining chip in a brutal war. When they were out of sight, I whistled for Bappy and the two of us descended into the foundry of both wonder and fear. I would have sworn I stood at the gates of this forbidden kingdom for hours, but my watch buzzed with an email from Alex that I was going to ignore for the time being. The time read 6:44. I peeled back the carpet and heaved the handle open. My basement was well lit, and it caught the evening sun as it cut through the trees causing a warm and vibrant atmosphere. Sometimes it reminded me of how an evening before a royal ball might feel. However, the darkness of this room seemed to swallow the light whole. My flashlight clicked to life, and I began to descent. The hair on the back of my neck spiked until my head dipped below the surface. When your legs are in another environment than the rest of your body, you feel especially vulnerable. The room was almost exactly how I remembered it. I skittered over to the light switch and booted it to life. The flashlight remained on just for moral support. Some things I did not notice before was that the light sockets that held the extremely dim iridescent bulbs looked relatively modern, but then again, the standard socket has been in use for over 100 years. Naturally I ran back upstairs and grabbed four 60W white bulbs. I will admit my heart fluttered when I had to shut off the lights to unscrew the old bulbs and install the new ones. The difference in the room was enlightening. I could see everything in the room now, from corner to corner to corner. However, this only raised more questions. First, I noticed that the walls which I assumed were stone or at the very least concrete, were actually a dark gray colored drywall. The wood paneling was wood certainly, but drywall in a room like this was odd. Next, the ceiling was not concrete or dirt either, it was paneled with 2x4s and cross beams. Even the most unsavvy homeowner should know, this should be impossible. When I went up the steps partway, you could tell that the wood is visible only from under the lip where you enter through the cellar door. The entry was flush concrete. After sticking my head in and out of the room, I noticed that there was a severe inlet of air into the room that was intermittent. It would enter for several seconds, almost a minute, then stop before entering again. Inside the room I found HVAC registers along the wall. This would have to have been installed when the house was built. There was a large airflow in the room, but until I saw the registers I guess I ignored it. Lastly, there was a pile of tarps, blankets, and carpets on the ground. Two thoughts crossed my mind: my breaker box should have a circuit to this room and my HVAC system should be able to temperature control this room. Bappy was clearly confused and started to whimper at my constant and erratic movement. I made sure to bring her to the breaker box with me. With a loud click my basement was plunged into darkness when I flipped the two breakers that accessed my basement. To my confusion I could see across the distance of my basement to the way-back room where my secret new room was slumbering in a residential tomb. A dim halo shone across. I did not need to venture over to know that the lights were still on in that room. In defeat, I switched the lights on and marched upstairs with Bappy on my heels to change the thermostat aware that I already knew the outcome. I blasted the heat and sat on the steps at the top of the stairs for a moment, petting my friend until I could feel the temperature rising. Again, I descended the stairs, sweating already. I could feel my stomach lurch as I waded into the uncertainty of my new room and could feel an ambient temperature of room temperature. It was like the SI Kilogram or meter; it embodied room temperature. It was as if the head refused to enter a place like this room either out of fear or inability. I just sat there for a moment thinking until I heard Bappy whining. I could see her shadow as she circled the top of the staircase, but she did not come down. I called her, I whistled, I even pulled a piece of jerky out of my shirt pocket and tried to goad her down, but she did not budge – which was fine. As I moved towards the blankets in the corner and began to pull them, I could hear Bappy start to bark. My blood ran cold because she only barks when she sees another dog – or a person. “Bappy! Knock it off,” I yelled. “You’re coming down here so I can keep an eye on you.” When I got to the top of the stairs, my head jerked towards where she was barking only to see nothing of course, “you just got yourself all riled up.” I was unsure if I was talking to her or myself. I took the first step back down the stairs when Bappy began to squirm. She’s a 40-pound dog, which does not seem like a lot, but a 40-pound dog that is squirming like you are dragging her to hell is not easy to carry. In the blink of an eye, I could feel her falling and with a thud, her haunch slammed into the corner of one of the stairs. “Bappy! No, no no,” I reached to grab her again, but she was sprinting away from me towards the upstairs staircase. Hastily I slammed the cellar shut and followed the dog running on three legs, and limping on the other. I caught her before she went up the stairs and immediately began loading her up to go to the vet. Tears welled in my eyes as my house was filled with human and dog harmonizing their wails. We were out the door on the way to the vet in under 3 minutes. I obviously hurried to take care of my dog, but I am beginning to think something else drove me from that room. In particular, I think it was the fact that I caught a glimpse of a hatch that was buried under the pile of blankets. 4. My trip to the vet was more pleasant than getting skinned alive, but less fun than pretty much anything else. Thankfully, the local football game convinced all pets in the area to go on a hiatus from having medical emergencies, which I thought was very considerate. Bappy and I waited in a stew of disinfectant and our own tears for eight minutes until a petite young woman tall enough to be in middle school said she was the vet and was going to take excellent care of Bappy. It took only a few minutes for her to diagnose a sprain and inject my friend with a painkiller sedative combo. The 15 minutes or so that succeeded involved me waiting alone in an examination room while my drugged Bappy was getting an X-ray. I was proud of myself that my first thought was guilt for accidentally hurting Bappy. I was even more proud that my second thought was how I had to tell Anna, but that I should wait until she is not around a boy she likes – even though it would be very easy to force him to deal with a teary-eyed Anna. My third thought, however, was one that was more esoteric. Thinking about a mystery hatch in my mystery room felt almost inappropriate to me: like a guilty pleasure. I thought about it with the same reverence and shame that I used to think about prurient aspects of my teenage years. It might make sense, and be entirely natural, but there was something secretive about it and I wanted to explore it more than ever now that I was away. It gave me chills to imagine what is underneath that hatch. I still had multitudes of questions about my first mystery room, but two? There had to be something going on. I was jolted out of my stupor with a cheery vet and a sleepy poodle. I was given a list that basically consisted of allowing her to rest, carrying Bappy up and down any stairs, and giving her several pills per day. We left and went home. The ride home was as good a time as any to call Anna. The first thing I heard when she answered were squeals and laughter before her familiar, “Hi dad,” came through my SUV’s Bluetooth. I choked back tears, “Hey Mars Bar, where are you now?” We share our locations, but I try not to bother her, and give her privacy without monitoring her. She and her friends laughed on the other end again, “We’re just getting ice cream and it’s so cold, we’re all unprepared.” “Let me know if you need a ride, I’m in the car, I have something to tell you,” I paused, “I was carrying Bappy and when she squirmed, I dropped her. But we are on the way home from the hospital! She is fine.” I was met with silence, and Anna beat me home on foot. When Mandy and Jason saw me carry Bappy inside, they bid me farewell and left. After an hour of tears and hugging our dog, we both went to bed. Saturday was uneventful and we got into a groove of carrying for Bappy. When Anna offered to stay home and not see her friends, I knew it was a fake offer until I took her up on it and she stayed with us until we went to bed. Anna was a very smart kid, but she was not nearly as clever as myself. Whether she did it to break the mold she put herself in, or for any other reason, she would sometimes sneak out after I had gone to bed, thinking I was none the wiser. I guess she never stopped to wonder why my door was always left open a crack – or what my reaction would be when I woke up to find Bappy laying next to me. I never brought it up, and tonight was going to be no different. The door to my room stuck a bit. The tolerancing was so tight that when I stained the door, the milky layer of varnish on the top scraped against the door frame so in addition to my personal heating climbing into bed with me, the creak of the door would also wake me up. That night, a familiar groan in the night gently pulled me from my slumber. Bappy. I thought to myself, waiting to feel her jump into bed with me. Jump? Bappy was not allowed to do that with her injury! With my blinking eyes getting the message to blink from different zip codes and my head struggling to stay awake I began frantically leaning over the sides of my bed searching for Bappy to stop her from jumping up and hurting herself. It was to no avail so I began whistling to get her to come to me just so I could confirm where she was. I felt a head perk up next to me. Bappy was already here to my surprise, and by the looks of it, she had been there so long that she had no interest in waking up fully. I exhaled in relief as my head crashed back into my pillow. I reached for my phone and opened Anna’s location. She was at the gas station across the street from her friend Dani’s house, a place she and her friends would hang out on the nights she snuck out I surmised. Out of instinct, I switch on my volume and texted my mom that if she woke up for any reason, be prepared in case something happened. I trusted her, the area was safe, and she was with friends. I could go back to sleep. However, I did not. The gas station was over 20 minutes away, and the door had creaked open moments ago. Bappy was already here, and asleep. It could not have been Anna that opened the door and set Bappy down. Every bone in my body was screaming at me that this had something to do with my rooms in the basement. I felt a near gravitational pull to my basement to examine if anything was out of place. I resisted. Any number of things could go wrong. Even if I was alone, what if I fall or what if when I left Bappy alone she hurt herself? What if I got trapped inside the room? Most hauntingly of all, what if I was not alone. I sprung up and locked my bedroom door and flicked the switch putting myself under a blinding glow of knowing safety. I checked under my bed, my closet, behind all my furniture were locations where a person or critter could fit. Bappy’s eyes were open, but she refused to partake in any nonsense. My room was secure. As I stood there alone in the room, I weighed my options. I could call the police, but what if all of this was for nothing? Drafts blow open doors all the time. But not my constantly-stuck door. I had to do something, or else Anna would be coming home to a potentially dangerous situation. At that moment, I would have traded anything for a weapon, but alas, I owned none. The only ways she could possibly come into the house were the front door, the garage, or the deck door. The front door was presumably the only unlocked one as she likely left through it. I killed the lights and gave my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark. The next moment was one I held my breath the entire time even though I knew I was likely being ridiculous. I ran out, locked the front door, and checked the other doors, and shut Bappy and myself back in our room. You’re not in trouble, come home now. I texted Anna. About 20 minutes later, I saw two peering headlights creep into my driveway, and I pressed my ear to the door of my bedroom for the finale of my plan. LED light pierced into every orifice of my house and any intruder would be scrambling if they knew the jig was up. Alas, other than the crunch of tires on concrete there was not peep inside my house. She approached the front door, and Bappy and I rushed out of our room, flicking on all the lights and I flung the door open basically lifting Anna into the house in an embrace. “Anna, I’m scared.” “Dad, what?” “Bappy was already in bed with me, but the door pushed open, and then I thought someone was here, and they must be in the basement,” I babbled like a child. “I’m so sorry I left, please don’t be mad, I won’t do it again.” “Anna, I think the basement has something to do with this.” “What? Why?” “There’s another room beneath the basement,” I hissed at her. “I don’t know what’s going on.” “You sound crazy,” she looked afraid. She was right, I seemed like a lunatic. I took a breath, “Anna, I need to tell you the truth,” under the incandescent spotlight, my staircase was my stage. She was staring at me in fear, and I could not blame her. “I was examining our new room, and Bappy wouldn’t stop freaking out. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight, and when I tried to bring her down with me she squirmed and forced her way out of my arms and fell on her hip.” Anna looked like I just dumped a bucket of cold water on her, “wait, you hurt Bappy.” “By accident!” I pleaded with her, “I was freaked out.” “Why?” I could see the confusion bubble into anger. “There is another room,” the words felt like a chill crawling from my mouth. “What’s going on? I mean you’ve always been obsessed with this house, but you’ve been so crazy lately,” her eyes were sympathetic. “Anna, my door was pushed open,” I stood up and gave her an example of how only intentional force could have opened my door. “I just have a gut feeling that this has something to do with the basement. Under some of the old blankets down there was a hatch. I didn’t look, but I just know there’s another room.” “Dad, there are no blankets in there, there was just a mattress.” We looked at each other for a moment. “Have you been down there?” I asked slowly. “No,” she did not hesitate. The unsaid words that hung in the air between us were heavy. I knew about my secrets, but I could tell she had some of her own, “Astronaut,” I enunciated each syllable slowly. “Dad.” “Anna, have you been down there?” “What does it matter? I live here too!” She was indignant. I could feel the previously unseen depths of my visage create a fearful powerlessness in Anna. I did not take my eyes off her. “I think I was down there once,” she admitted. “You think?” “Yes, I don’t know for sure. It could have been a dream, that I just fit the actual room to, but right after mom left I just remember being in a haze for a few days, and a few days ago I had another dream about it and I sketched it out and just painted what I saw,” she shrugged, “it’s weird, but you’re scaring me now. I just don’t see what the big deal is about it.” “I just know something is going on with it with everything going on. I just know it’s connected,” I slipped, forgetting that I had secrets of my own. Anna sat on the floor with Bappy between us, “What’s going on? And just so you know, I’m going to say astronaut immediately.” She was honest with me, and in a fair world, it would have been right of me to be honest with her. The fact that the divorce was now officially going through along with all the issues we would need to confront was just as much her business as it was mine. On the other hand, her mother was allowed to contact her at any time, and chose not to. Maybe this was a sign I should keep quiet about that, “Anna, I’ve been keeping a secret from you. Three years ago, your mother did not tell me that she hoped I died from cancer. I was just so terrified that you would take her side, and I would lose you. I needed you to be against her.” I could tell that Anna was processing a deluge of emotions. When she finally spoke, it caught me off guard, “Well, dad, I don’t think she really needed to use any words. If you left for another woman, I would have stayed with mom. That was a brutal lie though.” Little did she know that it was not even my biggest one, “Listen, given that though, I really think you should have a relationship with your mother on your own terms. Her birthday is next Thursday. Just send her a happy birthday text. You never know how far that goodwill will go. Maybe she’ll help when you go to college, or she’ll help pay for a wedding or something like that.” Anna stood up, looking so much like her mother that my being proud of the person she was becoming was a double-edged sword, “I’ll think about it. Am I in trouble?” “What? No. I’ve known about you sneaking out forever. I know you’re not stupid. Go to bed, we’re seeing grandma tomorrow. We need to check the house first though. Just humor me, please.” We meticulously checked the house and found nothing, not a single carpet fiber was out of place. My secret room was still covered like I had left it. If only I would have been able to let it stay like that. 5. If you have ever been in a cave, there is a strange feeling you get when you squeeze through rocks. The walls of a cave passage are steadfast and unmoving. When you let your kid win a play fight and they sit on your back, you can move the compressing force with a deep breath – as if you are your own pneumatic jack. In a cave that is not the case. That described how my next week or so went in a figurative sense. However, one day while Anna was at school, that comparison described my life literally. Anna and I came to an agreement that neither of us would go deeper down the hatch, but that since we had already seen the first room, we would go through turning it into a room for recreation. It would be fun to have a functional bar for me, and Anna and her friends could play games and do whatever they like to do. On my lunches I would run to the hardware store and get started on the repairs. It was coming along nicely. It turns out that a lighter color of paint, bright bulbs, and removing the old blankets and towels made the room so much livelier. The room seemed to play by its own rules, but for some reason it stopped bothering us. It was our home. You love your children for their quirks – the times they stare into the distance or utter something spine chilling before you walk through the dark of your house. Why should your home be different? I moved Bappy’s dog bed to the basement so she would stay there and I could monitor her while I installed some new light fixtures onto the bar. I was taking a sip of my Mountain Dew and when I set my can down Bappy was standing at the top of the stairs, “Stay there girl!” I called out to her. As usual she had no self-preservation instinct. She began descending the stairs. With a sigh, I stood up to stop her and bring her back up. If I had been more careful, I would not have spilled my drink on myself in the rush. I found myself looking like a child who soiled his pants as a scooped Bappy up from the step and we went upstairs. I thought to myself I might as well do a load of laundry and went to go grab some of Anna’s clothes to put a load on. Every time I entered her room since the discovery of my secret room, my first instinct is to check her drawing desk. Since our first drawing, there has been nothing. My lungs emptied with giddiness when a mostly finished sketch presented itself to me. A perspective view down a lit hallway, but not with fluorescent lights. Rather it was lit with incandescent lights like the ones you find in a residential home. It did not match our home, and it was very different from our secret room in the basement. I dropped everything and ran back downstairs. There was no fear left in my body as I plummeted towards the gift my house had given me, and that my daughter had told me about. I flung the mattress off the hatch and ripped the hatch under it open so hard I could see its metal handle chip the concrete floor. There was a metal ladder leading into the mouth of this hatch. Almost hypnotically I found I was halfway down the ladder. When I reached the bottom, my feet – now bare from removing them at the top of the stairs and forgetting to put them back on coming down – touched carpet. Shag carpet should remain in the 70’s where it belongs, but that is what my feet touched. It appeared that I was at the end of a hallway with beige walls and white molding on the floors. It was suburban hell in the most literal form. I followed the lit hallway for what I imagined was going to be a near infinite passage, but about 20 seconds later I reached a corner. I would have seen it, but there were impressionist paintings on the wall every few feet. I did not recognize any of them. I reached the right angle and around it was more hallway, but at the end of it was a kitchen. Almost like the front of a public bakery. The lights shone overhead and that is where they stopped. I could see a void on my left and a void straight ahead, blending perfectly with gritty black and white tiles beneath my feet. The glass cases were open as if a cartoonish army of racoons had emptied them at industrial pace. The paths of darkness converging on myself were beyond intriguing. The only reason I did not venture down one of them was decision paralysis. I was brought out of it by Anna screaming, “Dad! Dad! Are you down there?” My bare feet plapped across the tile until I reached the carpet and I sprinted back towards the ladder, “I’m down here Anna! I went down the next room! It’s great.” “Bappy went down the stairs.” I ascended the ladder, “I left her up there. Is she okay?” “She’s not crying,” Anna was knelt on the ground hugging her. “Anna, there’s like an entire bakery down there. It’s like the one in your room!” She looked violated, “Are you talking about my picture? You weren’t supposed to be looking at that.” “I was grabbing laundry,” I sat down and hugged Bappy. She stood up. “You’re the one who made me see Dr. Mentors. You knew that she wanted me to do private creative works,” I could tell she was angry. Foolishly, I did not just agree with her, and promise to respect her privacy, “Then don’t leave them in the middle of your room if you’re not going to clean up after yourself. You didn’t care when I saw the first one.” She was clearly exasperated and pulled Bappy into a hug and went upstairs: leaving an increasingly hollow man in an increasingly hollow house. The next several days passed by with in the absence of trouble or joy. Like the moments before dropping ice into water, there was such an impermanence to the grinding of our shared space. We both knew the explosion was coming, but neither one of us was willing to instigate it. Over dinner we would discuss the bare minimum. On the bright side, Bappy was healing perfectly. She avoided all doorways in the house, though. There had been little update on the legal proceedings, Mr. Pappas had seemed to describe the whole ordeal as a “hurry-up and wait” situation. I now have two separate rooms under my house that I did not know about. It was joyful to be sure, but these blessings must not be of this world. Maybe the eyes I imagine in the dark are that of an angel. It was comforting to be graced with more house to love. I built my entire life here – I am not religious as it is not something I can measure and prove being an engineer. When it comes to two extra rooms that magically appear, however, I can measure every single aspect of these rooms. They are as real as I thought my love with my wife was, and I would make the most of them. Part of the joy of these rooms was the childlike wonder I got from the idea of what new discoveries could be around every corner. We were coming up on Thanksgiving when I had been taking advantage of my time away from Anna to continue exploring. Bappy was almost fully healed but refused to even enter the original basement. I had fully mapped out the bakery at the bottom. It was quite tall and had a lower level. Not like another separate space, but rather as if it were a two-story building. In the purest sense, this was a full bakery with a kitchen, seating, and storage. It was incredible – but ultimately I reacted with ambivalent surprise when I opened an industrial freezer to reveal a staircase traversing downward in it. I will be having another adventure. The goosebumps on my arms were partially from excitement, but they also reminded me that I was in a temperature-controlled basement surrounded by humming industrial freezers. I felt my health watch buzz, and I saw that Anna was calling me. Part of me felt like everything was going to be okay when she broke her walls and spoke to me, “Hello? Anna?” “Where are you? The chicken and garlic toast smells like it’s burning.” “Oh, I’m sorry I’m just working on the basement,” I hoped she wouldn’t come down and verify my location, “Give me a few minutes and I will be right back. You want to take them out for me? Please.” Her voice was distant and muffled like she was holding her phone away from her face, “Yeah, I can.” I made the way up the stairs of Le Grande Bappy, the unofficial name of my little restaurant. The concrete stairs merged into the black and white checkered floor which merged with the fluffy carpeted floors of my hallway leading to the ladder. I ran my hand along the walls – drywall with a pale blue paint and brass-framed photographs. It was the smoothest wall I have ever felt. All the drywall in my house utilized 280 grit sandpaper. This is higher than industry standards and makes your walls very smooth. However, the walls here could have been made from silk. It was so alluring, that I felt my hands caress them like a magnet drew me to it. Upstairs, Anna was clearly annoyed, and I could tell. My spaghetti was turned off and drained. Even the untrained eye could tell it was far past al dente. The sauce was already slathered on and the grilled chicken I made was tossed in, “You could have gotten started without me,” I urged, washing my hands. “It’s fine,” Anna’s voice was sweet and respectful, but her face and tone were monotone. Dinner went as well as it could – tense and quiet, but uneventful. I asked her about school and her plans for the weekend. The volleyball season was coming to a close, so she was really honing in on school and wanted to go look at universities soon. She said she would be going to one of our local parks on Friday with “a friend.” I knew what that meant, but I trusted her so I did not press her on it. She did say something that caught me off guard, “I was looking at schools. Can we go on a visit to Saint-Germaine U?” I slurped my spaghetti into my mouth, “That’s like two hours away from me. It’s about 20 minutes away from Archimedes, New Columbia. Your mother lives there, but you knew that right?” “I did,” she spoke slowly through gritted teeth like she was trying not to scare off a deer. “I’ve been talking to her again.” My heart started racing, “what has she told you?” I asked casually. “That she misses me and wants to see me more,” Anna reached for another roll. “Is that it? Like did she say anything else?” “She mentioned the divorce.” I froze, “Uhhh,” I stared at her dumbfounded. “It was only a matter of time. I don’t know what else to expect from someone who would wish for death on a spouse – no matter the circumstances. I just wish you had told me.” “Well, Anna, there’s a lot more at stake than that. But I shouldn’t be the one to keep you from your mother.” She just looked at me like she expected me to keep talking. Her eyes told me to fight for her, to prove my parental loyalty to her, to compete against the other party for her favor. I would not play such games, especially if I wanted our dynamic to continue to be built on trust and respect. I reached for another roll. “Should you be doing that?” she asked with venom in her voice. “Should you?” Her chair screeched as she forced herself upward. Bappy woke up and began pacing behind her. She chose to cut the wires keeping us bound, diffusing the situation at the cost of even more distance between us. I went back to the basement after dinner. submitted by /u/LimeSkittleFanClub to r/TalesFromTheCreeps [link] [comments]

I didn’t know what to expect when I signed up to be a volunteer firefighter. It was something I had tossed back and forth in my head for a couple of years without actually pulling the trigger on it, until one night I finally mustered the courage to submit an online application to my local department. Fast forward almost a year to my Fire Academy graduation, when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that joining the fire service was the best decision that I had ever made. Following the academy, I was eager to put my training to the test and start responding to fire calls. The “problem” is that serious fires are (thankfully) much more rare than they used to be. Major, structure-engulfing fires only occur a handful of times a year in a community like mine, and as a volunteer, one really needs to be in the right place at the right time in order to make it on one of those calls. It is for this reason that several long months went by following my graduation where, while I did go on plenty of calls, I never actually made it to any of the “big” ones, so when I finally found myself in the prime position to go on one of these major fire calls, I jumped at the opportunity. God knows I wish I hadn’t. It happened in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday that I had taken off from work. With my allotted free time, I had decided to go to the grocery store to buy a few things before the rush hour crowd showed up later that day. I was less than a minute from the store when that familiar alarm on my phone went off, and seeing as I was at a stoplight, I quickly checked the notification. When I saw that it was titled “Fire – House”, I knew that my shopping plans would just have to wait. The grocery store is right up the road from my firehouse, so it didn’t take me long at all to get there. The paid guys were already rocketing out of the bay in the Engine as I was pulling up, but thankfully two other volunteers arrived at the station at about the same time that I did. One of them was Rudy, a long-time volunteer and certified fire apparatus driver, so with him in the driver’s seat the three of us were able to throw our turnout gear into the Ladder and take off, sirens screaming, hot on the heels of the career guys. Jack, the third volunteer in our truck, sat next to me in the rear of the cab. The two of us pulled on our gear while Rudy ferried us to the waiting blaze. Garbled sentences that I struggled to make out over the static and blaring sirens sloshed their way over the radio. I shared a glance with Jack. He looked about as nervous as I felt, the difference between us being that I was better at hiding it than he was. The SCBA straps over his shoulders were poorly fitted, and he had the look of an anxious child on the first day of school wearing a backpack that was too large for him. I extended a gloved fist in his direction. “We’ve got this.” Jack hesitated, then offered his end of the fist bump. “Yeah.” He sounded less confident than he probably would have liked; certainly less confident than I had wanted him to be. Jack and I started volunteering around the same time, and so had gone to fire school together. We had been partnered up during certification testing, and while we managed to pass all of the necessary skills on our first try, I wouldn’t have wanted to run them back again. Jack struggled through most of the skills, much like how he had struggled through most of fire school. To call him a liability feels too harsh, but he certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice for a partner. This was his first major fire call too, and while we were definitely both nervous, I was worried about his ability to overcome those nerves. I was surprised to see Jack at the station that day, seeing as I knew he also worked a typical 9-5, but I had no need to question why Rudy was there. Rudy works nights, so he has plenty of time during the day to make it to fire calls. I don’t know when the guy sleeps, but if he’s awake and alert enough to drive the apparatus during the daylight hours, I guess that’s good enough for me. I looked at him now. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I felt an air of normality from him that helped to calm my own nerves. He’s got a bit of a rough exterior, but there’s no question that he knows his way around a fire scene, so having him along helped me to feel a bit more confident. For him, this was probably just another routine fire call, just like any other that he had been on throughout his many years as a volunteer. He never could have known what was awaiting us. We turned down an old, well-traveled street and into a messily sprawled neighborhood that was surrounded by a dense collection of trees and filled with aging houses, some of which looked like crumbling tombstones ready to fall into ruin at the first moment of neglect. A thin, gray haze drifted on the air outside of our apparatus. Its smell entered our truck’s cab through the closed windows and made me think of cozy bonfires I enjoyed as a child. The sheet of smoke would have warned us of the waiting blaze had it not been easily visible through the truck’s front windshield as soon as we had turned into the neighborhood. A house on the far end of the street glowed a devastating orange that lit up the entire area, its radiance rivaling that of the bright afternoon sun. Its fully engulfed roof wore a twisting crown of flame that spat waves of onyx smoke up into the midday atmosphere. It looked as if Hell itself had opened up directly beneath the structure just so Satan could personally escort it down into the deepest, hottest depths. Even from several hundred feet away, I could tell that this fire was nothing like what we had practiced on at the academy. At the academy, we battled against thin steel cages filled with burning straw, which practically extinguished itself at the first suggestion of water. In comparison, the fire that we continued to draw ever-closer to was an uncontrollable entity of nature, one who told you through its very presence that it could consume the entire Earth if it felt so inclined to do so. “Jesus,” Jack muttered. “Big one, isn’t she?” Rudy said. “Not a bad first fire for you boys. I've seen worse, but this'll do for giving you boys your wings.” We passed by the Engine, which had stopped to let one of the paid guys pull the 5-inch line off the back of the truck and drag it to the only fire hydrant I’d seen since we turned onto this street. The Engine would be moving again in less than thirty seconds, but its delay meant that we in the Ladder would be the first to arrive on the scene. Other fire companies were en route, but our station, being the closest, had naturally made it there first. We’d have a good operation going by the time anybody else arrived to help us. The Ladder came to a stop in front of the burning structure, and the three of us disembarked from the vehicle. The house, a typical two-story, single-family dwelling, was positioned near a thick patch of forest that served as the natural border of this little, forgotten neighborhood. The good news was that it was far enough away from the other buildings that it didn’t pose an immediate risk to any of them, but the bad news was that a decent gust of wind could have easily sent rogue embers scattering into the nearby treeline, which could’ve resulted in a forest fire in addition to the blaze that we already had to combat. We needed to start getting that fire under control, and we needed to do it quickly. The next couple of minutes went by in a reflex-driven blur. Jack and I began pulling ladders off the back of our truck and throwing them up against second-story windows all around the building. Rudy acted as crowd control while he waited for Fire Police to show up. He used his years of experience to effortlessly keep the neighborhood’s many onlookers at bay while the rest of us worked. The Engine arrived not long after we did, and our fellows immediately pulled an attack line, which they used to start throwing water onto the blaze. The fire, continuing to grow and undulate, fought back against the aquatic stream; it almost seemed to have a malicious intent about it that sent a chill running through me despite the heat that blasted off of the building in oppressive waves. Soon a second Engine from one of our neighboring stations arrived, and with our combined hose streams, we finally managed to make some headway in the war against the raging inferno. Jack and I had just finished throwing up a ladder and were making our way back to our truck to grab another when Rudy approached us, bearing new orders. “Nobody has seen anybody come out of the building since the fire started,” he yelled over the sound of all the commotion, “which means there is a strong possibility that there are victims trapped inside. We’re going to send you two in to do the primary search. The Engine boys’ll keep attacking the fire from out here, then they’ll take their hoseline in through the front door once the fire is more under control.” “Which way are we going in?” I asked. “The fire looks to mostly be towards the A-side of the structure, so we’re going to send you in through the first floor on C-side. You guys up for it?” Jack and I shared a look. I could see the nervousness in his eyes, but they also told me that he’d follow whatever decision I made for us. I returned my attention to Rudy and nodded. “Yeah.” “Alright,” Rudy said. “Grab a set of irons. Remember to radio Command before you make entry.” He left us, and Jack and I quickly finished our walk back to the Ladder. We each grabbed one half of a set of irons (him a Halligan, me an axe) before rushing to the rear of the structure. Gray haze radiated from the house and danced through the air in front of us as we went. When we reached the house’s back door, we donned our masks and opened the cylinders attached to our SCBAs. The screens attached to our airpacks came to life, and the HUD in my mask glowed with the display that I had grown so accustomed to during academy training. Something about wearing that mask felt different now. Despite having done so countless times in class, I felt nervous taking my first loud, mechanical breaths from the regulator. It made me feel like I was about to step into something that I would not be able to return from. Jack and I affirmed to one another that we were ready, and we approached the entrance. Jack immediately grabbed the handle and tried the door, which came open with no effort. I was glad that we would not have to make forcible entry, but I was annoyed with Jack for his behavior. We’d had it drilled into our heads from nearly the first week of fire training that you need to first check closed doors for heat with the back of your hand, then open them slowly in order to prevent any built up smoke or fire from spilling out onto you. Jack had done neither of these things, and had instead carelessly thrown the door open in a way that, had fire been present, could have led to immediate and dangerous consequences. Thankfully the entrance was clear, so I didn’t bring it up — although as I reflect on this moment, I wish that I had. Instead, I radioed to Command that we were making entry, and then Jack and I stepped into the inviting wall of smoke that beckoned us from the other side of the threshold. We each turned on the flashlight strapped to our chest as we stepped inside, and I immediately realized just how little help they were going to be. The structure was lousy with thick, obsidian smoke which sapped any and all light that it touched, including the light from our flashlights, both of which barely projected a few feet in front of us before their essence was consumed by the swirling darkness. It couldn’t be helped; searches of this type were often done in pitch blackness, and one could not rely upon their eyes to guide them. We would do like we had done many times in class, and follow the wall with our hands. But the difference was that the flashlights had worked in class. The instructors had pumped the search structure with smoke, sure, but it hadn’t been nearly thick enough to completely swallow the beams of our lights, and we’d still had them to fall back on in the event that we lost touch with the wall or with each other. We’d clearly be awarded no such luxury now. This smoke, so alien when compared to that from the academy, did not award many luxuries at all, it seemed. I was the first one inside, and as such, was the one to lead the search. This meant deciding which way we went with it. “Right-hand search!” I yelled, my voice boosted by the amplifier attached to my mask. Then, to any potential victims: “Fire department! Is anybody in here?” My call was met with silence. Taking the axe into my left hand, I placed the palm of my right against the wall on the right side of the door, and once Jack and I both confirmed we were ready, we lowered ourselves to our knees and began our hasty, sliding shuffle along the wall. Guided by touch, we made our way through the inky blackness of the smoke, first through what seemed to be a kitchen and then into a dining room. The flashlights strapped to our bodies did their best to fight the darkness, but it remained a losing battle. I swept through the obsidian with the handle of my axe, searching for anything soft and flesh-like that might have been an unconscious — or worse — victim. It had bounced off the hard, unfeeling surfaces of furniture a few times, but did not touch anything that needed to be rescued. “What was that?” I heard Jack say from behind me. I turned around to look at him, then remembered that he only existed as a voice in that deep darkness. “What?” “I thought I saw something moving over there.” “Jack, how can you see anything moving in here?” “I saw it in my flashlight beam,” he said. “It looked like a person. I think there’s somebody in here.” “The smoke is probably disorienting you,” I said. “Let’s continue our search. If there’s somebody here, we’ll find them.” He reluctantly agreed, and we continued on. We made it out into a narrow hallway, something I deduced when my axe was easily able to reach the opposite wall from the one guiding my right hand. We went a few gloomy feet down the hallway before he spoke again, bringing our search to another halt. “There it was again!” he sounded more frantic, alert. “It just went around that corner!” “What corner?” I said, losing my patience. “You can’t see anything, Jack!” “Hello?” he called out into the darkness, ignoring me. “Are you alright? We’re the fire department! We’re here to help you!” He paused. “Did you hear that? It was a woman’s voice — she called for help!” I heard nothing but the sound of distant structures groaning with the weight of the raging fire. “You’re hearing things,” I said in a tone that no longer masked my annoyance. “We need to finish our search, Jack. If anybody here needs our help, we’ll find them.” “She needs our help!” he said. “She needs our help right now!” Before I could respond, I felt and heard sudden, frantic movement coming from behind me. A moment later, Jack’s vague form, largely obscured in the umbra, shuffled past me into the waiting darkness. “Jack!” I said, quickly feeling for him with my axe. “Jack, get back to the wall!” Silence. I heard my own machine-like breathing, followed by more protests from weakening support beams. If the fire wasn’t on this floor yet, it surely would be soon. I waited for so long that my SCBA’s PASS device — the system that automatically emits an alarm if a firefighter stays motionless for too long — began to sound. I instinctively shook my body in order to silence it. More seconds went by, and I called Jack’s name again. When he didn’t respond, I knew I had to make a decision. I certainly couldn’t leave him there alone, in his panicked, seemingly delirious state, in that dying house, but to go after him would be to break the golden rule of searches that, like the door rule, they had drilled into our minds again and again at the academy, the one that my partner had broken mere moments ago: never lose contact with the wall. I waited a few more moments, frantically trying to find a solution that did not exist, before I, too, broke that lifesaving rule. I left the wall behind, and went after my lost companion. Without the wall to anchor me, I was immediately disorientated in the blackness. The murk twisted my mind and fogged my brain. Were it not for the glowing HUD in my mask focusing my vision, I would not have even known for sure whether I still existed on Planet Earth, or if I was already lost somewhere beyond the firmament in the deep, dark reaches of space. I looked at this HUD now in order to check the status of my air cylinder. I was already more than a third of the way through the bottle, and was continuing to suck down air quickly. I knew I needed to find Jack and get him out of the building as soon as possible, before we both ran out of air. I blindly crawled through the gloom for several minutes, sweeping the handle of my axe and calling out Jack’s name with no result. The only thing I could be sure of was that I was no longer in the hallway where I had left the wall. This knowledge did me about as much good as knowing that I wasn’t in a public bathroom where I had taken a leak five years prior. I looked at my HUD. Half of my cylinder was gone. Had I really been searching for Jack for that long, or had I just been struggling to control my breathing? I suddenly remembered that I had a radio, and, after fumbling for the mic, sent a transmission to Command telling them that I had lost my companion and was attempting to locate him. After broadcasting my message, I waited for several seconds for a response that never came. I sent the same transmission again, and received no acknowledgement that my message had been received. It was then that I realized I had heard surprisingly little chatter on the radio since entering the house. In fact, I don’t think I had heard any chatter at all. There was no conceivable way that nobody had been communicating on the radio for the duration of the incident. The radio should have been abuzz with dozens of messages every minute, but it had been completely silent since we’d entered the structure. I had never even gotten a response when I’d told Command that we were beginning our search. Had I somehow turned the dial to the wrong channel? Not likely, since I didn’t think I had heard anything on Jack’s radio either, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to have also been on the wrong channel, or to have forgotten to turn on his radio altogether. I fumbled with my radio’s dial for a few moments, switching it to a new channel then back to the one I was supposed to be on. The radio’s robotic voice confirmed I was on the correct channel, and yet still I heard nothing. Something must have been wrong with the machine; I could get that sorted out later, but for now this meant I was on my own in my search for Jack. “Dammit, Jack, where are you?” I called, knowing that to do so was a waste of my most precious of resources. Every breath, every yell, every frantic shuffle forward used up more air. I was now more than halfway through my very limited supply. An orb of light cut through the darkness in a quick, short arc, so brief and so fleeting that I thought I had imagined it. I came to a halt and looked in the direction it had come from. For a long time there was nothing but further darkness, but just when I was losing hope that I’d see it again, another arcing sphere flashed in front of my mask. “Jack!” I said, hurrying in the direction of the light. “Wait up, Jack!” I rushed through the shadows, the swallowing smoke continuing to squeeze tighter and tighter around me with each passing moment. I knew I couldn’t let that sinister stuff enter my lungs, even if I ran out of air. I was better off sucking my regular to my face and passing out from lack of oxygen before I allowed that billowing death to take up residence inside of me. My axe smacked into a nearby wall. I immediately made my way to that lovely beacon in the darkness and firmly pressed against it with the palm of my hand. I still had no idea where I was in the house, but the lifeline of the wall gave new vigor to my long-deceased hope. I followed the wall for about thirty seconds before my hand suddenly lost its embrace and drifted into an empty space. I turned my torso toward this gap, and found that my flashlight’s beam actually managed to penetrate the darkness here. In front of me was a cavity largely free of smoke. Within it was a descending stairwell that appeared to vanish into the gloom of a basement, but unlike that of the smoke, this gloom was defeatable by my beam. I could see downward for several steps, but more importantly, I could see the second beam at the bottom that was immediately lost as it turned a corner and vanished into the basement. “Jack!” I called again. “Wait!” Remembering my training, I turned around and descended the stairs backwards. I really should have tested each stair with my foot before putting my full weight on it, but I knew they had held beneath Jack’s weight, and since the fire had not been down this far yet, I felt confident enough in their integrity to move quickly. My confidence in them proved to be well-founded, because they held strong until I reached the bottom. Now standing up, I followed in the direction of Jack’s beam, allowing a quick moment to survey my new environment as I went. From what I could see of the basement, it appeared to be unfinished and composed entirely of cement and brick. It also appeared to be empty, devoid of any furnishings and not even in use as a place for storage. I had the fleeting thought that it was strange to leave such a valuable space in a state of disuse, but my preoccupied mind had too much to worry about to hold onto that notion for very long. As it turned out, I didn’t need to go far before I captured Jack’s form in the halo of my flashlight. He was also on his feet, his back turned to me, only a couple of yards from the short hallway that led to the stairwell. I caught up to him in a matter of seconds and threw my free hand onto his shoulder with no small display of force. “Are you out of your damn mind?!” I barked at him. “You could have gotten us both killed!” He only offered me a brief, disinterested glance before turning his head forward again. I followed his gaze to the end of his beam, where I saw the thing that so greedily monopolized his attention: standing in the middle of that basement, her back turned to us in the same way that Jack’s had been to me, was the figure of a woman. “Holy shit,” I said, dumbfounded. “You were right!” Jack kept his attention focused on the woman in front of us, who did not turn at the sound of my voice. It was hard to make out many of her details save for the fact that she was dressed in a set of dark blue flannel pajamas. Most of her other features remained a mystery to me, as I’m sure they did to Jack. “We’re with the fire department,” Jack said, his voice sounding uncertain and tired through the amplifier. His projected, mechanical breaths, much like my own, were shallow and clumsy. “We’re here to help you. Are you alright, ma’am?” When she didn’t respond or turn around, he took a cautious step toward her. “Ma’am?” he said. “Can you hear me? Are you hurt?” Another few seconds of silence passed before she began to slowly walk toward the rear of the basement. Jack watched her in confused disbelief for a moment before he followed after her. “Wait!” I yelled. He ignored my call. Jack made it to the center of the basement just as the woman neared the rear wall. My companion’s flashlight, which remained trained on the woman, now projected its soft ring of a beam past her onto the far wall of the basement, built into which was a single wooden door. The faded length of wood was shut in place and locked tight with a thick, rusty iron bolt. As the woman drew closer to the waiting door, her shadow grew larger against the wall. My eyes were so focused on the woman herself that I didn’t immediately notice how her shadow began to shift and change as it grew. When I finally spotted it, looming over the entire basement from the stone throne that was the back wall, I felt my mouth go numb. The shadow was, for lack of a better word, inhuman. To try to describe it much further than that would be a foolish, impossible task, but the one thing I am almost certain that I could discern from that dark, towering shape was a set of long, sinister horns resting atop its head. In the moment I thought these to be a trick of the uneven lighting in the room. Now I know better. Now I know them for what they really were. The woman effortlessly unlatched the heavy bolt. She wrapped a pale hand around the doorknob and twisted her wrist. The door swung open with an echoing, primordial creak. I only saw the blackness beyond its threshold for a brief moment before the woman disappeared inside and pulled the door shut behind her. Her hulking shadow remained in the room with us, resting against the wall even after she was gone. Jack never seemed to notice it looming over him. “Wait!” Jack yelled. He followed after her, rushing toward the door, his flashlight shaking wildly as he went. “Come back!” I, in turn, rushed after him. Something deep within my bones told me that I needed to stop him from opening that door. “Wait, Jack! Stop!” He once again, and for the final time, refused to heed my warning. I had barely made it halfway across the room before his gloved hand wrapped around that same knob, and he pulled the door open with a hasty, energized jerk. Where once was darkness now waited a blazing hell. A rectangle of saffron and gold filled the doorframe for the briefest of moments before it came spilling out into the greater basement. Infernal fire discharged from the portal in a violent stream of stygian puke. Jack was swallowed by the unholy broth faster than he could even scream, but though I am sure he never made a sound, to this day I can still hear his tortured, immortal wails in the deepest bowels of my soul. The force of the terrible excretion knocked me off my feet with such overwhelming power that I was sent sprawling onto my back. I landed several feet away from where I once stood with a violent crash, losing my axe in the process. My body rang with the pain of the collision, especially where my back landed on my SCBA. I immediately heard a sharp, hissing sound coming from behind me, and I knew that my air cylinder must’ve suffered a breach. Glancing at my air supply, I saw it rapidly pass below 30%. Fire gushed into the room and began to spread with impunity, despite the space’s stone composition not being conducive to the blaze’s new, zealous life. I was overwhelmed by a despicable heat that I had never known before, and which I hope to never know again. My distressed mind retreated back to those practice fires we fought in the academy — the ones fueled by straw and goodwill. I thought I knew what heat was during those drills, but now, as the essence of hell itself seemed to wash over me, I understood that those fires would never in countless lifetimes have been able to prepare me for the inferno that now threatened to reduce me to ash with a mere flex of its mighty suggestion. I needed to get out, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to rise to my feet on my own. The overwhelming pressure that flowed from that doorway kept me pinned to the ground. I anxiously searched for my radio mic, knowing that it likely wouldn’t do me any good, but desperately needing to find it anyway. When I found it, I brought it up to my mask and slammed my clumsy, gloved finger against the push-to-talk button. “Mayday, mayday, mayday!” I shouted, probably to nobody. I was supposed to wait for my mayday to be acknowledged, but in my panic, I skipped this step. I didn’t expect to receive a response anyway. “This is Search Team 1! We’ve been overwhelmed by flashover in the basement! Both firefighters are down! We need immediate rescue! Repeat, immediate rescue!” If I ever got a response, I didn’t hear it. My ears were suddenly burning with the sound of my SCBA’s low air alarm, which was soon joined in its song by my PASS device once again activating due to my lack of movement. I became lightheaded as the precious few sips of life that remained in my cylinder fled through its breach. I knew I didn’t have long before I would pass out from a lack of oxygen. Soon my world would become an even greater darkness than that of the all-consuming smoke, and that would be the end of me. But before consciousness slipped away from me, I felt an overwhelming urge to look in the direction of the spewing doorframe. The inhuman shadow, still looming there, had become so large that its tenebrous form covered more than half of the room — and it only continued to grow. The hissing and crackling of the inferno that deluged from that hellish aperture suddenly sounded to me like the many uncountable screams and wails of the damned, and as my world faded away, I thought I heard Jack’s tormented voice among them. I knew that soon my own voice would join that very same chorus. I dreamt of evil, and of unfathomable heat. For a while, all I could see was red. As my vision cleared and my mind came into focus, I saw that I was in a massive cavern of fire. Jack was before me, screaming, naked as the day he was born, hoisted onto a crudely-built crucifix. He was on fire. He burned for a very long time while I watched in horror, hopeless to help him. His skin fell away in long, goopy strings that looked like melted wax. Soon his muscles and organs did the same, until all that remained was his charred, blackened skeleton. He still had his eyeballs, though. Those lasted even longer than his bones, which seemed to burn for several eternities until they finally crumbled away. Before his eyes joined the soup that was the rest of his body, I could see in their reflection that great, terrible shadow — the one I was sure possessed a pair of long, sharp horns. When I awoke, the screaming form of Jack was replaced by the crying face of my wife. She hugged me with as much vigor as she dared to. The embrace lit a fire in my aching body, but it also filled me with an overwhelming sense of relief even before my brain was awake enough for me to realize where I was: not in a burning pit of damnation, but in a hospital room. I learned from the doctor that I had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours, and that my wife had spent nearly every single minute of that time by my side. I spent some time piecing together the foggy memories of my ordeal, which seemed to float in space as many individual fragments. When those fragments finally came together, a burning question rushed to the forefront of my mind. I asked the doctor about Jack. Her grim reaction to my question was all that I needed to confirm my companion’s fate. I knew what she would tell me before the words had even left her mouth. “I’m sorry, but… he didn’t make it,” was all she said to me on the matter. It was clear that I wouldn’t be getting any more details from her. My room was a revolving door of visitors for the rest of that day, including several of the guys from my firehouse, who came by as soon as they learned that I was awake. Included in that number was Rudy, as well as our deputy chief, who, after giving me all the good wishes of those at the station who couldn’t make the visit, steered the conversation to a rather uncomfortable subject that I was dreading from the moment he had arrived. He asked me what I remembered about that call. I was mostly honest with him. I told him about how Jack, in what I thought to be a panicked, hysterical fit, had abandoned our search to go after a victim that he had thought he’d seen in the darkness. I told him about how I followed after Jack, and how I’d found him in the basement. I left out everything about the woman with the inhuman shadow, as well as how Jack had followed her to that back room before he was engulfed in flame. In my spoken version of events, Jack, still hysterical, had haphazardly opened the door in the basement thinking it was the way out, which is when the fire came pouring in. That was when I passed out, and the next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital. In exchange for my story, I was given the details that I so desperately craved. Jack, having burned to death, was the only person to perish in that fire; no other victims were discovered in the house after they had gotten the blaze under control. In fact, nobody had been able to contact the owners of that house at all. They seemed to have completely disappeared off the face of the planet. Apparently Command had heard every transmission I had sent over the radio, but Jack and I had never responded to any transmissions that they had sent back. That one was chalked up to malfunctioning equipment. The other anomalies could not so easily be explained. The RIT team had found me unconscious in that dreaded basement. They had expected to pull me out of a raging blaze, but by the time they had gotten to me, there was no fire there to speak of. They knew the fire had to have been there at one point, because the room’s walls and floor were blackened by their exposure to the blaze, and because the state of Jack’s charred remains could only be explained by the presence of fire. They found him lying in front of the door that I had mentioned, but that door was not only closed shut, its wooden surface was completely untouched by the inferno that had evidently scorched the surrounding basement before disappearing entirely. How the fire had spread along the stone surfaces of the basement was anybody’s guess. In fact, it made even less sense for the fire to have reached the basement in the first place, because it had been determined with reasonable certainty that the fire had been started in either the attic or on the second floor, and the blaze hadn’t even made it to the first floor before it had been put out. Any fire that existed in the basement needed to have been independent of the original blaze, and it needed to have put itself out just as easily as it had started. Such matters were under investigation. After wishing me a quick recovery and a hasty return to the firehouse, the deputy chief and the others left my room. As he left, Rudy flashed me a troubled look that I didn’t understand at the time, but which would make sense to me soon enough. I wasn’t well enough to go to Jack’s funeral. I was not surprised to learn that his casket was closed. About a month has passed since that nightmare of a day. I’ve since been discharged from the hospital and have resumed my duties as a firefighter. Over this past weekend, Rudy and I volunteered to cover a shift because the paid guys had an event to go to. It was just the two of us at the station for an entire twelve hours. I didn’t mind; it was a quiet day, and Rudy is decent enough company. He keeps the conversation interesting, at the very least. The afternoon was unseasonably warm, so we pulled out a couple of lawn chairs and sat just outside the bay, taking in the nice weather. Our conversation meandered through a series of inconsequential topics, all of which felt like attempts to tiptoe around the subject that we both knew we wanted to confront. Eventually, Rudy saw it fit to just tear the bandage right off. “I’m glad that fire didn’t get the both of you,” he said after a brief lull in the conversation. The bluntness of his words had slightly taken me aback. “Thanks. I, uh… I guess I am too.” “A shame what happened to that kid.” Rudy paused to take a drag from his cigarette. The sight of the smoke leaving his mouth and nose made me want to vomit. “I hope you don’t blame yourself for what happened to him.” I sighed, my gaze focused on the road in front of our firehouse. “I try not to.” “You did all that you could for him. That’s all anybody can ask of you.” Another pause to smoke. “You know, that entire call still doesn’t sit right with me.” I turned to look at him now. His eyes were already there to meet mine. “What do you mean?” “I mean I’ve fought a lot of house fires in my day, kid,” he said. “A lot of them. And I’ve never seen a fire fight back nearly as hard as that one did. It was almost like it… had a mind of its own or something. I’m actually surprised we managed to get it put out before it took the entire house. We needed four fire companies and twice as many apparatus to finally kill that thing. And then there’s the matter of how that fire, which started and ended in the upper floors of the building, somehow reached a basement with no combustible material in it, only to vanish like it wasn’t ever there.” He paused. This time he didn’t bring his cigarette to his lips. “I haven’t ever said I thought a fire was alive before. Not in all my time fighting them have I ever even considered that they might be something other than what I’ve always known them to be: unthinking, unfeeling bringers of destruction. But that fire… well, I just don’t know what I think after what I saw that day.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at me. “You sure you told the deputy chief everything that happened in that house?” I frowned at this. For a moment I considered telling Rudy the truth, and I almost did, but then I considered the potential consequences of telling him what I think — what I know — I saw in that house, and I thought better of it. “Yeah. All that I remember of it, at least. Why do you ask?” He shrugged, looking unconvinced. “Just asking, is all.” He tossed the cigarette onto the ground and stomped it out with his boot. Weak streams of smoke drifted up from its ruined carcass. “But hey, if you ever find yourself remembering anything else about that day that you want to talk about, you come and find me, alright? I’ll listen. You better know I’ll listen.” I nodded. “Thanks, Rudy. I appreciate that.” “Of course,” he said. “We’ve got to support each other, kid. It can take a lot out of us, running into those buildings without knowing if we’re ever going to come back out. Sometimes, some of us don’t. Sometimes… ” He allowed a long pause. “Sometimes we wish we didn’t.” He let the conversation go after that. We finished the rest of our shift without talking about that day again, though I know it still weighed on both of our minds. Maybe I’ll tell him what really happened in that house one day; I haven’t decided yet. I haven’t told anybody what happened in there yet. I’m debating if I even want to post this or not. Part of me thinks it might be for the best that the truth remains buried with Jack. The selfish part of me really wants to get the truth of that day off of my chest, despite any consequences that may come as a result. I think that part of me is going to win. Regardless of what I choose to do, though, I know this for certain: I’ll never be able to forget what happened to me that day. I’ll never get the memory of Jack’s horrific end out of my mind, just like I’ll never be free of the image of that inhuman shadow looming over its court of dancing, sinister flame. Even as I write this, I feel myself tormented by a harsh, malicious heat: a constant reminder that whatever it is I saw in that basement is still with me, and its fiery anger burns red hot. submitted by /u/SteveMcNellyFiction to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

"That's my childhood home." I wasn't turning down the street I grew up on. I wasn't standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I'd lost all my baby teeth. I wasn't sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. "That can't be possible," my husband said. "It can be possible, Parker, because I'm holding the flipping painting and telling you." "One, language. Two, can I say something without you jumping down my throat?" Parker asked, his voice even. "Yes," I said. "Is there an outside chance that this just looks like your childhood home? I mean, you grew up in the burbs. A lot of cookie-cutter homes, no?" I hated to admit he had a point. But as I stared at the house, I couldn't come around to that line of thinking. This was my house. Hell, the roses in the flower beds were the same size and color as I remembered them. "No. I mean, I hear you and you're not off base. But, dude, this is my house." I pointed at the porch. "I broke that railing trying to do a ballet spin and fell into the bushes." "You? Miss Two Left Feet? Senorita Trips-a-lot? Tried to do a ballet spin?" "To be fair, I did the spin. I just didn't stick the landing." "A minor detail in the world of dance. The landing part." "I landed…on the bushes right here," I said, pointing to the painting. "Hold on, I have to send a photo to my mom." "Does she have old house photos?" "Of course she does. You've met her, right?" I had Parker hold the painting and snapped a few pictures. I sent them over to Mom and asked if she had a photo to compare it to. The message came back a minute later. "OMG! That's our house! Weird." Another ding brought us a house photo. It looked exactly like the artwork in my hand. I showed Parker. "Christ," he said. "That's it." "Told you." "That's wild. Is it a print or a real painting?" I ran my hand across the art. There was a palpable texture to the brush strokes. Sometimes, a print may have varnish applied to give the impression of brushstrokes. This wasn't that. "I think this is real, but let me check something else," I said, walking toward the wall of ugly lamps. I turned on a lamp and held the painting in front of the bulb. Some artists will draw the picture first in pencil before painting. Sometimes, you can see those marks when you hold it up to the light. Staring at the oak tree in the painting, I saw graphite streaks underneath. "It's real," I declared. "Who painted it?" A slash of red paint in the corner mimicked a signature, but Parker and I stared at it as if it were written in Minoan Linear A. Parker traced the paint with his finger. Forwards and backwards. "The first name may be George or Jeff? I think George. Look at how it flows." He retraced the letters, and it made sense to me. "Okay, what's the last name?" "Hell if I know." I tried Parker's finger tracing. It felt like I was tracing a line drawing by someone with too much caffeine in their system. These didn't seem like actual letters. "Might be Moffit," a soft voice said from behind us. We turned and saw that a Goodwill employee had materialized. She was a short, frail-looking elderly woman with a hairstyle that resembled a well-constructed cumulus cloud in both color and shape. "Moffit?" I said. "I think that's an 'm'," she said, pointing to two humps. "Then it kind of circles into an 'o' and the double fs. The 'I' and the 't' are somewhat stylized, I think. Artists being artists." I looked and, yeah, it kinda looked like Moffit. "I can see it. George Moffit, you think?" "I do. Beautiful piece. Don't you think?" "Yes," I said. "It looks exactly like the house I grew up in." I showed her the photo my mom sent. "How strange!" "Right? I grew up across the country. Why is this even here?" "When I was younger, there was a company that would paint your home for you." "Painters?" Parker deadpanned. "Ignore him," I said. "He doesn't know how to act in public." She laughed. "I understand. I have one just like him at home. That's why he's at home." I laughed. "You're teaching and I'm taking notes, ma'am." "Anyway, they would come paint portraits of your house. It was a thing for a few years. This looks like one of those. There may be a company name on the back, under the frame." I flipped the painting over and gingerly removed the frame. Sure enough, there was a small, faded sticker that read "Cozy Home Portraits Company." There wasn't any other information. I made an impressed noise. "Look at that. Have a jumping off point to find out what this is all about. Thank you so much…." "Marge." "Marge, thank you. Sorry again for this guy." "Marge, please forgive me. You're a gentlewoman and a scholar." Marge leaned into him and nodded at me. "You're punching above your weight with her, kiddo. Keep her happy." Parker laughed, wrapped his arm around my hip, and pulled me in for a hug. "Marge, that's the best advice I've ever received from a Goodwill employee." "If only your barber had given you good advice. You could've avoided that haircut." I burst out laughing. Parker did too. "Marge, I hope to grow up to be just like you." "You found a guy who can take a joke. That's a start. You guys wanna get that or still debating?" I looked at Parker, and he nodded. "How can we not get this? Even if it's just for the story." Marge smiled. "See, you can learn. Come on, kids. I'll ring you up." When I got home, I immediately began researching the Cozy Home Portraits Company. I had a hard time finding anything. Most of the search results were links to people on Reddit asking the same questions. Apparently, there were a lot of folks like me who were surprised to find their childhood homes immortalized on canvas. One commenter said something that stuck with me. "Parker, listen to this," I said, reading the post. "My mom says she remembers someone approaching her and asking if they could take a photo so they could paint the house later. She told them no at first, but they said they'd do it for no cost. Mom agreed and assumed she'd get the painting at some point, but she never heard from the company again." "What's the next commenter say?" "This sounds fake," I read. "Kind of a dickish response, no?" "It's Reddit," he said, shrugging. "Maybe they just used the houses for inspiration and sold the paintings to commercial houses for reproductions?" "Then why bother involving the homeowners at all?" "Maybe to assuage their worries of someone standing outside their home snapping photos of their house?" Parker suggested. "I mean, anyone could take a photo of our house, and I'd have no idea unless I saw them do it." "True. It's weird, I'll grant you, but I think I'm on the right track. Commercial art. Americana stuff. That was to be it." He may have been onto something, but that answer didn't feel right. I couldn't work out the logic. If this company had been around for a while and painted portraits of homes all across the country for commercial sale, why wasn't there any record of them? No stories online. No official business records. No known CEO or lists of artists or anyone. Hell, even searching for the name George Moffit didn't yield results. My mind told me there was something off about this. A sense of dread loomed over the whole thing. I let it marinate all day to see if I'd reconsider. Shocking no one, I didn't. I told Parker as much as we got ready for bed. "You're reacting that way because of what's happening in the world right now," Parker said, yawning. "There are real evil people out there, but they aren't painting pictures." "Hitler painted pictures," I said. He gave me a deadpan stare. "You know what I mean." "I just can't let it go. It's odd. Odd that it was done at all. Odd that it traveled all the way out here. Odd that I found it. Odd stacked on odd stack on odd." "Turtles all the way down." "What?" I said, crinkling up my face. "What do turtles have to do with anything?" He laughed. "Nothing. Just a dumb expression." He yawned again. "Why is this bothering you so much?" "Some random company painted and sold pictures of my childhood house with no one knowing about it. It's…." "Odd," he said with a smile. "Very. It's just not sitting right with me." Parker yawned for a third time. "My melatonin is kicking in here. Get some rest and see how you feel in the morning. Maybe call your mom, see if she has a story to tell. She might know something." He didn't wait for my response. Instead, he rolled over, shut off the lamp, and turned on our sound machine. As digital thunderstorms rolled into our bedroom, I lay down on my pillows but didn't fall asleep. This whole thing smothered my thoughts as much as my weighted blanket did my body. I would call Mom tomorrow. See what she knew. If anything. I heard light snores coming from Parker's direction and sighed. That man could fall asleep even if the house were on fire. I flipped on YouTube, found something to help me sleep, and closed my eyes. Or would have, if I hadn't seen our front porch light turn on. A cold touched my brain and froze the rest of my body. The light going off didn't mean a prowler was trying to jimmy open our lock. It could be a bug flying too close to the sensor or a sleepwalking squirrel. Improbable? Sure, but they were better than the alternative. I didn't want to wake Parker, but I also wasn't keen on investigating alone. While I was debating getting out of bed, I heard a noise in the kitchen. That made the decision easy. I elbowed Parker. "What?" he asked, his voice a blend of exhaustion and annoyance. "Our front porch light went off," I whispered. "Raccoons tripping the light," he said. "Not worth waking me." "I know, but…but I heard someone in the kitchen." His eyes zinged open. In a flash, he was on his feet and grabbed the bat we kept near the bed. He quietly inched along the wall until he got to the bedroom doorway. He peeked out and scanned the room before turning back to me and shrugging. I pointed to the kitchen again before popping up and joining him on the wall. Parker wasn't pleased. He told me, not in words but vigorous nods, to go back to the bed and wait. I didn't. He gave in, and we made our way out of the bedroom. Me walking directly behind him like some backwards waltz. I saw nothing. That went double after Parker slammed his hand on the switch, flooding the room with light and damn near blinding me in the process. I let out a painful yelp and covered my eyes to adjust. I heard Parker sigh. "We're good," he said. "Nothing in here." "You gotta tell me before you do that," I said, finally checking out the room. Everything initially looked washed out. "I'm nearly blind." "I wanted the element of surprise," Parker said. "You achieved it," I said. "All I see now are a bunch of little diamonds everywhere." He walked into the kitchen. "Your intruder is nothing more than a fallen salt shaker," he said, holding up the culprit. "Oh." "Like I said, a raccoon probably tripped the light. I'm going back to sleep. You should, too." He walked past me, patted my ass, and headed back to bed. I was about to join him when my eyes landed on the painting. I walked over to it and stared. In the store, looking at it had flooded my emotions with joy and happiness. But now? None of that. Unease seeped into my blood and rushed through my body. Something was different about the painting. I couldn't put my finger on what had changed, but I knew something had. It was giving me chills. I grabbed a nearby napkin and draped it over the artwork like a coroner covering a dead body. My thinking was that if there was something supernatural about this thing, the napkin would keep it at bay. Dumb, I know, but it made sense at the time. "I couldn't believe that picture. That's so wild." Mom was too chipper for this early in the morning. She always was, though. A real 'rise with the early bird' kind of gal. That wasn't me. I still had bedhead as I sipped my cup of coffee. Parker, another early riser, cooked breakfast. "I thought so too. Someone told me a company used to go around and paint pictures of homes. They'd ask the homeowners beforehand. Any memory of that?" "Not that I can remember. Back then, it was mostly your father who spoke with salesmen. I found them unseemly. I can't imagine he'd allow someone to do that, rest his soul." "Yeah. Dad was pretty private." "We had a neighbor who was a painter, though. Carl, no, that wasn't it. Craig! Craig…aww goddamn my ancient brain. Bonnie, don't get old. It's hell." "I'm trying not to. It's why I do my nightly skincare routine." "It's intense," Parker added with a smirk. "What was his name? It's been years since I thought of him. Craig…Morris? Something like that. He didn't live near us for long. Dad didn't like him. At all." "Why?" "Craig was the human equivalent of a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth. Irritating. He rubbed your father the wrong way." "I don't remember Dad talking about him." "He didn't around you, but with me, hoo boy. Craig used to walk by the house all the time, always whistling 'pop goes the weasel' for some reason. He'd stand too close when he talked to you. He'd leer at me when I was outside hanging laundry on the line. He'd never get the hint that I wanted to be left alone, even though I was always short with him. Especially after he said that you were growing up nicely." "Gross," I said. "I was ten." "Like I said, he was a weirdo. But, again, most artiste types are, I suppose. Remember your Uncle Walter? Made those ghastly papier mache skulls. They used to be all over his house. Was like walking into some cannibal's hut whenever we'd go over there. But he was good at making them. Who'd want them is another thing altogether. He gave us one, and I made your dad keep it in a bag in the garage. 'Don't bring that ghoulish shit in my house.'" As my mom rambled about skull shapes like a Victorian phrenologist, a thought came to me. I looked down at the painting and traced the painter's name. "Mom, could his name have been Craig Moffit?" Parker looked over at me. I nodded down at the painting and traced what I thought the letters were with my finger. He hit his forehead with the spatula and shook his head. "OH MY GOD! Yes! That was it! Craig Moffit. God, what a blast from the past. He really was a weird little freak of a man," my mom said, laughing. "He used to wear these tiny little shorts, and he did not have the legs for it. Looked like two toothpicks stuck in an orange." Mom droned on a little longer, but provided nothing of substance beyond Craig Moffit's horrid legs. But she'd given me some new information - the artist's real name. As soon as I hung up, I grabbed my laptop. "Craig Moffit! Not George! Craig!" "I see it now," Parker said. "We should've never trusted Marge. Didn't like the cut of her jib." "Babe, her jib was flawless," I said, turning to the painting. "Her eyes, not so much." "To be fair, we all agreed it was George Moffit…." "There! There's Craig Moffit!" I turned the computer around and showed a webpage dedicated to his art. Parker leaned down to get a closer look. "His legs do look like toothpicks stuck in an orange." Rolling my eyes, I turned the laptop back to me and clicked on the man's "About Me" page. It was illuminating. Craig had quite the little career. He'd worked for a few newspaper outlets. A few magazines. Some ad campaigns. His stuff was good. There was a list of known works. "There are a few house paintings listed here. It has to be him." "Has anyone mentioned how odd this is?" Parker said with a sly smile. "It's catching on." "Maybe he saw your home as a happy family home and wanted to capture it for that company. Is there a contact page?" "There is!" I yelped. I read the page out loud. "If you have questions about Craig or his work, please feel free to reach out here," I said. "That's great. You can email him and ask directly." "Moffit estate at Moffit art dot com," I read. "Shit. He's dead." "That shouldn't matter. Maybe the guy who runs the estate can answer your questions?" I nodded. It was worth a shot. I started composing a message, and Parker went back to breakfast. I glanced at the artwork on the table next to me. Something about it picked at my brain. "Hey, I meant to ask, have you been watching professional Wiffle ball games on our YouTube?" "Oh, yeah. I've started turning on games after your melatonin kicks in. Puts me right out." "Uh-huh. Are you a Wiffle ball fan?" "No," I said, laughing. "I just happened across it one night, and I fell asleep like ten minutes into a game. It's better than ocean waves. Which game was it?" "Umm, Rhinos against the…." "Storks? Oh man, those two teams hate each other. Storks have won the last three series behind Dustin Braddock's nasty banana ball…." I stopped speaking because I could feel Parker's smug smirk on his face. I looked up and caught it with my own eyes. "Not a fan." "What the hell is a banana ball?" PING! "They emailed back already," I said. "What the hell?" "Maybe there isn't a lot going on at the Moffit estate?" "Hi, Craig Moffit was my father. He did several pieces of local homes during that era. I would love to discuss this with you. Can we set up a call?" "So there clearly isn't a lot going on at the Moffit estate," Parker said. "I'm going to say yes. I think I have to, if for no other reason than my own sanity." "Go for it. I can be there for the call if you need me." So I set up a call with the estate for later that day. Hopefully, there'd be some information that I could use to stop the itch in my brain. Parker served me breakfast before he got ready to head out to the gym. "You never told me what a banana ball is," he said, placing the plate in front of me. "It's a side arm slurve. A strikeout pitch. Nearly unhittable if Braddock is on his game." Parker gave me a quizzical look. I sighed. "Not a fan." After Parker had left for the gym, I went back over to the painting. It was still sitting in the last place I had left it. Still had the napkin over it. The bad vibes I felt earlier were still there. In fact, they'd grown worse. I didn't even want this thing in my house anymore - covered or not. Despite my misgivings, I pulled the napkin off the painting and gave it a once-over. I felt my stomach gurgle, and my throat went dry. Looking at this now literally caused physical pain. It didn't make sense. "Where's the front door?" I suddenly asked myself out loud. The front door of the house was gone. Blacked out like an actor with perfect teeth coloring in one to look sufficiently destitute for a role. I scraped where the door had been with my thumb. No fresh paint. It was like it had always been that way. But it hadn't. I checked the photo I sent to my mom to confirm. "What in the…." There was a creak on the basement stairs. There very much shouldn't have been a creak on the basement stairs. The basement was home to nothing but dust, Christmas decorations, and my ugly childhood couches we didn't have the heart to throw away. Since none of those things can walk, this made no sense. I tiptoed to the knife block and pulled out a butcher knife. With my phone in my free hand, I used my nimble thumb to unlock it. I was ready to dial 911. But, as I stared at my reflection in the knife blade, I questioned whether I was prepared to stick it into another person. I wouldn't know that until it came to that moment. I very much prayed that wouldn't happen. Another creak. Near the top of the stairs now. It was getting closer. I flexed the grip on the knife. I tried to control my breathing, but couldn't. Turns out all that woo-woo TikTok relaxation breathing stuff was just bullshit. My heart was thumping like an angry jazz drummer's long-awaited solo. I felt sweat drip down my neck. Something flickered on the painting. It momentarily took my eyes off the basement door. Like last night, I initially registered nothing different. Then I noticed. Through the window of the living room, it looked like someone had turned on a light or lit a fire. Splotches of yellow and orange paint filled the window frame. The jingling of the basement door handle snapped me out of my trance. My palms were sweaty. My legs swayed like bamboo in a strong breeze. I gathered all my remaining strength and yelled out, "Hey! St-stay away from me!" I wanted to say more, but overwhelming fear shut me up. The jiggling stopped. Relief. My hectoring worked...for about two seconds. The basement door cracked open. There was a ghostly, pale face staring back at me. That was when my brain firmly decided whether I was a fight-or-flight kinda gal. I was flight. "Fuck this." I dropped the knife, which clattered on the tile like that drummer hitting the high-hat, and sprinted toward my front door. I yelled gibberish the entire time, tears streaming down my face, and blasted out of the door. My fingers hit send on the call, and seconds later, an annoyingly even-keeled 911 operator connected me with the police. Parker returned home before the police arrived. He found me sitting inside my locked car. Before he could crack a joke, he caught sight of my face. I'd been crying and could feel how puffy my eyes were. Consternation crossed his face. I rolled the window down. "Get in the car." He did. I explained everything to him. He was astonished. He was confused. He grabbed my hand and held it steady as I went over everything, pausing occasionally to sob like a child with a skinned knee. When I was done, he asked why I didn't leave right away. "Who do you think you are, Rambo?" I laughed. I need that. "For a few seconds, I was. Then I wasn't. I wasn't even Gizmo pretending to be Rambo." He gave my arm a loving squeeze. "If it'll help you calm down, we can watch some pro Wiffle ball tonight. I hear the Rhinos are playing the Turkeys." "Storks," I said, "but they are actually playing the Habaneros tonight. Gil Faust is looking to debut his 'chili ball' pitch." He leaned in and kissed my forehead. "But you're not a fan." "I'm not." A knock on the window caused me to scream. The cops had arrived. If they were curious why we were sitting in our car, they kept it to themselves. I relayed what happened, and they said they'd go into the basement and check it out. Fifteen minutes later, they came walking out. "We didn't see anyone down there," the Cop said. "But, to be fair to you, your basement gave me the heebie-jeebies." "Great," I said. "I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth. On the plus side, I haven't seen that love seat since I was a kid." "Want it?" "It's better left to the past. You two have a nice day." We watched them leave. Parker turned to me. "You okay?" "No, and I won't be until I go into the basement myself." "What? Why?" "I…I can't explain. Something is drawing me there. It sounds crazy, I know, but I feel it in my bones." Parker saw the determined look in my eyes. This was going to happen. Had to happen. He sighed. "Want me to go in first?" "Yes," I said. "Are you actually going to wait for me to go in or follow right behind me?" "We both know the answer to that." Resuming our reverse waltz, we went back into the house. Once in the kitchen, we stopped near the painting. Parker looked over and agreed that there were changes. We turned our attention to the closed basement door. Parker put his hand on the handle. "We don't have to go down here, Bonnie," he said. "The cops didn't find anyone." "Alive. If there's a ghost in this house, I need to know. If we know, we can remove it." "How?" "I'm still working on that part," I said. "But I need to know for certain. I won't feel safe otherwise." "I'm inclined to just say yes and move on. Something altered the painting already. Who the hell did that?" "One issue at a time," I said. He knew he couldn't talk his way out of this. He knew I needed this, and he loved me enough to see it through to the end. Even though he was petrified, too. The skin on his arm had goosebumps as soon as we walked into the kitchen. It felt like braille to me now, and the only thing it said was "let's not do this." But that feeling in my brain, the one drawing me down there, wouldn't leave. It was stronger now that we were in the home. Something was loose in my house. I knew it in my heart. Whatever it was, I needed to keep it from roosting in my new home. Let the ghosts live in the past. Leave my future alone. Parker gripped the handle, sighed so loudly it was heard two towns over, and opened the door. The stairs led down into the dark of the basement. The floor around the landing was the only thing visible. In the abstract, it wasn't anything. Right now, though? Horrifying. Parker found the light switch, illuminating the rest of the space. So far, so good. We took our time walking down the stairs. Creaking along the wooden one step at a time. Maybe it'd have the same effect on the ghost that hearing creaking steps did on me. Perhaps the phantom was hiding, holding a ghost knife and deciding if it was going to play ghost Rambo or just fearfully disappear into the walls. "The house in the painting had a basement, too," I whispered. "When I was a kid, I hated going down there. Any time of day. Just didn't feel natural, ya know?" "Are you trying to get me to stop doing this?" "Sorry, I'm rambling," I said. I kept right on rambling, though. "What bothered me wasn't so much going down there. What scared me was the trip back up. Turning your back on the dark. I used to walk backwards up the stairs." "We can try that in a few minutes," Parker whispered back. "Any other ghost stories you want to share before we hit the landing?" "Sorry," I said. "It just popped into my mind. I haven't thought about that fear in years. Since we moved away from there, actually." "That's not comforting." We got to the bottom and took a look around. Everything looked normal. No surprises. Just our old, ugly furniture and friendly Santa decorations smiling and giving us a frozen wave. I thought about turning and heading back up, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was supposed to be down here. I was also positive Parker would be furious if I went darting up the stairs without him. Leaving him alone in Spook Central might be grounds for divorce. We headed over to the furniture. There was a layer of dust on everything. I smacked the pillow, sending it flying into the air. I coughed and sneezed, instantly regretting my actions. Parker's withering glare told me he wasn't fond of my actions either. "Sorry." "I don't see anything out of the ordinary here, do you?" "No," I said. "It looks like it always does." "Feeling gone? Can we go back upstairs now?" Before I could answer, we heard the familiar chime from our security system, followed by the calm, reassuring voice informing us that our front door was open. "What the fuck?" I said. "Shhh," Parker responded, his finger to his lips. He pointed up to the ceiling. We cocked our ears and concentrated. For about twenty seconds, there was nothing. Silence. It didn't last. CREAAAAK. The floorboards wheezed as someone took slow, deliberate steps above us. You could hear the footfalls as they moved from the front door to the hallway. Trembling, Parker pointed up at the ceiling. You could physically see the floor bow ever so slightly from the person's weight. I didn't even think that was possible. "W-what do we do?" I whispered. "I don't know," Parker said. "Maybe they'll leave?" A second later, we were cloaked in total darkness. All the power in the house had gone out. The only light came from the sunlight streaming in from the open door at the top of the stairs. It wasn't much, but it was a beacon. Our lighthouse. Our way home. "Let's…," is all I was able to say. Someone upstairs ran down the hall, through the kitchen, and to the basement door. They slammed it shut, plunging us into instant midnight. I wanted to scream. To yell so loud it'd shake the heavens. But I couldn't. My body physically couldn't make that happen. It'd give away our location. I clutched Parker's shirt so hard I was afraid I'd rip it right off him. If it bothered him, he didn't say. "This sucks," Parker mumbled. Understatement of the goddamn century. "HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!" One of our Santa decorations started going off. I nearly peed myself at Santa's sudden arrival. I imagined it would've been the same response I would've had if I had seen him as a kid. Kris Kringle was soon joined by all of our Christmas decorations going off at once. Dozens of laughing Santas, lights flickering off and on, inflatables rising like zombified plastic bags. The noise was deafening, but strangely festive. The strobing lights in the pitch black caused afterimages to dance in my rods and cones. I slammed them shut and silently prayed for this all to end. Someone must've heard because, as quickly as they'd come to life, they stopped. We stood in the dark, not breathing. Not moving. Neither of us knew what to do. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I couldn't shake the idea that whatever was coming would be worse than what we'd already experienced. There was a creaking again and a sudden rushing of blinding sunlight from the top of the stairs. Someone had opened the door. Before we could get a glimpse, the door slammed shut, and something sprinted down the now-dark stairs. I pulled Parker back onto the old love seat. We sat on the edge and kept our heads on a swivel, even though the basement was too dark to see our own hands. We weren't alone anymore. As my fingertips grazed the couch, I realized something. These were originally my parents. My parents got them when I was living in the house from the painting. They were a physical connection between the past and now. Are these what caused my sudden desire to come to the basement? Was I being manipulated by this thing? Could I trust myself at all? That dread feeling I'd had since I brought the painting into our house intensified. I felt it in my bones. Deeper even. My aura. My soul. I leaned into Parker's ear and whispered an apology. He didn't vocalize a response, but squeezed my arm. I squeezed back. My body shook, and I couldn't get myself to stop. I wanted to run for the stairs, but that old fear came rushing back. I knew if I ran up those stairs, it'd follow behind me. Something wooshed by us. My hair flowed with it, trailing behind whatever had sprinted past. I nervously dug my fingers into the fabric. We heard the sound of some liquid splattering on the floor across from us. Water? No. Heavier than water. A sound that made my guts twist soon joined the drips and splashes. Someone started whistling a familiar tune. Pop goes the weasel. The Christmas decorations flickered on and shut off. In the brief flash of light, we could make out a figure standing across from us. Craig Moffit. "POP!" he screamed as the lights strobed. "GOES!" he screamed again, a foot closer this time. "THE!" Another foot closer. Almost directly in front of us now. The lights flickered again, and his face was right next to mine. A sinister smile as he slowly whispered, "weasel." I felt something wet and slimy rub against my cheek. Parker stood and, surprisingly, swung at ghost Craig. It didn't find the ghoul, and, as the darkness returned, his fist only found the arm of the couch. I heard his knuckles crack and him swear in pain. My ears were the only thing working at that moment, though. I sat frozen, tears streaming down my face. The lights in the house came back on, and I screamed. On the wall across from us, where we had heard the water, the painting was hanging. Only, it wasn't the old house. It was the current house. All the windows and doors were filled with flames. There were two figures on the front lawn. Parker and I. We were both dead. Standing behind our oak tree, watching it all, was Craig Moffit. "Parker! Let's go!" I didn't have to tell him twice. We broke for the stairs and took them three at a time until we reached the top. I grabbed the handle and shoved my shoulder into the door, expecting it to hold firm. It didn't. Parker and I spilled onto our kitchen floor. I scrambled up and practically yanked Parker into the kitchen. I was about to slam the door when I saw Craig Moffit standing at the bottom of the stairs. We locked eyes. My mind flew back to my childhood. A memory stored deep in the folds of my brain. I was sitting on our porch reading a book and heard that damn whistling. Craig Moffit. A Polaroid camera in his hands and portrait photos on his mind. I was afraid he'd stop and take a picture of me. I was right. Even now, I could hear the heavy clunk of the shutter and the whirring of the processing photo as it slid out. He shook it, and as the fog of war slowly dissipated on the photo, he smiled. "This way, I won't forget you." I slammed the door shut and urged Parker to grab the car keys. He turned the corner to do so when I heard him sharply yelp in surprise, followed by the squeak of his sneakers on the hardwood and his ass hitting the ground. I ran to him expecting to see Craig, but was stunned by the sight of a living man surrounded by two yellow hulks outside my front door. Once my brain processed the information, it was clear those men were wearing biohazard suits. It still didn't answer why men in biohazard suits were outside my door. But it cleared up that there were. The suitless man in the middle, though, had a more than striking resemblance to the ghost I'd just seen in my basement. Only younger. Fuller. Fleshy. "Sorry to startle you both," the man said, raising his hands in peace. "You contacted us about a painting you found. I'm David Moffit. Craig was my father." "You've got to be shitting me." "We were supposed to talk on the phone," I said. "Yes, but we were worried things might have progressed too much by then. Tell me, has the door in the painting disappeared yet?" "How did…." David turned to his men. "Call for the extraction team." Turning back to us, he urgently asked, "Where's the painting?" "The basement," I said. "But it looks different now." "What in hell is going on?" Parker asked. "Different? Would you say violently different?" "'Our-dead-bodies-on-the-lawn-and-the-place-ablaze' violently different." He nervously turned to where the biohazard-suited men had gone. "The experienced extraction team!" Parker stood and held my hand. We looked at each other and back at David Moffit. We both cracked. Small smiles that turned into chuckles that turned into a laughing fit. I read somewhere that mental breaks can start like this. Whatever. I leaned in. "David Moffit, the son of your childhood painter neighbor Craig Moffit, himself a ghost that nearly killed us, is standing in our fucking veranda," Parker said, barely able to get the words out between screeching laughter. "I mean, what the fuck is this life?" Seconds later, a team of armed men in hazmat suits carrying unknown machinery rushed in and headed for the basement. We heard one of them scream, and then the sounds of mechanical engines warming up. David nodded toward the front door. "We should go outside." We did. What the hell else were we going to do? Once we were outside, David pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered us one. We both declined. David indulged and nodded back at the house. "This is the experienced team." "What's going on?" I asked. "I'm going to level with you. What I'm about to say is pretty weird. I like to say weird to people. Sets the right tone." "Sir, on what is easily the weirdest day in not only my and my wife's life, but I'd argue humanity's life, nothing you can say will top what we've already been through," Parker said. "I mean, I just discovered my wife watches professional Wiffle ball, for God's sake!" "Not a fan," I mumbled. "Dad was a strange man. Lots of demons. When he could keep them at bay, he did great work. But that was never for long. Around the time when you were a kid, he got deep into the occult. It was a faddish passing fancy at first, but soon he found a deeper meaning in it. It consumed him. Around this time, well, he conjured a demon." "I think I'm having a stroke." "He made a deal. We don't exactly know the details, but what we do know is that Dad agreed to start a company that would paint portraits of people's homes. The twist was that the homes he picked would become targets for the demon." "Naturally," Parker said. "Because why not?" "He'd take a photo of the home and give it to the demon. The demon would curse it and insert it into the canvases of my dad's paintings. These photos would be a connection between the subjects in the art and the demon itself. The pull got stronger when the artwork found its way back to the subjects. Then, they'd, well…." He trailed off. "Meet each other?" I said. "In a manner of speaking, yes." So many questions bounced around my brain. This all sounded so outlandish and yet…. The memory of the photo came back to me. "This way, I won't forget you," I said out loud. Confused, Parker looked at me. "What?" "We don't know how many paintings Dad did during this time, but we've recovered sixty-five in locations from New York to California. The people selected seemed to be random…except for you." "Why me?" "My guess? You were neighbors and, well, my dad really didn't like your dad." "The feeling was mutual." Just then, the extraction team came rushing out. One was limping. The machines they brought looked broken, but the lights were still on. One of them had the painting in a bio-containment bag. It was smoking. "The experienced team," David said, ashing out his smoke on the bottom of his shoe and pocketing the butt. "Thank you for letting us help rid you of this…menace. The work is exhausting, but my family has to atone for Craig's wicked actions." David nodded and turned to leave. I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. "Wait, that's it? We're free? Just like that." "Just like that," he said, turning to leave. He stopped and spun on his heels. "Unless you have something from the old house in your new house. Then you kinda sorta leave a backdoor for the demon to return. So, if you do, I suggest destroying it." He tipped his cap and left. Parker and I locked eyes. "The fucking love seat," we said at the same time. My back hurt just thinking about hauling it up those narrow stairs. Later that night, we torched the sofa in a makeshift fire pit in our backyard. We ate pizza and watched the flames consume the potentially demonic couch. Can't imagine that's a sentence that's been said a lot in history. As we did, relief filled my heart. The dread was gone. I looked over at Parker and smiled. "I think we can put to bed the argument about who had the weirder childhood, Park." He laughed. "Yeah, summers with my Amish family can't compete with demons." His phone buzzed. He looked down at the notification with concern. I felt my stomach twist. "Please tell me it's good news." "The Rhinos/Habaneros game is about to start. I set a reminder. Wanna watch?" I touched my heart and felt pure happiness surge through me. Tears. Grabbing his free hand, I held it tight and gave it a big squeeze. "I have something to confess," I said. "I think I'm a legitimate fan of professional Wiffle ball." "I know, babe. I know." We sat together, letting the crackling of a burning demon couch and the crack of a Wiffle ball bat fill the night air. I snuggled into Parker's shoulder. It was warm. Inviting. Home…and not one haunted by an angry ghost. How did one girl get so lucky? submitted by /u/SunHeadPrime to r/scarystories [link] [comments]

"That's my childhood home." I wasn't turning down the street I grew up on. I wasn't standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I'd lost all my baby teeth. I wasn't sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. "That can't be possible," my husband said. "It can be possible, Parker, because I'm holding the flipping painting and telling you." "One, language. Two, can I say something without you jumping down my throat?" Parker asked, his voice even. "Yes," I said. "Is there an outside chance that this just looks like your childhood home? I mean, you grew up in the burbs. A lot of cookie-cutter homes, no?" I hated to admit he had a point. But as I stared at the house, I couldn't come around to that line of thinking. This was my house. Hell, the roses in the flower beds were the same size and color as I remembered them. "No. I mean, I hear you and you're not off base. But, dude, this is my house." I pointed at the porch. "I broke that railing trying to do a ballet spin and fell into the bushes." "You? Miss Two Left Feet? Senorita Trips-a-lot? Tried to do a ballet spin?" "To be fair, I did the spin. I just didn't stick the landing." "A minor detail in the world of dance. The landing part." "I landed…on the bushes right here," I said, pointing to the painting. "Hold on, I have to send a photo to my mom." "Does she have old house photos?" "Of course she does. You've met her, right?" I had Parker hold the painting and snapped a few pictures. I sent them over to Mom and asked if she had a photo to compare it to. The message came back a minute later. "OMG! That's our house! Weird." Another ding brought us a house photo. It looked exactly like the artwork in my hand. I showed Parker. "Christ," he said. "That's it." "Told you." "That's wild. Is it a print or a real painting?" I ran my hand across the art. There was a palpable texture to the brush strokes. Sometimes, a print may have varnish applied to give the impression of brushstrokes. This wasn't that. "I think this is real, but let me check something else," I said, walking toward the wall of ugly lamps. I turned on a lamp and held the painting in front of the bulb. Some artists will draw the picture first in pencil before painting. Sometimes, you can see those marks when you hold it up to the light. Staring at the oak tree in the painting, I saw graphite streaks underneath. "It's real," I declared. "Who painted it?" A slash of red paint in the corner mimicked a signature, but Parker and I stared at it as if it were written in Minoan Linear A. Parker traced the paint with his finger. Forwards and backwards. "The first name may be George or Jeff? I think George. Look at how it flows." He retraced the letters, and it made sense to me. "Okay, what's the last name?" "Hell if I know." I tried Parker's finger tracing. It felt like I was tracing a line drawing by someone with too much caffeine in their system. These didn't seem like actual letters. "Might be Moffit," a soft voice said from behind us. We turned and saw that a Goodwill employee had materialized. She was a short, frail-looking elderly woman with a hairstyle that resembled a well-constructed cumulus cloud in both color and shape. "Moffit?" I said. "I think that's an 'm'," she said, pointing to two humps. "Then it kind of circles into an 'o' and the double fs. The 'I' and the 't' are somewhat stylized, I think. Artists being artists." I looked and, yeah, it kinda looked like Moffit. "I can see it. George Moffit, you think?" "I do. Beautiful piece. Don't you think?" "Yes," I said. "It looks exactly like the house I grew up in." I showed her the photo my mom sent. "How strange!" "Right? I grew up across the country. Why is this even here?" "When I was younger, there was a company that would paint your home for you." "Painters?" Parker deadpanned. "Ignore him," I said. "He doesn't know how to act in public." She laughed. "I understand. I have one just like him at home. That's why he's at home." I laughed. "You're teaching and I'm taking notes, ma'am." "Anyway, they would come paint portraits of your house. It was a thing for a few years. This looks like one of those. There may be a company name on the back, under the frame." I flipped the painting over and gingerly removed the frame. Sure enough, there was a small, faded sticker that read "Cozy Home Portraits Company." There wasn't any other information. I made an impressed noise. "Look at that. Have a jumping off point to find out what this is all about. Thank you so much…." "Marge." "Marge, thank you. Sorry again for this guy." "Marge, please forgive me. You're a gentlewoman and a scholar." Marge leaned into him and nodded at me. "You're punching above your weight with her, kiddo. Keep her happy." Parker laughed, wrapped his arm around my hip, and pulled me in for a hug. "Marge, that's the best advice I've ever received from a Goodwill employee." "If only your barber had given you good advice. You could've avoided that haircut." I burst out laughing. Parker did too. "Marge, I hope to grow up to be just like you." "You found a guy who can take a joke. That's a start. You guys wanna get that or still debating?" I looked at Parker, and he nodded. "How can we not get this? Even if it's just for the story." Marge smiled. "See, you can learn. Come on, kids. I'll ring you up." When I got home, I immediately began researching the Cozy Home Portraits Company. I had a hard time finding anything. Most of the search results were links to people on Reddit asking the same questions. Apparently, there were a lot of folks like me who were surprised to find their childhood homes immortalized on canvas. One commenter said something that stuck with me. "Parker, listen to this," I said, reading the post. "My mom says she remembers someone approaching her and asking if they could take a photo so they could paint the house later. She told them no at first, but they said they'd do it for no cost. Mom agreed and assumed she'd get the painting at some point, but she never heard from the company again." "What's the next commenter say?" "This sounds fake," I read. "Kind of a dickish response, no?" "It's Reddit," he said, shrugging. "Maybe they just used the houses for inspiration and sold the paintings to commercial houses for reproductions?" "Then why bother involving the homeowners at all?" "Maybe to assuage their worries of someone standing outside their home snapping photos of their house?" Parker suggested. "I mean, anyone could take a photo of our house, and I'd have no idea unless I saw them do it." "True. It's weird, I'll grant you, but I think I'm on the right track. Commercial art. Americana stuff. That was to be it." He may have been onto something, but that answer didn't feel right. I couldn't work out the logic. If this company had been around for a while and painted portraits of homes all across the country for commercial sale, why wasn't there any record of them? No stories online. No official business records. No known CEO or lists of artists or anyone. Hell, even searching for the name George Moffit didn't yield results. My mind told me there was something off about this. A sense of dread loomed over the whole thing. I let it marinate all day to see if I'd reconsider. Shocking no one, I didn't. I told Parker as much as we got ready for bed. "You're reacting that way because of what's happening in the world right now," Parker said, yawning. "There are real evil people out there, but they aren't painting pictures." "Hitler painted pictures," I said. He gave me a deadpan stare. "You know what I mean." "I just can't let it go. It's odd. Odd that it was done at all. Odd that it traveled all the way out here. Odd that I found it. Odd stacked on odd stack on odd." "Turtles all the way down." "What?" I said, crinkling up my face. "What do turtles have to do with anything?" He laughed. "Nothing. Just a dumb expression." He yawned again. "Why is this bothering you so much?" "Some random company painted and sold pictures of my childhood house with no one knowing about it. It's…." "Odd," he said with a smile. "Very. It's just not sitting right with me." Parker yawned for a third time. "My melatonin is kicking in here. Get some rest and see how you feel in the morning. Maybe call your mom, see if she has a story to tell. She might know something." He didn't wait for my response. Instead, he rolled over, shut off the lamp, and turned on our sound machine. As digital thunderstorms rolled into our bedroom, I lay down on my pillows but didn't fall asleep. This whole thing smothered my thoughts as much as my weighted blanket did my body. I would call Mom tomorrow. See what she knew. If anything. I heard light snores coming from Parker's direction and sighed. That man could fall asleep even if the house were on fire. I flipped on YouTube, found something to help me sleep, and closed my eyes. Or would have, if I hadn't seen our front porch light turn on. A cold touched my brain and froze the rest of my body. The light going off didn't mean a prowler was trying to jimmy open our lock. It could be a bug flying too close to the sensor or a sleepwalking squirrel. Improbable? Sure, but they were better than the alternative. I didn't want to wake Parker, but I also wasn't keen on investigating alone. While I was debating getting out of bed, I heard a noise in the kitchen. That made the decision easy. I elbowed Parker. "What?" he asked, his voice a blend of exhaustion and annoyance. "Our front porch light went off," I whispered. "Raccoons tripping the light," he said. "Not worth waking me." "I know, but…but I heard someone in the kitchen." His eyes zinged open. In a flash, he was on his feet and grabbed the bat we kept near the bed. He quietly inched along the wall until he got to the bedroom doorway. He peeked out and scanned the room before turning back to me and shrugging. I pointed to the kitchen again before popping up and joining him on the wall. Parker wasn't pleased. He told me, not in words but vigorous nods, to go back to the bed and wait. I didn't. He gave in, and we made our way out of the bedroom. Me walking directly behind him like some backwards waltz. I saw nothing. That went double after Parker slammed his hand on the switch, flooding the room with light and damn near blinding me in the process. I let out a painful yelp and covered my eyes to adjust. I heard Parker sigh. "We're good," he said. "Nothing in here." "You gotta tell me before you do that," I said, finally checking out the room. Everything initially looked washed out. "I'm nearly blind." "I wanted the element of surprise," Parker said. "You achieved it," I said. "All I see now are a bunch of little diamonds everywhere." He walked into the kitchen. "Your intruder is nothing more than a fallen salt shaker," he said, holding up the culprit. "Oh." "Like I said, a raccoon probably tripped the light. I'm going back to sleep. You should, too." He walked past me, patted my ass, and headed back to bed. I was about to join him when my eyes landed on the painting. I walked over to it and stared. In the store, looking at it had flooded my emotions with joy and happiness. But now? None of that. Unease seeped into my blood and rushed through my body. Something was different about the painting. I couldn't put my finger on what had changed, but I knew something had. It was giving me chills. I grabbed a nearby napkin and draped it over the artwork like a coroner covering a dead body. My thinking was that if there was something supernatural about this thing, the napkin would keep it at bay. Dumb, I know, but it made sense at the time. "I couldn't believe that picture. That's so wild." Mom was too chipper for this early in the morning. She always was, though. A real 'rise with the early bird' kind of gal. That wasn't me. I still had bedhead as I sipped my cup of coffee. Parker, another early riser, cooked breakfast. "I thought so too. Someone told me a company used to go around and paint pictures of homes. They'd ask the homeowners beforehand. Any memory of that?" "Not that I can remember. Back then, it was mostly your father who spoke with salesmen. I found them unseemly. I can't imagine he'd allow someone to do that, rest his soul." "Yeah. Dad was pretty private." "We had a neighbor who was a painter, though. Carl, no, that wasn't it. Craig! Craig…aww goddamn my ancient brain. Bonnie, don't get old. It's hell." "I'm trying not to. It's why I do my nightly skincare routine." "It's intense," Parker added with a smirk. "What was his name? It's been years since I thought of him. Craig…Morris? Something like that. He didn't live near us for long. Dad didn't like him. At all." "Why?" "Craig was the human equivalent of a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth. Irritating. He rubbed your father the wrong way." "I don't remember Dad talking about him." "He didn't around you, but with me, hoo boy. Craig used to walk by the house all the time, always whistling 'pop goes the weasel' for some reason. He'd stand too close when he talked to you. He'd leer at me when I was outside hanging laundry on the line. He'd never get the hint that I wanted to be left alone, even though I was always short with him. Especially after he said that you were growing up nicely." "Gross," I said. "I was ten." "Like I said, he was a weirdo. But, again, most artiste types are, I suppose. Remember your Uncle Walter? Made those ghastly papier mache skulls. They used to be all over his house. Was like walking into some cannibal's hut whenever we'd go over there. But he was good at making them. Who'd want them is another thing altogether. He gave us one, and I made your dad keep it in a bag in the garage. 'Don't bring that ghoulish shit in my house.'" As my mom rambled about skull shapes like a Victorian phrenologist, a thought came to me. I looked down at the painting and traced the painter's name. "Mom, could his name have been Craig Moffit?" Parker looked over at me. I nodded down at the painting and traced what I thought the letters were with my finger. He hit his forehead with the spatula and shook his head. "OH MY GOD! Yes! That was it! Craig Moffit. God, what a blast from the past. He really was a weird little freak of a man," my mom said, laughing. "He used to wear these tiny little shorts, and he did not have the legs for it. Looked like two toothpicks stuck in an orange." Mom droned on a little longer, but provided nothing of substance beyond Craig Moffit's horrid legs. But she'd given me some new information - the artist's real name. As soon as I hung up, I grabbed my laptop. "Craig Moffit! Not George! Craig!" "I see it now," Parker said. "We should've never trusted Marge. Didn't like the cut of her jib." "Babe, her jib was flawless," I said, turning to the painting. "Her eyes, not so much." "To be fair, we all agreed it was George Moffit…." "There! There's Craig Moffit!" I turned the computer around and showed a webpage dedicated to his art. Parker leaned down to get a closer look. "His legs do look like toothpicks stuck in an orange." Rolling my eyes, I turned the laptop back to me and clicked on the man's "About Me" page. It was illuminating. Craig had quite the little career. He'd worked for a few newspaper outlets. A few magazines. Some ad campaigns. His stuff was good. There was a list of known works. "There are a few house paintings listed here. It has to be him." "Has anyone mentioned how odd this is?" Parker said with a sly smile. "It's catching on." "Maybe he saw your home as a happy family home and wanted to capture it for that company. Is there a contact page?" "There is!" I yelped. I read the page out loud. "If you have questions about Craig or his work, please feel free to reach out here," I said. "That's great. You can email him and ask directly." "Moffit estate at Moffit art dot com," I read. "Shit. He's dead." "That shouldn't matter. Maybe the guy who runs the estate can answer your questions?" I nodded. It was worth a shot. I started composing a message, and Parker went back to breakfast. I glanced at the artwork on the table next to me. Something about it picked at my brain. "Hey, I meant to ask, have you been watching professional Wiffle ball games on our YouTube?" "Oh, yeah. I've started turning on games after your melatonin kicks in. Puts me right out." "Uh-huh. Are you a Wiffle ball fan?" "No," I said, laughing. "I just happened across it one night, and I fell asleep like ten minutes into a game. It's better than ocean waves. Which game was it?" "Umm, Rhinos against the…." "Storks? Oh man, those two teams hate each other. Storks have won the last three series behind Dustin Braddock's nasty banana ball…." I stopped speaking because I could feel Parker's smug smirk on his face. I looked up and caught it with my own eyes. "Not a fan." "What the hell is a banana ball?" PING! "They emailed back already," I said. "What the hell?" "Maybe there isn't a lot going on at the Moffit estate?" "Hi, Craig Moffit was my father. He did several pieces of local homes during that era. I would love to discuss this with you. Can we set up a call?" "So there clearly isn't a lot going on at the Moffit estate," Parker said. "I'm going to say yes. I think I have to, if for no other reason than my own sanity." "Go for it. I can be there for the call if you need me." So I set up a call with the estate for later that day. Hopefully, there'd be some information that I could use to stop the itch in my brain. Parker served me breakfast before he got ready to head out to the gym. "You never told me what a banana ball is," he said, placing the plate in front of me. "It's a side arm slurve. A strikeout pitch. Nearly unhittable if Braddock is on his game." Parker gave me a quizzical look. I sighed. "Not a fan." After Parker had left for the gym, I went back over to the painting. It was still sitting in the last place I had left it. Still had the napkin over it. The bad vibes I felt earlier were still there. In fact, they'd grown worse. I didn't even want this thing in my house anymore - covered or not. Despite my misgivings, I pulled the napkin off the painting and gave it a once-over. I felt my stomach gurgle, and my throat went dry. Looking at this now literally caused physical pain. It didn't make sense. "Where's the front door?" I suddenly asked myself out loud. The front door of the house was gone. Blacked out like an actor with perfect teeth coloring in one to look sufficiently destitute for a role. I scraped where the door had been with my thumb. No fresh paint. It was like it had always been that way. But it hadn't. I checked the photo I sent to my mom to confirm. "What in the…." There was a creak on the basement stairs. There very much shouldn't have been a creak on the basement stairs. The basement was home to nothing but dust, Christmas decorations, and my ugly childhood couches we didn't have the heart to throw away. Since none of those things can walk, this made no sense. I tiptoed to the knife block and pulled out a butcher knife. With my phone in my free hand, I used my nimble thumb to unlock it. I was ready to dial 911. But, as I stared at my reflection in the knife blade, I questioned whether I was prepared to stick it into another person. I wouldn't know that until it came to that moment. I very much prayed that wouldn't happen. Another creak. Near the top of the stairs now. It was getting closer. I flexed the grip on the knife. I tried to control my breathing, but couldn't. Turns out all that woo-woo TikTok relaxation breathing stuff was just bullshit. My heart was thumping like an angry jazz drummer's long-awaited solo. I felt sweat drip down my neck. Something flickered on the painting. It momentarily took my eyes off the basement door. Like last night, I initially registered nothing different. Then I noticed. Through the window of the living room, it looked like someone had turned on a light or lit a fire. Splotches of yellow and orange paint filled the window frame. The jingling of the basement door handle snapped me out of my trance. My palms were sweaty. My legs swayed like bamboo in a strong breeze. I gathered all my remaining strength and yelled out, "Hey! St-stay away from me!" I wanted to say more, but overwhelming fear shut me up. The jiggling stopped. Relief. My hectoring worked...for about two seconds. The basement door cracked open. There was a ghostly, pale face staring back at me. That was when my brain firmly decided whether I was a fight-or-flight kinda gal. I was flight. "Fuck this." I dropped the knife, which clattered on the tile like that drummer hitting the high-hat, and sprinted toward my front door. I yelled gibberish the entire time, tears streaming down my face, and blasted out of the door. My fingers hit send on the call, and seconds later, an annoyingly even-keeled 911 operator connected me with the police. Parker returned home before the police arrived. He found me sitting inside my locked car. Before he could crack a joke, he caught sight of my face. I'd been crying and could feel how puffy my eyes were. Consternation crossed his face. I rolled the window down. "Get in the car." He did. I explained everything to him. He was astonished. He was confused. He grabbed my hand and held it steady as I went over everything, pausing occasionally to sob like a child with a skinned knee. When I was done, he asked why I didn't leave right away. "Who do you think you are, Rambo?" I laughed. I need that. "For a few seconds, I was. Then I wasn't. I wasn't even Gizmo pretending to be Rambo." He gave my arm a loving squeeze. "If it'll help you calm down, we can watch some pro Wiffle ball tonight. I hear the Rhinos are playing the Turkeys." "Storks," I said, "but they are actually playing the Habaneros tonight. Gil Faust is looking to debut his 'chili ball' pitch." He leaned in and kissed my forehead. "But you're not a fan." "I'm not." A knock on the window caused me to scream. The cops had arrived. If they were curious why we were sitting in our car, they kept it to themselves. I relayed what happened, and they said they'd go into the basement and check it out. Fifteen minutes later, they came walking out. "We didn't see anyone down there," the Cop said. "But, to be fair to you, your basement gave me the heebie-jeebies." "Great," I said. "I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth. On the plus side, I haven't seen that love seat since I was a kid." "Want it?" "It's better left to the past. You two have a nice day." We watched them leave. Parker turned to me. "You okay?" "No, and I won't be until I go into the basement myself." "What? Why?" "I…I can't explain. Something is drawing me there. It sounds crazy, I know, but I feel it in my bones." Parker saw the determined look in my eyes. This was going to happen. Had to happen. He sighed. "Want me to go in first?" "Yes," I said. "Are you actually going to wait for me to go in or follow right behind me?" "We both know the answer to that." Resuming our reverse waltz, we went back into the house. Once in the kitchen, we stopped near the painting. Parker looked over and agreed that there were changes. We turned our attention to the closed basement door. Parker put his hand on the handle. "We don't have to go down here, Bonnie," he said. "The cops didn't find anyone." "Alive. If there's a ghost in this house, I need to know. If we know, we can remove it." "How?" "I'm still working on that part," I said. "But I need to know for certain. I won't feel safe otherwise." "I'm inclined to just say yes and move on. Something altered the painting already. Who the hell did that?" "One issue at a time," I said. He knew he couldn't talk his way out of this. He knew I needed this, and he loved me enough to see it through to the end. Even though he was petrified, too. The skin on his arm had goosebumps as soon as we walked into the kitchen. It felt like braille to me now, and the only thing it said was "let's not do this." But that feeling in my brain, the one drawing me down there, wouldn't leave. It was stronger now that we were in the home. Something was loose in my house. I knew it in my heart. Whatever it was, I needed to keep it from roosting in my new home. Let the ghosts live in the past. Leave my future alone. Parker gripped the handle, sighed so loudly it was heard two towns over, and opened the door. The stairs led down into the dark of the basement. The floor around the landing was the only thing visible. In the abstract, it wasn't anything. Right now, though? Horrifying. Parker found the light switch, illuminating the rest of the space. So far, so good. We took our time walking down the stairs. Creaking along the wooden stairs one step at a time. Maybe it'd have the same effect on the ghost that hearing creaking steps did on me. Perhaps the phantom was hiding, holding a ghost knife and deciding if it was going to play ghost Rambo or just fearfully disappear into the walls. "The house in the painting had a basement, too," I whispered. "When I was a kid, I hated going down there. Any time of day. Just didn't feel natural, ya know?" "Are you trying to get me to stop doing this?" "Sorry, I'm rambling," I said. I kept right on rambling, though. "What bothered me wasn't so much going down there. What scared me was the trip back up. Turning your back on the dark. I used to walk backwards up the stairs." "We can try that in a few minutes," Parker whispered back. "Any other ghost stories you want to share before we hit the landing?" "Sorry," I said. "It just popped into my mind. I haven't thought about that fear in years. Since we moved away from there, actually." "That's not comforting." We got to the bottom and took a look around. Everything looked normal. No surprises. Just our old, ugly furniture and friendly Santa decorations smiling and giving us a frozen wave. I thought about turning and heading back up, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was supposed to be down here. I was also positive Parker would be furious if I went darting up the stairs without him. Leaving him alone in Spook Central might be grounds for divorce. We headed over to the furniture. There was a layer of dust on everything. I smacked the pillow, sending it flying into the air. I coughed and sneezed, instantly regretting my actions. Parker's withering glare told me he wasn't fond of my actions either. "Sorry." "I don't see anything out of the ordinary here, do you?" "No," I said. "It looks like it always does." "Feeling gone? Can we go back upstairs now?" Before I could answer, we heard the familiar chime from our security system, followed by the calm, reassuring voice informing us that our front door was open. "What the fuck?" I said. "Shhh," Parker responded, his finger to his lips. He pointed up to the ceiling. We cocked our ears and concentrated. For about twenty seconds, there was nothing. Silence. It didn't last. CREAAAAK. The floorboards wheezed as someone took slow, deliberate steps above us. You could hear the footfalls as they moved from the front door to the hallway. Trembling, Parker pointed up at the ceiling. You could physically see the floor bow ever so slightly from the person's weight. I didn't even think that was possible. "W-what do we do?" I whispered. "I don't know," Parker said. "Maybe they'll leave?" A second later, we were cloaked in total darkness. All the power in the house had gone out. The only light came from the sunlight streaming in from the open door at the top of the stairs. It wasn't much, but it was a beacon. Our lighthouse. Our way home. "Let's…," is all I was able to say. Someone upstairs ran down the hall, through the kitchen, and to the basement door. They slammed it shut, plunging us into instant midnight. I wanted to scream. To yell so loud it'd shake the heavens. But I couldn't. My body physically couldn't make that happen. It'd give away our location. I clutched Parker's shirt so hard I was afraid I'd rip it right off him. If it bothered him, he didn't say. "This sucks," Parker mumbled. Understatement of the goddamn century. "HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!" One of our Santa decorations started going off. I nearly peed myself at Santa's sudden arrival. I imagined it would've been the same response I would've had if I had seen him as a kid. Kris Kringle was soon joined by all of our Christmas decorations going off at once. Dozens of laughing Santas, lights flickering off and on, inflatables rising like zombified plastic bags. The noise was deafening, but strangely festive. The strobing lights in the pitch black caused afterimages to dance in my rods and cones. I slammed them shut and silently prayed for this all to end. Someone must've heard because, as quickly as they'd come to life, they stopped. We stood in the dark, not breathing. Not moving. Neither of us knew what to do. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I couldn't shake the idea that whatever was coming would be worse than what we'd already experienced. There was a creaking again and a sudden rushing of blinding sunlight from the top of the stairs. Someone had opened the door. Before we could get a glimpse, the door slammed shut, and something sprinted down the now-dark stairs. I pulled Parker back onto the old love seat. We sat on the edge and kept our heads on a swivel, even though the basement was too dark to see our own hands. We weren't alone anymore. As my fingertips grazed the couch, I realized something. These were originally my parents. My parents got them when I was living in the house from the painting. They were a physical connection between the past and now. Are these what caused my sudden desire to come to the basement? Was I being manipulated by this thing? Could I trust myself at all? That dread feeling I'd had since I brought the painting into our house intensified. I felt it in my bones. Deeper even. My aura. My soul. I leaned into Parker's ear and whispered an apology. He didn't vocalize a response, but squeezed my arm. I squeezed back. My body shook, and I couldn't get myself to stop. I wanted to run for the stairs, but that old fear came rushing back. I knew if I ran up those stairs, it'd follow behind me. Something wooshed by us. My hair flowed with it, trailing behind whatever had sprinted past. I nervously dug my fingers into the fabric. We heard the sound of some liquid splattering on the floor across from us. Water? No. Heavier than water. A sound that made my guts twist soon joined the drips and splashes. Someone started whistling a familiar tune. Pop goes the weasel. The Christmas decorations flickered on and shut off. In the brief flash of light, we could make out a figure standing across from us. Craig Moffit. "POP!" he screamed as the lights strobed. "GOES!" he screamed again, a foot closer this time. "THE!" Another foot closer. Almost directly in front of us now. The lights flickered again, and his face was right next to mine. A sinister smile as he slowly whispered, "weasel." I felt something wet and slimy rub against my cheek. Parker stood and, surprisingly, swung at ghost Craig. It didn't find the ghoul, and, as the darkness returned, his fist only found the arm of the couch. I heard his knuckles crack and him swear in pain. My ears were the only thing working at that moment, though. I sat frozen, tears streaming down my face. The lights in the house came back on, and I screamed. On the wall across from us, where we had heard the water, the painting was hanging. Only, it wasn't the old house. It was the current house. All the windows and doors were filled with flames. There were two figures on the front lawn. Parker and I. We were both dead. Standing behind our oak tree, watching it all, was Craig Moffit. "Parker! Let's go!" I didn't have to tell him twice. We broke for the stairs and took them three at a time until we reached the top. I grabbed the handle and shoved my shoulder into the door, expecting it to hold firm. It didn't. Parker and I spilled onto our kitchen floor. I scrambled up and practically yanked Parker into the kitchen. I was about to slam the door when I saw Craig Moffit standing at the bottom of the stairs. We locked eyes. My mind flew back to my childhood. A memory stored deep in the folds of my brain. I was sitting on our porch reading a book and heard that damn whistling. Craig Moffit. A Polaroid camera in his hands and portrait photos on his mind. I was afraid he'd stop and take a picture of me. I was right. Even now, I could hear the heavy clunk of the shutter and the whirring of the processing photo as it slid out. He shook it, and as the fog of war slowly dissipated on the photo, he smiled. "This way, I won't forget you." I slammed the door shut and urged Parker to grab the car keys. He turned the corner to do so when I heard him sharply yelp in surprise, followed by the squeak of his sneakers on the hardwood and his ass hitting the ground. I ran to him expecting to see Craig, but was stunned by the sight of a living man surrounded by two yellow hulks outside my front door. Once my brain processed the information, it was clear those men were wearing biohazard suits. It still didn't answer why men in biohazard suits were outside my door. But it cleared up that there were. The suitless man in the middle, though, had a more than striking resemblance to the ghost I'd just seen in my basement. Only younger. Fuller. Fleshy. "Sorry to startle you both," the man said, raising his hands in peace. "You contacted us about a painting you found. I'm David Moffit. Craig was my father." "You've got to be shitting me." "We were supposed to talk on the phone," I said. "Yes, but we were worried things might have progressed too much by then. Tell me, has the door in the painting disappeared yet?" "How did…." David turned to his men. "Call for the extraction team." Turning back to us, he urgently asked, "Where's the painting?" "The basement," I said. "But it looks different now." "What in hell is going on?" Parker asked. "Different? Would you say violently different?" "'Our-dead-bodies-on-the-lawn-and-the-place-ablaze' violently different." He nervously turned to where the biohazard-suited men had gone. "The experienced extraction team!" Parker stood and held my hand. We looked at each other and back at David Moffit. We both cracked. Small smiles that turned into chuckles that turned into a laughing fit. I read somewhere that mental breaks can start like this. Whatever. I leaned in. "David Moffit, the son of your childhood painter neighbor Craig Moffit, himself a ghost that nearly killed us, is standing in our fucking veranda," Parker said, barely able to get the words out between screeching laughter. "I mean, what the fuck is this life?" Seconds later, a team of armed men in hazmat suits carrying unknown machinery rushed in and headed for the basement. We heard one of them scream, and then the sounds of mechanical engines warming up. David nodded toward the front door. "We should go outside." We did. What the hell else were we going to do? Once we were outside, David pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered us one. We both declined. David indulged and nodded back at the house. "This is the experienced team." "What's going on?" I asked. "I'm going to level with you. What I'm about to say is pretty weird. I like to say weird to people. Sets the right tone." "Sir, on what is easily the weirdest day in not only my and my wife's life, but I'd argue humanity's life, nothing you can say will top what we've already been through," Parker said. "I mean, I just discovered my wife watches professional Wiffle ball, for God's sake!" "Not a fan," I mumbled. "Dad was a strange man. Lots of demons. When he could keep them at bay, he did great work. But that was never for long. Around the time when you were a kid, he got deep into the occult. It was a faddish passing fancy at first, but soon he found a deeper meaning in it. It consumed him. Around this time, well, he conjured a demon." "I think I'm having a stroke." "He made a deal. We don't exactly know the details, but what we do know is that Dad agreed to start a company that would paint portraits of people's homes. The twist was that the homes he picked would become targets for the demon." "Naturally," Parker said. "Because why not?" "He'd take a photo of the home and give it to the demon. The demon would curse it and insert it into the canvases of my dad's paintings. These photos would be a connection between the subjects in the art and the demon itself. The pull got stronger when the artwork found its way back to the subjects. Then, they'd, well…." He trailed off. "Meet each other?" I said. "In a manner of speaking, yes." So many questions bounced around my brain. This all sounded so outlandish and yet…. The memory of the photo came back to me. "This way, I won't forget you," I said out loud. Confused, Parker looked at me. "What?" "We don't know how many paintings Dad did during this time, but we've recovered sixty-five in locations from New York to California. The people selected seemed to be random…except for you." "Why me?" "My guess? You were neighbors and, well, my dad really didn't like your dad." "The feeling was mutual." Just then, the extraction team came rushing out. One was limping. The machines they brought looked broken, but the lights were still on. One of them had the painting in a bio-containment bag. It was smoking. "The experienced team," David said, ashing out his smoke on the bottom of his shoe and pocketing the butt. "Thank you for letting us help rid you of this…menace. The work is exhausting, but my family has to atone for Craig's wicked actions." David nodded and turned to leave. I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. "Wait, that's it? We're free? Just like that." "Just like that," he said, turning to leave. He stopped and spun on his heels. "Unless you have something from the old house in your new house. Then you kinda sorta leave a backdoor for the demon to return. So, if you do, I suggest destroying it." He tipped his cap and left. Parker and I locked eyes. "The fucking love seat," we said at the same time. My back hurt just thinking about hauling it up those narrow stairs. Later that night, we torched the sofa in a makeshift fire pit in our backyard. We ate pizza and watched the flames consume the potentially demonic couch. Can't imagine that's a sentence that's been said a lot in history. As we did, relief filled my heart. The dread was gone. I looked over at Parker and smiled. "I think we can put to bed the argument about who had the weirder childhood, Park." He laughed. "Yeah, summers with my Amish family can't compete with demons." His phone buzzed. He looked down at the notification with concern. I felt my stomach twist. "Please tell me it's good news." "The Rhinos/Habaneros game is about to start. I set a reminder. Wanna watch?" I touched my heart and felt pure happiness surge through me. Tears. Grabbing his free hand, I held it tight and gave it a big squeeze. "I have something to confess," I said. "I think I'm a legitimate fan of professional Wiffle ball." "I know, babe. I know." We sat together, letting the crackling of a burning demon couch and the crack of a Wiffle ball bat fill the night air. I snuggled into Parker's shoulder. It was warm. Inviting. Home…and not one haunted by an angry ghost. How did one girl get so lucky? submitted by /u/SunHeadPrime to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

My husband cleaned out our garage on Mother’s Day. I appreciate the gesture (and the fact that we can actually walk through there now without it feeling like an obstacle course) but have a lot of mixed feelings… Let me preface this by saying the garage is like an ADHD graveyard of my good intentions. There are bags that should’ve gone to Goodwill a year ago (they rode around in my trunk until I had to actually use the trunk for something and they got relocated to the garage). There are things I was planning to sell on Facebook marketplace. There are things I was going to take to the electronics recycling facility. There are kids toys that need to be cleaned up before I can pass them on. There are flower pots left over from buying plants that I’m sure I’ll use someday because they’re too nice to throw away, furniture I’m planning to paint, and much, much more. Also, I’m pretty eco-aware and try hard to recycle everything that can be recycled, compost kitchen scraps, take plastic bags to the grocery store recycling bins, donate wearable clothes, take unusable clothing to the fabric recycling drop box in my town, buy used whenever possible, etc. When I learned of this cleaning project my first question was “what did you get rid of?” And his response was “nothing you’re going to miss.” I didn’t want to go and inspect, but listed off a few things I could think of and they’re still there, so I felt ok in the moment. My gut instinct was to go pull stuff out of the trash - but I resisted and it felt like a growth moment. Yay! THEN a day or two later, I was taking some garbage out and couldn’t help but see a few things at the top of the nearly overflowing garbage can. He was right - I wouldn’t have remembered these things had I not seen them. BUT (in my opinion) they were definitely not garbage, and could’ve gone on to someone else, or be donated, etc. I haven’t been able to get this out of my mind. I feel SO guilty for adding to a landfill because I’m too lazy to take care of these things, but on the other hand it does feel nice to have them out of sight. Anyone have tips for staying on top of these donate/recycle tasks so this doesn’t happen again? submitted by /u/Sea_Kale6043 to r/adhdwomen [link] [comments]

TL;DR: Childhood Friend turned into first love then cheated on me. I had a hard time getting over her and now I recently got a Facebook Message from her and I'm surprised at my own reaction. This is a long one. Thanks in advance for reading. I met Julie when we were both 8 years old. We initially went on a lot of play dates and to each others' birthday parties because our moms (and subsequently our dads) got along really well. Her dad was rich, a president of a technology company. My dad was upper middle class and not hurting for money himself. At this point, Julie had long brown hair. She had these big pale blue eyes that would blast me in my stomach every time our eyes met. My little self had no idea what was going on. In middle school, we were both Goth/Emo kids and outcasts (RIP Ian Curtis!). She had short black hair and was kind of pudgy. I was 6 feet tall skinny guy. I mowed lawns all summer and saved up some money. I bought her a ceramic unicorn when I asked her to go steady with me. I was sure she'd say yes and she did. Around the end of 7th grade, she decided she wanted to change her style and told me that she was going to change her social circle. She made it clear that I would need to evolve with her or be left behind. So I changed too. By the end of our Sophomore year in high school, she had a major glow up. She was physically very fit from swimming. She had grown her hair long and dyed it blonde. I had a glow up myself from orthodontics, lifting weights with the football team, and running track and field. I think I could have played football but Julie thought that only idiots played football, and I didn't feel strongly about it either way. Julie had guys after her but she was loyal, or so I thought. She was publicly loyal at least. I later learned that she was going to second base with guys from other schools at house parties, but this was in the future and I was oblivious at the time. I had girls after me too but Julie would run them off. She'd give them a subtle warning to begin with and then she'd pretty much eviscerate them socially if they didn't back off. One girl got messed with so bad that she didn't come back to school. I still don't know the details of that. I didn't really want any of them because, quite frankly, Julie was way WAY better looking, and she knew it. The first major trouble I had with her was at senior prom. I was coming out of the restroom and some girls came up to me saying "I'm so sorry" and "What are you going to do?" I asked them what they meant and they told me Julie had slow danced with another guy and kissed him on the dance floor. I confronted her about it and she convinced me it was nonconsensual. I started to go look for the guy to beat the piss out of him but she pulled me back and told me that we were going to leave to go to a hotel. She had arranged a fancy hotel reservation and she told me we were going to go all the way that night. We did. I can verify that she was a virgin when we did it (and so was I). We graduated and went to the same college. I majored in Computer Science and she majored in Art History (I would make fun of her for it). I won a lottery to get a sought after dorm room. It was a little bigger than a normal dorm room but what made it so sought after was that it had it's own small private bathroom. Julie, of course, lived in a fancy condo very near campus. She insisted on buying brand new hardwood furniture for my room. She got me a fancy desk chair that was surplus from her dad's office....Herman Miller...damn I miss that chair. She had always bought clothes for me even though I told her not to. I bought her little gifts too. Third year in college, I was studying in the library. I got a call from a friend telling me that he was sorry that Julie and I had broken up and asked me if I wanted to come to a party and that there'd be girls there. I was like "Whoa whoa whoa what the f are you talking about?". He told me he saw Julie with some guy at a party making out heavily (second base remember?) and that she pulled him out of the party to her car. My friend asked Julie "what about OP" and she told him we were broken up. We hung up and I took a chance and went to Julie's condo to get to the bottom of it all. I had a key. I went in and loud music was playing. I went back to the bedroom and there they were. The thing that still sticks with me this day was the fact that she had his shirt over his head and her lipstick was smeared on his chest. I yelled WTF?? and she stared up at me with a goofy look on her dumb drunken face. I grabbed the nearest breakable thing which turned out to be the ceramic unicorn I got her and I whipped it at her makeup table, smashing it. I yelled "F@ck you, Julie, we are done!!" and stormed out of there with her calling after me. The next day she called and was apologetic but explained that she wanted to tell me that we were "on a break" and "it's OK". I didn't know what "on a break" meant and I thought it meant the same thing as "broken up" so I was like "No sh!t we're on a break!" and hung up on her. She started "dating" this guy, who had a reputation as a [f@ckboi](mailto:f@ckboi). They were apparently in an open relationship and she bought clothes and stuff for him like she did me and she was seen with other guys but again with him. I was basically eating my heart out and trying to get the best grades possible. I went out but I didn't have any girlfriends. I just partied occasionally. To cope, I got rid of everything that reminded me of her. I donated all of the furniture and replaced it with thrift store particle board crap. I had to start dressing in thrift store clothes too because I got rid of all the clothes she bought me. It was about half of my wardrobe. I deleted all our photos and threw them away. I told my parents what had happened and they and Julie's parents wisely stayed out of it. I told my parents and friends not to talk about her with me. She was a figment of my imagination. This was when someone told me about her going to second base with guys at parties during high school. Approximately 9 months later, she broke up with [f@ckboi](mailto:f@ckboi). The rumor was that he f@cked a girl in front of a bunch of people in public at a party. She was embarrassed and dumped him. She came to me not long after. It was unexpected to me. When I opened the door, there she was, looking very beautiful with a bright smile on her face and the glued together unicorn in her hands. I was stunned as she walked in. I totally did not expect her. She asked if I had gotten robbed (all of the stuff she bought me was gone). I told her that if she wanted the furniture she better go to Goodwill and get it quick. She looked hurt. She showed me the unicorn like it was a metaphor for a repaired relationship. I told her it looked like sh!t and we were broken up. She explained what "On a Break" meant. I told her IDGAF we're broken up. She started crying but I told her to leave. She would then show up at my classes and try to convince me that we were "soulmates who were destined to be together" I told her that soulmates don't F@ck other dudes. She told our mutual friends and they started pressuring me to get back with her because she's 'inconsolable". She sent me notes and letters. Trash. She sent me flowers and candy like I was some insulted 1950s housewife. Trash. Just being around her hurt me physically so I transferred out at the end of the semester, ghosting her. I probably should have made other arrangements because I had to go to school two more years because a bunch of credits didn't transfer. At the new school I was signed up for a bunch of classes I already took and ended up barely passing them because I was in my bed all the time. My roommate (not a friend at the time, just assigned to the same dorm room) got annoyed that I was always there and a little worried at my attitude so he called the campus police on me. I didn't get in trouble but I did have to go see a counselor who told me I was having a "major depressive episode" and "PTSD" and that Julie had some kind of "personality disorder" or was a sociopath who had "groomed me" and manipulated me into dependence on her. I don't know if that's all true but the Zoloft sure helped. I heard that Julie came looking for me at my parents home. She kept asking them where I was and if she could contact me. They kept telling her no but she got more and more belligerent and hysterical with them until Julie's parents told her to stop or they would institutionalize her. I graduated, got a job. Got transferred to Singapore, where I met my now wife (that's a whole other story. I was a passport bro before there were passport bros apparently). I was 35 when we got married and she was 26. We moved back to the USA and had three kids. We're doing great. Fast forward to yesterday. I only use facebook to occasionally upload family pictures but mostly post amusing stuff that comes out of my head. For example "I found an entire bowl of cereal in the sink today so I guess we're Bezos rich now." I got a facebook message from Julie. It had a photo of the unicorn and in it she apologized for what she did and for hurting me and that she will never get over me. I didn't write back. I would never insult my wife like that. I blocked Julie. But what surprised me was my reaction to it: BLINDING. [F@CKING](mailto:F@CKING). RAGE. I f@cking punched the wall denting the sheetrock and I was so mad that tears came down my face, gritting my teeth. Major headache. I swear, if Julie were there in front of me, I would have curb stomped her into the death penalty. I'm not a violent guy. I really am not. I lied to my wife and told her I had to work late and I went on a long vigorous walk downtown to get my mind off of it. I couldn't go home like this. Later, I am calm and feel nothing but my reaction puzzles me. Isn't the opposite of love indifference? I just don't understand how that happened. I guess the solution is more therapy and Zoloft? Update Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/cheating\_stories/comments/1ah8vaz/update\_my\_55m\_childhood\_first\_love\_55f\_cheated\_on/ submitted by /u/GentlemanlyAdvice to r/cheating_stories [link] [comments]

Fun Fact To Cover Spoilers: Astraphobia is the name for fear of thunder and lightning. Brontophobia has also been used before to describe the fear as Bronto means thunder. Content Warning: None Mood Spoiler: Light hearted but inconclusive I am not the OOP. That would be u/salvefrater who posted these on r/StoriesAboutKevin - Intern Kevin tries to get a permanent job by yelling at the CEO and lying about which department he wants to work in (Originally Posted August 14th, 2019) I met this kevin while interning at a non profit organization. Kevin interned in the archives department and once the summer was coming to an end he decided he would get a permanent job there no matter the cost. This led to several hare-brained schemes and unsuccessful attempts to show how good of an employee he could be. Kevin tried to apply to a position in his department that had not existed for years because of budget cuts. But Kevin was a member of the organization and thought he was superior to everyone else so of course he thinks they'll just find the money so that he can continue working there. He meets with the main hiring director who again tells him there is no money or need for the position but that doesn't stop Kevin. Instead he comes up with an even worse plan. Kevin decides to apply for another position in a completely different department that he has no qualifications for. Kevin's plan is to get the job and then after a couple weeks move back into his old office at the archive department and pretend like he had been working there the whole time. Of course Kevin's plan was ruined by the fact that he told co-workers about it so some people already knew about his false intentions before he even had the interview. Before this interview Kevin tried to show how he can be a model employee. One day my soda got trapped in the vending machine. Kevin attempted to prove how macho he was in front of the hiring director (who was retired military) by shaking and punching the machine until he was red in the face and ran out of breath. The hiring director then proceeds to pull out a key and unlock the machine in a couple seconds, making kevin look like an absolute jackass while he's about to pass out from exhaustion. A few days later at lunch one of the other interns mentions how she's getting some furniture delivered to her apartment. Kevin butts in and says "I can come over to your place and help assemble it for you". She tells him thanks but I can do it on my own but Kevin is unfazed. "NO, I'm going to come over and help you, this is a man's job." Whats creepy is that Kevin was older than most of the interns by about 5 years having already gotten a masters degree while everyone else were still undergrad students. A week later Kevin receives a visitor in his office. The new CEO who was due to start in a month wanted to check in with everyone. The CEO begins to explain how he wants to run things when Kevin tries correcting him. Despite having only worked there for two months and due to leave in a week Kevin starts to lose his patience. "THIS IS HOW WE"VE DONE THINGS IN THE PAST AND THIS IS HOW WE"RE GONNA KEEP DOING THEM." Somehow Kevin still thought he had a good chance going into the interview despite screaming at the new CEO who would have to approve new employees. Well this ends exactly how you thought it would. Kevin doesn't get the job and mopes back to his office to pack up his stuff, riding off into the sunset to scam his way into another job. Edit: The Intern saga continues in part 2 - An Update to Kevin the Failed Intern (Originally Posted August 23rd, 2019) In my last post I talked about Kevin the Intern who managed to lose any chance of getting a job by yelling at the CEO, beating up a vending machine, and lying about his intentions. I thought I had seen the last of Kevin but the organization we both interned for was holding its annual conference and they needed help staffing the event. So kevin came back not even a week after his "last day". I heard or witnessed so many more Kevin stories over the course of this conference that I felt compelled to make an update. Other people who had to interact with Kevin on a daily basis filled me in on how he got hired and his daily routine. Kevin had heard about the internship when he talked to the retiring CEO at an event. This was a short 15 second talk while they took a photo together but Kevin interpreted this as a job offer and was angry when he didn't hear back a few days after sending in his resume. He decided to call up the organization's main representative in his state to complain and request that he bring it up with the CEO to try to get the internship hiring supervisor in trouble. He was finally hired after guilt tripping the organization by saying he needed this internship to finish his masters degree program. Kevin was majoring in Museum studies and he was placed in the archives department to catalog the museum collection they maintained. The catalog tracked where each item was kept in the building. Kevin, despite only being an intern, decided to completely change the system they used which meant the other intern had to spend countless hours cataloging every item back into the new system. Kevin would also routinely stare at her and when she asked why, he said it was a prank. "What? am I not allowed to mess with you?". He also deleted the part of the catalog that listed what building the item was in because everything was in the same building and felt redundant to him. This led to all the other categories like room and cabinet number being mixed up and inaccurate. Once again the other intern had to fix the entire system. After a long day at the conference we were all getting ready to go home. I was in the middle of talking to someone when Kevin comes over and GRABS ME BY THE JACKET TO LIFT UP MY LABEL PIN TO HIS FACE. Kevin is at least 5 inches taller and 200 pounds heavier than me so he's about to lift me off the ground. "I've been wondering all day what this pin was." I am too stunned to respond so someone else explained what it was. He lets me go only to grab me again to get a second look. Kevin leaves to give a ride home to another intern. He starts talking about Harvard which he thought was in MICHIGAN. Of course not everyone knows where Harvard is but this man plans on working in a field where the only two options are academia or museums.Also his profile picture has a caption saying "Stand Up to Harvard" in bold red font. The last night of the conference everyone was invited to a black tie dinner at a fancy hotel. Kevin manages to beg his way into getting a free ticket for his fiancé,Kevina, when every other intern only got a ticket for themselves. He introduces us to Kevina and says one of the interns is from Guam. This intern had actually lived in Guatemala not Guam for a few years and corrected him. He responded "Ehhh same thing they're both islands where they speak Spanish." Everyone else at the table was too dumfounded to even try and tell him that Guatemala is not an island and they don't speak Spanish on Guam. There was also a delegation of people from Guam at this dinner. Kevina while speaking very slowly and pronouncing every syllable asked if she missed home. This intern again tries to tell explain that she's American and just lived in Guatemala for a few years but it wasn't getting through Kevina's thick skull. When the salad came I accidentally grabbed the wrong fork. Kevin scoffs and tells his boss "we need to teach these interns some manners and etiquette."Remember this is less than 24 hours after he grabbed me with no warning to look at a shiny pin on my jacket. The main course was steak and fish. Kevina poked at her plate and said "this is some weird food" without a hint of irony. That ends the story of Kevin and Kevina at least for now. If i ever have to interact with this man again I might just break down into a ball. - Relevant Comments I love your stories. If I had your address, I would send you a 'thank you' postcard from the island of Guatemala. OOP: Thank you! Kevin probably wonders why Guatemalans cross into mexico to come to the US when they could just sail here from their exotic island ​ You know what would be a perfect ending to this story? You get the job he wanted. OOP: Our boss after the dinner basically implied to one of the interns who has experience in the field that the job will be there if she wants it when she graduates next year. This was after she made a joke at the table about taking it and Kevin responded "Hey I have first dibs on that." OOP (Added as its own comment): I forgot to mention that Kevina the fiancée was asked when they were getting married and she said as soon as Kevin found a job. So I guess they're never getting married. Also they moved halfway across the country so he could take an internship that paid minimum wage and now their only source of income is her fast food job. - Intern Kevin Part 3: This guy won't give up and now he has a strongly worded letter (Originally Posted September 25th, 2019) If you haven't read part 1or part 2 the main summary is that Kevin was an intern who tried several schemes to get a permanent job and instead ruined any goodwill his internship provided and revealed how dumb he actually was (shocker). Its been over a month since Kevin's internship ended but he still hasn't given up on his dream job. My friends who still intern at this organization noticed some weird messages last week on the shared intern email. Turns out Kevin has decided to use this shared work account as his own personal email and is asking other people to help edit a letter he has been writing. After being told several times that the organization does not need a Full Time Curator for their small museum, Kevin decided to write a letter to the new CEO trashing the Museum and implying the only solution is to hire a "Museum Professional" like himself. The museum is probably not even on the top 100 concerns for the new CEO but Kevin writes about how he can change the world by fixing this museum. Despite crossing several ethical boundaries in his previous schemes he writes that he is worried about the "ethical position" of the museum. Now Museum ethics is an issue for prominent museums like the British Museum that acquired some of their artifacts in a questionable manner but this is a little known museum that has things like civil war rifles and commemorative coins not ancient statues and Egyptian mummies. Since nearly everything in the museum was donated Kevin says that the organization is open to lawsuits over the ownership of the artifacts and that they're somehow violating ethical rules by not having a legal deed of ownership for every trinket in their collection . Of course this would never actually happen but then there wouldn't be a reason for Kevin to be hired to run the Museum. This whole letter is full of praise and compliments for the CEO despite their only past interaction was the CEO asking Kevin to store some of the former CEO's stuff for a future exhibit and Kevin outright refusing because "I disagree with the ethics of this." Kevin goes on to describe the museum as "a warehouse of oddities dumped on our doorstep" and the historians who have decades of experience working at the organization as "well meaning amateurs." Kevin also seems to not understand what charity means. Since this is a non-profit based around charity there are a lot of exhibits about the hospitals for children they help run and commemoration of the major donors. Somehow Kevin sees this as "Elitist" and showing off "the abundance of wealth" for the organization which again IS A NONPROFIT THAT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO HIRE SOMEONE LIKE KEVIN. Kevin concludes the letter by throwing several people under the bus. He says one of the newest hires "has no chance" of being successful without Kevin's help and and writes about "how much pain I felt" when the main hiring director told him he wouldn't create a new position for him. Kevin also says that once his changes are made to the museum it will become "a scholarly institution that will educate the world" (I'm sure Kevin's Museum will make the Library of Alexandria look like an abandoned blockbuster). Of course the letter is also full of spelling mistakes and basic grammatical errors even though this guy has a GODDAMN MASTERS DEGREE. He also doesn't seem to think it was wrong to keep using the work email for his own purposes. The password was quickly changed so Kevin didn't have a chance to see the edits made to his letter. The editor removed all the parts where he was either complaining or throwing people under the bus which was over half of the letter. This honestly proves Kevin is obsessed and will never stop trying to get this job and I look forward to writing the next 100 parts of this series. - Marked as inconclusive as OOP promised more updates but never has posted. I wish OOP well. submitted by /u/boru_posts to r/BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]

Hey everyone, I need some advice on what to do with a family bible I found at my Grandfather’s house. He died nearly a year ago in December. We’d always been close, and since my own father passed away years ago from cancer, the responsibility of dealing with Grandpa’s estate had fallen to me. I arrived one snowy evening just before Christmas, armed with trash bags and cleaning supplies. The house was exactly as I remembered it- dated, yet welcoming and familiar. I felt sad. This house was a happy place for me, and I had a lot of good memories here. I dreaded selling it. The interior was cold from having the heat turned down, l so I decided to light a fire in the fireplace while I worked. The flames spread quickly on the dry kindling, and crackled cheerfully behind the grate. I poured myself a bourbon from the decanter (thanks Grandpa) and turned to the bookshelves. Grandpa had always loved to read, and his shelves were filled with books. I had been looking forward to going through his collection and actually planned on keeping a few for myself. I smiled when I pulled down weathered copies of East of Eden, Kim, and All the King’s Men. But the next book I pulled down made me frown. It was a family bible, fragile with age. The leather spine cracked when I opened it and flipped its dry pages. I felt guilty for tossing it, but this just wasn’t for me. I was an atheist, more or less, and it just felt odd to keep a worn out bible. I flipped back to the front cover, where there were handwritten notes- a list of births and deaths in the family going back almost two hundred years. I was surprised to see my own name at the bottom. Taylor Smith, b.1991, d. 2036 I shivered. It was so bizarre. Why was I listed in the family bible with a future death date? The thing gave me the creeps. I was suddenly very aware of how alone I was in the house, on a cold winter’s evening. I continued to pilfer through the books, but the rest of the evening felt tainted by that discovery. I glanced nervously over at the coffee table, where the bible sat innocently. I polished off the bourbon and decided to open it again. It gave me an odd feeling, even to hold it. Like it was full of power. And there it was. My name, with a death date of 2036. I hadn’t imagined it. It felt wrong. I thought about putting it in the trash bag, with the other unwanted books. Then I looked up at the fireplace. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. I put it in the fire. And I watched it burn slowly, the pages curling with flame. After that I felt much better. I even laughed at how silly I’d been to let a book spook me. I went to bed with a clear conscience. The next day I moved into the bedroom. I bagged clothes and shoes, half of them for Goodwill and the rest for the dumpster. It was only when I turned to his nightstand that I saw it again. There was the family bible, sitting on a stack of books. I thought I was crazy. Surely I’d had too much to drink last night and I’d dreamed the whole thing up. I was curious. I had to open it. And sure enough, there it was: Taylor Smith, b.1991, d. 2033 I felt my chest tighten with fear. Hadn’t it said 2036 last night? In.. my dream? This was unnatural. I flung it into a trash bag, tied it up and hauled it outside to the growing pile of garbage near the curb. It’s got to be a joke. A cruel, horrible joke, I thought to myself. But who would do that? Grandpa loved me. He would never do something like this. I continued cleaning and purging, but the rest of the day I felt uneasy. The other stuff in the house was so mundane. Ordinary. I saw nothing atypical at all. On the third day, I went to the attic. There was a lot of crap up there, dusty furniture and piles of old junk. Most of it was trash, and I dutifully hauled bag after bag to the curb. I went through all of the furniture as well. None of it was empty. Piles of old china and knicknacks clogged the shelves. Ok, plates to goodwill, and the rest to the trash, I thought as I segregated the items. An antique dresser sat in the corner of the room. I pulled out the drawers and inspected the contents. Family photographs, scrapbooks. And of course, the bible. My heart dropped when I saw it. I felt nauseated. My skin grew clammy. Slowly, I pulled it out and opened the front cover. Taylor Smith, b.1991, d. 2030 I felt frozen with fear. My pulse raced, and my ears rang. I flipped the pages, and this time a letter fell out. I carefully unfolded the yellowed paper. This book is not what it seems. It may appear as a bible, but it is something far older and darker. It has been in our family for many years, and it is our role to protect it from those who search for it, those who would abuse it, and those who would use it to harm us. I made the mistake of telling your father. He tried to destroy it, and it cut his life short. Do not make the same mistake that he did. Keep it secret, keep it safe. If you do, you will live a long, happy life like I did. Love, Grandpa I was spooked. I gave up on cleaning for the day and took the bible and letter downstairs to the living room. I needed to think. I lit another fire and poured a drink. After a few minutes I felt brave enough to read the letter again. I sat for a long time in his armchair, staring at the flames deep in thought. I messed up. I’d tried to destroy the book three times already. And now it had reduced my life expectancy even further. Now I understood there was some reason for my dad’s life being cut short. When he’d been diagnosed with cancer four years ago it had come as a complete shock. He’d always been healthy. I didn’t know how I felt about this piece of information. Whatever this was, it had scared him, and he’d tried to destroy it. He’d tried to prevent it from getting to me. I contemplated the bible laying on the coffee table. I decided to open it and look at it, really examine it this time. I picked it up and held it in my lap, opening to a page at random. The translucent pages rustled beneath my fingertips. Grandpa was right. It wasn’t what it seemed to be. It was a bible, sure.. but when I tried to read it, the letters swam before my eyes and the text grew hot beneath my fingertips. I got a brief flash in my mind of something horrible- nails driven behind fingernails, flesh bubbling over fire, a pierced eye leaking a bloody milk, rope twisting around a slim neck- before I snapped back to the reality of the armchair and fire. It took a minute for my heartbeat to slow and my breathing to return to normal. I took a shaky gulp of my bourbon. I’d flung the bible to the floor, where it rested open to a page in Ezekiel. I don’t know where I went or who those people were, but I had a strange certainty that they were my ancestors. Maybe the ones who hadn’t cared properly for the book? I can’t explain it. I knew it was a bad idea as soon as the thought entered my head. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from jumping up and reaching for it again. If I was right, I’d be able to talk to him one final time.. …the earth spun around me in a nauseating swirl before spitting me out onto a blackened plane of hard earth. I struggled to move, my limbs heavy. Smoldering air burned my lungs. I lifted my head from the dry soil to see destruction all around me, piles of corpses, mutilated and burnt. I was startled when one of them jerkily turned its head and screamed at me. “Don’t come here again!” His wasted maw gasped out. “It will draw their attention!” I think I was flung back to reality by my own shock more than anything. I’d know that face anywhere. It was the face of my own father. I’d gone looking for him, and I’d found him. But knowing what happened to him was so much worse than not knowing. Ignorance truly is bliss. Whoever “they” were, they had come for him when he hadn’t protected the book. And now, they would come for me. My days were numbered too. I slipped from the armchair into the floor. Tears streamed down my face. I was both thrilled to be alive and tormented by the idea of my father in that hellish, astral plane. I slipped the bible closed with my toe. Enough of that for one evening. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, even with the help of one of grandpa’s pain pills I found in the medicine cabinet. I left the house the next day. I knew I’d be back after the holidays to keep working on the place. Honestly, I needed to get out of there and clear my head. I took the bible with me. As I drove down the snowy backroads to my house, I could feel its presence in the car. I shivered, and not from the cold. I think I’ll always be able to feel the dark energy now that I’ve visited the astral realm. I hated being near that thing. But the hard reality was sinking in. I had to become the caretaker of the book. That’s what Grandpa did, and you know who I didn’t see in the astral hellscape? Grandpa. I had to protect it, and I had to atone for my destructive actions any way I could. When I finally pulled into my driveway I had a package from Amazon waiting for me. After unloading the car I heaved the box through the front door and brought it into my bedroom. The small combination safe I’d ordered fit perfectly under my nightstand. I could feel the whispers of power as I pulled the book out of my duffel bag. I carefully slid it into the safe, locked the door, and didn’t touch it for months. It’s been nearly a year since my little discovery. I finished cleaning out Grandpa’s house in early spring, and had it sold by April. I didn’t find anything else exciting. I’ve been good this year. I’ve really made an effort to do what Grandpa said in the letter. I’ve also been extra careful about being inconspicuous. No gun purchases, no strange library book checkouts, and no googling “demonic bibles” or anything else that might flag my internet history. I don’t want to do anything to attract the wrong kind of attention. When I’m at home though, I always know it’s there. I can especially feel its presence when I lay down at night. I try to ignore its call. No more trips to the astral plane. Not after what I’ve seen. In fact, I’ll do anything to never see that place again. I try to block out what I saw there. It’s easier to do that than accept what happened to dad. Lately though the whispers have been growing louder, and the feeling of dread in my house has been almost unbearable. I finally broke down and opened the safe last week. When I flipped open to the cover page, I was surprised to see that the dates had changed once again- but this time for the better. Taylor Smith, b.1991, d. 2040 The book seems pleased with its secure storage. So really, the reason I’m posting today is to see if anyone out there has tips on what else I could do to protect it? I really want to show my dedication to keeping it hidden and safe. I’m not ready to die, and I don’t want to meet the entities that live in the astral realm anytime soon.. submitted by /u/sunshine_dreaming to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

I am NOT OP. Original post by u/daintyanus in r/JustNoMIL   Malicious Magda’s Racist Meltdown – 10 Feb 2016 I am 36 weeks pregnant with my first child, a boy. My MIL, Magda has fixated on us naming our child Patrick because I'm due in March. More than anything in the word, she wants us to name baby Patrick Liam to honor her family's Irish heritage.. At the beginning of my third trimester, I couldn't take her constant badgering, so I blocked her number. I told DH all contact with her has to go through him. DH and I are both practicing Catholics, both sides of our family have a tradition of naming children after saints. I have a saint name, DH & all of his siblings have saint names, my step-children have saint names, and Magda has a saint name. We're naming the baby Toribio Romo. Santo Toribio is a saint who was a parish priest in Mexico in the town next to where my family is from. All the first sons in my family are given this name. It's a tradition I'm happy to continue. I'm at BIL1's house for their Superbowl party. My wide, pregnant ass is comfortably sitting in the recliner with my feet up. I'm feeling good, my feet are up, the kids are bringing me snacks and beverages. Magda and BIL's MIL, "Linda" are talking to me about babies and child rearing. Magda is on her best behavior in front of Linda (Linda is the treasurer for our church and also runs the women's bible study group) so she hasn't harped on naming the baby Patrick Liam. The conversation stays cheerful and light until Linda asks if we have decided a name. Magda's eye open wide and I cooly say "We're naming him after Santo Toribio." Before Linda can say anything Magda starts ugly crying. Magda says Toribio is an unacceptable name. It's hard to pronounce and his classmates will make fun of him for it. She thinks naming our child after a the patron saint of immigrants is disgusting. Magda fell to the floor screaming that I've stolen her youngest son and am forcing him to turn his back on his Irish heritage. The only reason I'm with him was to get a greencard and to escape my desperately poor life. She wishes DH's late wife was still here because she was nicer (doormat) and would never dream of giving an innocent child such a disgusting name. My step-children deserve a better step-mother because I'm an just a gold-digging beaner who is only concerned with money. Linda just looked at her in gape-mouthed horror. I just got up and walked out of the house, determined not to cry in front Magda, I did not want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that she hurt me. Magda is in denial that I'm not only a US citizen, I am US born to US born parents. She hates that my step-children adore me and like my parents more than her. I have more stories about her because typing this out is exhausting. Thank you JNM for letting me vent. I have no idea what to do with her now.   My oldest just disowned his paternal grandmother – 15 Feb 2016 My horrendous MIL, Magda, had a racist meltdown directed at me (i'm Mexican-American) at her oldest sons Superbowl party. Luckily my BIL's MIL, Linda was there to witness the full splendor of Magda's hurtful words. Unfortunately the rest of the family has been working hard to sweep everything under the rug and to paint me as the bad guy. In my last post, I forgot to mention that I've known Linda since I was kid. She was a teacher my school. I never had her, but my older sister and a bunch of my cousins were in her classes. Magda has the story in her mind that I am living in the US with a stolen social security number, have a desperately poor family, and am only with DH for money and US citizenship. In her mind, my dedication to parenting my step-children is to brainwash them to love me so DH can't leave me. As a graphic designer/illustrator, I work half at the office, half at home. MIL thinks I work in a service job because of my "untraditional" hours. If wasn't for me, her family would be happy and peaceful. You know, standard JNM stuff. DH's wife, "Jana" died in a car accident when the youngest was 6 months old. Shortly afterward DH took a job across the country, where he met me. That's how I met him, at the annual company BBQ. Her family are a bunch of narc-assholes and Jana was totally the SG. When she died, her family just ghosted. In the entire time I've been with DH, Jana's family has never contacted the kids; no calls, visits, cards, nothing. That's fine with me because my family was overjoyed to add DH and the kids to the family. The kid's school pictures are on my parents' living room wall right along with all the other grandkids. I've been with DH since the kids were 2, 4, and 6. They are now (YS)12, (MD)14, (OS)16. I'm pregnant with my first baby, due in 3 weeks. Magda loathes with every fiber of her being that my family loves the kids so much. It fills her with jealous rage that they prefer going to my parent's tiny house in the hood rather than her sterile tract-mansion in a bland sub-division. It gets under her skin that I taught the kid's to speak spanish and they go to bilingual school. When she comes over to the house and Spanish-language TV/radio is on, she turns it off and makes an exagerated sigh of relief. Magda lost her mind when MD plucked her eye brows thin with a high arch, copied from the photos of me in high school from the 90s. MD is rocking the east LA style like her cousins, brown lipstick, huge hoop earings, black chuck taylors, big hair, I love it. This wasn't a day-to-day problem before we moved back southern California. Before, we lived across the country in Florida. We've been back about 2 years, now and I'm fucking done. The day after the party, OS went to my sister's house to hang out with his cousins. He told them what happened and they got all riled up (the latino machismo, ugh). Meanwhile, Magda had been textbombing OS, pleading with him not to be upset. Magda can't help herself in talking shit about me, enraging OS further. She offered to give OS FIL's old Lexus that he didn't sell when he bought his new car. OS told her to go fuck herself. DH and I have been arguing throughout this pregnancy because Magda wouldn't give me any space. As soon as we announced I was pregnant, she texted me multiple times a day asking for updates. Magda was already annoyed that I refused to let her have a co-parenting relationship with the kids when we moved back to SoCal (I suspected that's why DH moved across the country when Jana died). She wanted to go to all of my prenatal appointments and ultrasounds like she did for all of her other grandchildren. Madga was also displeased that I wasn't going to let her pick out the baby's name, like she did for all of her other grandchildren. I finally blocked her number and told DH that all communication from her had to go through him. Magda wants the baby's name to be Patrick Liam, as he is due in March. We are naming the baby Toribio Romo because it has significant sentimental meaning in my family. DH and i had an argument about maybe using the middle name of Liam. I refuse because Magda will end up calling him Liam and the rest of DH's side will follow suit. Magda called DH at work and cried about OS telling her to fuck herself. DH let Magda cry on the phone for 30 minutes, upset at the way we let the children disrespect their elders. None of this would have happened if I just followed the family tradition of Magda being the third spouse in her children's marriages (my wording). OS, already riled up from his cousins, overheard that argument on Tuesday, and exploded the next night, Wednesday. Madga will not stop textbombing all the kids. OS and DH start arguing in the backyard. OS tells DH he is a failure as a man, a father, and a husband for allowing Magda to act like this. I stayed out of it because I found myself agreeing with OS way too much. OS loves my parents more because they love him as a person, Magda just treats him as a "lifestyle accessory". As soon as he's 18, he will never speak to her again because she is just blood related, by my side loves him like family should love someone. OS also said that if DH and I got divorced, him and his siblings would want to live with me because he'll just crawl up Magda's ass, begging her to love him. He said that he wishes we never moved back to southern California, he liked it better when Magda only visited once a year and stayed in a hotel. DH ended the argument by telling OS to go to his room. When I heard OS's bedroom door slam and DH stomping into the backroom to watch TV, I took MD and YS to get burgers. At in-n-out, they filled me in on Magda's constant texting. They haven't responded back because they're afraid of causing more fights. My heart is breaking. I felt guilty for standing my ground because it's hurting the kids with the tension. Then they start talking about all the times Magda has been mean to me and I was nice back. I had to reassure them that DH and I aren't talking about divorce because Magda told them DH and I are going to break up and my family will abandon them like Jana's family did. She wants to reconcile because soon, she'll be the only grandmother they have. She has a forgiving heart, she still loves them. I try to play it cool even though I'm seeing red. I'm an adult with kids, a successful corporate career, and a late-model mini-van, but I'm still from the barrio. The East LA chola in me wants to fill a sock full of pennies and use it to beat her her surgically enhanced face in. I purposefully keep the conversation in English at in-n-out so I can make sure I choose my words more carefully. It's getting late, we go home, the kids go into their bedrooms. DH tries to get my to sympathize with him over this argument him and OS had. I'm most definitely not sympathetic and I tell him what the younger kids told me. OS most definitely not mention that part to DH, and DH gets angry again. I told him I'm not interested in anything he has to say because he hasn't handled his mother. I told him he needs to sleep in the TV room. I would go but being pregnant with his son requires me to have a bed with better lumbar support. DH stomps out of the room an slams the door. OS texts me to tell me he's sorry for causing the fight between me and DH. Me and DH don't speak from Thursday-yesterday morning. Even though he's angry with his mom, he's also mad at me for not backing him up during the fight with OS. MD went through her clothes and gave everything that Magda gave her to the Goodwill. YS is spending extra time practicing the piano. I know he's upset because he is only playing songs in minor key. We go to Sunday mass and Magda isn't there. I don't take my cell phone and I don't allow the kids to take their phones to church after I caught MD scrolling through instagram during mass a few months ago. When I get home, I have a VM from FIL. I listen to it and FIL went on for three minutes about how * I * need to resolve this conflict with Magda because it's my fault and Magda feels uncomfortable at church because I made her out to be a monster to the other parishioners. Traditions are important in their family and I was inconsiderate for not even discussing choice of names with her. He also said that they still love me even though there are many huge cultural differences between us. Also, is OS sure he doesn't want his old Lexus? It was DH's turn to help clean the chapel after service, when he got home from church, I had him listen to the VM. Afterwards, he apologized for me and asked to go to couple's counselling. Linda told our priest about what Magda said at the Superbowl party. Instead of cleaning the chapel after mass, the priest and DH had a long talk. OS has disowned Magda and FIL. He wrote them a NC letter and blocked their numbers from his phone, blocked them on FB, and set his email to automatically delete emails from them. I'm sad it had to come to this, but impressed that OS has the fortitude at 16, to cut these types of toxic people out of his life. The kids aren't just step-children to me, they are my everything. I have made many personal and professional sacrifices to make sure they have the best childhood possible. I'm getting a little teary right now because I hate that Magda had spewed out so disgusting bullshit, trying to make them hate me. It hurts me deeply that she can't just be happy that her son married a good woman who loves his children unconditionally. There we go. I'm sure after Toribio is born, there will be a fresh uptick in Magda shenanigans. DH hasn't gone NC with her yet, so I know the fighting will continue. I'm grateful that my brother's wife is coming to stay with us for 6 weeks after the baby is born. I need someone else to be there so I don't cave to Magda in my vulnerable post-partum time. Last night I dreamt that I cut Magda's tongue out with a kitchen knife and ate it in tacos a la langua.. I woke up a little sad that it didn't actually happen.   When Magda convinced her granddaughter she was obese – 17 Feb 2016 My middle kid (MD) is doing The Purge. She's getting rid of everything that Magda has given her. The bags of stuff in the hall today has reminded me of why I don't allow her unsupervised time with the kids. When we moved to southern California from Florida, Magda assumed that things would go like they did with her other grandchildren. DH is the bumper baby, 8 years apart from his older brother. The rest of his nieces and nephews are adults who have all moved away. Magda was so excited to spend time with her younger grandchildren. She offered to take them to school in the mornings 4 days a week and drive MD to her soccer practice and take her home after 3 days a week. It was too good to be true. She was never late, but cut it way too close for my liking in the mornings. She would insist on picking up MD in the afternoon in her tiny roadster, the trunk too small to fit her huge duffle bag, so she would have to put it on her lap, blocking her from seeing out of the car. This really pissed me off because she had no problem picking them up in the mornings in her S500 sedan. Right at the end of their first school year in California, MD started dramatically restricting her food intake. She thought she was clever by taking small portions and chewing very slowly. She started working out harder, knocking out another hour on the stationary bike after practice. She was so cranky all the time. I was worried that her friends were pushing her into it and she adamantly denied it. We were on week 3 of 5 of DH being in South America on a business trip. MD comes inside, looking like she just finished crying. Magda follows her looking like the cat who ate the canary. I'm busy getting dinner together while making sure YS is doing his homework at the kitchen table. Magda comes over to my stove and tut-tuts what I'm making, telling me MD might get depressed in high school if she stayed "stocky". Just because I'm Mexican, doesn't mean the kids should eat beans fried in lard daily. She understands that food is cheaper in the US, but I shouldn't fall in the trap of eating rich food every day because it's available. I asked her to leave. Her eyes tear up and she fake apologizes, she just wants to make sure her grandchildren are happy and healthy. If cooking is too much of a burden, she would be more than happy to pay for a service to deliver our meals, daily if we needed. OS and YS got really excited and I just acquiesced. I was tired from working full time and having the kids on my own, the idea of daily meal service while DH was gone didn't sound so bad. Joke's on me because that food was terrible AND Magda made sure to tell everyone how lazy I am when DH is gone. Hearing my frustration with MD my brother offers to take her with him when he visits his in-laws in Mexico. My SIL's family are hardcore soccer fans and she has quite a few nieces MDs age. She was gone for three days when my brother calls me. MD has been food restricting and over working out because Magda has told her that she needs to have muscle definition and a flat stomach to be successful in southern california. MD is obese and if she doesn't get it together, she will be a social pariah. She also offered to pay for breast implants as a high school graduation gift, on the condition she gets and stays fit. I told DH and he called Magda. She at first denied saying those things before eventually admitting. She's only looking out for MD's best interests because she'll be as large as a dumpster if they keep eating my cooking. Besides, we should have been proud of MDs dedication, she works hard and looks fantastic. She non-appologized and DH ate it up. After we got off the phone, he seemed proud of how he handled the situation. MD didn't look fantastic. She was too thin, pale, irritable, and she was losing a lot of hair. We fought daily over trivial stuff. My funny and easy going girl became a hypoglycemic shrew. I was exhausted so I just let it slide. When MD did come back, she gained a little weight and had her color back. We went out clothes shopping for school when MD said she didn't want to play soccer anymore. I had to really pry it out of her that she wanted to quit so Magda doesn't drive her to practice anymore. The entire time in the car, shes pinned to her seat from her bag and Magda interrogates her about what she ate and how she works out. Some of Magda's friends volunteer with the club, Magda wanted to make absolutely sure that MD made her look like the worlds best grandparent. I wanted DH to tell her that her chauffeur service was no longer needed. He tried to pussyfoot around it, angering Magda and they had a huge fight, ending with Magda no longer wanting to take the kids to school. Awesome! I felt so good a few days later when Magda asks for the school schedule and I told her not to worry about it. Again, she made sure to tell everyone how I'm actively alienating her grandchildren from her. I never told anyone that she wasn't allowed to have unsupervised time with the kids, I just maneuvered it so it didn't happen. I still feel guilty about letting MD's brief brush with compulsive overexercising happen.   Magda threw a lawn tantrum – 27 Feb 2016 Today, I was taking a pregnancy-induced coma nap in the living room when I woke up to my nephew, Luis (he's our landscaper) arguing with someone in the front yard. I peek out of the front window, and he's arguing with a two men in front of a truck from a very expensive furniture store near my nutbag asshole MIL, Magda's house. They stop arguing when I open the front door. Luis instantly apologizes for waking me up from my nap. He explains that this store is trying to deliver a bunch of furniture, a new piano and it's all paid for. When he saw Magda's name on the receipt, he knew I wouldn't want it. The delivery guys just couldn't understand how I could refuse a complete nursery set made of teak and a brand new Yamaha piano. I ended up calling the store, telling the manager if they didn't leave, I was going to call the cops. Refund Magda's money or don't, I don't give a shit, this furniture was not coming off the truck and into my house. So delivery guys and Magda's furniture leave and Luis goes back to working on the flower beds. I knew it wasn't over. When I hung up with the manager of the store, I knew Magda was going to be at my house in 55 minutes, 25 minutes to get the phone call and summon her flying monkeys, 30 minutes to drive to my house. Right on schedule Magda, SIL2 and her DIL come roaring up our street in Magda's car. Magda's in the front seat with SIL's DIL driving. Her mascara is streaked down her face, enraging me further. Her streaked makeup was for show, her eyes weren't puffy and her favorite mascara is waterproof. Before she could bang on my door, I threw it open and told her to leave. She stops in the middle of the walk and just chastising me for refusing to be a part of the family. Why did I insist on having to do things different and have such blatant disregard for [lastname] Family traditions. She just wants to love me and she loves her grandson. With him being born in the US, I'll have an easier path to citizenship. She's sorry for threatening to get me deported. She wants to resolve our conflicts before the baby is born. And then, BAM! My nephew hits her with the garden hose. HE makes sure to absolutely soak her. He's yelling at her to leave before he calls the cops. He follows her to the car, hose on full blast. Quite a bit of water gets into her stupid fancy car before she can get in and close the door. they take off quickly. Before they are even to the freeway, Magda calls me using GDIL's cell phone. She is screaming into the phone, she told me that she still loves me and I need to get over it. DH and I have been married for long enough for me to know that she's the head of the family. I need to know my place. I told her that she will never meet her grandson. She is not allowed to come to the hospital, she isn't invited to his Christening, we will never come to holidays in her home. DH is free to have whatever relationship he wants. But now, the two older kids, me and still gestating fetus don't have a relationship. The youngest can decide, but trying to buy his affection with a new piano is offensive, I will not be encouraging him to spend time with her. I just hung up. DH and the kids have said nothing about her when they got home. I don't know what's going to happen now. There Magda elephant is in the room and even saying her name out loud enrages me.   Magda visits her adult grandchildren – 1 Mar 2016 Last time on My MIL is a psycho asshole, she tried to buy my youngest (YS) a new piano and my still-gestating fetus a suite of unnecessarily expensive nursery furniture. I refused delivery, she came over to yell, my nephew turned the garden hose on her when she wouldn't leave, he got A LOT of water in the inside of her car but she left. I suspected my FIL didn't know that she just dropped that kind of money, which he did not, this brings us to yesterday. My BIL2, husband and father-in-law to the flying monkeys Magda brought with her to yell at me, leaves a panicked text message for DH to call him ASAP. DH is still pissed off that BIL2's wife and daughter-in-law joined Magda to try to bully me into submitting to her will. He doesn't return the text or call. After getting flurry of panicked texts from all of his brothers and a cousin, DH finally calls FIL: American Express called FIL, the furniture store refused to refund Magda after I refused delivery. She tried to get it charged back, claiming fraud. The furniture store called the house number instead of Magda's cell phone. FIL picks up the phone and the owner told FIL he can fuck himself and they're banned from the store because of Magda's behavior. Blowout fight between them ensues, Magda leaves in a dramatic fashion. She doesn't come or call Friday night. By Saturday afternoon, he logged into the mobile bank to see Magda made a sizable cash withdrawl in a branch near an out of the way airport. She took a plane somewhere but FIL can't tell where and United put him on hold for 45 minutes before he gave up. DH recounts this to me while I'm playing video games with YS and I''m pretty much ignoring it because this is just more escalation of her bullshit. It wasn't until he said, "...let it slip that Mom redesigned her medication regimen." when I actually paid attention. Awesome, an improperly medicated psycho is running around without major financial constraints. Awesome. Yesterday morning, BIL3's daughter, Tammy (Magda's #1 scapegoat) calls her parents, upset because Magda showed up at her door dissheleved and wearing sweatpants, crying hysterically about needing to reunite her family. Magda lives in Southern California. Tammy lives in Virginia (and not close to a major airport). Magda is in Tammy's house, terrifying her great grandchildren that's she's never met before by carrying on. Honestly, I can't believe Tammy let her in, considering they had been on no contact for at least 5 years. Tammy agrees to let Magda stay there until FIL gets there. He'l book the next flight out. Magda flips out when she hears this plan and leaves. Tammy tells FIL she doesn't give enough of a fuck to chase after her. (SWOOOOOOOOOON). Magda does the same to BIL2's daughter, Bambi in New Jersey. Granddaughter comes home from work to Magda crying again hysterically about wanting to reunite the family. The building manager let her in the apartment!!!!! Bambi and Magda has been estranged for a long time too. Bambi was at least expecting something because Tammy texted all of her cousins warning them. She kept it cool, gave Magda a shit load of Xanax and a glass of wine. She was passed out long enough to be collected by FIL. So this isn't the first time Magda's gone off her meds, had a ragey meltdown at someone she didn't like in the first place, and then goes on spending spree. This is the third time she's done it, the first two times we were living in Florida so the family decided to just not tell DH. This sounds so fucking ridiculous. When I vented about this to my mom, she just threw up her hands. She feels sorry for my white people problems. Yes, this is total NC time. I told DH that FIL also needs to be cut off. He's enabled this behavior for far too long. I'm thinking also about changing hospitals to have the baby. I'm paranoid that DH's family isn't going to properly deal with Magda, just bring her back to southern California. I'm so mad at her mental health crisis. I'd feel less guilty if she was her regular asshole self.   Magda’s intervention – 5 Mar 2016 After Magda's epic freakout and impromtu visit to the east coast to harass and stalk her NC granddaughters, she has returned to southern California. All total she visited three of her five granddaughters, Tammy, Bambi, and Renee. All have been NC with her for at least five years. When FIL collected Magda from Bambi's, she escaped the hotel, drove from south New Jersey to upstate New York to Renee's house. Renee especially hates Magda because Madga stopped paying her college tuition when she wouldn't break up with her Jewish boyfriend, now husband. She converted, they got married, she finished college and moved upstate. Their wedding was the best family event with DH's family I'd ever gone to, because his parents weren't there. This is where I got hip to raisin kugel, google this stuff and get into it. Magda shows up at Renee's house, pounding on the door, screaming about family unity. Renee's mother in law calls the cops and Magda gets arrested. FIL finally catches up with her and they take the next flight back to LA from Buffalo. BIL1 puts together an intervention at his house. His marriage is on the rocks right now because this isn't Magda's first mental health meltdown that he's had to deal with. His MIL, Linda witnessed Magda's racist freakout at me at their superbowl party. Linda has known my family for a long time, she taught at the school we went to. Linda has been talking in her daughter's ear about how she should divorce BIL1. He is desperate to get his mom reigned in. DH refused to go to the intervention. His brothers begged him and he completely refused. He says Magda is dead to him and dead people can't have interventions. I'm proud of him for that. When they came back on Wednesday night, Bambi calls me to let me know that they are going to have an intervention. FIL and DH's brother's think the girls are coming for support. Renee and Tammy's brother who is in the navy on a boat somewhere will be skyping in. They had the meeting this morning. Bambi is a mastermind, she had FIL, DH's brothers, the GC grandson and his wife say supportive, loving things about how they want her to get help for her mental issues and rx addiction. When it was the girls turn to talk, each of them gave Magda C&D letters and said a variation of "I'll come to your funeral to make sure you're dead" FIL was pissed because he paid for airfare, rental cars, and hotels for everyone. An argument ensued about how ungreatful everyone is. FIL scolded his sons for raising such bitches for daughters. Magda had another tantrum screaming about how nobody loves her and she's made so many sacrifices for her family. She should just kill herself blah blah blah. Ultimately, Magda agreed to do the 90-day rehab program. The website makes it look way more like a spa than rehab. I'm sure she will love the daily individual & group therapy sessions, reiki massages, and horseback riding on the beach. On the plus side, my babyshower is tomorrow and DH's nieces are in town so they get to come. Our lawyer friend sent a sternly worded letter with Magda's photo to the hospital I'm having the baby at. My OB got me in touch with the hospital's Risk Management department. I'm registered privately with a flag on my chart to only admit DH and my older brother's wife who is like my second mom. My step-kids are staying with my parents while I'm in the hospital. I feel a lot better now that I now Magda is being fawned over in rehab.   Magda announced the birth of my son on FB – 19 Mar 2016 thankfully, I'm on baby high still so i am not as upset as I could be. I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy yesterday, 3/17/16 just after midnight. I had an easy, short labor with a perfectly healthy baby. I was in the hospital for about 12 hours. This was a nice easy end to an emotionally difficult pregnancy. I'm glad after everything my nutso MIL put me through, at least birthing the goddamn baby was a breeze. My BIL's MIL, Linda just called me asking why Magda announced the birth of my baby on FaceBook with photos and sent me screen shots. My youngest big kid texted those pictures to her along with the vitals. Magda wrote a pitiful paragraph about how she sad that her grandsons birth is tainted by the animosity from me. It's like it never ends. I was foolish to think she would actually stay in rehab through the birth of her grandbaaaaaaaby. I am so thankful for my SIL (my oldest bro's wife and my second mom) being here so at least I know Magda won't get into my house. But fuck man, I don't know what to do with the boy. I can't even look at him right now because I feel so violated. I hate Magda because she is the master manipulator and knows exactly how to get under the kid's skin. On the other hand, he was told directly by me and his father that he is not to communicate with her. I wish beating him with a sock full of pennies would make me feel better and remedy the situation.   Malicious Magda really lives up to her name – 21 Apr 2016 My MIL is a psycho asshole and bitchbot can fill you in. it's been quiet after the FaceBook fiasco. My SIL, Sylvia is taking care of me, cooking, cleaning, handling the big kids. I've been lounging around the house with the baby, getting breastfeeding down. 2 weeks after baby was born, DH had to go to Asia for a work thing. This has been planned for the last 2 years, it was expected and unavoidable. April 20 is a hard day for me. I was in a pretty bad car accident while pregnant with my boyfriend, Victor. He died and I lost the baby. Holding baby Mo, the exact copy of DH is a little bittersweet. Victor was my first everything and we were about to get married. It was absolutely devastating and I still managed to graduate college with a double major and good grades. In our living room, DH and I have a little shrine for our departed loved ones. The first time Magda saw the shrine, she got really weird for the rest of her trip to visit us. She always wanted to come visit us in April under the guise of Easter and I let her. Without fail she would say something snarky when I would be glum this time of year. How could I be sad when I had this beautiful family, why aren't I happy with the big kids? During the month of April, I light a candle and say a prayer for Victor and my lost daughter. One year, I caught Magda blowing it out. I don't know why I didn't call her out, I just relit the candle. Last year, she told me it's inappropriate to light candles for him because we weren't married and it was a long time ago. But she has no problem lighting candles for DH's departed wife. Today, Magda sends me a large, angel themed flower arrangement. I was going to post a picture but my oldest step-son is a redditor and asked me not to. It's very large, like something you would see in a funeral. I was by myself, Sylvia took the big kids to school and was running errands. The attention to detail is stunning. Magda knows exactly where to go to make it hurt. I didn't let the delivery guy bring it inside. After he left, I put Mo in the swing, then ugly cried next to the beautiful flowers. I grieve for the family I wish DH could have. Since Magda's meltdown during the Superbowl, there is a sadness in his eyes when we're with my side of the family. He grew up cared for by a yearly changing nanny and housekeeper. It hurts him to know that he was only a lifestyle accessory. I love DH dearly but sometimes I miss Victor so much it hurts. I still hurt for my lost daughter. I was with him for 6 years. Our families are close friends. That life was stolen from me by the drunk asshole who crashed into us and didn't leave with a scratch. When I was done crying at the flowers, a wave of dark, cold, aching sadness hit me. This was different from the bitter tears of exhausted frustration. Seeing those flowers made me remember a thousand memories of Victor all at once. Then I think about crying so hard in my hospital bed, stitches. I cuddle my tiny baby, thankful he's healthy and alive. I hate her so much. I've always been kind, polite, and compriising with her, she used it against me. I put up with Magda's bullshit for so long and when I put my foot down, she tries to alienate my youngest big kid from me and taunts me about my departed partner and lost daughter. I try not to really think about it, but I imagine myself dancing in a red dress on her grave. I could really use a blunt the size of my infant son's arm but I'm breastfeeding. The idea of pump and dump makes me really sad I bring myself to do it. I fucking hate 4/20 so much, omfg. I wish the stoner holiday wasn't tainted by this.   FIL died and Magda is loving the attention – 13 May 2016 So yeah, FIL died on Monday (5/9/16). He had a heart attack in the shower, likely dead before he hit the floor. My SIL, Linda called me to inform me of the news. The call was mostly a warning of the memorial service and funeral plans Magda had. Magda is holding court in her house, enjoying being the grieving widow while her DILS flutter around the house entertaining guests. FIL was a very successful businessman in his industry. Many people in his industry will be there, networking their asses off. Getting invited to this memorial service is a major professional coup. Magda is very aware of this and LOVING IT. I checked my Magda folder and sure enough was the summons to the memorial service and funeral with instructions on appropriate dress. It's fucking laughable and I'm leaning towards not going at all, DH is in Asia for another 6 weeks. The boys (including the baby) are to wear black suits, white shirts, black ties. The older boys are to tie their ties in a half Windsor knot, FILs favorite. It is acceptable to the baby have a clip on tie. daughter and I are to wear black dresses. The necklines should be high, shoulders, and elbows covered. The hem of our dresses should be no shorter than 1" above our knees. No bare legs and no flat shoes. Our hair and makeup will need to be professionally done, if we go to her regular salon they'll bill her for the services. DH, needs to come back from Asia for the funeral. He won't answer her calls so it's up to me to convince him. He needs to be here for this difficult time for the family. If he absolutely cannot leave, skyping will be marginally acceptable. There will be professional photographers documenting the memorial service, funeral mass, and burial. It is vitally important we are photo-ready. Some of these photos will be published in the major trade publication of FIL's industry. Yall, I wish I had more eyes to roll. From what my SIL told me, Magda's melt down at me really did FIL in. After the intervention, he really started going down hill. DH and I haven't talked about his father dying. I figure when he's ready to talk to me about it, he'll talk. Right now, he's on a career-defining business trip. The last thing I want to talk to him about when we have Skype dates is his father's death. When I told the big kids that FIL died, my middle kid rolled her eyes and said, "Why couldn't the lord take her too?" They have decided that they won't go. Wise women of JNM, what should I do, tell me about your experiences. I love you all so much. Update: I had a long conversation with DHlst night, I made him talk about the logistics of his father's death. He is not coming home from Asia. “I'm missing my son's first few months of life for this project, I can easily miss FIL's funeral” If he comes back early, he'll have to go back. He also forwarded me several emails Magda sent to him, badmouthing me. DH's aunt, “Carol”, FIL's younger sister wants me to sit at the mass and burial with her. Her husband passed away a few years ago and her kids weren't able to fly from Florida for the funeral. We're very close and I'm honored that she wants me there. Magda and Carol had a major falling out in the 90's. Carol is the bigger bitch so Magda steers clear. Carol assures me that at no point will Magda come anywhere near me. FIL's brother's children and grandchildren are attending, they will make sure we are surrounded. I'm not attending the public memorial service. I have a couple of dark color pant suits I can get into with some SPANX and a prayer. I'm not at all capitulating to Magda's dress code. My attire at these two events will lean heavily towards “soft butch”. My youngest big kid is taking this better than I expected. He's still without computer and phone privileges after sending Magda photos of the baby. He's working in my uncle's recording studio after school to keep him busy, it's really improved his musical abilities. The reading of FIL's will is today at 1200. I'm on high alert for Magda to come over afterwards crying about her family and wanting to see the baby. Luis is working on my yard this afternoon, Magda could get hosed... again.   Part 2 posted here Reminder - I am not the original poster. submitted by /u/hotfudgeunicorn to r/BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]

I manage a shipping retail store in a strip mall in a wealthy city in northern CA. We share two gated and locked dumpsters with a local goodwill style thrift shop. I use the dumpsters a lot because of the amount of cardboard and discarded paper mail the we get in everyday, but the bulk of the trash in those dumpsters are tossed by that thrift shop. People think they are helping the community when all day and all night they drop off truck loads of donated stuff at the back door of their shop, but the thrift shop is small and could never accommodate the massive volume of goods donated. The majority of this stuff ends up in those dumpsters after one very old man picks through it all trying to find anything of value which then ends up in the store to be sold. This guy has no fucking clue what he is doing, and he seems to only look out for antiques and clothes from way back in his day, never picking anything modern of value, and for this I am enormously grateful. Like I said, the dumpsters are always diligently locked and guarded in order to repel any passing opportunists looking to hopefully liberate any overlooked discarded treasures. Why this thrift store so truly despises the idea of their overflow donations actually being utilyzed by someone in need, I don't have any clue as it was all donated free to them in the first place and the landfill is where it goes next. I am the only other soul with a key to the number of huge padlocks, the only other person allowed total legitimate access to the treasure bins that without fail refill up to the brim every single day with new and exciting loot. The rich old people who populate this city will donate brand new items of all kinds that they bought but don't use, it's incredible. The thrift shop doesn't like that I take what I want but they can't do shit to stop me as I pay half the cost of the dumpsters trash collection fees, and I love to wave while smiling wide at them as they stare me down and scowl, I even have a dumpster diving wheelbarrow I bring with me out there every evening. The loot is amazing! I've found a full box set of first edition LOTR books with original covers and original fold out parchment maps released many decades ago, it looks to be worth alot of money. I found a complete 4 person 5 day emergency backpack filled with every survival item you could ever need along with all the vacuum sealed ration bars and water packs a family would need, these run for hundreds of dollars each and everything is individually wrapped in plastic. I found a brand new 300.00 brand name premium hiking backpack with an aluminum frame. They throw away so many purses that look brand new, I know nothing about them but I grab the nice ones and let my female employees take whatever they want, we have found purses that cost as much as a used car, I just don't understand it but my employees absolutely love it when I bring back a load of purses specifically. The thrift store refuses to sell computers specifically, but also a large amount of electronics, I build computers of all types for people as a side hustle and I pull nearly new laptops and desktop computers out of that dumpster nearly everyday, I save so much money on standardized pc components because of this. Cameras, phones, leather jackets, new cruiser bicycles and one unicycle, wooden furniture, mountains of books end up in there, a brand new ipad in wrapped box, I've found lots and lots of weed, I fount about 2000.00 dollars with a bag of cocaine in a bunched up plastic bag, power tools, kids toys, and even medical grade equipment like new walkers, crutches, braces and one prosthetic arm. I love those dumpsters, I REALLY love that the thrift store that so callously dumps the mountains upon mountains of caring people's good natured donations right in the garbage just absolutely hates that they can't stop me. I wish people would stop giving their donations to this place, I really do. Although I really do cherish everyday, my own personal thrift shop where for me and me alone, everything is free! submitted by /u/CharleyDexterWard to r/DumpsterDiving [link] [comments]

There’s little else in this great big world that can make a little girl in the ‘90s more excited than goddamn stickers. Glittery Lisa Frank nonsense by the roll, bought in needlessly pricey gift sets that peppered the caps of the pink aisles, princesses and My Little Ponies; hell, I used to get excited about the stickers that came on the fruit my mom brought home, or the foil stars my kindergarten teacher stuck to my spelling tests. I was a goddamn ferocious sticker collecting machine, and nothing made me or my friends more needlessly excited than badly printed cartoon characters on shitty adhesive paper. Nothing. In fact, the pecking order of my childhood group of friends was usually decided by who had the largest, most unique, most vibrant collection on the whole block, in the same way that some of the boys used their trading cards. She who had the newest set of rainbow dalmatians and sparkling pink horses was essentially the alpha female, and the more glitter and holographic film we had to show off, the better. We’d pile together in our living rooms with shoe boxes of treasures and try in vain to compete with the reigning champion in the neighborhood: my cousin, Rebecca. Rebecca was different than the rest of us. She wasn’t a resident of that impoverished corner of town, but she was a frequent visitor. My aunt and uncle had barreled their way out of the slums through a combination of hard work and luck (which they’d never admit to), so Rebecca had a lot more at her disposal than a bunch of first and second graders who scrounged together their allowance to buy a couple of sheets of stickers from the drug store. No, she was the cool, older kid with literal boxes of untouched sheets and rolls of Disney characters and multicolored unicorns and cute puppies and fuzzy kittens. And, while she wasn’t in any way mean or unkind to us, she was an absolute scrooge with her collection. I suppose I would be too if the situation were reversed. We could marvel at her recent acquisitions, but we couldn’t actually touch. Trading with her was like talking to a brick wall, because she was more there to gloat than to take part in our mad scramble. Occasionally, if the wind blew in exactly the right way and the sun was aligned properly with the planets, she’d bestow upon us a gift from her hoard, though I could never peg whether it was goodwill or showing off. It doesn’t matter. She gave me a rainbow shark for my birthday and I still have it stuck in my drawer of sentimental junk. Additionally, she was very particular about her stickers. I can’t think of time when, at the end of our sessions, she didn’t comb the entire room just to make sure that everything was in its place. I’m not sure how an eight-year-old girl manages to memorize exactly how many sheets of identical Casey and Caymus stickers she has, but it never failed that she would always notice if something was missing. Sometimes, things got mixed up and we’d have to sort through our own piles to find the errant stickers, and sometimes we’d spend half an hour looking under furniture until we found where it fluttered to. She was anal about it. Which is why it shocked me when she left for the day and I discovered she’d forgotten one. It was a regular day of our swap meeting, sitting beneath the picture window of my mom’s living room, the only anomaly being that Rebecca seemed more than a little under the weather. The other girls who could make it wrapped up early because their moms needed them home from lunch, but Rebecca lingered until well into the evening until her parents finally picked her up. She counted out her sheets, we spent way too long looking for a missing dragon she’d got from a fifty cent machine, and once she was satisfied with her inventory, she packed up everything and left. Only, as soon as she was out the door, I noticed something sitting where she had just been. It was on white wax paper and was the size of a Skittle, but it was a fluorescent yellow that caught my eye immediately. I dove on it out of curiosity and a weird sense of first-grade desperation. I didn’t care that, technically, it was stealing. I just cared that Rebecca had somehow missed one of her treasured stickers--probably because she was too sick to notice or care--and I could add it to my own collection. It wasn’t anything impressive: a yellow circle with the tiny, awkward silhouette of a unicorn on it. In any other situation, I’d think it was the dullest thing I could ever cram into my pile, but it was Rebecca’s. That made it special. As I shuffled it into my shoe box of wonders, I justified it to myself by repeating the mantra that, if it meant that much to her, she would have noticed it was gone regardless of how ill she felt. Maybe it wasn’t even her who dropped it. Maybe it was Cathy or Ashley or a girl from a previous get-together, and I know all of my friends wouldn’t mind if I kept something as insignificant as a teeny, tiny, pinkie-nail sized sticker with a poorly drawn unicorn on it. If they did bring it up, I’d just give them one of my gold stars or weird, bug-eyed smileys from the doctor’s office. In my mind, it’d balance itself out. Predictably, after half an hour of gloating to my stuffed animals, I did what any kid would: I completely forgot about it. That unicorn sticker was lost in the fog of dressing up a Beanie Baby in doll clothes so he could have a lovely night out at Pride Rock with his girlfriend, bootleg Hello Kitty. By the time my mom forced me to take a bath and ordered me into bed, the unicorn sticker was barely a blip on the radar, at least until Rebecca finally called me out on my theft. Or, normally that’s how it would go, except for the fact that I barely could sleep that night. I was plagued with nightmare after nightmare, waking up to stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, feeling like something was glaring at me. I’d always doze off again, but the dreams would go on like a sick, twisted clip show: finding Rebecca eating my neighborhood friends alive in the kitchen, watching my dog get slowly crushed by a car, drowning in the river beside my house. And it just went on and on. And on. And on. For days. To say my mother was concerned by my night terrors was an understatement, but less of one than to say I was scared when I realized she would react to smells and glimpses of something dark that seemed to ooze around in our peripheral vision. You see, as the days marched on, the nightmares seemed to persist in small, strange ways once I woke up. I’d catch a whiff of vinegar and sulfur out of nowhere and watch, horrified, as my mother’s nostrils would flare and her brows would furrow in confusion. I’d see strange shadows slink around the wall, always bolting out of sight if I looked to them and, eventually, I’d watch my mom whip her head around to seek out the culprit, too. It took almost a week for me to put two and two together, my house gradually becoming more and more unwelcoming and my sleep becoming less and less restful. I probably would have never figured it out if I hadn’t knocked over my box of stickers while staggering tiredly across my room. Amidst tears of frustration and kid-friendly curses that wouldn’t get me grounded, I started putting everything back into place and stumbled across that goddamned unicorn. It was just as boring as I remembered it, lemon yellow with a awkward silhouette like some kind of girly Batman logo. I stared at it, it stared back, and then I got a whiff of something sour that was so strong that my eyes watered. I blinked and looked down, only to see a blank yellow circle staring back from my palm. I screamed. I was too young to really register how crazy it sounded and too trusting in the idea that my mom would believe me, and she opted to chalk it up to sleep deprivation. She practically manhandled me to force a Benadryl down my throat, telling me it was for my own good, that I needed a nap, that she’d find a way to get me to the doctor within the next couple of days. I fought valiantly, but was out like a light within a few minutes. And I awoke in a nightmare, huddled in my bed, the floor stretching for miles and miles and the walls climbing up to the stratosphere. The only source of light was an ethereal ball of what looked like fire but, somehow, less substantial. It ebbed and flowed and glowed and the shadows seemed to dance with its erratic undulations, twisting and squirming like snakes and monsters. Some of them seemed to have faces, but they burned away in the light. Fire or no, it was cold. I huddled beneath my blanket, breath creating clouds in the air as I stared, transfixed, at this strange ball of energy. Something dark began to grow inside of it, a shadow that wouldn’t melt, and as it expanded, the orange light grew brighter and more golden, almost radiant. I squeaked and tried to run as I saw four spindly legs, a long and crooked neck, and a jagged horn, but my body was paralyzed when it let out a horrifying scream. Have you ever heard a horse when it’s angry? It’s petrifying. Terrifying enough, actually, that it was the basis for a dinosaur roar in many films. Loud enough that it makes your ears pop and your head throb. I clapped my hands over my ears and felt blood pool in my palms as it grew louder and louder and louder and louder. I screamed back and it drowned me out, one voice becoming two becoming three. Though there was only one solitary creature standing in front of me, one twisted and deranged unicorn that jittered unnaturally and bent at weird angles, its voice came from everywhere. In its screams, I began to hear whispers, then words. Threats. Threats spoken in languages a six-year-old shouldn’t know, yet somehow I understood. Threats of what would become of me and my family, and lists of everything it knew I cared about. It detailed what it would do to everyone from my favorite toy to my family dog to my best friend to my long-dead grandmother who it shrieked, triumphantly, it could reach even though I would never see her again. I saw flashes of white walls and cups of medicine and a woman, with hair and eyes and skin like me, hanging listlessly from a pipe by her bedsheets with a toppled chair beneath her feet. “This is what happens,” it told me. “This is what will happen. This is what I am. I am your worst nightmare.” The screaming only stopped when I felt a horrible pain. I awoke on the floor in my room--my real room--with my mother at the bedroom door, pale-faced and hoarse. My face was sticky and warm, my left eye wouldn’t open. As I tried to push myself up, my mom screeched in a way that would have put the unicorn to shame. She got me to the doctor that day. The official story was that I’d fallen out of bed, and maybe I had. Cracked my head on the nightstand and nearly gouged my eye out, but caught my brow instead. They gave me a little clamp because it was too swollen for stitches and, as per usual, a sticker to help me feel better. I stared at it on the ride home, knowing what it was that I had to do. When the weekend rolled around and we had our little trading party, Rebecca came to gloat, as always. The neighborhood girls clamored around her most recent additions, like a whole new set of glow-in-the-dark aliens and a few sheets of Disney heroines. They ooh-ed and aah-ed and thankfully paid no attention to my bruised and battered face as I sat there, fist clenched around that fucking unicorn as I struggled to force a smile. I couldn’t help but notice how much more alive and refreshed and energized Rebecca was as she flittered around, grinning and happy. Not like she was when she made me scour the living room for that goddamn dragon sticker the day I found the unicorn. She had done it on purpose, hadn’t she? She’d left that thing in my house trying to get away from it and look what it had done. Anger was my fuel as I waited for her to turn her back, grabbed a box of her stickers, and chucked the unicorn in. I shook it for good measure, so the tiny thing would settle somewhere in the bottom where she would probably miss it. And she did. Somehow, despite every odd against me, she missed it. When she left for the evening, she only did a quick check for anything that could have fallen, packed her boxes under her arm, and left with a cheerful wave. I couldn’t even feel remorse as I watched her go; in my mind, it was justified. In my mind, I was playing tit-for-tat. If she was willing to throw her little cousin under the bus, then maybe little cousin had every right to dish it right back at her. I slept very soundly that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. A miracle, my mother called it, though I knew the truth. I still know the truth. And I think Rebecca does, too. I visit her sometimes, out at the ward. She’s not very responsive and more than a little prone to falling asleep mid-visit, but sometimes when she looks at me, there’s a glint of hate and fear and disgust that I can catch in her eye, and envy and spite hidden deep in her voice. It’s like she wants to tell me that I should be in her place, that it should have been me whose childhood was robbed from her. She wants to tell me, but she can’t. She won’t. She’ll never admit what she did, because she wants me to feel like she is the victim in all of this, that she never once tried to sacrifice me to whatever the fuck that unicorn really is. She doesn’t want to admit that I won. Or maybe, just maybe, she’s guilty. She knows what she did and I’m a constant reminder of it, the only family member who ever visits and the only one who stays to talk. Maybe she hates me because I remind her of what a monster she is, perhaps even worse than the unicorn ever could be. And maybe? Maybe that’s the worst nightmare of all. submitted by /u/Ilunibi to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

My husband and I just finished a multi-step cross country move, and as my "gestational mother's day" gift (I'm 20 weeks pregnant with our first - relevant), he helped unpack the rest of our boxes and hang all our artwork and get rid of the boxes/trash. We also ended up with a large moving box of stuff we don't need/want/use that isn't worth reselling in a yard sale group or Craigslist, so off to Goodwill it went. Since I'm new to the area and I do a lot of thrift store shopping, I decided to go in and check out the store. While I was there, I happened to run across a nearly new bassinet for $10, and I jumped on that like a fat kid on a cupcake. As I was standing in line waiting to check out, an older lady saw me standing there next to my prize and said "Oh, you're going to buy that! I was looking at that for my grandson, but decided that it's a little early for that. My daughter in law hasn't even told anyone yet." I'm obviously pregnant at this point, I really need to pee, but I was still about 5 people back in line, so I figured I could chat a minute to distract myself from my bladder and asked her, "Oh, how far along is she?" "She's only 8 weeks. My son says I don't want to jinx anything by getting her baby stuff." "That sounds fair. I'm 20 weeks now so I feel safe buying a few things here and there, but we still don't know what we're having yet. If your daughter in law is only 8 weeks, how does she already know it's a boy?" "Oh, she had a miscarriage a few months back and that one was a boy, so I'm sure this one will be too. Some of that boy has to be hanging around in there! But I can't jinx it by buying baby furniture yet!" Nope. But apparently it's cool to talk about your DIL's private medical history to complete strangers while simultaneously displaying a disturbing misunderstanding of how gender works. submitted by /u/sockmonkeyboxinglove to r/JUSTNOMIL [link] [comments]

I married my husband exactly one week after my nineteenth birthday. Marcus was, as my step-father Jedidiah Bell had repeatedly told me, a good match for me. He was a member of the same congregation that my Step-father was pastor of. His most defining qualities were that he was near my age and unmarried. Jedidiah made it very clear that, as the head of the household, he was perfectly capable of finding me a God fearing husband. My stepfather had married my widowed mother when I was fourteen. He came into our life like a showman; Jedidiah was larger than life in almost every way. Large stomach, large smile; and large beliefs about how wives and stepdaughters should treat the new man of the house. “Please Greta, just make sure you do as he says, he means everything to me,” my mother pleaded with me. The pain and desperation in her face was enough to convince me. Just to see her happy again was enough. At least it had been. I had not interacted much with Marcus before our fast engagement and hasty church wedding on a sweltering day in May. He was always in khakis or faded blue jeans, complete with a button down shirt every Sunday morning, sandwiched between his parents and siblings. I had known that he was a mechanic and despite what I had assume were frequent showers the smell of machine oil always lingered. He never smiled. His eyes had always seemed cold to me despite the warm shade of blue they contained. Shortly after we were married, he took a job as a mechanic at a shop that was an hour away from where we were currently living, which was in my old bedroom while we looked for a home. I was actually happy to be leaving my stepfather and mother behind. I loved my mother, but she had become a timid and quiet thing. Not like the mother I remembered from when my father was still alive. As Jedidiah would say with his wide toothed smile, a wife had to do what was best for her husband, which meant obeying without question. My own job was simple, I was a receptionist at a dentist office, but I loved it there. I had no other education besides my high school diploma and started my job right after school. My co-workers were so kind. I cried as I turned in my two weeks’ notice. They gave me a small farewell party complete with cake and wine and told me to keep in touch. The move was fast since I had very little to move to our new home. I could fit all of my clothes in a small and battered suitcase that was older than I was. The rest of my possessions fit into a cardboard box. I loaded up my car with my things and set out for what I hoped was a brighter future. I stopped only once to gather groceries, as I knew it would be up to me to make lunch and dinner that night. The home that we were renting was an old one. When I first lay eyes on it, my heart sank. I could already envision the old Formica counters and thread bare carpets. It looked like it was barely hanging together. Marcus was silent with me as we moved in our things, though he did make conversation with his brothers and relatives who had come to haul in the heavier furniture. I busied myself with unpacking the kitchen as quickly as I could so that I could start making lunch for everyone. I approached Marcus as he was carrying a box into the master bedroom. “What would you like to eat for lunch sweetheart?” That term of endearment sounded so false on my tongue I nearly choked. He was my husband, not my sweetheart. Marcus paused long enough to give me a harsh glare. I withered under that gaze and looked down. “Just make some fried chicken, you’re good at that. And mashed potatoes,” He said gruffly as he turned away to store the box in the bedroom. I hurried to make the requested fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I was thankful that I had stopped at the grocery store to gather supplies. Fried chicken would be easy to make and fulling for the men as they fixed up the house. The lunch was ready just as the last cardboard box found its’ way into the house. I served everyone at the table while Marcus led us in prayer. My step-father and my mother were not present. As my Step-father did not like to travel and my mother was rarely able to go anywhere without her husband. It was up to Marcus to say the blessings before we could begin to eat our meal. I had also misjudged how hungry everyone would be, the men devoured chicken as fast as I set it on the table. By the time I was able to sit down and join everyone there was only a small piece left. One of Marcus’s brothers saw that I had nothing for myself and insisted that I take the last bit of meat. I ate it happily, though I saw Marcus glaring at me out of the corner of my eye and I wondered with a jolt of fear what I had done wrong. After everyone had left I found out why Marcus had glared at me. While I was cleaning up the table he grabbed my forearm roughly and squeezed it hard, digging in his nail which were crusted with dirt. I whimpered slightly but stopped myself from jerking away as I knew it would only make it worse. He looked into my eyes and spoke in a low and angry voice. “Why didn’t you make sure that you had enough food for everyone? You humiliated me. My brother shouldn’t have to give up food so that you can stuff yourself. You did nothing all day while we all worked.” I stuttered, biting back a retort, realizing it would not do any good. “I’m so sorry Marcus, this Sunday I’ll make everyone lunch. I can make enough for everyone to make up for today.” I grimaced as his grip on my arm increased, and I was sure that his dirty nails would were breaking the skin. With one last hard squeeze he let me go and set back in his chair. “I think that would make up for it. But make sure you ask proper forgiveness from my brother and everyone else that helped with today.” I nodded numbly, not yet daring to move away from him. He gave me one last withering glare and set off to the garage. Most likely to arrange his tools in the small space. After he was out of sight I gingerly rubbed my forearm A nasty bruise was already starting to form. There were little half-moon marks where his nails had dug into my arm. I wasn’t sure how I would hide my bruises as I had a job interview tomorrow. It was for another receptionist job. It would not be much but it would grant me at least some autonomy away from my husband. I wrapped my arm in a dish towel that I had dipped in cold water. After that I took extra care to wash the dishes and make sure that the kitchen was as clean as possible. I winced when I heard Marcus come in from the garage a few hours later. I was still straightening up the bedroom and putting clothes away when he came to bed. He didn’t say anything to me, or even look at me. He turned on our bedroom TV and watched the local television until he fell asleep. It was only after he had fallen asleep that I felt safe enough to lay down next to him and fall asleep. I stayed there, as quiet as possible while he snored beside me and waited for sleep to take me. The interview the next morning went incredibly well. I had opted to wear a long sleeve silk blouse to cover my bruised arm. I was hired on the spot as they had been desperate for a new receptionist with previous experience. Plus I had nothing but glowing reviews from my previous job. I was excited. This job gave me time away from home and my own money, plus benefits. I went home after the interview feeling optimistic. I would have called and told Marcus and my mother about the new job but I didn’t have a cell phone. My husband would hear about the job once he got home that night. For dinner I made meatloaf and arranged the table as nicely as possible. There was still a knot of fear in my stomach as I lay out the food for our meal. If something was not to Marcus’s liking I didn’t want to risk getting another bruise. He arrived just as I set the meatloaf on the table, I looked up at him as he entered and tried to force a smile. He didn’t look at me but headed straight to the kitchen to wash his hands of their persistent grease. After the blessing he ate in silence, wolfing down his food and going in for seconds. I took the opportunity to try and start a conversation. “How was your job today?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light and pleasant. I was rewarded with a glare. “I don’t want to talk while I’m eating,” he said as he swallowed another bite. I nodded and looked down, not wanting to do anything to provoke him After dinner he went into the garage and stayed there until bedtime, never even bothering to say another word to me. I preferred it that way. While we lay down for bed I finally told him that I had gotten the job. He rolled over and gave me what probably amounted to a pleased look. “It’s good that you got the job. Make sure you deposit everything in the joint account. As the man of the house I will make sure to give you an allowance to cover gas.” And with that he rolled over and went straight to sleep. I said nothing but I let a few silent tears roll down my cheek in the dark. Any autonomy I had hoped to have would be gone now. I should just run away, I told myself in a brief spark of defiance. I could pack everything in my truck and just drive as far as I could. But how far would I get with no money? My truck needed gas and I would need food. There were no friends I could turn to, and my own mother was out of the question. I was alone. The next say was a Saturday and Marcus was off work. Marcus pinched me awake at dawn to go make breakfast. I rushed to make it, anything to get away from those bruising pinches. Since it was a Saturday I knew he might work on his own truck today or mow the lawn. It would give me time to myself and decorate the inside of the house. While I was making a list of groceries to get while I was out later that day, I saw Marcus coming out of our room with a handful of my clothes. “Marcus, what are you doing with my clothes?” He stopped and looked at me, fixing me with those cold eyes. “These shirts aren’t decent, you should only be wearing long sleeved shirts or dresses.” He held up the few t-shirts that I actually owned. Some of them were plain cotton T’s, the others were nice ones that I wore to work when it was hot. “I’m going to turn these into rags. I could use some for my garage.” He glared at me again almost daring me to fight him. I shrunk back from his gaze. “But, if you take those shirts I won’t have much to wear for work. I’ll have to go buy some long sleeved tops somewhere.” I said pleadingly. I hated myself in that moment. I should have slapped him then, taken my things and run away. Money and marriage be damned. Sleeping on the street would be better than this. But I didn’t move, I stayed glued to the spot staring at the floor because I was too afraid to make eye contact with the man I married. Marcus sighed and threw my clothes to the ground, pulled out his wallet and handed me a creased 20 dollar bill. I took it with trembling fingers. “There is probably a Goodwill somewhere in this town. You can get yourself some clothes there, and give me back the change.” I nodded and stuffed the bill into my purse while he took my clothes into the garage. I left as soon as the door closed behind him, grabbing the grocery list as I went. I did not want to be around him while he destroyed my things. Once I was on the road I started crying. I wiped my face angrily, tears weren’t going to be doing me any good. Instead I set out trying to find a Goodwill or some other kind of thrift shop. It turned out my new town had none of these things and I was starting to give up hope of finding any cheap clothing. I would have to settle for the local Target and hope for a sale. As I was thinking this I saw on side of the road a small yellow sign proudly proclaiming “Yard Sale! On 505 Turner Street!” someone had even tied a pink balloon to it to attract attention. I smiled, I had forgotten about yard sales. It was a warm Saturday and there would probably be a ton of them. I might be able to find some clothes. I turned into the side street and it didn’t take me long to find the yard sale. It looked like a large one. There were at eight cars lined up on the side of the street, and at least a dozen people were examining tables filled with second hand goods. It had to have been one of the bigger yard sales I had seen, it looked like they were clearing out the entire house. I spotted what I had been hoping to find, clothes were carefully arranged on a pole suspended between two trees. I parked my truck and walked over, happy to see that the clothes were women’s clothing. I browsed through the shirts and pants. I could tell they had belonged to an older woman, but they were all in great shape and some things still had tags on them. I settled on five new tops. They were all long sleeved and looked conservative enough for both work and my husband’s tastes. I tucked my finds under my arm and fished out the 20 dollars Marcus had given me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a box that had been placed under the clothes titled “Miscellaneous” with a tiny doll poking out of it. It was entirely nondescript and devoid of features, like a rag doll. It had tiny red stitches for eyes and a mouth. The fabric looked like some kind of faded linen. I squished its belly hoping to find out what was stuffed with, and whatever its’ insides were composed of rolled around. Maybe it was filled with dried beans? The tiny doll looked at me in what I thought was an expression of curiosity, which was not possible as it hardly any features at all. In some ways it reminded me of Oogie Boogie from my favorite child hood film. I held on to the tiny doll, it wouldn’t hurt to ask how much it was. The woman who was running the yard sale was sitting at a small table under the shade of a large tree. She was dressed in a sleeveless bright pink top with white shorts, all of which complemented her dark colored skin. When she looked up she smiled warmly and gestured to what I was holding. “Is that all for you honey?” She asked with a pleasant voice. I nodded and lay the shirts down on the table so she could count them. “It’s gonna be 10 bucks for all the shirts honey, do you need a bag to carry them?” “Yes, thank you,” I answered. I held up the tiny doll for her to see. “How much would you like for this little doll?” She reached for it and I let her take it, she gave it a small squeeze and let out a tiny laugh. “I remember this little thing! My mom bought it when we took a trip down to New Orleans, about, oh…20 years ago? She always said she wanted an authentic voodoo doll” I looked at the doll in surprise. “So this little doll, it’s really a voodoo doll?” I had never seen one in real life before. If Marcus found out that I had even touched it he would be upset. She set it down with the clothes and gave it a thoughtful look. “Oh yes, my mom was adamant that she get a real one. She didn’t want any fake tourist souvenir. That was the last trip we all took together as a family. It wasn’t long afterwards that my father passed away from a heart attack.” She sighed and made a sweeping motion with her hand to encompass the yard sale. “All of this is because my mom died last month. It’s up to me to make sure everything gets sold off.” “I’m so sorry to hear that…,” I trailed off suddenly, not sure what else to say. Anything that anyone could say about the death of a loved one seemed hollow. She shook her head. “It’s alright sweetie, death is just a natural part of living after all.” She poked the doll one more time with finality, “I’ll sell it to you for a dollar.” She said with a smile. I thought for a moment. I would get in trouble if my husband found that doll. Of course he might not even know what it was if he did find it. Buying it would be a risk, and an act of defiance. “I think that sounds just fine.” I handed over the money and she handed me back my change and stuffed everything in the bag for me. I left the yard sale feeling accomplished. I had gotten a good deal. Even better than shopping at the thrift store. I would have bought more but I was expected to be back in time to make lunch. I dug around in the bag and set my little doll on the dashboard. It almost felt like having a friend along for the ride. Once I finished the rest of my errands I drove home, making sure to stuff the doll in my purse. I didn’t want Marcus to know that I had spent money on something so frivolous. While I was putting the groceries away Marcus came in from the garage, I noted with a stab of anger that he was wiping his greasy hands on one of my old shirts. “Give me the change and show me what you bought. If it’s not appropriate I’m turning it into rags like I did the others.” I pulled out the change from my billfold which he stuffed into his wallet while he waited for me to show him what I bought. Each shirt was laid out on the table for his inspection, I was certain that they would be alright but I was still nervous. “These are okay, you don’t need to be showing any kind of skin anyway. Where did you buy them?” He asked finally looking at me. “A yard sale, I figured that they would be cheaper.” I answered him daring to meet his eyes. “Good, this should be enough for you for now. I don’t want any wife of mine spending money on clothes that she doesn’t need. Make some lunch now, I’m hungry,” And with that he walked back out to the garage. Gathering up the shirts I placed them neatly in my closet. My wardrobe was looking very sparse. As for the doll I stuffed him under my pillow. I knew I was risking Marcus finding it, but for some reason I was comforted by its presence and I wanted it close. The next few weeks passed in a kind of blur. The only good thing was my new job. I was really enjoying it, and I was getting along really well with my coworkers. At home things were getting progressively worse. What had started out with pinches and grabs was evolving into punches. The first time he ever hit my face was when I had asked if I could have a cell phone. The force of the hit flung my head back and I hit the wall and I started to cry. While I was slumped against the wall he punched me in the back, driving the breath from my body. I fell to the floor and stayed there until Marcus went out into the garage. My face, though swollen, didn’t bruise so I didn’t have to make up any excuses for my co-workers. The weekly gas allowance that Marcus had promised me was five dollars a week. I had nothing from which to save, which made the idea of running away even harder. I was not allowed to buy my own lunch or go anywhere after work, even though several coworkers had invited me out. My only relief at home was my tiny doll. Once Marcus was done with his abuse I’d hug it to my chest and cry. It was the only thing in the house that was truly mine. I thought of my father, and how much I missed him. I also thought about how much I wished he’d lived and my mother died. He would never have forced me to marry Marcus. He would never have let Jedidiah into our lives. As the months wore on I thought I was starting to go crazy Perhaps the isolation and abuse were screwing with my brain. Every time I looked at the doll it looked a little more like Marcus every day. Its tiny stitch eyes and mouth, so devoid of expression now seemed to remind me of my husband’s glare and perpetual scowl. It was on a Saturday in September that I received the worst beating I had gotten so far. I had been very tired that morning, and while Marcus had gone to meet some friends from our old town I lay down to take a nap. I had been sleeping peacefully on the bed when suddenly I was thrown to the floor. I screamed as I opened my eyes and saw Marcus staring down at me. “Why are you sleeping? On a Saturday? Don’t you have eyes to see that the house is a mess? What kind of wife can’t even clean properly?” He lifted his booted foot and brought it down hard on my stomach. My breath left me in a painful oomph! I had no time to recover before be pulled his leg back and kicked me in the ribs, once, twice, then three times. I was screaming and begging for him to stop. All it got me was a slap to the face. He knelt down beside me and held me by my hair forcing me to look in his eyes. “If this house isn’t clean, and lunch on the table by the time I get back from the hardware store I’ll do even worse to you. Do you understand?” “Yes, Marcus, I understand.” I stammered, holding his gaze until he let my hair go and my head hit the carpet with a thunk. I stayed on the ground till I heard the front door slam behind him. I felt my stomach and my ribs. Was anything broken or bruised? I couldn’t tell. It hurt so bad, I couldn’t sit up, but I made myself crawl to the bathroom. When I was able to stand I swallowed some aspirin and stared at myself in the mirror. My right eye cheek was starting to swell and bruise, there would be no way to hide these marks from my co-workers on Monday. My stomach burned as I went back into the bedroom, I took out my doll and sobbed into its fabric. Now more than ever it reminded me of Marcus, his evil glare and twisted mouth were there, plainly on the dolls face. I felt a surge of anger and hatred for him. I had never in my life wanted anyone or anything to die as much as I wanted Marcus to die. From under the bed I took my sewing box and grabbed the largest needle I could find. With one last look at the doll I stabbed the needle right through its left eye piercing it completely. The doll fell to the ground and I left it there. I couldn’t find the energy to pick it back up. My mind was made up, I could call my old office and see if anyone could let me stay with them for a while. They had always been kind to me, surely one of them would help me. I mentally chastised myself for not thinking of it earlier. Instead of cleaning like Marcus had wanted, I started packing my suitcase. I raided Marcus’s bedside table for loose change and came up with a few crumbled bills and change that would give me enough gas to drive away. I made a place for my doll on top of my clothes. I pulled out the sewing needle feeling guilty for stabbing it in the eye. Oddly enough it looked like its’ old self again. All traces of Marcus’s scowl were gone. There was a knock at the door and my heart jumped into my throat. It was Marcus, back to make good on his promise. But it couldn’t be Marcus, if it was him he would have just opened the door and walked in. To be safe though I hid my suitcase in the closet and ran to answer the door. It was not Marcus, but two police officers staring at me through the screen door. My heart was pounding, maybe a neighbor had heard my screams and called the cops? Opening the door I forced a smile. “Hello officers, can I help you?” The male police officer took off his hat and gave me a sorrowful look. His partner, a woman, took one look at my bruised and swollen face and gave me a very knowing look. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to tell you this. But your husband has been in an accident.” The next few days were all a continual blur as I made arrangements for my husbands’ funeral. Marcus had died while driving his truck. The doctors told me after his autopsy that he had suffered from a massive brain aneurysm that had killed him instantly. His car had rolled off into a ditch, the force of the impact had tossed his body through the windshield. The ambulance had arrived in minutes but there was nothing anyone could have done. His parents and siblings were beyond any consolation, and my heart went out to them. Marcus might have been their kin, but they shared none of his temperament. They were nothing but kind to me and I couldn’t help but feel guilty for causing them any pain. At the funeral I wore a new black dress with short sleeves. Not caring whether anyone saw the bruises on my arm that had been Marcus’s final parting gift. Jedidiah took issue with it though. He looked indifferently over my bruised arms. “These things can happen in a marriage. He was a good husband to you Greta, at least cover up so no one can talk ill of the dead.” With the funeral over I had freedom for the first time in my life. It was a liberating feeling. To have my own place, and my own money, and to do as I pleased. I took perhaps too much pleasure in donating Marcus’s possessions. But I felt completely purged when the last reminder of him was gone from the house. The only problem was my mother and Jedidiah. They were pressuring me to come back and live with them. Despite my assurances that I was doing okay, and I was getting by with just my paycheck. My step-father would call me on my new cell phone and lecture me about how an unmarried woman’s place was at home. And he would talk about how much my mother missed me. His voice was sickeningly condescending as he talked to me like a child. I listened politely while he told his peace over the phone. All the while holding my doll to me chest. And you know what? It was starting to look a lot like Jedidiah. submitted by /u/thelibrarianchick to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

I love old books. It doesn't matter if they're rare or valuable, I couldn't afford that anyway. No, anything from before the war gets me excited, and I often find myself browsing used book stores and thrift shops for crumbling novels, biographies, even old text books. My favorite finds have hand written doodles or notes in them, and those are usually old college course books. Last week I was wandering around a furniture store of all places, a local one that decorated with crappy "coffee shop art" and Goodwill accessories. On one particularly hideous night stand I spotted a pile of the "junk" I so treasured, their covers peeling and the binding loose. I picked up the one at the bottom of the stack, a particularly worn and faded copy of "psychology for educators", circa 1930. The inside of the cover was scribbled with random notes, and I was thrilled. I quickly looked around and pocketed it, rushing out of there so I could go home and thoroughly inspect my find. When I got home and sit down at my desk, bookshelves filled with my treasures lined the walls of my office. It smelled of old paper, my favorite scent. Eagerly I carefully opened " psychology for educators" and began to try and read the faded, frantic looking cursive that the former owner had left for me. Most of it was illegible, or just didn't make sense, seemingly random words strung together. One sentence though stood out to me. something wrong with Brian. A shiver ran down my spine, all at once I was creeped out and excited. My love for these old books stems mostly from their stories, not the ones contained in their pages, but the ones they have lived over the years. Who were their owners? What happened to them? I am extremely introverted, so the past intrigues me, and little clues like this were too enticing, quickly sparking a painful curiosity in me that demanded I find out more. I flipped through the book, noting passages about disturbed children and the affects of extreme neglect or abuse on a fragile psyche. One passage that was underlined in furious dark scratches described a case study in which a young man, his mother having insisted he was a female, was horribly abused and tortured by the woman. He retreated into himself, creating multiple personalities that were his friends and protectors through his ordeal. Eventually he snapped, and one of his personalities, 'George', murdered his mother by skinning her alive. The word "dissociative identity disorder" was circled in angry spirals. I was excited now, and extremely creeped out, but I decided I had to know who the owner of this book had been. I carefully flipped through each page, noting several doodles of distorted faces in the margins. In the back was a page filled with what looked like compounds and elements. I could make out mercury, arsenic, and copper, though I didn't see what that had to do with psychology, but in the very bottom corner in tiny writing was written "Elizabeth Mason class of '33". I googled her immediately, figuring she was born in 1912 or so, but I couldn't find much. Figuring she'd gotten married or something and changed her name, I decided to go back to the furniture store the next day and see if maybe there was another book belonging to Elizabeth amongst the thrift store collection the place had. The next afternoon I found myself dodging sales people again to search through every random stack of books in the place. Finally I found one titled "Classic English Literature" stuffed into a dusty book case in the clearance section. Sure enough "Elizabeth Mason, class of '33" was inscribed in terribly faded writing in the front cover. I flipped through the pages and discovered to my absolute joy that the book was in fact a journal disguised as a boring text book. I stuffed the book in my bag and practically ran over a sales lady on my way out. When I got home I ignored all other chores and sat down at my desk, opening to the first entry and using a magnifying glass to make out the extremely tiny and faded writing. Here is what it said: May 15, 1931 I have at last finished my second year at Westminster, and it has been a taxing and difficult one. Being away from Mother and Brian has been particularly hard, but I hear they are doing well without me. Mother was never the same when father passed in the great war, but having been a doctor, he luckily left enough money to sustain us even through the crash. I do hope that Brian is taking care of her, he's so young. His last letter seemed strange, as if it were written by someone else while he dictated, but I suppose he must have been tired. In any case, I will be heading home in a few days, and will be staying during the summer to help. I am so looking forward to being home and seeing all of my friends again, especially Thomas. Hattie says he has just graduated at the top of his class at law school, and I do hope he will not travel too far from Brockway. I know that it is an awfully small town, but after all, I am there. May 18, 1931 I arrived in Brockway late last night, the bus having taken a terrible long time to make it. A late spring storm had made a few roads near impassable, but our driver was skilled and I was lucky to make it without sliding into a ditch! Mother does not seem well, and Brian has particularly dark circles beneath his eyes. I worry that Mother's illness is affecting him too, as I heard him muttering to himself in the next room, all the way into the early morning hours. He didn't say much to me today, even as we cleaned up the kitchen together after supper, which is when we had always had our best conversations. He answered all of my questions with a few words or less, and slunk off to Mother's room when we were done, shutting the door behind him. I wonder if he is angry with me for leaving him alone with a sick woman, but I must get my teaching degree if I am to support them both! I am unsure how to approach him. Perhaps it is just teenage hormones getting the best of him, he is 14 after all. Oh well, I am going to bed, I am meeting with Thomas tomorrow. May 19, 1931 Thomas is just as handsome as I recall, and twice as charming. He met me at the cafe for lunch, and we talked about his schooling and what he plans to do with his future. He says he will be working at Mr. Hadley's law firm here in town for a while, to gain experience, and I could barely hide my giddiness at that declaration. He says he is quite impressed with my own ambitions, and thinks teaching is the perfect profession for a young lady. I couldn't help but blush, and I'm certain he noticed. When I returned home, Brian was waiting for me, and he scolded me for talking to men. He used terrible language, which I refuse to repeat, and stormed off to Mother's room again. I tried to follow him, but he cursed at me through the door and told me off. I simply don't know what to do about him, I fear I may have to call a doctor. Mother's condition isn't getting any better either. Perhaps I will tomorrow. June 1, 1931 Mother is barely clinging to life. The doctors do not know what illness is causing her to die, but it is quite gruesome. Her teeth and hair have fallen out, and she has wasted away to a dry husk. Brian does not leave her side, and he mutters bitterly to himself when I dare to approach him. He does not look much better, his face is stretched so thin and his eyes have a yellow hue. The doctors do not believe he is ill, but I am not so sure. Thomas says I must trust them, and warns that my brother is practically a man, and does not need me to baby him. Brian no doubt blames me for this, but what can I do? I can hear him right now, grumbling, throwing things as he cleans her room. I am so worried. June 5, 1931 Mother is dead. Brian will never forgive me I fear. The funeral is on Monday. June 14, 1931 It is quite a mystery to me, the way the last week has progressed. Once mother was in the ground, Brian seemed to change completely. The morning after the funeral he came out of Mother's room, freshly bathed and smiling. He made breakfast, insisting I sit and relax. He called me dear, and petted my hair as I drank the coffee he made. I didn't think Brian drank coffee, but he had 3 cups before he left to collect some groceries from Mr. James's store. I am not sure what to think of this transformation. Is he glad that mother is gone? Has he forgiven me for abandoning him with the burden of caring for her? I am afraid to ask him. I met Thomas for lunch and he says he is no doubt much happier to be relieved of the heavy weight my mother and her illness represented. I accepted it as truth, but after supper I heard him again muttering to himself in her room, his voice sounding angry. June 20, 1931 I walked in on Brian wearing Mother's dress. He behaved as if nothing was wrong, and greeted me cheerfully as I entered Mother's room. He kissed me on the cheek, and suggested we have Thomas over for supper. I simply stared at him, not saying a word, what could I say? He clucked at me and pushed me out of the room, saying he had to freshen up if we were to have dinner guests. I stood in the hall way in shock for a good while, but when Brian came out of the room he was wearing his normal clothes, and seemed a little more tired, but still happy. I pretended I'd forgotten the whole incident, and of course said nothing to Thomas. Brian insisted on cooking supper, despite my best efforts to take over the kitchen. Thomas was impressed by his roast, and he lied and said it was me to cooked it. I didn't deny it. Now I can hear him, next door, shouting "mother, stop it mother!" Over and over again. July 4, 1931 Thomas has asked for my hand in marriage. I accepted with a grin a mile wide, and when I came home and told Brian, he jumped for joy. I love Thomas so much. He proposed as the smattering of fireworks celebrating independence day exploded in the square. I am so happy, although, I can hear what sounds like Brian sobbing in the other room. I'm afraid I have to go to work now Reddit, I have been up all right reading and transcribing the journal, and I think I'm going a little crazy obsessing over it, I could swear I heard a man's voice mumbling in the next room early this morning. In any case, I'll continue this when I get home! submitted by /u/ProfessorScaryPants to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Hey everyone! I’m Kelly and I make a living buying and selling anything and everything. I’m going to teach you everything that I know. If you spend the next few hours reading this and asking questions, you will learn something very important. Knowledge is only a small fraction of this business though. Half of you will read this and continue your lives only wishing you could make a good in the resale business. Another 25% of you will probably read this and “try” reselling. I put “try” in quotes because you will probably half-ass it with a doubtful mind. You will scoff and think to yourself “If it’s so easy and you can make so much money, why isn’t everyone doing it?” or “It just sounds too good to be true.” I’ll let you in on a little hint. Everyone does do this. That’s what makes this job so challenging! Those of you who put in the proper effort will succeed. Is this because the resale business is hard? You’re damn right it’s hard! If you actually take in what I teach you, however, in 6 months’ time, you will be making around $2000-10,000/month working between 5 and 20 hours per week, at your own schedule, from your own home. Before I get in to the hot and steamy facts, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m 22 years old (in a few weeks at least) and I currently live in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’ve had the “reseller’s sickness” since I was young. My mom told me a story once about how when I was in the first grade, I tried to sell Garfield comics that I printed off the internet to my classmates for a nickel. I didn’t have a real business though, until I was about 15 years old. I would go and find furniture and appliances that people left on the curb to throw out, and I would resell them in the classified section of the newspaper, and eventually, on craigslist. I made a killing (at least for a 15 year old) doing this! You can actually still make money doing that, but I’ll talk more about that later on. In 2011 I up and left my small town home for the big city, Charlotte, North Carolina, half a world away. Okay, just 1000 miles, but that’s still a long ways away! I quickly got a job selling cars for the local Kia dealership (they told me I’d be a used car salesman someday lol) and within 2 months I was promoted to corporate. I was the Executive marketing director for one of the oldest dealership franchises in the Carolinas. I made $50,000 per year plus benefits (including all the fuel I ever needed in my car for free). I could be sitting pretty there for the rest of my life if I wanted to, but I dreamt bigger things. October 15th, 2012 was a big day for me. It was my last day in the car business. I left to start reselling on eBay full time. Since then I’ve expanded to amazon and craigslist along with eBay and nearly a year in, I’m making about the same as I did in the car business. The difference is I work at my own schedule. I can travel, spend time with friends/family, and do whatever I want because I work half the time that I did before. Now for those of you doubters, if I can leave a cushy corporate job to do this full time and never look back, you shouldn’t be afraid to start reselling too! What are the benefits of reselling? For starters, you can make a good living. That’s pretty obvious though. The freedom to work your own schedule and limited hours are the biggest benefit in my opinion. Living out of state, so far from my friends and family, it’s nice to take a few days off to go visit them. I also love travelling so I can go anywhere at the drop of a dime without worry of getting fired or using up PTO. You can also get health insurance through eBay. Lastly, because you are always finding deals and know how to buy low, you can usually get things you need for next to nothing! There are two sides to every story. What are the cons of reselling? There aren’t a lot of cons, but with everything, there are always a few. For starters, you really need to motivate yourself. With no boss looking over you, there’s nothing stopping you from skipping work for a day…..or 20. I found that out the hard way when I only made $500 last November. Too much travelling and not enough working! Another downside goes along with your health insurance. It can take a few months to get health coverage through eBay, so you’ll be insurance free until then. Lastly, you can’t prove your income until you file taxes. Don’t plan on getting any loans or leases or renting a new home until you get that tax statement next year! If it’s so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it? That’s a valid question that I have to answer a lot. The truth is, everyone does it, and it really pisses me off! Every time you find a new niche item or unknown supplier, you need to milk it as much as you can, because soon enough, so many people will do it that it will either (1) flood the market and drop prices, or (2) people will buy it up so much that the product cost will skyrocket. DVDs are a prime example. I used to buy them in HUGE collections from people at $1 each and sell them for $3 each. Soon later I could only sell the rare ones and the common ones would go straight to the pawn shop for my $1 back. Within months pawn shops would only pay 50 cents per DVD. Then $0.25. No they don’t buy them at all. DVDs are almost worthless! I’ve seen it happen time and time again. In fact, every month or so I have a new product that I buy and sell primarily. This can really be a pain working in an ever changing industry! So where can I find merchandise? There are all kinds of places to find merchandise! Soon, you’ll find yourself pricing every item you see in your head! I find most of my merchandise in the following places: Craigslist yard sales Flea markets Goodwill / thrift stores Clearance items at stores like Target / Walmart Salvage stores like Big Lots eBay Return business What kinds of items sell best This is a very broad question that I get asked a lot. You can sell just about anything if you get it at the right price. I don’t want to tell you any specific items, because this changes daily, but try to look for things that are in high demand. Search craigslist for things like video game systems and hot electronics. Find the people that need cash NOW and lowball the hell out of them. They get cash now and you get a profit later. You can also find people moving, trying to unload a ton of furniture. Buy it for one price and sell it later at higher prices. If you find a discontinued item that people love, buy it and wait until later. People were paying over $100 for a box of twinkies a month after stores were sold out! I always like to find things that I can get for next to nothing that everyone just passes by. You’d be surprised what sells! I can get scrabble games for around a dollar and sell the tiles to crafters for $10/set. I find TV remotes and sell them in wholesale lots for $1 each. Broken video game systems sell really well for parts as well! Try and make your own niche. If you hit it early, you’ll get more sales before the market gets saturated. Tell me about shipping Anytime I buy anything, I save the bubble wrap and box. This comes in handy because I hate spending $16 for a small roll of bubble wrap. If I have to, I get boxes at walmart when they are restocking. I also use newspaper to pack boxes. It’s all about being green right? Always ship directly through amazon / ebay. It’s about 30% cheaper than going to the post office and much easier. Use media mail when you can (books, DVDs, CDs, etc) and anytime it’s under 13oz ship first class. I usually find it cheaper to ship in my own boxes instead of flat rate, but sometimes medium FR boxes come in handy. Order yourself a ton of flat rate padded envelopes. They are about $5.70 to ship an item and you can pack them tight! Also, get yourself a shipping scale and make sure to pack everything tight! You see the posts on the front page about how fed ex and ups deliver items! Lastly, you want to get insurance on anything that you ship that’s over $250. It’s eBay’s policy and it will really cover your ass! Here’s what you need to get started: First, a smartphone. Don’t have one? GET ONE! My iphone 4 costs me about $75 a month and it’s worth every penny! Download the “amazon price check” app and the “ebay” app. I use the former to scan items to see if it’s worth anything on a regular basis. Next, get yourself a shipping scale. You can get them cheap; for about $12, on eBay. Don’t just guess! It’ll cost you in the end! You’ll want a USB barcode scanner. This makes listing a breeze, especially when you have hundreds of DVDs and books to look up. They are about $10 on eBay. Order bubble mailers off of eBay too (noticing a pattern here?). #0 are best for DVDs and #2 and #4 are best for about everything else! give yourself a dedicated office. I use my spare bedroom, but it might be smart to work out of a storage unit too. Now it’s time for the Q and A part of this seminar. Ask me anything you want. I just have a few rules: Read the post first. Your answer might already be here. I really don’t want to answer the same question 14 times For the quickest response, reply directly to this thread or a comment I left. That way I see it quicker. No question is too dumb. I had a lot of dumb questions when I first started and I had nobody to ask! I will try to get to each question, but sometimes life gets in the way. It may take a day before you have an answer depending when you ask If any of you are resellers, feel free to answer questions along with me. It can only help! I don’t want to give out my eBay or amazon ID’s so please don’t ask. If somehow you figure it out, please respect me and keep it to yourself. Lastly, if you’re in the Indianapolis area and want to meet up for a drink, I’d be happy to teach you everything I know. Sometimes you can get a lot more across verbally. Ask away! (more in comments) submitted by /u/flantaclause to r/Flipping [link] [comments]