This morning I wasn't feeling well and woke up late. I messaged my boss to let her know I won't be in and I'm not feeling well. I usually keep it vague because I don't need the extra judgement around whether or not it's justified.
She calls me immediately and asks whats wrong, I say I'm not feeling well. Then she presses me again asking for more details. Feeling pressured, I say I have a sore throat and sinuses. Then she starts grilling me about whether I'll be feeling better tomorrow because I have work to do and what alternatives are available. I say I don't know (I can't tell the future). Then asks about some other work stuff.
I have no sick leave due to COVID last year so I'm not sure if this changes the situation. But I often feel like I get a lot of attitude from my manager while certain other staff are constantly being supported.
Is she allowed to ask for specific details of sickness for a single work day?

Hey beautiful ladies! This is my first time posting but I’ve searched this subreddit up and down frequently for help. I wanted to thank each and every last person whom ever posted on this sub, you guys helped me in so many ways. And gave me silent support I needed to calm my anxiety and just made me feel like I wasn’t alone in this journey! So I wanted to return the favor and tell my little story… I was diagnosed with fibroids over a year ago. The journey of being anemic due to bleeding for 20days at a time. My hemoglobin dropping to 4 having to spend days at the hospital every 2 months getting blood transfusions. Cancelled surgery and canceled hope because nobody would work on me due to being anemic. Dealing with doctors that didn’t make me feel heard or just downplaying how I felt and immediately recommending hysterectomy at which I didn’t want! I finally found a doctor that took me seriously, listened to me and created a plan to remove my fibroids. I had my surgery today and even though my hemoglobin was at a 7, she told me she wasn’t letting me down and she was going to remove the problem because otherwise it’s a continuous circle. I had a Myomectomy done to remove a prolapsed fibroid that was coming out of my cervix. The procedure took about an hour and half. Only pain I feel is a sore throat, but I’m sure I’ll feel cramps after my pain meds and anesthesia wears off I’m literally typing this 2 hours of being home. I just wanted to let you guys know you are not alone! If you are scared don’t be, if your doctor isn’t listening to you, go get another one, and another one until you find that one that cares! You are amazing, fibroids is not your fault! You will overcome this! And yeah thank you again. This is an extremely helpful forum!

2yo had a high, one day fever last week that I caught. She had a fever that went away after a day and had no other symptoms. I spent last weekend in bed with fevers, chills, and the sore throat from hell. It’s now about six days since the onset of symptoms and I still have the horrible sore throat! It’s like there are razor blades embedded into my throat every time I swallow. I’ve subsisted off one meal of canned soup and a cup of apple sauce a day and multiple lozenges since Saturday. Negative for strep, flu, RSV, and Covid. I went back to urgent care today to get antibiotics (last time I had it my tests were also negative but antibiotics got rid of it fast.) I looked at my throat and it’s red, and one side of the tonsils has white patches, which the doctor said looked like a popped blister. They’re convinced it’s viral but I have no cough, no congestion.
I’m alternating Tylenol and Advil, was prescribed lidocaine mouthwash to gargle. Sucking lozenges helps, and warm salt water gargle. I can’t drink anything that’s not water—ice cream burns, so does warm honey lemon tea. When I do eat, I just knuckle down and get through it. I’m basically sweating buckets from the pain by the time I’m done. I’ve lost 7 pounds already (this is the only positive lol). I’m super behind at work because I can’t focus and have cancelled all my meetings because I can’t talk. I’m not interacting as much with my daughter because I’m just so hyper focused on the constant burning pain and also don’t want to expose her if she disinterested give it to me.
It’s been almost a week of this and I don’t know how much more I can take and what else I can do. Has anyone else gone through this? What is going around? How much longer can this go in?

18F I cannot make this up. I have all 3 simultaneously and it is completely unbearable. I’m on antibiotics for the strep along with a probiotic, then of course there’s no treatment for mono other than lots of fluids and resting. It’s so difficult to sleep due to ear aches and the sore throat. I have to keep my mouth gaping open in order to breathe somewhat properly. My tonsils are so swollen that they’re touching each other. I would say that I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy but I have a lot of enemies that I strongly dislike and would love to transfer this triad of sicknesses to them instead of me.
Please someone drop tips. Anything to put me out of my misery

I got covid 3 times. And my body has never been same since. Ever since I got covid, I started to catch any and every disease in the wind. I took supplements, vit d3, probiotics, and even multivatins, basked in the sun and everything. But I got typhoid last year. I have been in and out of hospitals trying to treat it. Changed upto 7 doctors. None of the antibiotics worked. Everyday was a battle to wake up. I would wake up and feel like my body is exhausted in 2-3 hours. Did blood tests. And more and more and more and then ct chest and abdomen. It came back with slight fatty liver and intestinal swelling in small intestine. The doctor ordered me monocef injections. It was a hard dose for my body. But after 5 months of struggle I was fever free. Then, I got covid again. I contracted it from my parents, the work so I don't blame them. But the fevers came back. My typhoid report negative. I have inflammation in my vulva constantly. I itch. I'm sore. And I'm bloated everytime I eat a meal. And I get fevers low grade fever 99 every night. It only comes in night. Doctors are perplexed. They said it's all in my head. 99 is not a fever. Gynecologist tested me, I was positive for e.coli, put me on more antibiotics and it got better but then the issues were back. She doesn't want to test further since my vagina doesn't show signs of infection according to her but my outer labia is inflammed and red. No stds the ones which were done came back negative. I only eat bland food. My tongue is white it has a buildup, doctors chucked it out saying you had an infection for so long, it will go away. But I can't eat anything spicy, or fried it makes my body feel lethargic. I have not stepped out of my house since almost a year now. I lost my youth to this. My body has given up on me. There's no hope. Most of the treatments the group talks about are simply not available in my country. I'm blessed to be able to afford the treatments but even money isn't helping me. I'm so young.. I look at the other 20 year Olds my age and I envy them. I envy their health I know thats a bad thing to think. Is this life even worth living? With constant pain, fatigue, fevers, inflammation and itching. Not being able to eat normal foods. Not being able to have the energy to step out? That's not a life, that's a torture sentence on this earth. I feel I must have sinned so much before that I'm suffering so much now. I want to die. But I can't even chalk up the courage to kill myself. I wish I could find some answers some treatment some comfort. Life is meaningless without my healthy body. 💔

Hello, I’m hoping maybe someone here has ENT knowledge and can help? Based in the UK.
My sister (24F, 49kg, 5’3’’) has had tonsillitis symptoms for six weeks now and has had three separate courses of antibiotics (Phenoxymethylpenicillin, two taken four times a day before a meal). The symptoms are: swollen tonsils, swollen glands, inflamed tonsils, white pus on tonsils, pain when swallowing, little bit of a cough, burning sensation in chest.
The first two courses of antibiotics were for seven days each. With the first course, her throat really improved, but a day or two after finishing, her throat returned to the same swollen and pus-ridden state. Visited the same GP a second time and repeated the whole process.
After completing the second course of antibiotics, and the symptoms reappearing, she went to a different GP, who stated that the recommended antibiotics course of throat infection treatment is ten days, not seven. So a third round of antibiotics was prescribed.
It has been five days since she finished the third course, and all symptoms have returned and are even worse. Her tonsils are very swollen, she is having a lot of difficulty swallowing, and is now suffering from pain in her lower back / pelvis which I’m worried might be due to too many antibiotics?
She returned to the GP this morning who literally told her that she has no idea why she isn’t better. The GP didn’t want to prescribe any more antibiotics because of how many she has already had, and said she had no symptoms of oral thrush and it didn’t have the characteristics of glandular fever either.
As the day progressed, she has worsened and has a fever (38.5°C) and phoned NHS 111 this evening and saw another doctor. Both handlers at NHS 111 did not recommend any more antibiotics. However, the (unfriendly) doctor at the hospital has given her a prescription for Clarithromycin and has suggested that she has oral thrush, despite the GP this morning saying that she had no symptoms of it. However, he also said he did not know what could be wrong. He didn’t bother with her lower back / pelvic pain.
I think she needs her tonsils removed at this point? What else can be done?
A bit of history too: She has been on the NHS waiting list for almost three years for ENT as she has two nasal polyps, after already having had a large one removed privately three years ago. She takes fexofenadine for this. She has chronic migraines for which she takes Aimovig and bedranol + propranolol.

will attach photo as a comment

Edit: the 111 doctor at the hospital took a urine sample tonight which he described as “unconvincing” (???? what does that mean) and she has an appointment for a blood test tomorrow

Just about to order some RATs but pretty sure I finally got the new variant - feels nothing like a typical cold.
Started with uncontrollable shivers and chill suddenly right after a gym class. Fever went up and thought it would be crazy high but stayed on 38.0 .. massive headache but no cold symptoms at all .. no sore throat no tickle in the nose , no cough really maybe just some chest pressure etc.
Headache , fever chills and just moderate fever - sounds like the new Covid?
Only other noteworthy thing is that my watch warned me this morning my HRV / stress vas 17 over night .. normally it’s 50 ..

I have sore throat and fever I have already taken one holiday but I am still sick

M15 5 6 It started Sunday when I became really dizzy and tired. I had extreme chills and felt off. Then came Monday and I still felt like that. Tuesday, I went to the ER to get treated and I had 101 fever. They tested me for respiratory panel and strep throat. It all came back negative. I also have chest pains and trouble breathing. I get really dizzy when I walk around and have a slight headache, I have a really dry cough too. I'm scared, what could it be?

How long would asymptomatic strep remain positive on a culture test?
My daughter had a negative rapid strep test on Saturday morning, that was followed up with a positive culture test the next day. She was asymptomatic for strep, never had a fever, sore throat or any common cold symptoms. She wasn't recovering from being sick or any viruses.
Three days prior, she woke up with a full body rash that progressed over the next couple days into severe joint pain and swelling.
Pediatrician did initial rapid strep test in office that was negative and the next day the culture was positive. She was sent to ER for chest tightness/ difficulty taking a deep the day after the rapid strep test.
She had a negative blood test for strep at the hospital, followed by a negative second strep culture at the hospital.
My question is:
If she truly had strep, wouldn't the second culture still have tested positive one day after the first positive culture?? How could she test positive one day and then negative the next day? AND have a negative blood test the day after testing positive on the first culture?
Thank you for any insight you can provide.
Demographics: Female 12 years old 110 lbs. 5’1” Non-smoker No medications No previous medical issues

MarvelsNCU proudly presents...

STREETS RUN RED

Issue Three: Unexpected Allies
Story by u/VoidKiller826, u/Predaplant, & u/FrostFireFive
Written by u/Predaplant
Edited by u/VoidKiller826
Luke Cage scrolled through the emails that Tony Stark had sent him upon his release from prison. If he was meant to be part of a new Avengers squad, then surely there must be other members, other people that he could call on for help.
He surveyed attachment after attachment. If he was being honest, he hadn’t checked most of these at all. A lot of them were just legal paperwork that Stark’s lawyers had handled for him. He certainly didn’t have the legal knowledge himself to make heads or tails of it all beyond what they had summarized to him.
Here it was: the email going over the proposed plan for the New Avengers. It set out mission and vision statements, useless corporate junk. Outlined how they were going to interface with world governments and the nature of their connection with Stark Industries. Luke was sure that stuff was actually important but wasn’t of much help to him now.
As far as Luke could tell, there wasn’t a list of potential members anywhere, though. Maybe he was the first, or maybe they just didn’t want to say until everybody got signed on, to avoid leaks and the like. He didn’t know.
Hold on, there was something here about the Hero Initiative?
Luke had heard Tony mention the name when he got him out of prison. Gave him some sort of pager or something, Luke probably still had it in some bag somewhere.
So this was it, then. He opened another attachment, with a list of people who had been assigned pagers.
If he was going to call on a partner, he’d want somebody local to Manhattan (obviously). Somebody who wasn’t too much of a loose cannon, who he could trust to have his back if things went off the rails.
Luke narrowed his eyes as he scrolled through the list. That last requirement crossed a surprising number of people off his list. He supposed you had to be some sort of unhealthy if you ended up playing the hero too often.
Maybe that was why so many superheroes were White. If they weren’t, they would’ve been arrested long ago, and never built up the name recognition or staying power.
Luke didn’t want to waste time thinking about stuff like that right now, though. Not when there were so many people in danger. He had done his thinking in jail, now was the time for action.
He paused, mulling over a particular name on the list. That might be just who he needed.
He got up and crossed the room, pulling open his bag and rummaging through it for his pager. He pulled it out and set the dial to call the Iron Fist.
He didn’t answer right away. Luke figured that this might have happened, that anybody he called would be involved already in trying to help people, trying to protect the city. Luckily enough, though, Iron Fist did eventually pick up.
“Hello, who is this?”
“My name’s Luke,” Luke started. He paused for a moment. Weren’t superheroes supposed to use their fake names? Stark had given him one. “Power Man.”
“Power Man, huh?” came the voice from the other end of the line. “Haven’t heard of you. You new?”
“In a way,” Luke explained. “Listen, things are messed up right now out there, and I was thinking maybe some of us could band together and help each other out? Figure out some ways to really deal with these gangs in a way that matters, know what I mean? Because the police definitely ain’t got this handled.”
“Yeah, sure, I was actually thinking I could use some help myself. You wanna come over to my place and we can work something out?”
“Sure, where’s that?”
Bobbi Morse knew something was off.
She had been a SHIELD agent for years. She had served on the Avengers, even, a regular woman amidst all the superheroes. She’d fought her way through it all, and was still here standing today when so many of the other Avengers had given up the fight or gone off the grid.
Suffice it to say, she had only survived by gaining a keen sense of when there was something wrong.
She hadn’t seen Clint Barton in a couple of hours. Didn’t seem to be anywhere around the SHIELD base, as far as she could tell.
Right after they had that conversation about whether or not he could go help his friend Kate.
She had sent him a few texts. Given him the benefit of the doubt. But now, she couldn’t let this go on any longer. She had to call him, and give him what for.
The phone rang.
It kept on ringing.
It went to voicemail.
Well. That made it much more likely that something was up, and Clint had gotten himself in the middle of something.
Bobbi held back a sigh. She didn’t want to have to get Clint fired. He was a good agent, and he was cute. Well, sort of.
But she had to get to the bottom of this. It was her job, after all.
The next step was obvious: if she couldn’t call Clint, she’d call Kate.
It took a few rings, but she thankfully picked up. If Bobbi was being honest, she was surprised. It was so hard to get people to pick up for anything these days.
“Hey, what’s up?” Kate asked.
“Hi. It’s Bobbi Morse, from SHIELD.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kate said with a long drawn-out sigh. “Clint gave me your number in case I ever needed anything. Something wrong?”
“It’s Clint. Haven’t seen him in hours,” Bobbi explained. “You wouldn’t happen to know where he’s gone, do you?”
“He came out to FEAST to get me some arrows, but then he left. Haven’t seen him since.”
“Wait,” Bobbi said, making a realization. “Isn’t FEAST one of the main targets of the Goblin attacks?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s why I’m here?” Kate said with a small laugh.
“Maybe Clint got captured by the Goblins?” Bobbi suggested.
“I mean, it’d surprise me, but Clint’s surprised me before,” Kate replied. “Maybe he’s just avoiding your calls, since you’re from work and all? I’ll see if he picks up for me, and if he doesn’t, maybe we should do something about it.”
“Sure,” Bobbi said, but before she could get the word out of her mouth, Kate had hung up on her.
Bobbi tapped her foot, waiting for Kate to get back to her. It didn’t take much longer than a minute before Bobbi’s phone rang again.
“Yeah,” Kate told her. “Let’s go save Clint.”
Danny set his pager down on the table. He had been surprised to hear it go off, at first, but he supposed this was the sort of emergency that it was for, if nothing else. The kind where you want a whole bunch of different people to pitch in.
If nothing else, it had gotten this “Power Man” to step up.
Danny liked to think that he was pretty knowledgeable about New York’s various vigilantes, but he had never heard of this one. Clearly if he had been given one of these pagers, he had to have done something of note, though.
He considered whether Luke had just taken this pager off of another hero, fallen or captured in the battle over New York’s streets. It was a tad too late to worry about that, though, since he had already given Luke his address.
Power Man even sounded like a name made up by some guy who had two seconds to think of a name that sounded believable.
Yeah, Danny would have to be careful. He didn’t want any superpowered gang members busting down his door. When this Power Man came, Danny would be ready.
And to be prepared, Danny would have to be able to focus his chi better than he had been doing before Power Man called.
For what it was worth, he did do better this time. He was able to keep it steady for a few minutes at a time... but he felt like it would all collapse once he threw a punch. He kept trying, though. Just a little more...
Danny’s buzzer went off. There was no time.
He peeked through the peephole. Looked like there was just one man there.
Alright, if that was true, he probably stood a shot.
But then again, he hadn’t stood a shot against Frenzy, so who knew at this point.
He couldn’t just leave the door locked, though. Not if this really was somebody who could help him out.
He had been a hero for years. He could handle this.
Hesitantly, Danny unlocked the door and pulled it open, bracing for the man to lunge at him.
But he didn’t, so Danny put on a smile. Maybe the worst had passed. “Hey, you’re Luke, right?”
“Yeah,” Luke said with a small nod.
“I’m Danny.” If Luke was really acting in bad faith, he could’ve just asked Danny’s neighbours for his name. No real point in hiding it. “Come in!”
Luke scanned across Danny’s base. He looked almost amused?
“So!” Danny said. “Let’s start this off with me asking who you are. What did you do to earn one of these, and what’re your powers like, if you have any?”
“Stark wanted me to be a part of a new Avengers squad he’s forming. He got me out of jail for it, even,” Luke explained, matter-of-fact.
Danny looked taken aback. Luke narrowed his eyes.
“What? Is it the jail, or that Stark would put a Black guy on the Avengers?”
“I think I might remember your trial, actually, now that you mention it. A bit surprised that Stark would want you on the Avengers already, since I don’t recall you having any real crime-fighting experience at that point,” Danny said with a light chuckle. “But if you’re good enough for that, I’ll be happy to have you fight by my side today.”
“The other thing was powers, right?” Luke asked.
Danny nodded.
“My skin’s super tough, and I hit hard. Can’t really do the last one much lately, but you know.”
Chuckling, Danny gestured to a chair for Luke to sit down. “That makes two of us.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You on parole, too?”
“No,” Danny shook his head. “It’s silly.”
“Not very silly if it stops us from helping out,” Luke observed. “Spill.”
Danny sighed. “Got in a fight with a mutant. She mopped the floor with me, and my confidence has been shot ever since. My powers need focus, self-control, too. I feel like I’ve lost those.”
Luke nodded. “I know what you mean. When I first ended up behind bars, I felt like I always had to be watching over my shoulder, in case someone tried to take advantage of me. Took me a while to feel comfortable in my own skin again.” He took a deep breath. “Anyways, sounds like we aren’t raiding any gang bases anytime soon.”
Danny smiled wryly. “Guess not. You got any more hero friends we can call?”
“Not unless you want to take your chances with Moon Knight.”
Danny grimaced.
“Yeah,” Luke said, taking a deep breath. “So. What can we actually do together?”
“Do we know some targets the gangs might want access to? I mean, without thousands of cops standing around all the time on their phones, a bunch of places gotta be more vulnerable now, right?”
“Right!” Luke said. “You might be onto something. What could they want?”
“Well, firepower’s the obvious one,” Danny reasoned. “Anything they can convert into weapons. Just power in a greater sense, too. Anything that can give them a foothold whenever this all dies down.”
“You know…” Luke said slowly. “Stark did give me access to his tower. Definitely stuff there that would qualify as being that powerful.”
“Yeah, Stark Industries does have some pretty powerful stuff. I’ve seen some stuff online from them that’d definitely qualify. The Maggia or Goblins get their hands on those, and I feel like we’re all toast.” Danny agreed.
“Let’s get over there, then,” Luke said. “I dunno about you, but I’ve felt useless for far too long.”
Clint Barton opened his eyes. He could barely tell that he had done so, however. Wherever he was, it was incredibly dark, pitch black.
He was sitting on some sort of chair. Felt like a wooden one. His hands were bound behind his back. He tried to struggle, to test the ropes, but whoever had tied him up had done a decent job. He opted not to strain his sore wrists even more. He could try and work the knots a bit later, but he doubted it.
He should’ve known better than this, but he remembered one of the cardinal rules that they taught new agents at SHIELD: anybody can get the better of anybody else in a fight. That worked in your favour, especially when you had to face down superhuman threats... but it also worked against you. Case in point, what had happened to him.
At this point, he just had to accept that this was the situation he had found himself in. The question was simply what he could do now... and what they were going to do with him now that they had him captured.
Clint hoped that he would find a way out before things got to that point, but he knew the chances of that were slim.
So he stared into the darkness. If he couldn’t see, at least he could listen. He could hear noise, a general bustle of people moving around. Guess he had been taken to some sort of Goblin base, even if they had stowed him out of the way for now. Maybe it was for the best, maybe he could find some hidden weakness of theirs if he listened closely enough.
So that was what he did: he listened.
It was hard to tell time in the dark, but it felt like maybe fifteen minutes had passed before Clint heard footsteps approaching.
He started getting nervous. The fact that it was still dark likely meant one of two things.
They intended to blind him with light as soon as they got close... or they were going to cut his throat without him even being able to see it coming.
He closed his eyes to shield against the first, but there wasn’t much he could do about the second. He just had to hope... and pray.
He heard a knife slide out of its sheath.
This was the end, then.
What a lousy way to go. At least if they had killed him before he woke up, he wouldn’t have had to go through this feeling of helplessness.
He braced for the end.
The tension around his wrist suddenly disappeared.
“Get up,” he heard a voice say. It was deep, probably a man’s. “I’m getting you out of here.”
“How...” Clint started to say, but the question died on his lips as he finished putting the pieces together.
If somebody had managed to cut the ropes without light, that meant they couldn’t see. New York only had one blind vigilante.
Clint was in the presence of the one and only Daredevil.

I'm worrying that I might have something wrong with me because I've never felt that kind of warm love that's depicted in media, the kind that sends butterflies to your stomach and makes you feel good.
Everytime I've felt something towards a girl it has never been pleasant. Usually I start with the butterflies and I quickly gather the confidence to make eye contact and further to talking with her and making skin contact via either shaking hands or something else. I'll not plan much after this point because I believe that I can't plan an interaction or a conversation with a new person whose personality I am completely unaware of. After we have talked a bit I hopefully still like her and here's where everything goes down hill.
YK the feeling that you get when you have chewed on a gum too long? When your throat and tongue get sore and you have this hungry rawr from my stomach but you don't feel like eating. That's exactly how I feel. Some of the girls I've talked to are very pleasant and I would've liked to be around them more but my own body response to their presence was making me sick. I don't think I'm gay, I jack off to lesbian or straight corn and just thinking about a relationship or intercourse with another man makes me sick so I don't think it's a sexual issue, I'm pretty strong in my sexual identity.
I don't know what the issue is, but I have only ever imagined what romantic love feels like because I've never felt what I've imagined romantic love to feel like.
Just today I talked to a girl on Snapchat, I had met her a few days before IRL, and she sent me some mirror selfies and lap photos writing that she wants me on her lap but instead of getting aroused or feeling anything romantic I felt repulsed...
Wtf is wrong with me!
For clarity: I don't get as much play as I make out sound like, I interract with many people through out the day and I had such a detailed instructions about the first meeting because as a neurodivergent person I had to learn socializing when I was a teen. I'm a Christian so I haven't slept with anyone and don't intend to in the close future so it can't be sexual guilt either because I want a partner, not a one use orgasm tool.
Feel free to ask further clearing questions, I'm really concerned if I need some psychiatric help or to know if there's some actual name for this stuff and I should just give up on trying to find love, if I'm even able to feel it...

True story but might have some trigger warnings but my friend is completely ok now
When I was in school last Friday, my friend was at home because he was having breathing problems(he’s a completely fit and healthy teen). He said he couldn’t drink at one point and soon couldn’t breathe and blacked out.
He medically died for 3 minutes and within those minutes he was in a dark infinite room(like elevens voidspace), and he saw a light similar to portal created when the 3 played running up that hill. He didn’t really have a body but he started “running” towards the light. Eventually he made it back to the light and opened his eyes gasping for air.
He went to the ER later and the doctors didn’t know what happened.
He’s never watched stranger things before and I was showing him the scenes that I refer to in class today and he’s like yes that’s exactly what it happened.
Again he’s totally ok now, a sore throat but he’s good and I’m glad he’s feeling better.

^{3rd Moon, 6 AC}
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
So the rhythm goes within the hearts of Arryn lances, within the wooden cores of those pieces from that stupid Essosi game. Aye, so was Ronnel Arryn's own bloody heart thumping when he lead his first charge, when he snuck out of the Gates of the Moon to gather what boys he knew and push back the wildlings calling themselves the Sons of the Tree.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
It was not just his own heart. It was the click of hooves against mud, the roar of riders in the wind. But a boy then, he still yelled the loudest, sat astride a galloping courser in the thick of battle and held.
Ronnel saw it true, he saw it all clearly when he was atop Vhagar, freer every time Visenya allowed him the escape: his lands, draped in the tranquil blue shine of the sky and brushed with green. Out of the thickets emerged castles, keeps and holdfasts buttressed the ridges, leagues of rolling fields dotted with towns and villages filled with His. People. To. Protect. That fact was doubly stressed when they veered too close to the margins of that tapestry, over snowy mountain peaks and to crueler lands nestled near the throat of the world. Sparse smoke, fires that burned bright in the night. Camps of warriors, not the hamlets of smallfolk.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
He scouted. Laid the ambush, stakes and carts blocking the entrance to the valley while his men ascended up goat tracks. His gyrfalcon nearly gave them away, but by some stroke of luck, the wildlings were none the wiser. He was at the heart of the formation, leading his men when they crashed down the hillside. And he won.
Why, then, did that victory amount to naught when he looked at the knight slumped against a tree stump, gripping the earth in one hand while he struggled to get up? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. A smaller camp of raiders, easy to scatter, easy to defeat.
And here sat a man dying.
Ronnel Arryn knelt by his side. “A maester,” he said, “We can get—Jonos, get Harmune!”
The knight shook his head, before he raised up his sword-hand, slowly, weakly, plied by wheezing as he spoke a scarce few words.
The gyrfalcon cried when the blade landed on Ronnel’s shoulder.
“In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.”
“In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just...”
^{12th Moon, 24 AC}
To hunt was to grip the wilds by their heart, squeeze till they bore fruit, to rule, truly, unfettered by the domain of words and compromises. There was respect to be shown to the creatures they slew, of course, and honorable conduct, and, and… the heady rush of victory could not be as potent without such trappings.
And by the seven above, he needed it. The Eyrie had taken on a much more different chord after the white raven had arrived and sparse snows began to blanket the courtyards. Dreary. Sullen, almost. The windows offered a peek into dark clouds and rain and freezing rain instead of valleys covered by a sheer blanket. It was not all bad. The hearthfires roared, the children—all except Robar—liked the snowfall well enough, and some quiet could be found, though that slipped away more often than not. Fur-laden lords and ladies were oft more straightforward, Ronnel found, when that hint of winter settled into minds and coated their words. No longer did he have to listen to lengthy, summery addresses.
Or he’d just conjured that story up to glean some good from the bad. It made no matter. Small comforts while they all waited for winter.
Beneath that, however, was a sense of… gnawing. A wait for the next raven, so that they might finally move down to the Gates at the perfect moment. Decreed by tradition, it was a week after Alyssa’s Tears slowed in their descent, but he grew impatient. Shook his leg up and down when holding court, and stilled that tic when Serena called.
It was with a deep exhale that Ronnel met the news of quarry. Good enough distraction. The huntsmen departed that night, and at dawn, a cast of hawks descended, first to Sky by way of the handholds, then meeting with the guides and their mules at Snow. Ronnel took the fore, his uncle Cortnay grumbled as he looked down the ledge, Cousin Denys was still half-asleep, and Marq Hardyng nudged him awake when he threatened to fall off his mule. A trio of handlers led them down the path to the Gates. Their leader in Maryam the Harelip gave glares and instructions to the servants, and quick nods when the Arryns spoke to her.
“Good weather today,” Marq noted idly.
“Good weather? We’re like to have supper at Stone at this pace.” replied Ronnel, the wind battering his voice. “Come on. Uncle, wake Denys up properly.”
Over the horizon were flocks of birds soaring over the valleys, villages beneath that looked like specks of dust, peaks of mountains caked in frost that reached out into the heavens. The Lord of the Eyrie could swear that he saw Vhagar somewhere in the shadow of the Giant’s Lance. Still, under his breath, Ronnel cursed the King Roland for the blight that was this descent. Such a mighty castle did he call his seat, but every love suffered some pitfalls.
Soon enough, they sighted the Gates of the Moon, and relief washed over them. They could make it in time… provided that they could attend to other obligations swiftly. Ronnel coughed twice as he dismounted.
Cavaliers, spearmen, and soldiers in sky-blue cloaks hailed them at the gates, and Ronnel had a mind to head right for the stables—before one face caught his attention. The man standing by the walls bowed then rose, halberd in hand.
“I know you.” Ronnel pointed a finger at him, the surprise clear in his tone. “Theron.”
“Theron of the Lungcatch!” Marq added with a chuckle. “Unhorsed Sers Donnerly and Shett in their heyday! A victory to remember.”
“The Tourney at Crossmont. Damn good show, but their prime was a year before then,” Ronnel objected, “before Donnerly caught that blow to the head and Shett went into his cups.” He spared a glance toward his cousin, the man’s eyes yet closed. “Best listen well, Denys! If you want to be half as good a jouster as this man.”
Cousin Denys shook himself awake, but his father interrupted before he could speak.
“My lord,” said Cortnay as he climbed down from his mule. “Perhaps we should visit with Mother sooner rather than later.”
Ronnel looked at his uncle for a beat before clapping Theron on the shoulder. “You earned your spurs then, aye? What’s happened since?”
Marq approached as well. “I heard you joined the Four-and-Forty. Could scarcely believe it, sorry lot that they are.” A few of the Cavaliers around them snickered at that.
Ronnel responded with a click of his tongue. “Enough of that.” Rivalries between the knightly orders, however friendly, were best cut off quickly.
Where Theron was straight-backed before, his stance eased when the lord met him with familiarity. “Thank you, milord. You know how it is; times change, horses and lances are too much of a rush when you’ve a family to feed. I served at the Bloody Gate for eight years, and the Keeper was gracious enough to name me a serjeant when I was transferred here.”
Another approached from the courtyard, a woman donning a gambeson with the badge of the Cavaliers sewn into it. “My lord,” she said with a bow. She motioned to the Falcon Tower, where the Queen Cynthea’s chambers and solar lay. She was awake, then.
“Right, right. Theron—you’ll come with us to the hunt. Take a horse from the stables. In fact,” Ronnel motioned over to a side. “Denys! Get this man a courser. Which one did you say was spirited last time, Hardyng?”
“Shade would do well enough,” Marq advised. With a sigh, Denys beckoned the serjeant over with him and trudged toward the stables.
So too were the remaining three—Ronnel, Marq, and Cortnay—escorted to the Falcon Tower. Before entering the Queen Grandmother’s solar, Ronnel and Cortnay near-interrogated a servant about her well-being. He replied with a nonchalant “same as always,” and the three were shown inside.
Myrish carpets and spring colors covered the room, while new oaken tables and baubles to decorate them were scattered about. The Queen Cynthea was nestled between cushions on a couch, her companion Jeyne sitting to her side. “Too bitter,” Cynthea muttered as she raised a spoonful of soup and took a sip. Her expression turned sour. A thin circlet rested on her brow, wrought of red gold and studded with garnets. The gold and the gems glistened as sunlight seeped into the room.
“Your Grace,” declared Ronnel as he stepped in. He gave a bow and placed a kiss on her outstretched hand.
“Still so courteous, Ron.” Cynthea looked him over before she waved over a servant. “Bring some tea!”
“Marq Hardyng. Come, come closer, boy. The beast next to you can wait.” Marq obliged while Cortnay grunted and took a seat. Cynthea pinched Marq’s cheek. “Look at him, hair on his chin and all. In Oswell’s time the men wore mustaches to imitate their king. I suppose it’s beards now.” That took on a note of disappointment.
“They all look so disheveled with them,” sighed Jeyne.
Cynthea continued. “Ronnel told me you went to the Free Cities. Was it Braavos? You know, when you were but a boy…”
Despite the delay, Ronnel found some comfort as he settled into a seat and the tea was brought. Cynthea continued conversing with Marq for a time, and Hardyng was poked at by questions from her companion as well.
“Ronnel,” Grandmother turned back to him. “How has the child been?”
“Robar?” Ronnel asked and offered a smile. He knew the answer already. “Artos? Or…”
“My daughter. Cynthea. Even Rowena and Arwen don’t visit me enough. Must you deprive me of my namesake too?”
“Do you remember that volume on wyverns you gifted her? She’s collected three of those books now. Scarcely even read them. Too taken with dragons, she is, though ice dragons have been close competition of late. She’s not wont to leave the Eyrie unless Vhagar flies her down. But,” he shrugged, “Serena would hardly allow that.”
“Dreadful creatures.” Cynthea said, aghast. “She’s right. I told your mother not to let you and your siblings fly at all, lest you think yourselves too lofty for us common folk.” With a scoff, she turned her eyes then to Cortnay.
The conversation shifted. By Grandmother’s mention of ‘that one’, Ronnel knew that they were speaking of Visenya. Something about banners and colors, blue-and-white and red-and-black. He drank down the tea while his thoughts once more drifted to the hunt. Plans to corner the boar at first, but then, something else. A thought that he couldn’t quite place a finger on.
With a lull in talk came another look from Grandmother. “Your brother stopped by earlier.”
Ronnel furrowed his brows. “Roland?”
“Would he come by without your knowing? No.” Cynthea wrinkled her nose. Jonos, then. “He brought his gyrfalcon with him. Have you seen it? A graceful bird, silver and dappled with black, but he boasted so much about it. It’s unbecoming, you know.”
Fucking Jonos.
Why was he here and not at the Bloody Gate?
“I’m sure he’s just proud of that raptor. I’ll talk to him.” Ronnel slowly rose to his feet. “But I’m afraid we must leave. We’ll be back soon enough, I promise. Our cook at the Eyrie,” he looked over to Cortnay, “send for him. I can’t let you settle for bitter soup, grandmother.”
Where they might have japed and drank before on this same rutted road, there was nothing of the sort now. Ronnel was sore angry, and the dozen riders that left the Gates of the Moon knew it well enough. There would be no tales of some bygone tourney, nor of a winesink they’d frequented in the days before the obligations mounted. Ronnel felt a scraping within his ribs, some itch that would not abate.
Once the dirt path turned and went deeper into the forest, they had arrived at the hunting grounds. He saw people there. His own hunters and trackers, and several that stood out, all gathered around tables and horses, and—a tent, blue and white with the livery of House Arryn.
They went to hail him as he climbed down his horse, but he held up a hand. There was that fucking bird, silver-and-black and perched with a hood on its head. As he drew closer, he heard voices from within the pavilion. Jonos’ voice.
“...Why, Lord Egen told me so himself. Lazy Lyn’s bed is barren, his head full of doubts, but he’s too much of a craven to speak such ‘treasons’ in public.” A snort of a chuckle. “This queen of theirs is listless, and her dragon grows weaker and fatter by the day. Why, then, must falcons limit their flight when we can soar so much higher?”
“A toast! To the—”
So soon as the tent opened did Ronnel throw a punch for his brother; caught unawares and already in his cups by the smell of him, Jonos reeled and hissed. Ronnel tugged on his arm to pull him outside.
“THERON!” Once the serjeant ran over, Ronnel swept a hand over the handful sitting about the tent. “Take them to the Gates. OUT, ALL OF YOU!”
When Theron took them outside, Ronnel’s attention turned to his damnable brother.
“Why are you here? Hm? Who gave you leave.” That was not a question. Ronnel paced about his brother. “You’ve spat on all that I’ve done for you. All the chances, all the posts and duties that I’ve afforded to you as my fucking blood—and you look at me not with respect, but envy. A gyrfalcon?!” A pause. Jonos knew what he meant. Ronnel raised his arms wide. “Is this what you do now? The old man turns his ear away, so you wring what dissent you can from your ranks of lickspittles and gutter knights?! You should thank the bloody gods that I did not hear more from you.”
“Are we ridding ourselves of pretense?” Jonos put in. “Fine. What of you, brother? So much do you give our enemy. Lands aplenty for her dragon to sully, a castle whole to hold her and her twisted brood, and you bow to an empty fucking throne for her sake. Is it so much that I ask to what end? How much more will you let them take? The Gates? The Eyrie? Or perhaps she’d ask for Robar’s head next. You’d assent, wouldn’t you?”
In a trice, a brawl had started with another blow from Ronnel—Jonos put up a fight, but the retainers quickly intervened to restrain the man from striking their lord.
“PICK A FUCKING SPEAR UP!” Ronnel yelled. “Bring him a spear. BRING HIM A SPEAR!”
All of those around them hushed. The Lord of the Eyrie took a boar spear in hand and marched into the forest. Jonos was not far behind.
Through the afternoon, the pair trudged over the undergrowth, ducking beneath fallen trees and pausing to examine tracks. Not a word was exchanged. Only glares when their eyes met.
The sun had approached the horizon when they heard the first noises. Their steps slowed, Ronnel cocked his head about to seek out the quarry. The clearing ahead looked to be the source of the growls.
When they stepped into the glade, Ronnel and Jonos exchanged a look. Jonos stepped on a branch; a crack resounded. Ronnel made to approach his brother, Jonos flinched, drew his spear closer—just as he did, the boar erupted squealing from a bush, he lunged, and…
The pork leg was skewered, sizzling and crackling when it was placed over the fire.
Night had fallen by the time that the maester arrived. Harmune appeared with his apprentice and boxes upon boxes of herbs in tow. Ronnel had not asked for his presence, but with the pain that erupted from the slash on his shoulder, he could not turn him away either.
“A clean cut,” Harmune remarked, otherwise silent as he worked to cleanse the wound and wrap it with linen.
The Lord of the Vale occupied a campfire alone, while the others had dispersed along the hunting grounds. Jonos was there, in the corner of Ronnel’s vision, flanked by Theron and another blue-cloaked guard.
The coughs had returned. Not too many. Not too consuming. But they were there, lingering, and Ronnel felt the scratch within his lungs worsening the more he held it in.
Once the wound was bandaged, Harmune waved his apprentice off and began. “My lord… I’ve consulted the tomes and exchanged correspondence with the Citadel. My previous reckoning was wrong. But I must needs examine your breathing again to come to a conclusion.”
Ronnel supposed it was time enough. “Not consumption, then?”
Harmune placed a hand on the Arryn’s chest. “I don’t believe so… breathe in?”
An inhale. An exhale. A cough. Then another, and another, each more hacking than the last. Ronnel’s hand went up.
The maester drew away. Focused 0n the fire, Ronnel could not discern the man’s expression. He would not hear the next words, either, but he sensed the shift in tone, the absence of a ‘take these herbs and drink that poultice’.
There were senses that he missed. The wind battering against his face as he clutched onto Vhagar’s saddle. High above, as high as honor and the gods, though nothing but the dirt underneath his riding boots truly made him feel free now.
The fire-given glow grew. The heat scorched.
To what end? What bloody end would he meet, would his family meet, would the whole kingdom meet?
There was nothing to the future but Fire and Blood and all the rotten fruits that Aegon had left behind. He felt an anger welling inside of him. Not the same kind of feeling that he’d felt when Jonos grew too truculent. It was something foreign, blade-sharp, pinpointed.
“...no more than a year.”
Silence filled the air. The flames danced.
Ronnel spoke.
“Do you remember that one—what was it, a story? The riddle that you used to tell us?”
Harmune puzzled a brow. “Which one, my lord?”
“You know the one,” Ronnel insisted, “the one about… mountains, something of the sort. You know. I never understood that one.”
“Ah,” the maester squinted, “I’ve forgotten the exact wording. Lord Jonos asked me to retell it many a time when he was poorly with fever. The first winter after Aegon’s landing, I believe…?”
Ronnel nodded twice. “He pestered me about it for days. Came up with near a hundred different answers, the halfwit. None fit. What the fuck was it?”
The wizened man gave a small shrug in response, the chains about his neck rattling as he did. “He asked me for a riddle. I could not think of one…” A pause. “I suppose there was no answer.”
The Defender of the Guarded Domains grunted to dismiss the maester. He held his hand up before the fire. Clenched it into a fist. Opened his palm, then observed as the smeared red droplets within winked under the light.

I think one of the reasons I'm making this post is because I need to feel that I'm not alone, to feel that others are going through the same thing as me and that in the end there is hope, even if at the moment I don't have much of it.
I lived in the apartment that made me ill for 7 years. My symptoms started about 1 year after I moved. I was always sick. But the final straw came when I got bronchitis. I had bronchitis and an infection in my wisdom tooth. I waited before going to the dentist because I didn't want to infect him with my bronchitis. I took antibiotics for my bronchitis and then for my tooth, and that's when everything went down hill. I woke up one morning a few days after my last antibiotics and my throat was swollen to the max, I had a fever, i was dizzy (i thought i was going insane my mental state was so weird.), i couldn't breathe properly, my shoulder and chest were so stiff i couldn't move properly, i couldn't speak, think, articulate. i was so fucking tired. i had spams and couldn't sleep. I start having weird rashes on my body. My digestive system was a wreck, i couldn't digest any food. I'm sure i'm forgetting some symptoms now but it was hell on earth. I don't know how i managed to survive this period.
Thankfully, the pandemic happened. I was working in a restaurant\bar, and it closed down. In Canada, the gouvernement was giving money to people in my situation and it saved me. I started seeing a nathuropath. It really helped but didn't eradicate my health problems. I gave up coffee and alcohol. At the time, she mentioned mold, but I didn't take her seriously. She asked me if there was mold in my house but i brushed it off. I didn't want to believe that my problem could be caused by that. I wanted a medical diagnosis. But the thing is that none of the doctors that i saw through the years took me seriously. I've been gaslighted in so many different ways. I might write another reddit post just about that.
My opinion changed one winter morning when a large ball of water appeared on my ceiling. It was leaking. After that, i started connecting the dots. It wasn't the first time it had happened. For 2 winters in a row, the same thing had happened and my landlord had just fixed the ceiling without trying to understand why it was doing that. Shortly after that, i started seeing someone and he'd come to my place all the time, we never went to his (he's my boyfriend now hihi). Over the course of 1 year, he began to be sick all the time. he often coughed and said Ah, it's nothing, there's a lot of dust at my job (now he doesn't have that anymore and he still works at the same job). I also realized that there was a smell in my house. Often my mother or friends would tell me, but I always thought it was normal. After all that, it all made sense.
Fast foward to today, I moved in with my boyfriend. I still have symptoms. I learned that I have arthritis in my jaw. That I have TMJ. I'm going to have an ultrasound of my thyroid for a second time because they found a suspicious nodule. The symptoms that I still have: rosacea, rashes on my face that look like fungal acne and other that look like eczema. I'm extremely dehydrated (I lose my eyelashes and hair a lot), I have an iron deficiency and other deficiencies, i have hormones imbalance to the roof. I have invasive candidiasis that affect differents systems (genitals etc..) I have trouble thinking, and I have memory loss. But I think the symptom that distresses me most is my throat. It's always swollen. I have trouble speaking properly and it's worse when I'm tired. I've always liked the way I used to speak, I used to express myself well. I've done a lot of theater in my life and that was one of my strengths. I don't recognize myself anymore. I have trouble swallowing too.
I started taking betaine hcl yesterday and it helps a lot especially with my histamine intolerance symptoms. Since this summer, since I left the moldy appartment, some symptoms improved. For example, i no longer have numbness in my arms and legs and i don't feel hit by a car when i wake up. On the other hand, I had a return of symptoms this winter when I started working in a bookshop full of mold. The basement was disgusting next level moldy and we had to take or lunch breaks there :').
Btw sorry if i misspelled words, my native language is french and i write this in a hurry since i'm at work. I just felt like i needed to write this post and i hope it can help others. Feel free to ask me question.
I plan to start the diet this week-end. My nathuropath said its the only way. But before that, there is one phone call i need to do. I saw some weird signs of mold the other day in my bathroom...and my nathuropath said i need to do the diet in a mold free environment. If someone has a take on that i'm all ears. But in the meantime, im gonna have to call an inspector. Wish me luck, i need it.
Lots of love and healing energies to you all and thank you for reading me <3

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

A couple months ago in March I was diagnosed with chlamydia. I got treated and that was the only positive test result I had received for any std. During my recovery period I got scared that I also may have contracted HIV. I did a antigen/antibody blood test from a vein 3 weeks after possible exposure (same day i tested myself for chlamydia and other stds) at quest Diagnostics, a finger prick test at 5 weeks from AHF wellness, and another Antigen/antibody blood test at 7 weeks from quest Diagnostics that all came out negative. Was this last one conclusive? Because I don't know what is going on with my body, I was minorly sick with only a sore throat and a runny nose with just the slightest dry cough with the sore throat persisting for 2-3 weeks. I had a rash on my arm for a week, my joints have been cracking even when I make the simplest movements, I can't tell if my joints and muscles are starting to hurt. I didn't really get a period this last month, I had cramping WEEKS before i was supposed to have a period. I am terrified, my tests are saying that I'm fine and negative for everything and I want to believe that, but I need to know if those HIV tests were actually conclusive because my previous partners all deny that they don't have anything contagious but I couldn't have gotten chlamydia from nowhere

My wife, Iris, sat on the couch next to me, holding the bowl of popcorn in her thin hands. On her other side, our little boy, Freddie, sat. He looked just like his mother, with the same dirty blonde hair and faraway eyes, like the eyes of a dreamer. The movie played across our flat-screen TV, some CGI comedy with talking penguins and llamas that could drive cars. It was some garbage from Disney I would never have watched in a million years, but Freddie liked it, so I suffered through it for him.
We had turned off all the lights in the house for the movie. Only the TV’s flickering colors illuminated the room, sending dancing shadows that flashed out behind us.
Suddenly, outside the living room window, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting a tree in our front yard in two. Light flooded in through the window as if the flash of a nuclear missile were ripping its way across the town. A crash rang out as the tree split down the middle, its massive branches tumbling down onto the lawn. I jumped as the ground shook. More lightning flashed nearby, hitting other houses and lawns on the street.
“Damn, there wasn’t supposed to be any storms,” I said in surprise. The TV had gone black, and now we sat in darkness. For a long moment, I thought the power had gone out.
Abruptly, it came back on with a roar of white noise and a flickering of static. The volume seemed to be increasing by itself, growing into a rushing cacophony like a waterfall. I saw Iris try to scream something, but I could only see her lips move.
As suddenly as it all started, it stopped. The standard “PLEASE STANDBY” screen with a rainbow of blocky colors behind it appeared. There was a clanging, ringing sound that emanated from the speakers, high-pitched and whining like tinnitus. Then text started appearing across the screen. At the same time, a deep, serious voice spoke in the background, like a radio announcer reporting on the death of a President.
“This is the Demon Emergency Alert Broadcast System,” the voice read grimly. “This is not a test. Level five activity has been reported in your area. Do not go outside. Close all blinds, shutters and windows. Lock all doors and close any attached garages. Do not open your doors except to military or police personnel with the proper insignia. Even if someone appears to be in distress, do not open your door to investigate or try to interfere in any way. A temporary quarantine is in effect for your area. Military and police assistance is on the way.
“To ensure the greatest chances of survival during this time of crisis, please abide by the following rules:

1. If blood begins to pour under your door, go to a higher floor immediately. Avoid physical contact with the blood at all costs.
2. All legitimate military and police personnel will have a special insignia on their helmets and jackets, an eye contained in a double-thumbed fist. Only accompany them if they have this insignia- otherwise, they are imposters.
3. Avoid mirrors for the duration of the emergency.”

The voice cut out abruptly, slowing down in a mechanical whine. Static started flashing across the TV, covering the “PLEASE STANDBY” message that had returned in blocky letters. At that moment, the lights went out. They came back on a couple seconds later, brightening and dimming, before the power failed again. This time, the electricity did not come back on.
“What the fuck?” Iris whispered next to me, taking out her phone and shining the light across the dark living room. “That was pretty weird. Everything looks different outside, too. I was just outside an hour ago and the Moon didn’t look anything like that.” She pointed. I got up, realizing she was right. The nighttime sky outside looked strange. I looked out the front window, seeing the Moon was cast in a fluorescent orange light. The cloudless sky had a dark red glow to it, as if some kind of eerie smog had covered everything. I had seen similar things happen after massive forest fires in the past.
“What happened, Dad?” Freddie asked in his small voice. “Where’s the movie?”
“I think we lost power, little man,” I said, ruffling his hair in a nonchalant manner. I didn’t really believe the emergency broadcast, after all. I figured some teenager had hacked the TV station and decided to play a prank, or perhaps some disgruntled employee had done it on his last day as a kind of “Fuck you” to the station. I had heard of similar things happening before. It was somewhat strange how the power had gone out and the sky had changed, but I felt sure that it could all be logically explained.
Someone shrieked outside. I looked out onto the dark street, seeing the silhouette of someone running frantically down the middle of the street, zigzagging wildly. As the figure got closer, I realized it was a young woman. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She wore a white shirt and khakis. Her clothes were soaked in streams of blood that made the fabric cling to her trembling body. I saw a vicious gash bitten into her left shoulder, a wound so deep that the white bone peeked out through the ragged patches of flesh.
“Help me!” she wailed, her eyes wild and panicked. “Why won’t anyone help me?!” She staggered and fell forward, crying and bleeding all over the road. I was about to run outside to see what was wrong with the young woman when I saw another silhouette creeping up behind her.
It looked like the body of a man, but something was wrong. As he drew closer, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face through the dim light. The left side of it was rotted and decayed, while the right looked muscular and healthy. He wore a black suit that looked like little more than tatters. Pieces of it fell off in ragged strips. I could see his left hand was also decomposing. Whatever kind of sickness it was, it seemed to extend to the whole left side of his body.
The stiff, skeletal leg cracked as he dragged it behind him, silently drawing nearer to the young woman. The living side of his face split into an insane rictus grin as he looked down at her. He carried a blood-stained ax that dragged on the pavement behind him with a harsh, metallic groan.
“Get away from me!” the woman screamed at the abomination, trying to kick at him. But she looked weakened from blood loss, and her attempts were feeble and slow. The man laughed, a sound that rang out like the gurgling of blood. He spat squirming maggots from his mouth onto the dark street below. He knelt down before the gasping woman and gave a low whisper. It carried on the dead, silent air.
“So warm,” he murmured, wiping his dead, putrefying fingers across the streams of blood that spurted from her left shoulder. He stuck an inhumanly long, pointed tongue out of his chattering lips and began to lick the blood off his hands. “But not enough. Not nearly enough.”
He stuck the bony, decaying fingers of his left hand into the wound and started pulling at the ragged wound. Blood bubbled out in increasing quantities, covering her body in its wet sheen. The woman jerked, her face turning pale and bloodless. She tried to kick at him, but he only laughed again, gurgling like a man with a slit throat. In horror, I watched him raise the ax above his head. It stood there for a long moment, trembling in his shaking hands like a guillotine blade.
“Please, don’t…” the woman pleaded as he grinned down at her. In a blur, he swung the ax down into her forehead. There was a wet cracking of bone and a ringing of metal. She sat there with her mouth open for what felt like a very long moment. Then, limply, she collapsed to the pavement. A dull thud echoed down the street as her skull smacked the pavement.
Sickened, I closed the blinds on the window and turned away, realizing that Freddie and Iris had been standing right behind me the entire time, watching the horrific display. Freddie was crying quietly into his hands, while Iris looked pale, her green eyes wide and unbelieving. The woman exhaled one last time, a long, drawn-out death gasp, and then everything went silent.
I felt sick and weak. Staggering, I put my hand out against the wall. A wave of nausea rose up my stomach. I ran towards the bathroom, shining the light from my cell phone to light the way. Iris started crying. I heard her frantically try to dial 911 over and over again.
“Dammit, nothing’s working!” she cried. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw up all the popcorn and soda I had consumed that night into the toilet. Covered in sweat, I started wiping my face with toilet paper. I pushed myself up, glancing into the mirror.
A cadaverous version of myself stood there, the dead face showing horror and surprise just like my own. I saw the same high cheekbones, the same shaved head, but in the mirror image, maggots writhed and squirmed in the rancid flesh. I backpedaled into the wall, stuttering something incomprehensible. The reflected image did the same, his lipless mouth opening and closing with silent curses. He wore the same clothes as myself, a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but they were rotted and tattered, as if they had been dug out of a grave.
“What the fuck?” I swore, raising my right hand experimentally. The mirror image did the same, matching every single movement perfectly. At that moment, Iris came running into the bathroom, her soft footsteps thudding gently against the marble floor. I jumped, turning to her.
“There’s someone outside the door,” she whispered, her face pale. I glanced back at the reflection, seeing that the other version was no longer following my movements.
“Watch out!” I cried, but it was too late.
The skull-like face came forward in a blur. His arm shot out towards Iris. The surface of the mirror swirled as if it were made of water when his pale flesh made contact with it. The sharp points of bone of his fingers wrapped around Iris’ neck. Stunned and silent, I watched in horror as he started dragging her into that other world.
“Stop him!” she screamed. “God, make him stop!” I ran forward, grabbing her legs as her head and chest was sucked through. There was a slight popping sound when her body entered the liquid-like surface. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but whatever abomination was on the other side was strong, stronger than me. His iron grip yanked her out of my hands.
“Dad?” Freddie asked, slinking into the bathroom. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom? Who’s screaming?” I had to make a decision instantly, I knew. I could either stay with my son, or try to get my wife back. I knew I couldn’t just leave Iris, though. I felt mentally torn. I looked between him and the mirror, my heart quivering with anxiety.
“Freddie, go wait in the living room,” I said. “Hide behind the couch. Don’t answer the door or say anything to anyone, no matter what. I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if I would or not. Before I turned to the mirror, I patted his head. “Remember the rules they read us on the TV.” He nodded, but he was only a seven-year-old boy. How much did he really understand? Hell, how much did I even understand? I hadn’t followed the rules, and now Iris was kidnapped.
I turned back to the mirror, seeing that I had no reflection now. There was no sign of Iris or the rotted corpse with my face, either. Slowly, I walked forward, putting my trembling hand out towards its silvery surface. My fingers went through the mirror as if it were mere air, but I felt something freezing cold ripple around my skin. Pins and needles rushed up my arm. Taking a deep breath in, I pushed myself up on the counter and went all the way through.
***
I fell forward onto the marble surface of the bathroom floor, putting my hands out to break the fall. As I glanced up, I realized how strange everything looked. The world here was in constant motion, as if a fog-like void shimmered over the world. The floor’s surface danced with whorls of shadow. They felt as freezing cold as liquid nitrogen as they passed over my body.
Shivering and hugging myself, I pushed myself up off the floor. The walls and ceilings, too, rippled in the same black currents. I glanced around, seeing the white bathtub filled to the brim with dark blood. It bubbled constantly, as if someone were drowning under its surface. Bloody handprints of all sizes smeared the sides of the tub. The smell of copper grew strong, mixing with the strange smell that emanated from the shadows, a pungent, chemical odor like ammonia.
I passed by the mirror, seeing that here, too, I had no reflection. I felt like a vampire, staring into that blank emptiness. Feeling sick and disoriented, I stumbled forward, afraid to even breathe too loudly. I heard Iris crying and shrieking somewhere nearby.
“Nooo…” she wailed. “Please, stop…” Her voice seemed to be growing fainter and weaker, as if she were being dragged away by a tsunami. I peeked around the corner. Everything looked like nightmarish and strange. The living room looked much longer, stretching out for hundreds of feet. It had the same blue carpet and white walls as the one in my world, but now it was the size of a football stadium. The dark red couch had lengthened to an absurd size, stretching wide enough to fit a hundred people in it. The TV loomed across the room like the screen of a movie theater. It flickered constantly, showing a cacophony of white noise and static interspersed with horrible images: naked corpses with their throats sliced from ear to ear, burning bodies, people falling to their deaths from burning buildings.
But none of that was what made an involuntary gasp of horror rise up my throat. It was the enormous spiderweb spanning the length of the ceiling, fluttering softly in the breeze. In the center of the symmetrical web, I saw Iris, covered in silky thread up to her neck. She was hanging horizontally facing down, her body parallel to the floor. She struggled against the webbing that bound her like steel chains. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared fixedly at the cadaver approaching her.
Crawling upside-down towards Iris was the monstrous image of myself I had seen in the mirror, but he had transformed into something spidery and eldritch. He skittered along with four arms and four legs now. The emaciated limbs poked out of his tattered rags of clothes, forked and elongated, the skin pale and covered in purple sores and deep gashes. Iris continued to plead and shriek in horror as it drew near. The creature’s chattering fangs and blackened gums approached her neck.
At the penultimate moment, Iris saw me, peeking around the corner of the bathroom. I stood there, unsure of what to do. I thought of trying to scream out, to throw something at the creature, but then what? We would both die, and then who would be left alive to protect Freddie? I didn’t know what to do. These thoughts passed through my head in the space of a single moment as we stared at each other. Her eyes shone with a moment of clarity, even as waves of mortal terror shook her body like a hurricane.
“Save Freddie!” she screamed. “Run! Go, Jack!” The creature noticed her staring at me instantly. He curved his long neck and twisted his spidery limbs, clutching the thick strands of silk with his skeletal limbs. The creature turned to me. He had a face like a skull. His filmy eyes regarded me intently. Silver streams of saliva dripped from his mouth. He gave a wide, insane smile, then turned back to Iris, unhinging his jaw. The pale, dead skin tore with a wet ripping sound. The yellow, sharp points of teeth gleamed darkly in the currents of rippling shadow.
I turned, sprinting back into the darkness of the bathroom as the crunching of bone and the shrieking of my wife followed me out. I had to repress an urge to vomit. With all of the speed I could muster, I staggered forward to the counter, where the mirror sat revealing the image of my house, an image that still lacked my reflection inside. Iris’ pleas and screams rapidly weakened. I heard her choking and gasping. A few moments later, I heard a rapid skittering of many legs approaching the bathroom. I started to pull myself up on the counter to escape this hellish mirror world.
Something creaked in the doorway behind me. I glanced back in fright, seeing the abomination with the eight limbs creeping up behind me. He stood only a few feet away from me now. As my eyes met his white, dead ones, his cadaverous face split into a sickly grin.
***
A wave of adrenaline shook my body. My vision turned white in the darkness. With a pounding heart, I pushed myself up and lunged through the mirror. The eight-limbed abomination with my rotting face gave an insane shriek. I felt a freezing cold hand wrap around my ankle and begin to drag me back.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick blindly at the mirror creature’s dead face. “I’ll never go with you! Never!” I smashed my sneaker into his jaw. There was a shattering sound, as if a ceramic vase had been dropped. The chattering of sharp teeth and the shrieking cut off abruptly. Looking back, I saw the corpse’s broken jaw hanging on by only a few shreds of tendons and muscle. The eyes went slack and I felt the grip loosen for the briefest moment. I pushed myself forward and slid through the mirror.
The freezing cold, pins-and-needles sensation returned, running over my body like water. I collapsed head-first onto the sink, rolling onto the floor with a jarring thud. The shrieking of the eight-limbed corpse continued behind me. I saw him trying to force his elongated body through the mirror. The long arms with their sharp fingers reached through, swiping wildly at the air. Before I could escape, one of them came through and cut four deep gashes into my chest. My shirt instantly became soaked in blood as a burning pain ran up my body.
I heard someone pounding at the front door, but in the panic of the moment, I could barely think. As the rest of the cadaverous body tried to push his way through the mirror, I dragged myself out of the bathroom. I slammed the door shut, even as the sounds of breaking and shattering followed me out of the bathroom. Ignoring the pain radiating through my body, I ran over to the couch and began shoving it towards the door.
The door shuddered in its frame. The house and the floor shook as the corpse threw his enormous body into the wood over and over again. Cracks spiderwebbed down the front of it, and I knew it wouldn’t last more than a couple more seconds.
“Freddie!” I screamed, looking around frantically. My heart dropped when I remembered I had told him to hide behind the couch. He was not here, not anywhere in the living room. “Freddie! Where the hell are you?”
“Dad?!” a voice responded from outside. It sounded like Freddie’s voice, but it was eerie, as if his voice had gotten caught between stations on the radio. It sputtered with static. It fell and rose in an ear-splitting scream. “Dad, let me in! Please! They’re going to hurt me!”
I ran to the front door, looking outside, but I saw no sign of Freddie. The sky had changed, though. The Moon had changed from orange to a dark red, the color of a burst blood blister. The rest of the sky was such a dark shade of crimson that it looked almost black. Around my feet, I felt something warm and wet.
“Where are you?” I yelled. “I don’t see…” At that moment, the bathroom door exploded outwards in a shower of nails and splinters, covering my face and body in the debris. The cadaverous face peeked around the corner, as if he were playing hide-and-seek rather than hunting and killing people.
“Fuck!” I swore as I looked down, seeing blood streaming in from under the door. It covered my sneakers up to the tops of the soles as more and more flooded in.
I ran for the stairs as the eight-limbed corpse skittered across the ceiling like a spider. He hung upside-down, the jaw hanging askew on his putrefying skull, the filmy eyes flashing with bloodlust. I was already half-way up the stairs when the corpse jumped down into the lake of blood at the bottom of the stairs. With his elongated, twisted limbs, he began pulling himself towards the first step in a blur, covering his body in the thick, putrid blood that continuously poured in through the bottom of every door.
But something was in the blood, I saw to my horror. I froze in place near the top of the stairs, watching the creature as he struggled to pull himself out of the blood, which was already at knee-height and still rising. There were dark silhouettes slithering through the blood. I saw the head of a black snake peer out at the eight-limbed cadaver. The snake had no eyelids, and its eyes looked as red as the blood it lived in. It wrapped its muscular body around his torso, rising up towards the cadaver’s face. The blood-red eyes met those dead, rotted ones of the corpse as they stared at each other. Then the eldritch snake lunged forward and bit off the corpse’s face.
Other snakes started to rise out of the surface, wrapping around his four legs and slithering up his back. The corpse wailed like a banshee, running blindly into the walls to try to smash the many snakes that suffocated and bit him from all sides. But this only seemed to heighten their hunger and bloodlust.
The sound of shredding flesh and snapping bone followed me as I ran into Freddie’s room and hid. His room was the only one without mirrors in it, I knew, and I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
***
In the thick curtains of shadow, a small voice rang out, terrified and searching.
“Dad? Is that really you?” Freddie asked, hiding behind his chest of toys. I saw his small body, contorted and pale. His little head poked above the lid.
“Freddie! You’re alive!” I cried, running over and hugging him. Tears streamed down my face. “I thought you were outside. I heard you screaming out there.”
“I heard you and Mom yelling outside, too,” Freddie whispered, his small body trembling as I held him. “I got scared and ran up here. I’m sorry, Dad. Where’s Mom?”
“It’s OK. Thank God you did,” I murmured, remembering the lake of blood downstairs and all those strange, black snakes. “Mom isn’t coming, Freddie.” He went silent then and didn’t ask any more questions. A sick, heavy weight covered my heart.
In the darkness, we hid and waited, though I knew not for what. The smell of copper and iron from all the blood downstairs had become overwhelming. After a few minutes of this, I took my phone out and shone it around experimentally.
I saw a thin layer of blood streaming into the room, rising up the stairs like the waves of a tsunami. It covered the hallway’s hardwood floor, a half-inch thick deep already and growing fast. Dark shapes slithered and writhed in it. Small waves pushed the lake of blood towards us, and within seconds, my shoes were submerged in it.
“Dad?” Freddie asked in a panicked voice. “What’s that? There’s things inside of it…” Without thinking, I picked Freddie up and held him above my body.
“We need to get to the attic!” I whispered to him, sprinting through the rising pool of blood with my son in my arms. “Don’t be afraid, Freddie. We’ll make it.” I had nearly reached the hallway where the pull-cord for the attic stairs hung when something wrapped around my feet. I went flying forwards, dropping Freddie in the pool of blood. He was submerged up to his waist instantly. His small body writhed in terror.
“Help me! Help me!” he screamed, flailing his arms as black snakes circled him like hungry sharks. The one wrapping around my legs continued slithering up my body. A rising sense of horror and panic filled me. At that moment, I knew I was doomed. I only hoped I would see Iris again. Then I noticed spotlights turn on outside, filling the inside of the house with a radiance like the Sun.
All of the windows upstairs suddenly smashed inwards. A spotlight shone through the nearest of them, illuminating me and Freddie in our frantic struggles against the snakes. Men in SWAT gear crawled through the shattered windows. With their gas masks, their faces looked like insects with too many compound eyes.
On their helmets and jackets, I saw a strange symbol: a double-fisted thumb holding a staring, lidless eye. Dozens of them streamed in, shooting the snakes that circled Freddie and me. As the one wrapping around its body slowly wound its way towards my face, one of the black-clad men came up behind it and shot it in the skull. The snake’s body collapsed all around me, its muscles loosening in death. With relief washing over me, I ran to our saviors.
“Get us out of here!” I pleaded. “There’s horrible things happening!” The man nodded in his black military gear, his mask revealing nothing.
“Follow me,” he said dispassionately, starting towards the roof. “You two are the only survivors we’ve found so far. It truly is a miracle anyone’s still alive.” I could only agree silently.
"This must be all over every news channel," I said. The masked man shook his head.
"No one knows about this," he responded. "No one but you two and our group. The media won't say shit. They do what we tell them."
***
I followed the men out onto the roof. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies, illuminating the houses and streets with many bright spotlights. As a helicopter slowly lowered itself down to take Freddie and me away from that pit of nightmares, dropping a rope for us to ascend, I glanced around my town one last time.
Many of the houses were destroyed or burning, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the blood-red sky. Men in full SWAT gear zoomed around the blood flooding the streets in boats, the whirring of the motors echoing like angry hornets. Turning away, I followed Freddie into the helicopter and never returned.
Iris is dead, and Freddie and I have seen enough horrors to scar us for a thousand years. In my heart, I know it is my fault my wife died. I didn’t follow the rules, and she paid the price.
I will hear those dying, panicked screams until my final breath.

Does anyone know of a product that has the benefits of honey but is not honey?
For example - if I ever had a sore throat as a kid - my dad would russle up a cup of hot honey and lemon - lemon for Vit C to fight the infection and honey as an antiseptic and soothing for the throat…
I have made vegan honey (last year) but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have all the antiseptic qualities that honey has.
I’m currently using agar syrup but it’s really just a sugary substance with no medicinal benefits.
Thanks…

So I live in Hawaii. We have a food called the lau lau. Simple sounding name, not at all simple to make, as it requires several meats, vegetables, the leaves of a plant that is hard to find unless someone is going out of their way to cultivate it (Ti) especially since all its wild growth has been paved over by developments, and being steamed for hours after the meat and veg chunks are wrapped and tied together in the leaves.
We also used to have festivals, which are only now starting to get back up after covid-if at all.
Apparently, one such festival has announced that they will restart this year but the lau lau vendor won't be there.
Cue my mom deciding this is because the Old Guard (the boomers) were willing to do all the work to cook a labor intensive food for a festival. Then that migrated to talking about cell phones, since I had to spend two hours last night teaching her how to use a tablet so she could read the local newspaper, which is ceasing actual print production. Namely, the first gen cell phones that were a brick at best, or required a satchel full of batteries and antennas. and how her generation had to "make do".
Excuse me, I'm a bit sore because I need to clear my mind so I can do some studying for my SECOND JOB. Meanwhile at my main job my only coworker is tethered to his cell phone at all times because he is expected to be on call 24/7. Both of us are over 40 and neither of us will ever own a home, much less have the time to fraternize for hours upon hours as they did.

Posting again cause I am not able to access my original post in hiv/paranoia. My exposure was more than 7 and half months ago, unprotected received oral and protected vaginal with escort. - Symptoms that started 11 days after exposure: severe insomnia, fast heart beat, muscle and joint pain, loss of appetite, no libido and ED, fatigue, mild sore throat for 2 days. Later I had night and day sweating and diarrhea. - Symptoms that emerged later that persist: Sore throat and feeling dry, fatigue, sleepy, neuropathy mainly in hands ( numbness in fingers) I had several negative lab 4th generations hiv test: at 19, 30, 45, 56 ( same day in 2 different labs), 96, 102, 125, 157 and 192 days . Plus 4 negative rapid ( called autotest VIH approved in europe) at 45, 56, 60, and 125 days . In addition to 2 Quantitative PCR HIV 1 VL @ 56 (by Roche 5800) and 102 (by Genexpert Cepheid), both undetectable. Tested for EBV, CMV, TOXO all showing old infections, HBV, HCV and syphilis negative.
Any help will be much appreciated