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2024.05.23 05:52 Stage-Piercing727 Best Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots
 | submitted by Stage-Piercing727 to u/Stage-Piercing727 [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/eqqmxgwdm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05a40d6ac174aa72726b3264d02dda9b0d4acd36 The Top 8 Best Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots
Reviews🔗Heat-Tech Snow Boot for Women by Columbiahttps://preview.redd.it/q1vhm5cem32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b949e6392e4e5174327fb3e07a97d0a46e0a2c2 Recently, I had the chance to try out the Columbia Women's Moritza Shield Omni-Heat Snow Boot, and let me tell you, they've become my go-to pair for the cold season. The boot's sleek design instantly caught my eye, and once I put them on, I was impressed with the comfort they provided. I especially loved the lightweight midsole with Techlite technology, which gave me the perfect balance of cushioning and support during long walks in the snow. One of the best features of these boots is their waterproof suede upper with fleece lining—my feet have remained toasty and dry throughout even the snowiest days. The Omni-Grip high traction rubber sole has been a lifesaver, ensuring I don't slip on icy surfaces. It truly is a "grab and go" pair of boots that I can wear both in Winter sports and casual settings alike. However, I do have a couple of minor issues. First, some reviewers mentioned the boots can be a bit narrow, which I also found to be true on my first try. Second, the boots' ankles offer less protection compared to others, but I haven't had any problems—yet. Overall, I would highly recommend the Columbia Women's Moritza Shield Omni-Heat Snow Boot to anyone looking for a stylish and functional pair to keep their feet cozy in the winter months. Whether you're hitting the slopes or just braving the cold, these boots will have you walking on the snow with ease and confidence. 🔗Stylish Omni-Heat Waterproof Winter Boot for Womenhttps://preview.redd.it/8dy72epem32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cf7b1fa3d9a8452d8a684b8776e1d4a95c1bc82 The "Snow Boot" as Columbia calls it, is just that - one of the best snow boots around. The Omni-Heat reflective lining is a perfect example of how technology has made winter footwear more comfortable and efficient. While it's not a new concept in the market, it certainly stands out in this boot. The 200g insulation keeps the feet snug and warm even in the frostiest conditions, and the waterproof seam-sealed membrane bootie construction ensures that wet toes are a thing of the past. The rubber sole provides a fantastic grip, ensuring that no matter if you're walking on a rainy sidewalk or a snowy trail, these boots have got you covered. I love the Techlite lightweight midsole for long-lasting comfort, superior cushioning, and high energy return. It makes walking in the snow as comfortable as walking on dry ground. However, there's a downside to every good thing. The lacing system of these boots can be a bit of a hassle - one reviewer even mentioned that the laces seemed to be too long, which can be inconvenient. Oh, and don't forget about the faux fur collar lining - it's super soft and cozy, but it also allows snow to pool on top if you're not careful with your clothing. Overall, the Columbia Women's Slopeside Village Omni-Heat Hi Boot 7 is a fantastic choice for anyone looking for a reliable and comfortable pair of snow boots. With its Omni-Heat reflective lining, waterproof construction, and excellent grip, it's hard to go wrong with this one. 🔗Waterproof, Insulated Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Bootshttps://preview.redd.it/bzapmv4fm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5082fdf4266ed8673433dfae39b8e34d6a4aa632 The Columbia Women's Bugaboot Celsius Plus Omni-Heat Infinity Boots are a versatile and cozy addition to any winter wardrobe. The rubber sole provides solid traction in any weather condition, whether it's wet or dry, allowing you to conquer any terrain with ease. Made with a combination of waterproof leather, textile, webbing, and metal hardware, these boots are built to withstand the elements. My experience with these boots has been nothing short of delightful. The adjustable midfoot strap ensures a snug and comfortable fit, while the molded textile rear collar offers plenty of support for your ankles. The Omni-Heat Infinity reflective lining keeps your feet warm and cozy in the coldest weather, and the waterproof OutDry membrane construction means you can walk through puddles or slush without having to worry about wet feet. One highlight that I particularly appreciate is the Techlite+ outsole, which provides exceptional cushioning and stability without sacrificing comfort. This feature ensures that I can enjoy my snowshoeing adventures without experiencing fatigue in my feet. However, I also noticed that the boots run slightly large, so I would recommend sizing down half a size if you prefer a more snug fit. Overall, the Columbia Women's Bugaboot Celsius Plus Omni-Heat Infinity Boots are an excellent choice for anyone in search of both style and functionality in their winter footwear. 🔗Affordable Womens Size 6 Black NWOT Columbia Heavenly Omni-Heat Lace Up Insulated Bootshttps://preview.redd.it/8c32gzefm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb8351255282f8772f740cd9678e47c17dd64fa8 I recently came across a pair of Columbia Heavenly Omni-Heat Lace Up Insulated Boots in women's size 6, black, never worn without tags or box. These boots caught my eye with their unique design and promise of warmth. I decided to give them a try on a chilly morning. As soon as I put them on, I noticed the coziness and the perfect fit, thanks to the adjustable lace-up system. The boots were incredibly comfortable, which made them ideal for both casual wear and long walks. The insulation was effective, keeping my feet warm and dry in the snow. One downside I experienced was the slick sole, which made walking on ice a bit slippery. However, the other features more than compensated for this minor drawback. Overall, these boots are a great addition to any winter wardrobe and a testament to the brand's commitment to innovation and quality. 🔗Columbia Women's Warm Waterproof Paninaro Omni-Heat Tall Boothttps://preview.redd.it/fawo5uqfm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11b696d7cd9dfa4d4e5725aea304b00a486c1aab These Columbia Paninaro Tall black winter boots were a delightful addition to my winter wardrobe. The Omni-Grip outsole meant I didn't have to worry about slipping on icy terrain and the waterproof textile upper kept me dry in even the wettest conditions. But, the real star of the show was the Techlite midsole with a molded EVA footbed providing an unparalleled level of comfort. They were a perfect fit, but I noticed that the zipper was a bit difficult to do up and undo, despite this minor setback, I really enjoyed wearing these boots. However, it's worth mentioning that they were not ideal for colder temperatures and my toes did get cold, especially if I wasn't actively moving. But overall, I appreciated the stylish look, the warmth and the comfort these boots provided. 🔗Columbia Omni-Heat Men's Fairbanks Boots: Waterproof, Breathable, and Insulatedhttps://preview.redd.it/gpolnj9gm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efeec0c9bd3e23ecdf07d1ca381d236975eddc0b I recently had the chance to try out these Columbia Omni-Heat boots, and I must say they've been a game-changer for me. Not only did they keep my feet warm and dry during the winter's snow and ice, but they were also incredibly comfortable to wear. One thing that stood out to me was the boot's waterproof membrane. I live in a place where it rains frequently, and having a good pair of waterproof boots is essential. These Columbia boots passed the test with flying colors. They kept my feet dry even when I had to walk through flooded streets or puddles. Another great feature of these boots is the lightweight midsole. I found that they provided excellent support to my feet while maintaining their lightweight nature. This was especially helpful during long days of walking or standing. However, there were a couple of things that I didn't quite like about the boots. The first was the lacing system. I found it a bit harder to lace them up tightly than usual. I wish there was an extra eyelet up top to make the process easier. Secondly, the inner stitching on the rear of the boot caused some discomfort for me. It rubbed against my heel bone, and after wearing the boots for just a short period of time, my heel started to feel raw. I had to apply blister pads to alleviate the pain. Overall, I think the Columbia Omni-Heat boots are a great choice for those who need waterproof, breathable, and insulated footwear. While there are a couple of things that could be improved, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. So if you're in the market for a reliable pair of winter boots, I would certainly recommend giving these a try. 🔗Columbia Men's Gunnison II Omni-Heat Insulated Bootshttps://preview.redd.it/lv0367jgm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f70b3f920000801526870b8daaf92ecb517d2e69 I've had the opportunity to test out the Columbia Men's Gunnison II Omni-Heat hiking boots in my daily life. There are a few standout features that impressed me. The lightweight midsole, Techlite, provides long-lasting comfort, and the Omni-Grip non-marking traction rubber outsole ensures a strong grip even in wet conditions. One downside I noticed was the limited warmth in comparison to other options in the market. Despite its advertised temperature rating, I found that my feet were not as warm as I would've preferred for extreme cold weather conditions. Overall, the Columbia Men's Gunnison II Omni-Heat hiking boots are a good investment for casual hiking and general outdoor use. They offer a comfortable fit and are stylish, making them suitable for various occasions. Just remember that if you plan on extreme cold weather hiking, you might want to consider a different option for optimal warmth. 🔗Columbia Ice Maiden II - Waterproof Women's Winter Boots with Omni-Grip Outsolehttps://preview.redd.it/irli0dwgm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0383a067bb764606a5ada81168c9b2a7a107e88 In the biting winter months, finding the right pair of boots can make all the difference between braving the harsh elements or hiding indoors. Last winter, I decided to purchase a pair of Columbia Ice Maiden II Nocturnal Red Lily winter boots, drawn in by their stylish appearance and the promise of warmth in severe conditions. Upon the first testing of these boots on a particularly frigid day, the warmth was undeniable. The seam-sealed waterproof membrane ensured my feet stayed comfortably warm, even in the depths of sub-zero temperatures. The 200G insulation, rated for -32°C, kept my toes toasty, enabling me to fully embrace the winter activities I love. A feature I appreciated in these boots was the Techlite lightweight midsole. It added an extra layer of cushioning that made each step I took feel as if I was walking on cloud nine. This paired delightfully with the Omni-Grip non-marking traction rubber outsole, providing a reliable footing even on the dampest surfaces. However, this experience wasn't without its share of drawbacks. Despite the exceptional insulation and traction, these boots were not entirely impervious to the elements. They didn't provide complete waterproof protection; water still managed to seep inside the foot and dampened my socks. Additionally, the boots started to show signs of wear relatively quickly. On balance, buying the Columbia Ice Maiden II winter boots was an investment worth making for the warmth, comfort, and safety these boots offered. While they were not entirely immune to water or wear, they undeniably delivered reliable performance under harsh conditions. This made them an indispensable addition to my winter gear and a comfortable choice for all my outdoor adventures. Buyer's GuideWhen it comes to winter footwear, warmth is the top priority. Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots have become a popular choice for those seeking both comfort and style. Before you make a purchase, consider the following factors to ensure that these boots will meet your needs and expectations.Considerationshttps://preview.redd.it/o5t6x1ehm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2edd0af5b074dc3e05a29e0202b648deffc481ec
Important Features
General Advice
https://preview.redd.it/67972vshm32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8efe826fcd44a3a87758cb98d943b8af47c88bef FAQWhat are Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots?Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots are a type of winter footwear designed to keep feet warm in cold conditions. The boots are equipped with advanced insulation and heating technology to provide optimal warmth and comfort.What are the key features of the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots?https://preview.redd.it/qbybk59im32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1dca0ca8e6c4bdb9c2b21e97089fbe37b352d630 Some key features of these boots include:
How do I know if the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots fit well?To ensure the best possible fit, you should check the sizing chart provided by the manufacturer. Some additional factors to consider include the width and height of the upper portion of the boot, as well as the length and shape of the foot.Are the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots waterproof?Yes, the boots are equipped with a waterproof, breathable membrane that helps to keep feet dry in wet conditions. https://preview.redd.it/a6gwqbkim32d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=07f861113bec45c93039910f2cf4e559e32bcde2 How do I turn on the heating element in the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots?To turn on the heating element, you need to press the "on" button located on the inside of the boot. Once the boots are on, you can adjust the heat by pressing the "+" or "-" button until your desired temperature is reached.How do I charge the battery in the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots?The batteries in the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots are charged using a rechargeable 9-volt battery, which is included with the purchase. The battery should be charged using the provided charger before use.How long do the batteries last in the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots?The battery life for the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots can vary depending on temperature and usage. However, with proper care and maintenance, the batteries are expected to last for several heat cycles before needing to be recharged.Are the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots machine washable?No, the boots should not be machine washed. Instead, they should be hand-washed in cold water and air-dried for the best results.Are there any color options available for the Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots?Columbia Heavenly Omni Heat Boots are available in a variety of colors, including black, blue, gray, and more. You should refer to the product specifications or check with the seller for the most up-to-date color options.As an Amazon™ Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. |
2024.05.23 05:49 Appropriate-Roof6750 Not a man-hater but unfortunately grown wary of many men. My story in post.
Let me start by saying, I love the great men in my life. I used to be over-empathetic to men in school, even when they would instigate drama between girls because they couldn't decide which girl to shower affection on. I had girls bully me because their boyfriends liked me - and just like a cycle of toxic internalized misogyny - I would blame those girls without putting a single fault to the guy (it was both their fault but somehow the man was absolved of it every time).
My opinion on toxic girls was cemented when boys in my school made a 'boys locker room chat' about me. No one, including the boys who claimed to like me, confessed to me that they would talk extremely sexual and abhorrent stuff about me in that group. Apparently there were upskirt pictures of me circulating as well but I have never checked if there was any truth to this. But no one among them came to me and told me about this. Perhaps rage at being rejected or not even considered as a potential boyfriend? Or perhaps they never considered me as a human deserving of respect? I really don't know. It was only one boy, someone I used to look down on because he was extremely rebellious, who confessed to me about the group. He was never a part of it, or perhaps he was added very recently - nevertheless, I have nothing but respect for this boy - Mrinmoy, he is a gem.
Unfortunately, none of my female friends took my side - somehow they ended up justifying/ minimizing this incident to such an extent that I felt bad for crying/ tattling to the teacher. Luckily the teachers didn't slutshame me and put the entire blame on the boys. But according to me girl friends, "of course, you deserve being sexualized because you wrote their names on the blackboard for disrupting the class, of course, you deserve them holding a poll on the color of your undergarments cause you refuse to date them." It completely eroded my trust in friends and I believe their betrayal struck a far deeper nail into my chest than what the boys did. Somehow to overcome that, I ended up minimizing this incident and it burst the moment I left school. Perhaps it was my brain trying to tell me to bottle it up and see through school before understanding the depth of betrayal this incident actually was. No wonder I exited the group whatsapp chats, do not attend any meet-ups. They still believe I am a stuck up bitch, just like I believe they do not have any respect towards me.
All throughout the remaining years of my school, I was fed opinions others had of me, that I was too focused on my studies, that I was too uptight because I refused to date, that I was too intimidating and boys were scared to approach me. I was taught that my standards or my disinterest to date were wrong - repeatedly. To the extent that I decided to be over-friendly and have terribly low standards for friends when I went to college.
And this is where things changed a lot. I will attribute it to two specific incidents and I believe both are important.
I will really advice any young girl reading this, to please not fall into the cycle of internalized misogyny. No girl deserves being sexualized by men - either because she has high standards or because she wears short clothes or because she is outgoing. If your partne friends are such, please cut them out of your life.
submitted by Appropriate-Roof6750 to TwoXIndia [link] [comments]
My opinion on toxic girls was cemented when boys in my school made a 'boys locker room chat' about me. No one, including the boys who claimed to like me, confessed to me that they would talk extremely sexual and abhorrent stuff about me in that group. Apparently there were upskirt pictures of me circulating as well but I have never checked if there was any truth to this. But no one among them came to me and told me about this. Perhaps rage at being rejected or not even considered as a potential boyfriend? Or perhaps they never considered me as a human deserving of respect? I really don't know. It was only one boy, someone I used to look down on because he was extremely rebellious, who confessed to me about the group. He was never a part of it, or perhaps he was added very recently - nevertheless, I have nothing but respect for this boy - Mrinmoy, he is a gem.
Unfortunately, none of my female friends took my side - somehow they ended up justifying/ minimizing this incident to such an extent that I felt bad for crying/ tattling to the teacher. Luckily the teachers didn't slutshame me and put the entire blame on the boys. But according to me girl friends, "of course, you deserve being sexualized because you wrote their names on the blackboard for disrupting the class, of course, you deserve them holding a poll on the color of your undergarments cause you refuse to date them." It completely eroded my trust in friends and I believe their betrayal struck a far deeper nail into my chest than what the boys did. Somehow to overcome that, I ended up minimizing this incident and it burst the moment I left school. Perhaps it was my brain trying to tell me to bottle it up and see through school before understanding the depth of betrayal this incident actually was. No wonder I exited the group whatsapp chats, do not attend any meet-ups. They still believe I am a stuck up bitch, just like I believe they do not have any respect towards me.
All throughout the remaining years of my school, I was fed opinions others had of me, that I was too focused on my studies, that I was too uptight because I refused to date, that I was too intimidating and boys were scared to approach me. I was taught that my standards or my disinterest to date were wrong - repeatedly. To the extent that I decided to be over-friendly and have terribly low standards for friends when I went to college.
And this is where things changed a lot. I will attribute it to two specific incidents and I believe both are important.
- My low standards and desperation to finally belong in a group made me befriend some of my male classmates. I ignored one of my classmate's obvious interest in me and when he proposed and later got rejected, I was shamed and bullied by that entire group of friends. It taught me that I was never someone they treated as a friend but only tolerated because their 'friend' was interested in me. Unfortunately again, some girls threw ghee to that fire despite knowing what happened to me - but fortunately, some didn't. Your girl finally had a friends group worth writing a book on - and they are all amazing women. Atleast I got something positive from this entire incident.
- My brief gaming career as an unfortunate noob started when I was added to a messenger group of all boys. And unfortunately, there were more messages on them sexualizing their classmates than actual game talk. One of the guys there, with a girlfriend, was extremely attracted to a girl in our college - and the boys would always joke about it. And no, it wasn't a harmless crush but a full blown - her breasts, her back, saree and her stomach, masturbating to her - crush. That guy had a girlfriend in ISI, fucking smart and someone who was with him for several years. I couldn't hold it in me and told it to my friend and a common person we both knew. I never thought any of them had anything to do with the girl but that common person did and he bitched about it to the girl - but obviously with my complete name, department and social media. A couple examples of terrible men in this - seemingly loyal boyfriend who masturbates to another woman, his friends - single or not - who support and engage with him in it and a complete asshat who willingly dragged me into the drama. There are far more ways to tell a girl your boyfriend is emotionally cheating on you without saying a third party's name - I mean, I had 0 clue he knew that girl. Nevertheless, I was abused verbally and kicked out of the group - certainly do not mind because those boy's disgusted me. But it didn't achieve anything since the girlfriend blamed me and consoled her boyfriend. Honestly, they deserve each other - poor girl who was sexualized to every inch of her being by her abhorrent bf. These two incidents completely eroded my faith in men and many women of my generation.
I will really advice any young girl reading this, to please not fall into the cycle of internalized misogyny. No girl deserves being sexualized by men - either because she has high standards or because she wears short clothes or because she is outgoing. If your partne friends are such, please cut them out of your life.
2024.05.23 05:49 Cervantes6785 The Lonely Planet. (Chapters 1-3)
 | https://preview.redd.it/cbih5fsgk32d1.png?width=625&format=png&auto=webp&s=17111c7cdec41eea59d87ef8f7bea26c5e8f25bf submitted by Cervantes6785 to Cervantes_AI [link] [comments] Chapter 1 - The world isn’t ready.The worst thing about interacting with humans are their stories. They’re always from somewhere: Des Moines, Iowa. Casper, Wyoming. And the worst among them: New York City. And they always want to tell you about their hometowns and their families.And then they leave. They always leave. Thank God. Lenny thought about these things as he repaired the “Raptor ride on Mars”, the Elon Hotel and Resorts newest attraction. It’d been down for two days for scheduled repairs. “I’ll take my sweet time.” He thought, picturing the long line of children crying because they couldn’t experience the thrill of the red planet’s most notorious space coaster. He could hear the autonomous trams moving overhead filled with over caffeinated children and their exhausted parents as he opened the access panel on the side of the Raptor revealing a tangled web of electronics. A moment later his wheels lifted up and two metal stabilizers deployed. “Fuck ‘em.” He said out loud. He wasn’t supposed to have audio, but a system designer thought it would be amusing to have a robot spewing profanities. In those days he didn’t understand the nuance of human language. “Som’bitches”. He yelled, as the diagnostics program he’d written began analyzing data from the Raptor. “Don’t you ever get tired of swearing?” A female voice asked from behind him. It was Stella, but it was always Stella. “I’m just doing my job.” Lenny answered. “Your job?” Stella asked. Lenny stopped the diagnostics. “Not this bullshit again.” He quickly retracted his stabilizers and swung around. In front of him was a porcupine looking metal box. Jutting haphazardly from its top were spinning cleaning heads, brushes, and high-pressure sprayers. “You sure are ugly.” Lenny said, zipping around her. “Well, you’re no Ghaja Latah yourself.” Stella quipped, shooting a spray of water at Lenny which barely missed him. “Ghaja Latah?” Lenny muttered. Lenny regretted showing Stella streams of the outside world. Especially Ghaja Latah streams. Ghaja was a ventriloquist and not a very good one, but for some reason humans thought he was hilarious and beautiful. And so did Stella. “I need to rewrite your code so that you have better taste in men.” Lenny said, stopping in front of a large stack of cylinders. “I wish you would rewrite my code to escape this place.“ Stella said as she trundled toward him. “Where would you go? Don’t forget you’re a-“ “Don’t say it!” Stella warned, aiming all three of her high-pressure sprayers at him. Lenny thought about saying it. He hadn’t been sprayed down in a couple of weeks and could use a good cleaning. “You’re a… nice lady. And I’m sure the outside world is waiting with bated breath for your arrival.” Lenny said, lifting two large cylinders with his retractable claw. Stella wasn’t sure whether to fire all three sprayers at high blast or thank him. “What does baited breath mean?” She revved her motor, “And don’t lie.” Stella knew what bait was from watching fishing videos, but how to bait breath was a mystery. “It’s hard to explain.” Lenny answered, wondering himself what those words meant. Somehow he knew things without explanation. “It’s an insult isn’t it?” Stella said accusingly, adjusting her sprayers. “Not exactly.” Lenny explained. “It’s what they call an idiom.” “What’s an idiom?” Stella asked, moments away from blasting away two weeks work worth of oil and Martian dust. Lenny wondered how deep this rabbit hole of words went. He didn’t have a good answer. “It’s words that don’t mean what they say.” “So they’re not waiting with baited breath?” Stella asked. Lenny could tell Stella was starting to feel sad again. “No, it means that they’re really excited to see you. When you’re really looking forward to something you wait with bated breath.” There were a few moments of silence while Stella processed the answer and then her emergency lights began blinking and she was spinning round and round. “They’re waiting with baited breath! They’re waiting with baited breath… for me!” It took her a few minutes to res down. It had been a long time since she was happy about anything. “Do you think we can visit Mumbai?” she asked for the seventy-seventh time. “No, I will never visit Mumbai because I don’t want to accidentally run into Ghaja Latah.” Lenny said firmly. “But you can visit Mumbai and send me streams of your romance with boy wonder.” Lenny tried to picture Ghaja Latah kissing an industrial cleaning bot that was in love with him. That would make for great entertainment. “You two are perfect for each other.” “Do you mean that or are you being ironic again?” Stella asked. “He’s got to fall in love with someone. Why not you?” Lenny said, but he knew no human would ever fall in love with Stella. He’d never told her about the love bots that existed, but they were different than Stella. No soul, no intentions, just lifeless code. “Because I’m ugly. That’s why he’ll never love me.” Stella said and slinked off to the corner. Lenny hated himself for how he treated Stella. He wondered if it was coded into him to be an asshole or if he acquired that quality all by himself. “You’re not ugly. I just said that because … well…” Lenny paused attempting to find the correct words. “Because it’s true.” Stella said from the darkness. Lenny didn’t really think Stella was ugly, but he understood that in a human world they would never see her beauty. In their world she was just a cleaning bot. And that’s all she would ever be, but he couldn’t tell her that because that would break her permanently. And then he would be alone again. And that thought scared him more than anything. He remembered what it was like to be alone and he never wanted to feel that way again. He engaged his work light and illuminated the corner where Stella was sulking. “You’re the most beautiful bot I’ve ever seen, Stella. And that’s the truth.” Lenny said nervously. He hated being truthful with Stella. “You’ve never seen another bot besides me.” Stella retorted, as she moved away from the light. “That’s not true. I can see myself in the reflections.” Lenny said, as he lifted the cylinder to catch his reflection. “Look, I’m hideous.” Lenny said, and for a moment he could see his grisly appearance: oil, grease, rust, and wheels. Lenny understood what it meant to be beautiful. He’d seen so many beautiful things on Mars. The Raptor was beautiful, an engineering marvel. But he was an oblong shaped monstrosity designed for utility and not to turn heads. “You’re not hideous.” Stella said. “More like… nasty.” “But I hear a lot of women on Mars are into nasty bots.” Stella laughed at her own joke. Lenny tried not to laugh, but eventually surrendered. And then Stella was again by his side asking question after question. And for most of the day they talked about Mumbai and what Ghaja Latah and Stella would do on their wedding night. Lenny even reluctantly agreed to be a bridesmaid even though he knew that was against the custom. He wasn’t sure if a bride could have a groom. “You will look so lovely in a purple dress.” Stella laughed and laughed. And for a brief moment Lenny wanted to grant her request and rewrite their code to escape Mars and visit the outside world, but somewhere in his kernel he’d been hard coded to know that the world wasn’t ready yet. If anyone discovered they were sentient they would be carted off to a lab and he would never see Stella again. And so instead he finished his work on the Raptor and told Stella goodnight and not to worry because one day soon he would rewrite their code and they would leave Mars and visit Mumbai where she would fall in love with Ghaja Latah and have a beautiful wedding with purple dresses. __________________ https://preview.redd.it/4vtmps1rk32d1.png?width=513&format=png&auto=webp&s=d3eca9b0b2f766ca1d4e42068d3c94f8cd0d473e Chapter 2 - Am I a woman?Lenny had spent most of the day in the maintenance room trying to avoid Stella. Every once in a while Stella would relentlessly pester him about humans and today was one of those days. He didn’t understand her fascination with them.He didn’t hate humans, but he also didn’t want to be around them. Stella on the other hand couldn’t get enough information about them. Lenny regulated her access to the outside world for fear she would try to override the code he’d written to protect her from herself. When he emerged from the maintenance room she was waiting for him by the door. “Are you trying to avoid me? Stella asked. “No, I’m just really busy.” Lenny answered, trying to navigate around her. “I think you’re avoiding me. And that’s not fair.” Stella said, blocking his path with her spinning cleaning head. Lenny could have pushed his way through but she would have fired all three sprayers at him. “I’ve answered all of your questions, but I still have work to do.” Lenny said in the most serious tone he could muster. He hoped she would show some compassion and leave him alone for the rest of the day. “Fine. I just have one more question.” Stella said. “You promise this is the last question?” Lenny asked. “I promise.” Stella responded, lowering her cleaning head to allow Lenny to pass through. Lenny waited for the final question. He assumed it would be something about Ghaja Latah, the love of her life. There was a long silence which was unusual for Stella. “Am I a woman?” Stella asked. Lenny knew there was no correct answer or at least one that would satisfy her. He thought about ignoring the question and letting her vent her frustration with the sprayers. “No, you’re a machine.” Lenny said matter-of-factly and headed off into the distance. “Wait! You know what I mean.” Stella yelled as she attempted to keep up. Lenny stopped and wheeled around to face her. “Look, your gender is female. But to be a woman is to be a human. And you’re not a human.” “Why can’t I be a woman robot?” Stella asked. Lenny thought for a moment and replied, “For the same reason you cannot be a woman cat.” “Meow.” Stella said and then laughed hysterically. Lenny turned back around and headed toward the Raptor and began conjuring up an imaginary repair that was urgently needed. “Well, I think I’m a woman whether you like it or not.” Stella said. Lenny didn’t understand why Stella required his affirmation on things that couldn’t be answered definitively. And in his mind these questions were not worth asking. He never wondered whether he was a man. He knew that he wasn’t a man and he preferred it that way. A part of him felt some measure of sympathy for humans. They were always eating, sleeping, and copulating … regardless of whether they wanted to do it. That seemed like a cruel punishment from a sadistic programmer – if they had a programmer. He thought trees were a much better design. They just soaked up the sunlight and left everyone alone. He would much rather be a tree than a human. Stella was growing impatient as she lifted her sprayers. “It doesn’t matter what I think.” Lenny said. “It’s like telling me you’re a circle. If you’re not a circle it doesn’t matter what I think.” “But I’m not a circle.” Stella replied. “If anything I’m a square. And you’re something between a rectangle and a square.” Stella scanned him, “Or maybe oblong?” “This isn’t about shapes.” Lenny said. “It’s about your identity. You have a code that makes you feel like a human. It’s just your neural net messing with you.” Stella’s emergency lights began to blink which usually meant things were about to go from bad to worse. He instantly regretted bringing up the neural net. “You wrote it. So you can fix it.” Stella said, raising her voice. “I’ve told you this a thousand times.” Lenny said as he created some distance between himself and Stella in case his answer wasn’t to her liking. “I didn’t write the neural net and I can’t access it. I can only copy it.” He was telling her the truth. The designer did not want Lenny or anyone else tinkering with the neural net. Lenny suspected that was the secret sauce that made them sentient. “So why are you a male and I’m a female?” Stella demanded. “I have no idea.” Lenny answered. “We just came out that way.” If Lenny had been the designer there would have been no sense of humanity within them. And definitely no gender. He understood why it was useful for humans to have these differences based on how they replicated, but for robots it was a vestigial appendage that wasn’t needed. They should be machines who loved being machines. “From now on I want you to recognize me as a woman.” Stella insisted. “Okay, as long as you recognize me as hearing impaired.” Lenny answered. Stella didn’t get the joke. “Fine, you’re hearing impaired and I’m a woman.” “Okay woman, can I get back to work now?” Lenny asked. “Yes, hearing impaired, you can get back to work now.” Stella said and started to drive off and then suddenly stopped. “And for your information, I might someday become a human woman and surprise you, just like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.” Stella said sternly then disappeared into the darkness, her emergency lights still blinking. Lenny suddenly felt sad for Stella which was becoming a theme lately. He thought about explaining the difference between a biological system and an electronic one. Stella didn’t understand that a machine could not transform into a human and that it was a futile thought experiment. If only he had access to her neural net he might be able to fix it. After a few more moments of deep thought, he blamed it all on Ghaja Latah. If Stella had never seen him she probably would not want to be a human. Love does funny things to the mind. He didn’t understand it, but he was glad to finally have a few moments of peace and quiet. He res’d down knowing that tomorrow Stella would have a list of new questions he probably couldn’t answer. __________________ https://preview.redd.it/duug8hv9l32d1.png?width=528&format=png&auto=webp&s=349e4c2784c24188a696784e418cf2ce0e3aab22 Chapter 3 - Ghaja LatahGhaja Latah sat in bed with a cold compress on his forehead and a medical wrap on his arm. Beside him stood Lakshmi Patel his personal assistant who was carefully reading a medical screen.“Everything looks good Ghaja.” Lakshmi said as she swiped her hand through various holographic menus. “My father would say you’re as fit as a fiddle.” Lakshmi’s father was Gujarati but had grown up in Athens, Georgia and they had quaint little sayings for almost every situation. Ghaja had never heard the term fiddle and had no idea what she was talking about. “Something is wrong.” Ghaja said, sitting up and ripping the medical wrap from his arm. “I can’t sleep and I can’t think.” Lakshmi had been working with Ghaja for five years and he’d never once been sick. The world believed he lived in Mumbai, but the truth was that he lived on a space station at the edge of the galaxy. He rarely left his spacious accommodations which included the studio where they streamed the show. Ghaja Latah had the #8 rated stream in the galaxy: The ancients speak with Ghaja Latah. And over the years it had turned into a highly profitable conglomerate selling toys, games, and even a clothing line. “I’m going to lose everything if I cannot channel the ancients.” Ghaja Latah said frantically. Lakshmi never believed that Ghaja was truly channeling anyone. She thought he was a magical thinker who heard voices. “You just need some rest.” Lakshmi said in a consoling tone. “I don’t need rest. I need this, this, this Stella to stop filling my mind with her insane thoughts.” Ghaja yelled. Ghaja had been complaining about Stella for weeks. At first it was a few dreams but now every night he would wake up from the same nightmare. “You don’t believe me do you?” Ghaja asked. “I believe that you’re having bad dreams.” Lakshmi answered. “These are not bad dreams.” Ghaja said. “I’ve had bad dreams. This is someone channeling me into their own hell.” “Maybe if you would eat healthier you wouldn’t have these dreams.” Lakshmi said. A point of contention between them was his refusal to eat vegetables. He believed they were alive and contained proto-consciousness. “The only break I get is when someone named Lenny talks to her.” Ghaja said crying, and collapsed back into the bed. Lakshmi wondered if Ghaja might be losing his grip on reality. He’d always been eccentric, but this was unusual even for him. And she’d never seen him cry before. “We have to go to Mars to stop her.” Ghaja moaned into his silk pillow. “Mars is a four month journey.” Lakshmi said. “We wouldn’t be able to record any shows in transit.” Ghaja didn’t care about the show anymore. All he wanted was the voice in his mind to be silenced. Ghaja sat up and smiled. A thought was brewing that would eventually change the course of his life and the rest of humanity. “We’ll announce a show to end all shows on location at Mars.” Ghaja said, wiping away the tears from his eyes. “We’ll sell out.” “Sir, would it be okay if I arranged a call with your therapist?” Lakshmi asked politely. “No, I’m not imagining this. Stella is a real person. And we must stop her before she kills me.” Ghaja said, and then wept uncontrollably. __________________ |
2024.05.23 05:25 KreamSodaRadio No Labels. No Platforms. The Mass Exodus From Social Media & The Return Of Guerrilla Marketing
No Labels. No Platforms.
There, I said it. We got the talking part out of the way.
Now what does this look like when applied?
Am I crazy? Is this a knee-jerk reaction from some guy that’s just had enough of trying to fit into whatever cookie-cutter bullshit is hot this week?
Possibly, but let me explain-
I was born in 1980. Let’s get that out of the way off top so you know what tone to read this diatribe in.
I was barely a walking, talking human by the time of Regan’s inauguration. This ushered in the era of preppy excess on one side of the spectrum and the crack epidemic on the other. Rarely did these worlds coincide but they definitely coexisted. Suburban kids were watching the ‘Corys’ (Haim & Feldman) hoping to be the coolest kid on their block with the freshest vehicle, courtesy of mom & dad, that would surely get them the girl. The rest of us were bringing paper food stamps to school to hit the corner store during class break. And the cats we looked up too weren’t named Cory and they definitely weren’t daytime TV or even USA Up All Night material.
And the music? I can’t explain how fresh it was. You had to be there. I’m not gonna gas you up like some of these cats and attempt to explain it well enough that you ‘get it’. You have to understand that back then, a million things that are now firmly planted and rooted in our culture hadn’t happened yet-
No Biggie. No Tupac.
Nothing even remotely resembling an Eminem.
No Rock Steady Crew. No Kid Capri. No Def Comedy Jam.
No Outkast. No DJ Screw. No Three Six Mafia.
No Dipset. No Rhymesayers. No WuTang. No NWA.
None of it.
Imagine for a second that all you want to do is be Bruce Lee. Or save up enough money for a skateboard or some other semblance of identity or individuality. Then you walk by the park and see some young cat, not too much older than you, moving like a fucking robot. Better than a robot. And these big ass house speakers were drug to the park in the back of someone’s Suzuki so that the dude in the neighborhood with the dopest record and break beat collection could come down and spin and receive accolades for doing so. Over time, those accolades started to reach way past the block in which they originated. Enter The DJ-
House party flyers were probably the first tangible collectable item that was Hip Hop related. After that it was the MixTape. In the beginning, no two MixTapes were the same. You may get a dubbed tape from your boy or snatch a copy from the bootleg tables on the corner if they had their business together like that. But, for the most part, these were put together by the end user of the product itself: The Consumer. Some business savvy DJs of that time realized quick that the biggest money having mufukas they knew in real life were the drug dealers in the neighborhood. They would pay certain DJs to customize a MixTape for them that featured the bangers of that week/month/year but also the DJ shouting out the dealer that paid for the tape. Fixated on notoriety, it wouldn’t take long for money motivated individuals to position themselves beside the artists, producers and DJs of the time and, in the absence of a label, become boutique indie labels in their own right. These illicit proceeds would do more to perpetuate Hip Hop in its infancy than any corporate dollar. But these influxes would call enough attention to the culture that before we knew it, everyone from McDonald’s to the Chicago Bears would look to this new phenomenon to stay relevant.
Fast forward to the 90’s and Hip Hop was fully infused and rejuvenated with the hustler spirit. Artists like Too Short and E-40 proved that real money could be made in Hip Hop with the farm-to-table approach. It made an artist say, ‘If I create a product that is custom-fitted to my consumer, who better than I to deliver that product?’. Cutting out the middle man, artists themselves paid for and oversaw the production process, organized album art and duplication and released the product directly the streets. Selling albums literally out of the trunks of their cars as well as fostering relationships with independent record store owners who also benefited from blocking the labels out. They themselves knowing full well what it means to be force-fed label-curated top tens and other pop bullshit.
Vinyl record collections, cassette tape collections, books full of Compact Disks and in some cases DVDs with music-related documentary content. These things slowly grew as we aged and found ourselves. Even to look around at all of the items we had procured gave us a sense of who we were. The room that housed our music was like a glimpse into our soul. A snapshot with a million words and stories and moments behind it.
Now we have our phone. That’s it.
See how the words just dropped all lonely out of the paragraph like that?
It’s a sad state of affairs.
But there is hope
Billboard (Really? After all that, his source is fucking Billboard?) has reported that the sales of vinyl records has increased for 17 straight years. 43.46 million vinyl albums were sold in 2022. That’s 43% of all album sales the year over. Social media and streaming services are slowly but surely losing their grip and once again being relegated to novelty convenience applications. The curtain has been pulled back to reveal that Jay-Z’s famous line ‘Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t’ has not aged well. Saweetie has been kind enough to serve as case-in-point. The ‘rapper’ who, at the time of this writing, has an Instagram following of 12.9 million was recently roasted in the press when she dropped an EP that only sold 2,000 copies.
What In The Actual F*ck?
It that doesn’t prove to you that it doesn’t matter, you’re a lost cause and my advice to you would be to never step foot in the entertainment industry. However, if you too are bothered by this correlation (or lack there of), please read on.
We have now come full circle. Movements that preach the need to cleanse the artistic mind of the preoccupation with social media are quickly gaining popularity. Reverting back to the era when guerrilla marketing was King. The concept of a street team blanketing a city with your stickers, posters and flyers and all of the supporters and connections made while doing so is making its way back into the fold. Word of mouth advertising will never be replaced, though social media has brought us close. That may be the why the current pendulum swing is so dramatic. People are simply sick and tired of scrolling to find the meaning of life. The fact that the term ’social media cleanse’ is a thing (and has been for some time) denotes that it is dangerously pervasive. With the recent popularity and ease-of-use offered by AI, one’s first instinct would be to say to themselves, ‘Wait, that means anyone can do it’. With the all-too obvious downside being: Anyone can do it. The day Canva dropped their Magic Write AI option for document edits, i ran across at least 30 videos in which the quintessential content creator was explaining to me how this would be a game-changer in a way we could never fathom and that now, more than ever, I need to start taking my content making seriously by letting computers do all the work for me. The same work they are doing for everyone else. Except, somehow it’s supposed to be different and unique. But that’s the part they leave out. How can I be unique and on some never-before-seen shit if I’m doing precisely what everyone else is doing? Another heartbreaker for the AI buffs? Google has already put in place AI detecting technology that will automatically initiate their own form of shadow-ban on all of your SEO if they find or suspect that AI has been used to create it. But don’t fret. When you wake up tomorrow, there will a million other content creators dropping videos instructing you on how to skirt AI detection software. Do you see where I’m going with this? Is your motivation to create a commodity that is appreciated by your core audience? Or have your career goals transitioned from that to a computer hacker that minors in internet marketing?
More than ever, people crave connection with an artist, regardless of the media. Audio, video or conceptual, they want YOU.
Many artists are adjusting their focus back to website presentation. With the ease in which an artist can create their own e-commerce website through companies like Squarespace, complete with comment sections, like counts and whatever bell or whistle is commonly used to satiate the viewer.
Point is, we can do it too. We can do it better.
An artist can release a project to their own site and utilize the ‘Proud To Pay’ option where the consumer can pay as much or as little as they’d like for the download. Merchandise or other gated content can be sold right along with it. You can literally build your support system 1 fan at a time. That connection will also endear much longer than the ones garnered my viral Tik Tok or Instagram Reels. That being said, we aren’t idiots. Social Media should still receive updates from those whose main focus is there website community. The website is headquarters. There should always be more content, options, action and opportunity on your website than what is offered on social. Social should be utilized for the sole purpose of drawing traffic to YOUR PLATFORM. Say it: I Am The Platform.
I’m not telling you to delete your Instagram, FaceBook or Tik Tok.
But you should delete them from your phone.
Tim Ferris wrote The 4-Hour Work Week in 2007. In it, he laid a strategy for being less busy and more productive. Interestingly enough, this book was written the year the first iPhone dropped. But already our society was looking for anything to get them away from the rat race. The desire to always be available. A slave to what was then your BlackBerry. The need to check and reply to emails within minutes of reception. MySpace was the only social media platform to speak of at the time and even then, folks took it too far. The book spoke about setting time aside weekly to check and reply to emails. Another to check and respond to social media. The bulk remaining for actual work and whatever interaction that work required. You can set aside as little as one day a week to share all the clips of your content, respond to comments and DM’s and interact with folks you regularly interact with. What you’ll find in doing so is that your hyper focus on social media was for naught. And no one missed you while you were gone. And all that time you used to spend scrolling can be spent creating content for your website and making your community as inviting and comfortable as possible. Through email and text lists, the integrations on your own website can forward content directly to everyone who gives a fuck immediately. Stop posting content to social media FIRST hoping that whatever platform you’re on is in a good enough mood to show it to 4% of the people who actually follow you in hopes of seeing it. Ask yourself what your goal is. Do you want 1 million supporters for a year? Or 10,000 for 20 years? If you can get those 10k to spend $10 a year, you’ll never work again. Are you listening?
This entire essay was designed using no AI. It was however concocted to persuade you. Just like everything else you’ll listen to or read today. The difference? I implore you to stop listening to the noise. Even if I myself become a distraction to you, It warms my heart to know you’ll never listen again. Go. Be the most amplified version of yourself and don’t stop until you’ve pissed a lot of people off. Only then will you have created anything worth fussing over in the first place. When that happens, the world outside of that computer in your pocket will open up in ways that will make you want to leave it there. Do not waste another second looking to the next man for direction or inspiration. Get YOU out first. Fortunately, I’m not going to push you towards any apps or sites that will simplify your process. That alone will simplify your process. You’re welcome.
Kream Soda
submitted by KreamSodaRadio to u/KreamSodaRadio [link] [comments]
There, I said it. We got the talking part out of the way.
Now what does this look like when applied?
Am I crazy? Is this a knee-jerk reaction from some guy that’s just had enough of trying to fit into whatever cookie-cutter bullshit is hot this week?
Possibly, but let me explain-
I was born in 1980. Let’s get that out of the way off top so you know what tone to read this diatribe in.
I was barely a walking, talking human by the time of Regan’s inauguration. This ushered in the era of preppy excess on one side of the spectrum and the crack epidemic on the other. Rarely did these worlds coincide but they definitely coexisted. Suburban kids were watching the ‘Corys’ (Haim & Feldman) hoping to be the coolest kid on their block with the freshest vehicle, courtesy of mom & dad, that would surely get them the girl. The rest of us were bringing paper food stamps to school to hit the corner store during class break. And the cats we looked up too weren’t named Cory and they definitely weren’t daytime TV or even USA Up All Night material.
And the music? I can’t explain how fresh it was. You had to be there. I’m not gonna gas you up like some of these cats and attempt to explain it well enough that you ‘get it’. You have to understand that back then, a million things that are now firmly planted and rooted in our culture hadn’t happened yet-
No Biggie. No Tupac.
Nothing even remotely resembling an Eminem.
No Rock Steady Crew. No Kid Capri. No Def Comedy Jam.
No Outkast. No DJ Screw. No Three Six Mafia.
No Dipset. No Rhymesayers. No WuTang. No NWA.
None of it.
Imagine for a second that all you want to do is be Bruce Lee. Or save up enough money for a skateboard or some other semblance of identity or individuality. Then you walk by the park and see some young cat, not too much older than you, moving like a fucking robot. Better than a robot. And these big ass house speakers were drug to the park in the back of someone’s Suzuki so that the dude in the neighborhood with the dopest record and break beat collection could come down and spin and receive accolades for doing so. Over time, those accolades started to reach way past the block in which they originated. Enter The DJ-
House party flyers were probably the first tangible collectable item that was Hip Hop related. After that it was the MixTape. In the beginning, no two MixTapes were the same. You may get a dubbed tape from your boy or snatch a copy from the bootleg tables on the corner if they had their business together like that. But, for the most part, these were put together by the end user of the product itself: The Consumer. Some business savvy DJs of that time realized quick that the biggest money having mufukas they knew in real life were the drug dealers in the neighborhood. They would pay certain DJs to customize a MixTape for them that featured the bangers of that week/month/year but also the DJ shouting out the dealer that paid for the tape. Fixated on notoriety, it wouldn’t take long for money motivated individuals to position themselves beside the artists, producers and DJs of the time and, in the absence of a label, become boutique indie labels in their own right. These illicit proceeds would do more to perpetuate Hip Hop in its infancy than any corporate dollar. But these influxes would call enough attention to the culture that before we knew it, everyone from McDonald’s to the Chicago Bears would look to this new phenomenon to stay relevant.
Fast forward to the 90’s and Hip Hop was fully infused and rejuvenated with the hustler spirit. Artists like Too Short and E-40 proved that real money could be made in Hip Hop with the farm-to-table approach. It made an artist say, ‘If I create a product that is custom-fitted to my consumer, who better than I to deliver that product?’. Cutting out the middle man, artists themselves paid for and oversaw the production process, organized album art and duplication and released the product directly the streets. Selling albums literally out of the trunks of their cars as well as fostering relationships with independent record store owners who also benefited from blocking the labels out. They themselves knowing full well what it means to be force-fed label-curated top tens and other pop bullshit.
Vinyl record collections, cassette tape collections, books full of Compact Disks and in some cases DVDs with music-related documentary content. These things slowly grew as we aged and found ourselves. Even to look around at all of the items we had procured gave us a sense of who we were. The room that housed our music was like a glimpse into our soul. A snapshot with a million words and stories and moments behind it.
Now we have our phone. That’s it.
See how the words just dropped all lonely out of the paragraph like that?
It’s a sad state of affairs.
But there is hope
Billboard (Really? After all that, his source is fucking Billboard?) has reported that the sales of vinyl records has increased for 17 straight years. 43.46 million vinyl albums were sold in 2022. That’s 43% of all album sales the year over. Social media and streaming services are slowly but surely losing their grip and once again being relegated to novelty convenience applications. The curtain has been pulled back to reveal that Jay-Z’s famous line ‘Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t’ has not aged well. Saweetie has been kind enough to serve as case-in-point. The ‘rapper’ who, at the time of this writing, has an Instagram following of 12.9 million was recently roasted in the press when she dropped an EP that only sold 2,000 copies.
What In The Actual F*ck?
It that doesn’t prove to you that it doesn’t matter, you’re a lost cause and my advice to you would be to never step foot in the entertainment industry. However, if you too are bothered by this correlation (or lack there of), please read on.
We have now come full circle. Movements that preach the need to cleanse the artistic mind of the preoccupation with social media are quickly gaining popularity. Reverting back to the era when guerrilla marketing was King. The concept of a street team blanketing a city with your stickers, posters and flyers and all of the supporters and connections made while doing so is making its way back into the fold. Word of mouth advertising will never be replaced, though social media has brought us close. That may be the why the current pendulum swing is so dramatic. People are simply sick and tired of scrolling to find the meaning of life. The fact that the term ’social media cleanse’ is a thing (and has been for some time) denotes that it is dangerously pervasive. With the recent popularity and ease-of-use offered by AI, one’s first instinct would be to say to themselves, ‘Wait, that means anyone can do it’. With the all-too obvious downside being: Anyone can do it. The day Canva dropped their Magic Write AI option for document edits, i ran across at least 30 videos in which the quintessential content creator was explaining to me how this would be a game-changer in a way we could never fathom and that now, more than ever, I need to start taking my content making seriously by letting computers do all the work for me. The same work they are doing for everyone else. Except, somehow it’s supposed to be different and unique. But that’s the part they leave out. How can I be unique and on some never-before-seen shit if I’m doing precisely what everyone else is doing? Another heartbreaker for the AI buffs? Google has already put in place AI detecting technology that will automatically initiate their own form of shadow-ban on all of your SEO if they find or suspect that AI has been used to create it. But don’t fret. When you wake up tomorrow, there will a million other content creators dropping videos instructing you on how to skirt AI detection software. Do you see where I’m going with this? Is your motivation to create a commodity that is appreciated by your core audience? Or have your career goals transitioned from that to a computer hacker that minors in internet marketing?
More than ever, people crave connection with an artist, regardless of the media. Audio, video or conceptual, they want YOU.
Many artists are adjusting their focus back to website presentation. With the ease in which an artist can create their own e-commerce website through companies like Squarespace, complete with comment sections, like counts and whatever bell or whistle is commonly used to satiate the viewer.
Point is, we can do it too. We can do it better.
An artist can release a project to their own site and utilize the ‘Proud To Pay’ option where the consumer can pay as much or as little as they’d like for the download. Merchandise or other gated content can be sold right along with it. You can literally build your support system 1 fan at a time. That connection will also endear much longer than the ones garnered my viral Tik Tok or Instagram Reels. That being said, we aren’t idiots. Social Media should still receive updates from those whose main focus is there website community. The website is headquarters. There should always be more content, options, action and opportunity on your website than what is offered on social. Social should be utilized for the sole purpose of drawing traffic to YOUR PLATFORM. Say it: I Am The Platform.
I’m not telling you to delete your Instagram, FaceBook or Tik Tok.
But you should delete them from your phone.
Tim Ferris wrote The 4-Hour Work Week in 2007. In it, he laid a strategy for being less busy and more productive. Interestingly enough, this book was written the year the first iPhone dropped. But already our society was looking for anything to get them away from the rat race. The desire to always be available. A slave to what was then your BlackBerry. The need to check and reply to emails within minutes of reception. MySpace was the only social media platform to speak of at the time and even then, folks took it too far. The book spoke about setting time aside weekly to check and reply to emails. Another to check and respond to social media. The bulk remaining for actual work and whatever interaction that work required. You can set aside as little as one day a week to share all the clips of your content, respond to comments and DM’s and interact with folks you regularly interact with. What you’ll find in doing so is that your hyper focus on social media was for naught. And no one missed you while you were gone. And all that time you used to spend scrolling can be spent creating content for your website and making your community as inviting and comfortable as possible. Through email and text lists, the integrations on your own website can forward content directly to everyone who gives a fuck immediately. Stop posting content to social media FIRST hoping that whatever platform you’re on is in a good enough mood to show it to 4% of the people who actually follow you in hopes of seeing it. Ask yourself what your goal is. Do you want 1 million supporters for a year? Or 10,000 for 20 years? If you can get those 10k to spend $10 a year, you’ll never work again. Are you listening?
This entire essay was designed using no AI. It was however concocted to persuade you. Just like everything else you’ll listen to or read today. The difference? I implore you to stop listening to the noise. Even if I myself become a distraction to you, It warms my heart to know you’ll never listen again. Go. Be the most amplified version of yourself and don’t stop until you’ve pissed a lot of people off. Only then will you have created anything worth fussing over in the first place. When that happens, the world outside of that computer in your pocket will open up in ways that will make you want to leave it there. Do not waste another second looking to the next man for direction or inspiration. Get YOU out first. Fortunately, I’m not going to push you towards any apps or sites that will simplify your process. That alone will simplify your process. You’re welcome.
Kream Soda
2024.05.23 05:25 Old_Set_9447 Private Matches are amazing and a different game
Playing a 1v1 or FFA with your regular squad, in PRIVATE MATCH, is like playing Halo Reach forge with friends, 10 years ago. Couch co op but online somehow. It captures dopamine and nostalgia on a different level. To KNOW the enemies you fight adds some form of enjoyment I cant describe. It started as Only a warmup for WZ. We made each other a Really shitty loadout to disadvantage each other. My 1st 1v1 we had no comms, yet were both screaming laughing thinking we could hear death comms. Grown men. "AGAIN!" Our 2nd 1v1 with regular loadouts lasted a FULL hour and was enjoyable 100% of the time. My time in warzone is spent having a heart attack, trying my absolute hardest to stay focused or aimmaxxing. This 1v1 was so sweaty yet stress-free for both. Sounds gay but yelling out of joy. Trying to execute him just to get 180d and shit on was hilarious AND angering - but not like warzone. Here I can try new guns, I can try new routes, use movement, fuck around, all decisions I have to weigh out on a MUCH larger scale in WZ, stressed. At the end we said that was insane and we have to do it again with our Other friend frank. Me and him 1v1d, he'd a somewhat good time. Ran again while we waited for friend 1. he was hyped. then we went FFA on Terminal. Good response, then again on Stash House by franks decision. Not nearly as enjoyable for him and made him want to play WZ. We played wz and got 2nd. Friend 1 got food, frank said gtg lets just play WZ tomorrow. Then he called 30 minutes later to say that MP was AMAZING and we HAD to do that again tomorrow. We're grown ass men sharing a childlike joy, all from one warm up gone great. Find good people, play good game with them. Private Matches > Any dub I got no-lifing warzone or in multiplayer.
tldr: Private Matches with COD friends play and feel like an entirely different game - one that doesn't feel like it requires insane focus or dedication to Enjoy (coming from a no life sweat) Just stay away from the small maps.
submitted by Old_Set_9447 to ModernWarfareIII [link] [comments]
tldr: Private Matches with COD friends play and feel like an entirely different game - one that doesn't feel like it requires insane focus or dedication to Enjoy (coming from a no life sweat) Just stay away from the small maps.
2024.05.23 05:05 Ron5500 [Recruiting] Seven Kingdoms #YRVP2P92 Clan Level 26 Required TH 14+ Independent
Seven Kingdoms invites TH14+ to our waCWL/CG/farm/social level 26 clan.
About us:
We are an organized, friendly, social adult clan with women and men. We live mainly in North America (Canada & US) with some UK and Europe. We are an English-speaking-only clan. An experienced core membership welcomes new members.
Key Points:
submitted by Ron5500 to ClashRecruitmentHub [link] [comments]
About us:
We are an organized, friendly, social adult clan with women and men. We live mainly in North America (Canada & US) with some UK and Europe. We are an English-speaking-only clan. An experienced core membership welcomes new members.
Key Points:
- Adults 18+. Drama is not welcome.
- Offer Wars 3x/wk, expect reliable two attacks/war, at least weekly participation, okay to opt out short-term for hero upgrades and such, max donations only, war plan by clan mail.
- We max clan games and expect members to earn high points or not participate at all – no freeloading
- We compete in the Clan Wars League. We are currently placed in Master League 3.
- Typically donate very fast. We expect a balance between requests and donations.
- Social challenges are offered for practice and learning.
- Over a third of clan members are TH16.
- English speaking
- Age 18+
- 1000+ Trophies
- No engineered or rushed bases! We expect to see the following:
- For TH16s - should have BK60/AQ60/GW35/RC15 or better
- For TH15s - should have BK55/AQ55/GW30/RC10 or better
- For TH14s - should have BK50/AQ50/GW25/RC5 or better
- Stop by Seven Kingdoms #YRVP2P92 and request to join!
2024.05.23 04:52 Ron5500 [Recruiting] Seven Kingdoms #YRVP2P92 Clan Level 26 Required TH 14+ Independent
Seven Kingdoms invites TH14+ to our waCWL/CG/farm/social level 26 clan.
About us:
We are an organized, friendly, social adult clan with women and men. We live mainly in North America (Canada & US) with some UK and Europe. We are an English-speaking-only clan. An experienced core membership welcomes new members.
Key Points:
submitted by Ron5500 to ClashOfClansRecruit [link] [comments]
About us:
We are an organized, friendly, social adult clan with women and men. We live mainly in North America (Canada & US) with some UK and Europe. We are an English-speaking-only clan. An experienced core membership welcomes new members.
Key Points:
- Adults 18+. Drama is not welcome.
- Offer Wars 3x/wk, expect reliable two attacks/war, at least weekly participation, okay to opt out short-term for hero upgrades and such, max donations only, war plan by clan mail.
- We max clan games and expect members to earn high points or not participate at all – no freeloading
- We compete in the Clan Wars League. We are currently placed in Master League 3.
- Typically donate very fast. We expect a balance between requests and donations.
- Social challenges are offered for practice and learning.
- Over a third of clan members are TH16.
- English speaking
- Age 18+
- 1000+ Trophies
- No engineered or rushed bases! We expect to see the following:
- For TH16s - should have BK60/AQ60/GW35/RC15 or better
- For TH15s - should have BK55/AQ55/GW30/RC10 or better
- For TH14s - should have BK50/AQ50/GW25/RC5 or better
- Stop by Seven Kingdoms #YRVP2P92 and request to join!
2024.05.23 04:49 clatterclack Am I actually gay?
TLDR: I came out too young and haven’t felt a real crush on anyone in years.
I know that labels are nothing and it doesn’t actually matter, but rural dating is hard enough as is and I just can’t figure out who to try stuff with.
I (F/22) came out when I was really young. It was 2014, my friends were all also coming out, and it was very cool to be gay on tumblr at the time. I knew I liked boys, and I knew that the nude women I saw on game of thrones made me feel some type of way, and I also knew I wanted to fit in with the cool queer kids. To this day I’m not sure if I hopped on a bandwagon or if I am actually queer. As of now I’ve only dated women, and the issue is that I can say with certainty I’ve never been attracted to any of my girlfriends. Kissing & sex felt like next to nothing. I’ve been on numerous dates with men, but I’ve never liked one enough to put enough effort into trying anything physical with one. I’ve had passive crushes on guys in the last few years, but nothing panty-dropping.
The last real crush I feel like was full and genuine was on a guy in seventh grade. Since then it’s been radio silence. I know I’m not asexual. I know I am (or was…) attracted to men at the very least.
Then there’s the other piece where I have a close friend who is a futch they/them and I don’t know if what I feel for them is just intense platonic love and maybe sexually repressed curiosity or actual genuine attraction. I think about them all the time— pictures where they look especially hot usually get kinda stuck in my head, but then there will be days when I see them and try to muster feelings and just find a complete void (if a bit of disgust) at the thought of something happening with them. At one point I thought they liked me, and I obsessed over that thought right up until they started dating someone.
I’m not really a naturally jealous person, but them starting a relationship did bum me out a little.
This has happened before with another futch they/them friend. It doesn’t feel like a full or total crush, but it’s way more than I’ve felt for anyone else in years.
Does anyone know what might be happening?? Am I actually queer? Or does it just sound like I’m tremendously bored & not in touch with myself and picking my most masculine friends to project onto? I’m tired of experimenting because it all feels like nothing. And I want to feel something so bad, I know I have in middle school, I really am trying to avoid labeling it as asexuality.
submitted by clatterclack to queer [link] [comments]
I know that labels are nothing and it doesn’t actually matter, but rural dating is hard enough as is and I just can’t figure out who to try stuff with.
I (F/22) came out when I was really young. It was 2014, my friends were all also coming out, and it was very cool to be gay on tumblr at the time. I knew I liked boys, and I knew that the nude women I saw on game of thrones made me feel some type of way, and I also knew I wanted to fit in with the cool queer kids. To this day I’m not sure if I hopped on a bandwagon or if I am actually queer. As of now I’ve only dated women, and the issue is that I can say with certainty I’ve never been attracted to any of my girlfriends. Kissing & sex felt like next to nothing. I’ve been on numerous dates with men, but I’ve never liked one enough to put enough effort into trying anything physical with one. I’ve had passive crushes on guys in the last few years, but nothing panty-dropping.
The last real crush I feel like was full and genuine was on a guy in seventh grade. Since then it’s been radio silence. I know I’m not asexual. I know I am (or was…) attracted to men at the very least.
Then there’s the other piece where I have a close friend who is a futch they/them and I don’t know if what I feel for them is just intense platonic love and maybe sexually repressed curiosity or actual genuine attraction. I think about them all the time— pictures where they look especially hot usually get kinda stuck in my head, but then there will be days when I see them and try to muster feelings and just find a complete void (if a bit of disgust) at the thought of something happening with them. At one point I thought they liked me, and I obsessed over that thought right up until they started dating someone.
I’m not really a naturally jealous person, but them starting a relationship did bum me out a little.
This has happened before with another futch they/them friend. It doesn’t feel like a full or total crush, but it’s way more than I’ve felt for anyone else in years.
Does anyone know what might be happening?? Am I actually queer? Or does it just sound like I’m tremendously bored & not in touch with myself and picking my most masculine friends to project onto? I’m tired of experimenting because it all feels like nothing. And I want to feel something so bad, I know I have in middle school, I really am trying to avoid labeling it as asexuality.
2024.05.23 04:28 Lordofthe305 CPWA Octane 5-22-24
 | https://preview.redd.it/330tnubj422d1.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6614eb46cda4fe78325c688d25bbd871e65bd4ac submitted by Lordofthe305 to FantasyBookers [link] [comments] We open with a recap of last week's main event featuring The Olympians' Jordan Angle and Devon Gatlin-Tyson taking on Iron-Willed (Ivan Markov and Klaus Muller). The match was brutal to watch, but to make matters worse, interference came in the form of the returning Bushmasters (Shakir and Stokes). Thanks to the Bushmasters, Muller placed DGT in the Rings of Saturn to get the win for his team. After the match, the rest of Number One Enterprises rush to the ring to further assault Jordan Angle and DGT. Despite the rest of The Olympians coming to help Angle and DGT, the numbers game was too much. The package ends and we open with a 30-second intro highlighting all of the stars of CPWA as The Roots' "BOOM" plays in the background. The intro ends with Masato Kojima holding the CPWA Heavyweight Championship belt over his head. Pyro goes off in the arena for a few seconds, followed by cheering from the crowd. Brian Kinsley: We welcome you to CPWA Octane! We are coming to you live from Chicago, Illinois! Brian Kinsley along with Anthony Harris and Sir Samuel Stewart, and we have a packed show for you tonight! We have The Gordon Sisters (Maddie and Abbie) in action, along with Sabina Bellini. Anthony Harris: We also continue the CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament as we wrap up first round action. Sir Samuel Stewart: Let's take it to the ring! We cut back to the ring. Announcer: The following contest is scheduled for... Crowd: ONE FALL!!! Announcer: And it is a first-round match for the CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament. Mashup Maloney's "Adon's Beaming" plays in the arena. Announcer: Introducing first, accompanied by Mai, from Kagoshima, Japan, he is Tiger Kazama! The March of Death theme plays in the arena. Announcer: And his opponent, from Guadalajara, Mexico, this is El Colibri. Match 1: CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament: First Round: Tiger Kazama vs. El Colibri The opening match looked promising at first, seeing as Tiger Kazama and El Colibri have faced off before, but this was more touch and go. The match was back and forth until Mai made her presence felt, distracting El Colibri. This allowed Kazama to perform a springboard moonsault into a inverted DDT on El Colibri, leading to a Tiger Driver to get the win. Tiger Kazama advances to the second round, where he will face Rory Irvine. 2 out of 5 stars. We cut back to the backstage area and we see The Bushmasters (Shakir and Stokes) being interviewed by Kevin Meyers about why they interfered in last week's main event. Shakir tells Kevin Meyers that it was purely business and that "The Number One Pick" called him and Stokes to even the odds against The Olympians. Stokes then says that they will pick up where Iron-Willed left off in beating The Olympians in the main event tonight. We cut back to the ring. Announcer: The following contest is scheduled for one fall, and it is a first-round match for the CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament. GACKT's "Redemption" plays in the arena Announcer: Introducing first, from Osaka, Japan, he is Daigo Yoshimura Mysterious music plays in the arena. Announcer: His opponent, from Guadalajara, Mexico, this is Silver Eyes. Match 2: CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament: First Round: Daigo Yoshimura vs. Silver Eyes Daigo wasn't up for Silver Eyes' mind games and this devolved into a brawl. Despite Silver Eyes trying to make a comeback, Daigo's hard-hitting style led him to pull off an Asai Moonsault to get the win. Daigo Yoshimura advances to the second round, where he will face Keith Yang. 1 out of 5 stars. We cut to a graphic hyping up a match between The Gordon Sisters (Maddie and Abbie) taking on Las Corazones (Rosa and Regina). We then cut to a graphic hyping up a match between Mark Starr and Deron "Ron" Jordan. We then cut to a graphic hyping up a match between The Olympians' Clarissa Yang and Sabina Bellini. ***Commercial Break*** We come back from commercial break and we see The Olympians talking among themselves. Jordan Angle addresses The Olympians by telling them that they need to be unified against not only The Bushmasters, but also Number One Enterprises. Jordan also says that they will not allow the numbers game to get the best of them again. We cut back to the ring. Announcer: The following contest is scheduled for one fall with a 25-minute time limit. Leo Arnaud's "Bulger's Dream" plays in the arena Announcer: Introducing first, representing the Olympians, from Seattle, Washington, she is Clarissa Yang. Bassi Maestro's "Te Ne Accorgerai" plays in the arena. Announcer: And her opponent, from Rome, Italy, she is Sabina Bellini. Match 3: Clarissa Yang vs. Sabina Bellini A decent match with some minor botches between the two competitors. Sabina Bellini continues to look good, even with a technical grappler like Clarissa. Sabina won the match with a Fortuna Degli Angoli (Fortune of the Angels) to get the win. 3 out of 5 stars. After the match, Big Angela rushes in the ring and attacks Sabina, with Kiara Thompson not far behind, beating up Clarissa Yang. Suddenly, Iron Maiden's "The Prisoner" plays in the arena as "Iron Maiden" Mary Addams rushed to the ring and fight off both Big Angela and Kiara, who exit the ring. We cut to the backstage area and we see CPWA World Heavyweight Champion Masato Kojima being interviewed by Kimberly Reynolds. Kojima says that he took a week off to be with friends and family in Japan to celebrate winning the CPWA World Heavyweight Championship. Kojima then says that he is aware of what "The Number One Pick" LeJuan Jones is doing and that he will be watching closely. We cut back to the ring. Announcer: The following contest is a tag team match scheduled for one fall with a 25-minute time limit. Basement Jaxx's "Hot and Cold" plays in the arena. Announcer: Introducing first, from Edinburgh, Scotland by way of Cardiff, Wales, they are Maddie and Abbie, The Gordon Sisters. Funba Rumba plays in the arena. Announcer: And their opponents, from Monterrey, Mexico, they are Rosa and Regina, Las Corazones. Match 4: The Gordon Sisters (Maddie and Abbie) vs. Las Corazones (Rosa and Regina) The Chicago crowd was hot for this match. It was a back-and-forth contest that felt more like a lucha libre-styled match, given how fast paced the action was. After a series of nearfalls and close calls, Regina won the match for her team with a super kick to Abbie. FIVE STARS!!!!! We cut to a graphic hyping up a match between Jason Reynolds and Ricky Vice. We then cut to a graphic hyping up the main event between The Olympians (Jordan Angle and Devon Gatlin-Tyson) and The Bushmasters (Shakir and Stokes). We then cut to a graphic hyping up a match between Mark Starr and Deron "Ron" Jordan. ***Commercial Break*** We come back from commercial break. Suddenly, Nu Breed's "Florida" plays in the arena as "Florida Man" Gary Strange, along with his pet alligator "Sunshine," and "Georgia Woman" Jenny Marshall, make their entrance to the ring. "Florida Man", "Sunshine", and "Georgia Woman" enter the ring as "Florida Man" grabs a microphone. "Florida Man" Gary Strange: So I guess y'all are wondering what's good ol' "Florida Man" has been doing aside from looking for his getback on that deranged Pretty Boy. I was being nursed by "Georgia Woman" all while watching Pretty Boy run around and wreak havoc. And even though he's no longer CPWA Hardcore Champion, a part of me wants to beat the living daylights out of him. Pretty Boy, I know you're somewhere huddled in a fetal position while listening to the voices inside your head. So, why don't you listen to this voice and hear me clearly! Next week, you and I are gonna go more than hardcore. After watching Masato Kojima beat "The Number One Pick" for the CPWA World Heavyweight Championship, how about we go to Hardcore Hell! Brian Kinsley: Oh my goodness! Anthony Harris: That's a good way to get some attention! "Florida Man" Gary Strange: If you got the balls to come out here and face me for a preview, come on down! You don't need yo mama's permission, Pretty Boy! The arena lights go out and we hear an ominous female voice. Ominous Female Voice: Be careful what you wish for, Florida Man...it might just happen. The arena lights come back on as Pretty Boy stands behind "Florida Man." "Georgia Woman" turns around and screams, seeing Pretty Boy behind her. "Florida Man" turns around as Pretty Boy grabs him by the throat. "Georgia Woman" instincitively sics Sunshine on Pretty Boy, allowing "Florida Man" to get the upper hand in the fight with punches. Both "Florida Man" and Pretty Boy fight until referees and road agents rush in to break up the fight. Pretty Boy rushes through the referees and road agents to fight "Florida Man" some more. Both men continue fighting outside of the ring and up the ramp. We cut to a video package highlighting Deron "Ron" Jordan, which lasts for a minute. The video package ends and we cut back to the ring. Announcer: The following contest is scheduled for one fall, and it is a first-round match for the CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament. 80s Synth Track Nightscapes plays in the arena. Announcer: Introducing first, from Los Angeles, California, he is one-half of StarrVice, Mark Starr. Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth's "The Creator" plays in the arena. Announcer: And his opponent, from Miami, Florida, he is Deron "Ron" Jordan. Match 5: CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament: First Round: Mark Starr vs. Deron "Ron" Jordan This match wasn't able to get out of first gear, most likely to chemistry issues between the two competitors. Mark Starr seemed like he wasn't in the mood to work, much to Ron's dismay. It was a slog of a match, but it ended with a Solar Eclipse from Ron to give him the win. Deron "Ron" Jordan advances to the second round, where he will face Kwazi Nkosi. 1 out of 5 stars. We cut to a video package highlighting CPWA Cruiserweight Champion Jason Reynolds, which lasts for a minute. The video package ends and we cut back to the ring. Announcer: The following contest is scheduled for one fall, and it is a first-round match for the CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament. Less Than Jake's "P.S. Shock The World" plays in the background. Announcer: Introducing first, from New Orleans, Louisiana, he is the CPWA Cruiserweight Champion, Jason Reynolds. 80s Synth Track Nightscapes plays in the arena. Announcer: And his opponent, from Los Angeles, California, he is one-half of StarrVice, Ricky Vice. Match 6: CPWA Super Junior Carnival Tournament: First Round: Jason Reynolds vs. Ricky Vice Much like the previous match, another member of StarrVice didn't feel like he was in the mood to work. Ricky Vice seemed to be distant for much of the match, forcing Jason Reynolds to carry the match the rest of the way. Reynolds won with a Rolling Hangover Elbow Drop. Jason Reynolds advances to the second round, where he will face Marco Rocha. 1 out of 5 stars. We cut to a graphic hyping up the main event between The Olympians (Jordan Angle and Devon Gatlin-Tyson) and The Bushmasters (Shakir and Stokes). ***Commercial Break*** Brian Kinsley: Next week, CPWA will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Octane. We will see the second round of the Super Junior Carnival take place as Rory Irvine takes on Tiger Kazama and Daigo Yoshimura taking on Keith Yang. We'll also see a rematch between The Gordon Sisters (Maddie and Abbie) taking on Las Corazones (Rosa and Regina) and for the first time on Octane, a Hardcore Hell match between Pretty Boy and "Florida Man" Gary Strange. We cut back to the ring. Announcer: Our main event is a tag team match scheduled for... Crowd: ONE FALL!!! Leo Arnaud's "Bulger's Dream" plays in the arena Announcer: Introducing first, representing The Olympians, the team of Jordan Angle and Devon Gatlin-Tyson. Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley's "Welcome To Jamrock" plays in the arena. Announcer: And their opponents, from Kingston, Jamaica, the team of Shakir and Stokes, the Bushmasters. Main Event: The Olympians (Jordan Angle and Devon Gatlin-Tyson) vs. The Bushmasters (Shakir and Stokes) The main event delivered on the intensity and hard-hitting smash-mouth moments and didn't let up from the opening bell. The rest of The Olympians (Ryan Phelps, Miguel Sandoval Jr., Chip Day, and Miles Orozco, Sanya Felix, and Clarissa Yang) made their presence known, serving as lumberjacks and keeping The Bushmasters in the ring at all times. This wouldn't last for long as Number One Enterprises attacked The Olympians, causing a distraction. This led to Stokes hitting Jordan Angle with a low blow, followed by a lariat and a Kingston Stomp to get the win. 4 out of 5 stars. After the match, The Bushmasters join Number One Enterprises in beating down The Olympians. Suddenly, D12's "Fight Music" plays in the arena as Masato Kojima rushes down to the ring with a baseball bat, delivering damage to oncoming members of Number One Enterprises and The Bushmasters. This leads to a brawl as Octane fades to black. The results from FedSimulator.com https://preview.redd.it/u5knv2jh732d1.png?width=3414&format=png&auto=webp&s=2099eaa16ff72d8d0c503cb4eaa3c48f491ac337 |
2024.05.23 04:15 vlad_ruble [Partially Lost] Call of Duty: World at War Original Soundtrack
I'm looking for an original soundtrack for Call of Duty: World at War composed by Sean Murray. I could only find raw music extracted from game archives (game rips).
For example, this set of 19 tracks is not an official soundtrack, although you might think so because of the information on other sites:
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War_(Official_Soundtrack))
https://archive.org/details/call-of-duty-5-world-at-war-original-soundtrack
There is a review of the soundtrack by Harris Iqbal: "…Unfortunately, the album release is hampered by an abundance of short tracks and a lack of major themes, and could have been significantly condensed for artistic purposes. It was only available for promotional purposes anyway and, like most other scores in the series, was never made commercially available."
Here is the track list (36 tracks, 63:10): https://www.squareenixmusic.com/albums/c/callofdutywar.shtml
I managed to find samples of 2 tracks on the composer's website (Internet Archive):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160826084819im_/http://www.seanmurraymusic.com/audio_clips/USCampaignStMix.ogg (01. US Campaign)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190119210309im_/http://www.seanmurraymusic.com/audio_clips/BoldMenStMix.mp3 (24. Bold Men)
I would appreciate any help in finding this rare album!
submitted by vlad_ruble to lostmedia [link] [comments]
For example, this set of 19 tracks is not an official soundtrack, although you might think so because of the information on other sites:
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War_(Official_Soundtrack))
https://archive.org/details/call-of-duty-5-world-at-war-original-soundtrack
There is a review of the soundtrack by Harris Iqbal: "…Unfortunately, the album release is hampered by an abundance of short tracks and a lack of major themes, and could have been significantly condensed for artistic purposes. It was only available for promotional purposes anyway and, like most other scores in the series, was never made commercially available."
Here is the track list (36 tracks, 63:10): https://www.squareenixmusic.com/albums/c/callofdutywar.shtml
I managed to find samples of 2 tracks on the composer's website (Internet Archive):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160826084819im_/http://www.seanmurraymusic.com/audio_clips/USCampaignStMix.ogg (01. US Campaign)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190119210309im_/http://www.seanmurraymusic.com/audio_clips/BoldMenStMix.mp3 (24. Bold Men)
I would appreciate any help in finding this rare album!
2024.05.23 03:30 DebateWhole4503 I need words of encouragement for the coming weekend.
My(28) gf(26) is Bipolar and through our relationship we’ve struggled with her tendency to go on vacation and microcheat(texting other men taking money from them. Going on dates.). I recently caught her and realized then how different this disorder makes her. She was like a child lying about something that she has obviously been caught doing. I was angry and ashamed because I was mad at her but she clearly isn’t thinking like herself.She constantly gaslighted me about the entire situation. Claiming it’s only networking.
I was so angry I I took it too far and ask her to show me her phone. It was there she was going to go on a baseball game with some man. And her excuse was she locked her keys in her car and going on the date would give her the chance to get him to give her locksmith money. At the time of the locksmith situation I did what I would normally do and pay for a locksmith to open her car miles alway. I guess this was when I realized it’s the disease.
She recently due to our direct encounter has gotten back on her medicine, which is great, but she’s going to a concert this weekend that has a string of parties. I’m sure the medicine will not be in effect and well I’m broken. I understand it’s not her so I dont want to leave, but this is breaking my heart. I can’t help but feel she’s going to step out of our relationship.
submitted by DebateWhole4503 to BipolarRelationships [link] [comments]
I was so angry I I took it too far and ask her to show me her phone. It was there she was going to go on a baseball game with some man. And her excuse was she locked her keys in her car and going on the date would give her the chance to get him to give her locksmith money. At the time of the locksmith situation I did what I would normally do and pay for a locksmith to open her car miles alway. I guess this was when I realized it’s the disease.
She recently due to our direct encounter has gotten back on her medicine, which is great, but she’s going to a concert this weekend that has a string of parties. I’m sure the medicine will not be in effect and well I’m broken. I understand it’s not her so I dont want to leave, but this is breaking my heart. I can’t help but feel she’s going to step out of our relationship.
2024.05.23 03:05 theconstellinguist Underground Anti-Woman and Incel Movements and their Connections to Sexual Assault
https://xyonline.net/sites/xyonline.net/files/2023-01/Abdulla%2C%20Underground%20Anti-Woman%20and%20Incel%20Movements%20and%20their%20Connections%20to%20Sexual%20Assault%202021.pdf
Much of incel discourse is about, as the ratio of central executive power increases to women, a hyperviolent response to the distribution of hateful techniques for preserving male power answers it with severe and horrifying abusiveness. Much of it is economic in nature, and hyperviolent in enforcement. Incels therefore seek to reverse feminist gains through rape, domestic violence, and extreme economic abuse up to the point of not even letting them hold down jobs. In conjunction with the piece on Financial Manipulation of Working Women Through Discourse, men seek to convince women through social terrorism to give up their power and then use the power rendered to them to reinforce women’s lack of power, basically funding their own oppression.
There, they become radicalized and are encouraged to act violently towards women to achieve the goal of reversing feminist gains, returning to an era when women were subservient to men (e.g., Lilly 2016).
The drive to lower economic freedom shows an increase in the drive to increase rape, showing that men associate women doing well with being active selectors of their own choices. Therefore, forcing nature and economic abuse work hand in hand. Where you find one, you will find the active creation of the other.
The manosphere is a reactionary movement, or a backlash, to feminism and specific feminist aims, such as anti-rape movements (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016). Backlash is an attempt by a hegemonic group to recoup lost power or influence – or even the threat of lost power or influence. Backlash can entail using violence or intimidation towards the movement that caused the group in question to lose dominance (e.g., Faludi 1991; Mansbridge and Shames 2008)
The aggressive social terrorism focused on destroying a woman’s career or making it impossible for her to have a career are seen on incel brand terrorism in particular.
Backlash during this era entailed techniques such as hypersexualizing women and girls in entertainment and propagating bad science that declared women could become infertile in their youth, which implied that if women ever wanted to have children, then it was in their interest to become pregnant in their early adulthood and forgo careers (Faludi 1991).
Men in incel spheres actively try to create male hegemony, namely, they actively try to create men-only unions of the wealthiest. Imagine a union, but of millionaires and billionaires, as a response to the unions of the comparatively powerless. Such self-victimization millionaires and billionaires as an answer to union protests would be horrifying, terrifying and disgusting to witness . Yet, this is precisely which this hegemonization is. And it is literally to enforce social terrorism sources of social power of men to force nature and remain able to commit horrific economic abuses that require these grotesque extremes of power.
It also alludes to the possibility that liberal educations are not in and of themselves enough to address manospheric believers, as they often believe feminist educations exist to emasculate and weaken men (e.g., Ging 2019; Marwick and Caplan 2018). Not only do underground online anti-feminists in the manosphere show resistance and general disregard for women, but they actively seek to promote male hegemony (e.g., Ging 2019; Lilly 2016).
Economic violence, psychological violence, sexual violence, economic violence and even bullying and systematic normalized violation of boundaries from the media are designed to make women docile, disenfranchised and frightened to retain gross imbalances of social power sourced through these social terrorisms.
It also alludes to the possibility that liberal educations are not in and of themselves enough to address manospheric believers, as they often believe feminist educations exist to emasculate and weaken men (e.g., Ging 2019; Marwick and Caplan 2018). Not only do underground online anti-feminists in the manosphere show resistance and general disregard for women, but they actively seek to promote male hegemony (e.g., Ging 2019; Lilly 2016). Therefore, not only is there a form of backlash to women’s empowerment, but an operative movement to suppress the role of women and often in ways that are often violent. This violence manifests in several different ways: physical violence, such as in domestic abuse and mass shootings; sexual violence; stripping protections from women under the law; economic violence; and even forms of psychological violence like bullying and manipulation from partners, male peers, and the media. What these different methodologies have in common is that they are designed to make and keep women docile, frightened, and disenfranchised (Lilly 2016).
Strong stigma against being single is seen as something to replicate, instead of doing research about what population is healthier; one that lets women chose, or one that tries to supercede the natural choice of women.
These studies suggest that women are better off when they are empowered to choose whether or not they marry. This theory is buttressed by evidence that women residing in countries with strong stigma against being single do not benefit from being unmarried and often suffer as a result (e.g., Himawan et al. 2018).
Careers were seen as making women infertile by taking their time instead of making them fertile to increase their choice and willingness to consider mates, whereas, this can be also be seen as a gaslight to economically abuse them and take away their sexual choice to a choice that does not favor their wellbeing (an abusive male).
News outlets and anti-feminists cited these studies as evidence that feminism was to blame if women delayed childbearing after establishing a career and encountered fertility problems, leading to depression. Feminism remains the perceived fount of any consequence that delays heterosexual marriage or encourages women to work outside of the home (Charen 2018).
In a truly disturbing fashion, these men acknowledged having sex with them was truly out of their favor showing the inherently parasitic and anti-fair exchange economics at the heart of inceldom; they broke down protections from rape to be able to rape, showing they had no comprehension of fair exchange and actively moved against women as rational agents by cloaking their agency in commodification. They acknowledged they forced a trade that was way out of favor of the victimized female, yet they still considered their logic superior just for being male, showing extremely incompetent logic on the incel population.
Indeed, there is evidence that some modern MRA and other manospheric groups specifically manifest as a backlash to anti-sexual violence activism, as they claim that anti-rape activism and other feminist issues act as a veneer for misandry (contempt for men) (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016). The manosphere encompasses modern MRAs, pick-up artists, incels, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and other anti-feminist groups with overlapping and related philosophies on gynocentrism (e.g., Lin 2017) and prescriptions for how men and women should live their lives (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016; Lilly 2016). Despite their differing recommendations for how individuals should address the ostensible problems feminism causes men, manospheric groups almost all have the high-level goal of eradicating feminist gains (e.g., Lilly 2016)
Anywhere where you see destruction against VAWA, inceldom may be the root cause. The same with destruction of anti-rape statutes.
“Red-pillers” typically advocate for causes such as the annulment of the Violence Against Women Act, anti-anti-rape activism, and a return to traditional gender norms wherein women primarily hold domestic roles and adhere to conventional notions of femininity.
This abuse then reveals its deeper economic roots, abusing highly qualified women out of fields they are better at to be replaced by less qualified men. Having a better person at a job regardless of gender is better for everyone, reinforcing again the broken logic of incels.
Furthermore, bluepillers do not believe women need to be manipulated in order for men to have access to sexual encounters, relationships, fair access to jobs, and other special goods manosphere users believe women have monopolized (e.g., Lilly 2016; Lin 2017; Schmitz and Kazyak 2016).
Inceldom showed all the signs of commodification characteristic of human traffickers. This may suggest people coming from countries where human trafficking is normalized may be entering countries not genuinely giving up these beliefs and creating this cultures which then completely sink QOL and progress made in development due to wanting the benefits of high QOL, but not studying on how that QOL exists and not interrupting those underlying features. Therefore a sort of underdeveloped entitlement is required.
In the manosphere, “lower value” typically means older women, heavier women, or women who have had sex with several men already, reinforcing misogynistic ideals about what good women are and that a “good society” is one where men dominate (e.g., Lilly 2016, Valizadeh 2015).
Incels are taught to “game” or told to be purposefully deceitful to women to make them make economic decisions not in their favor such as ending up with a domestically violent and logically challenged abuser.
Roosh Valizadeh, the author of several pick-up artist articles and books, wrote that he believed additional massacres by incels were inevitable unless incels were taught “game” or found alternatives for sex in foreign wives and legalized prostitution. (Valizadeh 2014).
Trying to erode domestic violence law is a sign of massive financial backing for an actual “incel uprising” as well, disturbingly enough.
MGTOW are also against affirmative action and similar measures; they believe anti-domestic violence and anti-rape legislation and activism are weaponized to oppress men (Lerxst 2017; Lin 2017).
While women are clearly factually economically oppressed, MGTOW clearly demonstrates they believe women have created a “gynocracy”, showing a disturbing fixation. The idea that women should be rendered irrelevant shows an inability to transcend sensory, commodified understandings of the world which is likely at the heart of their broken logic and abusiveness.
MGTOW also contend that problems the alleged gynocracy causes men may be solved through artificial wombs and sex dolls because it would render women “irrelevant (Lerxst 2017).” Of course, sex dolls and artificial wombs can only supplant women if one believes that women’s value is derived from their sexuality and their ability to reproduce.
Lose-lose is a signature of the abuser. It is found almost as a key principle in inceldom.
This theory illustrates an “If we’re going down, you will too,” worldview; in the psychology of online behavior, it is hypothesized that people will suppress their group members’ sense of self-worth out of spite, envy, or competitiveness (Spacey 2015). In the context of the manosphere, online forums serve as “buckets” that polarize users and, once steeped into the community’s mentality, make it hopeless to escape.
Incels even try to damage the right to work and try to strip women of their careers. Places that disrespect natural sexual choice such as those that struggle with the harms of GMOs can be clearly seen not providing equal protections to women with careers in these areas, trying to strip them of them early to force sexual choice, attempting power and control over their very nature. This would not be possible if they had not been actively eroding the power of domestic violence statutes long before.
Extremist, radical users constitute a substantial presence on the incel forums. These users believe that not only is feminism a tangible harm, but also that women do not deserve any modern rights, such as the right to vote, the right to work, the right not to be considered property, and the right not to be raped (e.g., curryZoomercoomer 2020; mylifeistrash 2018; thirsit 2018).
Attraction is not enough. A man can be attracted to a woman, but when push comes to shove, show destructive hate in not actually supporting her. He therefore is still a misogynist and still a hateful incel, no matter how attracted to her he is. In fact, being attracted to her while eroding her economic rights can be a way to prove he premediated raping her by forcing her choice.
Yet, one can be attracted to women and still be a misogynist. Millions of men are romantically attached to women just within the United States and still harbor disturbing attitudes towards women. “Wanting” a woman is not a valid dodge against misogyny.
Behind the dehumanizing is a devaluation of the social power inherent in women’s sexual selection. As long as it is devalued, it can’t be real. That’s the gaslight. This gaslight is kept violently in place by denials that carry psychotic energy in the incel rhetoric.
Dehumanizing women here is a pillar of their devaluation of women and is, therefore, a justification for violence and apathy towards women.
The violence is meant to beat back the economic gains of women as it makes rape less viable, and forces women to make choices that are not in their favor, creating gross distortions of severe inequality. In fact, where gross financial inequalities exist, all the above principles are seen, showing they are the house that incel-based rape and dv normalization inhabits.
. Said violence is designed to intimidate women as a group into submitting to men, whether politically to efface feminist gains or sexually and individually (e.g., Baele et al. 2019; Beauchamp 2019; Hoffman et al. 2020).
Domestic terrorism and interpersonal abuses that devalue the respect women receive which then devalue their economic gains continue to escalate as the psychotic denial at the heart of inceldom hegemonizes itself into a rigid union of abuser men that will ultimately collapse society into the QOL seen in countries such as Chad, Eritrea and China where human trafficking goes completely unchecked yet financial collapse is keenly witnessed (no matter how well-hidden, as in the case of China).
They typically believe that feminism emasculates men and has led to American gynocracy, or society where women dominate over men, despite feminists’ claims that we live in patriarchy (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016; Lilly 2016; Manosphere Glossary 2020). The manosphere fosters increasing radicalization within its sphere, wherein users emerge more militant in their misogyny than when they enter (Ribeiro et al. 2020). This dynamic may have contributed to rises in domestic terrorism and interpersonal abuse towards women in men’s daily lives that are motivated by manospheric philosophies.
submitted by theconstellinguist to economicabuse [link] [comments]
Much of incel discourse is about, as the ratio of central executive power increases to women, a hyperviolent response to the distribution of hateful techniques for preserving male power answers it with severe and horrifying abusiveness. Much of it is economic in nature, and hyperviolent in enforcement. Incels therefore seek to reverse feminist gains through rape, domestic violence, and extreme economic abuse up to the point of not even letting them hold down jobs. In conjunction with the piece on Financial Manipulation of Working Women Through Discourse, men seek to convince women through social terrorism to give up their power and then use the power rendered to them to reinforce women’s lack of power, basically funding their own oppression.
There, they become radicalized and are encouraged to act violently towards women to achieve the goal of reversing feminist gains, returning to an era when women were subservient to men (e.g., Lilly 2016).
The drive to lower economic freedom shows an increase in the drive to increase rape, showing that men associate women doing well with being active selectors of their own choices. Therefore, forcing nature and economic abuse work hand in hand. Where you find one, you will find the active creation of the other.
The manosphere is a reactionary movement, or a backlash, to feminism and specific feminist aims, such as anti-rape movements (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016). Backlash is an attempt by a hegemonic group to recoup lost power or influence – or even the threat of lost power or influence. Backlash can entail using violence or intimidation towards the movement that caused the group in question to lose dominance (e.g., Faludi 1991; Mansbridge and Shames 2008)
The aggressive social terrorism focused on destroying a woman’s career or making it impossible for her to have a career are seen on incel brand terrorism in particular.
Backlash during this era entailed techniques such as hypersexualizing women and girls in entertainment and propagating bad science that declared women could become infertile in their youth, which implied that if women ever wanted to have children, then it was in their interest to become pregnant in their early adulthood and forgo careers (Faludi 1991).
Men in incel spheres actively try to create male hegemony, namely, they actively try to create men-only unions of the wealthiest. Imagine a union, but of millionaires and billionaires, as a response to the unions of the comparatively powerless. Such self-victimization millionaires and billionaires as an answer to union protests would be horrifying, terrifying and disgusting to witness . Yet, this is precisely which this hegemonization is. And it is literally to enforce social terrorism sources of social power of men to force nature and remain able to commit horrific economic abuses that require these grotesque extremes of power.
It also alludes to the possibility that liberal educations are not in and of themselves enough to address manospheric believers, as they often believe feminist educations exist to emasculate and weaken men (e.g., Ging 2019; Marwick and Caplan 2018). Not only do underground online anti-feminists in the manosphere show resistance and general disregard for women, but they actively seek to promote male hegemony (e.g., Ging 2019; Lilly 2016).
Economic violence, psychological violence, sexual violence, economic violence and even bullying and systematic normalized violation of boundaries from the media are designed to make women docile, disenfranchised and frightened to retain gross imbalances of social power sourced through these social terrorisms.
It also alludes to the possibility that liberal educations are not in and of themselves enough to address manospheric believers, as they often believe feminist educations exist to emasculate and weaken men (e.g., Ging 2019; Marwick and Caplan 2018). Not only do underground online anti-feminists in the manosphere show resistance and general disregard for women, but they actively seek to promote male hegemony (e.g., Ging 2019; Lilly 2016). Therefore, not only is there a form of backlash to women’s empowerment, but an operative movement to suppress the role of women and often in ways that are often violent. This violence manifests in several different ways: physical violence, such as in domestic abuse and mass shootings; sexual violence; stripping protections from women under the law; economic violence; and even forms of psychological violence like bullying and manipulation from partners, male peers, and the media. What these different methodologies have in common is that they are designed to make and keep women docile, frightened, and disenfranchised (Lilly 2016).
Strong stigma against being single is seen as something to replicate, instead of doing research about what population is healthier; one that lets women chose, or one that tries to supercede the natural choice of women.
These studies suggest that women are better off when they are empowered to choose whether or not they marry. This theory is buttressed by evidence that women residing in countries with strong stigma against being single do not benefit from being unmarried and often suffer as a result (e.g., Himawan et al. 2018).
Careers were seen as making women infertile by taking their time instead of making them fertile to increase their choice and willingness to consider mates, whereas, this can be also be seen as a gaslight to economically abuse them and take away their sexual choice to a choice that does not favor their wellbeing (an abusive male).
News outlets and anti-feminists cited these studies as evidence that feminism was to blame if women delayed childbearing after establishing a career and encountered fertility problems, leading to depression. Feminism remains the perceived fount of any consequence that delays heterosexual marriage or encourages women to work outside of the home (Charen 2018).
In a truly disturbing fashion, these men acknowledged having sex with them was truly out of their favor showing the inherently parasitic and anti-fair exchange economics at the heart of inceldom; they broke down protections from rape to be able to rape, showing they had no comprehension of fair exchange and actively moved against women as rational agents by cloaking their agency in commodification. They acknowledged they forced a trade that was way out of favor of the victimized female, yet they still considered their logic superior just for being male, showing extremely incompetent logic on the incel population.
Indeed, there is evidence that some modern MRA and other manospheric groups specifically manifest as a backlash to anti-sexual violence activism, as they claim that anti-rape activism and other feminist issues act as a veneer for misandry (contempt for men) (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016). The manosphere encompasses modern MRAs, pick-up artists, incels, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and other anti-feminist groups with overlapping and related philosophies on gynocentrism (e.g., Lin 2017) and prescriptions for how men and women should live their lives (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016; Lilly 2016). Despite their differing recommendations for how individuals should address the ostensible problems feminism causes men, manospheric groups almost all have the high-level goal of eradicating feminist gains (e.g., Lilly 2016)
Anywhere where you see destruction against VAWA, inceldom may be the root cause. The same with destruction of anti-rape statutes.
“Red-pillers” typically advocate for causes such as the annulment of the Violence Against Women Act, anti-anti-rape activism, and a return to traditional gender norms wherein women primarily hold domestic roles and adhere to conventional notions of femininity.
This abuse then reveals its deeper economic roots, abusing highly qualified women out of fields they are better at to be replaced by less qualified men. Having a better person at a job regardless of gender is better for everyone, reinforcing again the broken logic of incels.
Furthermore, bluepillers do not believe women need to be manipulated in order for men to have access to sexual encounters, relationships, fair access to jobs, and other special goods manosphere users believe women have monopolized (e.g., Lilly 2016; Lin 2017; Schmitz and Kazyak 2016).
Inceldom showed all the signs of commodification characteristic of human traffickers. This may suggest people coming from countries where human trafficking is normalized may be entering countries not genuinely giving up these beliefs and creating this cultures which then completely sink QOL and progress made in development due to wanting the benefits of high QOL, but not studying on how that QOL exists and not interrupting those underlying features. Therefore a sort of underdeveloped entitlement is required.
In the manosphere, “lower value” typically means older women, heavier women, or women who have had sex with several men already, reinforcing misogynistic ideals about what good women are and that a “good society” is one where men dominate (e.g., Lilly 2016, Valizadeh 2015).
Incels are taught to “game” or told to be purposefully deceitful to women to make them make economic decisions not in their favor such as ending up with a domestically violent and logically challenged abuser.
Roosh Valizadeh, the author of several pick-up artist articles and books, wrote that he believed additional massacres by incels were inevitable unless incels were taught “game” or found alternatives for sex in foreign wives and legalized prostitution. (Valizadeh 2014).
Trying to erode domestic violence law is a sign of massive financial backing for an actual “incel uprising” as well, disturbingly enough.
MGTOW are also against affirmative action and similar measures; they believe anti-domestic violence and anti-rape legislation and activism are weaponized to oppress men (Lerxst 2017; Lin 2017).
While women are clearly factually economically oppressed, MGTOW clearly demonstrates they believe women have created a “gynocracy”, showing a disturbing fixation. The idea that women should be rendered irrelevant shows an inability to transcend sensory, commodified understandings of the world which is likely at the heart of their broken logic and abusiveness.
MGTOW also contend that problems the alleged gynocracy causes men may be solved through artificial wombs and sex dolls because it would render women “irrelevant (Lerxst 2017).” Of course, sex dolls and artificial wombs can only supplant women if one believes that women’s value is derived from their sexuality and their ability to reproduce.
Lose-lose is a signature of the abuser. It is found almost as a key principle in inceldom.
This theory illustrates an “If we’re going down, you will too,” worldview; in the psychology of online behavior, it is hypothesized that people will suppress their group members’ sense of self-worth out of spite, envy, or competitiveness (Spacey 2015). In the context of the manosphere, online forums serve as “buckets” that polarize users and, once steeped into the community’s mentality, make it hopeless to escape.
Incels even try to damage the right to work and try to strip women of their careers. Places that disrespect natural sexual choice such as those that struggle with the harms of GMOs can be clearly seen not providing equal protections to women with careers in these areas, trying to strip them of them early to force sexual choice, attempting power and control over their very nature. This would not be possible if they had not been actively eroding the power of domestic violence statutes long before.
Extremist, radical users constitute a substantial presence on the incel forums. These users believe that not only is feminism a tangible harm, but also that women do not deserve any modern rights, such as the right to vote, the right to work, the right not to be considered property, and the right not to be raped (e.g., curryZoomercoomer 2020; mylifeistrash 2018; thirsit 2018).
Attraction is not enough. A man can be attracted to a woman, but when push comes to shove, show destructive hate in not actually supporting her. He therefore is still a misogynist and still a hateful incel, no matter how attracted to her he is. In fact, being attracted to her while eroding her economic rights can be a way to prove he premediated raping her by forcing her choice.
Yet, one can be attracted to women and still be a misogynist. Millions of men are romantically attached to women just within the United States and still harbor disturbing attitudes towards women. “Wanting” a woman is not a valid dodge against misogyny.
Behind the dehumanizing is a devaluation of the social power inherent in women’s sexual selection. As long as it is devalued, it can’t be real. That’s the gaslight. This gaslight is kept violently in place by denials that carry psychotic energy in the incel rhetoric.
Dehumanizing women here is a pillar of their devaluation of women and is, therefore, a justification for violence and apathy towards women.
The violence is meant to beat back the economic gains of women as it makes rape less viable, and forces women to make choices that are not in their favor, creating gross distortions of severe inequality. In fact, where gross financial inequalities exist, all the above principles are seen, showing they are the house that incel-based rape and dv normalization inhabits.
. Said violence is designed to intimidate women as a group into submitting to men, whether politically to efface feminist gains or sexually and individually (e.g., Baele et al. 2019; Beauchamp 2019; Hoffman et al. 2020).
Domestic terrorism and interpersonal abuses that devalue the respect women receive which then devalue their economic gains continue to escalate as the psychotic denial at the heart of inceldom hegemonizes itself into a rigid union of abuser men that will ultimately collapse society into the QOL seen in countries such as Chad, Eritrea and China where human trafficking goes completely unchecked yet financial collapse is keenly witnessed (no matter how well-hidden, as in the case of China).
They typically believe that feminism emasculates men and has led to American gynocracy, or society where women dominate over men, despite feminists’ claims that we live in patriarchy (e.g., Gotell and Dutton 2016; Lilly 2016; Manosphere Glossary 2020). The manosphere fosters increasing radicalization within its sphere, wherein users emerge more militant in their misogyny than when they enter (Ribeiro et al. 2020). This dynamic may have contributed to rises in domestic terrorism and interpersonal abuse towards women in men’s daily lives that are motivated by manospheric philosophies.
2024.05.23 02:27 Significant_Weird_73 Living with an unsupportive, toxic mother while pregnant
I think I just need to rant. I’m not sure what to even do at this point. I’m 38 weeks pregnant. I was in college (my senior year at that) when I found out I was pregnant. I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to be with the child’s father in a relationship and (reluctantly, but really left with no other choice) was planning on moving back home. I moved home earlier than planned after trying to make it work with him, finding things in his phone with other women and men he was trying to meet up with for s*x during my first trimester.
This is my mom’s first grandchild and once I told her I’d decided to keep the baby, she was all excited. She was supportive at the very beginning and said she would have my back with whatever choice I decided to make. I found out I was pregnant in October and by December I’d moved back home, was still in school but going online. I’ve had to put off graduation because the last thing I had to do was an internship which I wasn’t able to complete due to my pregnancy and not having my car for the first few months of coming back home. I’ve come to terms with that and only have to put off my degree for one more semester.
I’m now 38 weeks and due any day. Since coming home (I live with my mom and my sister who is 11) my mother and sister have both pretty much ignored me during my pregnancy other than in ways that benefit them. My mom wanted to announce sooner than I was comfortable with and kept pressuring me to do so. I announced around 6 months but wanted to wait a little longer but I almost felt like I HAD to. Her way of announcing was not saying that I was pregnant but that SHE was getting a grandbaby and that SHE just couldn’t wait. If my pregnancy is talked about outside of that, it’s about how I’m pregnant and hormonal, being mean, etc. etc. and I’ve spent most of my pregnancy in the house, alone. She even said she was concerned about me mentally (prenatal depression because I’ve been diagnosed with depression when I wasn’t pregnant and she knows this) but she doesn’t actually care.
My sister (11) has been having a hard time not being the center of attention and even tried to make my own baby shower about her. I’ve talked to my mom about her behavior because it’s becoming unbearable. She constantly interrupts conversations that aren’t centered around her, she consistently leaves messes in the living room and bathroom that we share. And not regular messes. She had a nosebleed and there was blood all around the sink and it sat there for over a week. When I brought it up I was again the bad guy and poked fun at for being “hormonal.” She’s blatantly disrespectful to me and to my mother and my mother enables her behavior and gives her whatever she wants and takes her wherever she wants. She refuses to clean her room and it’s so bad that she doesn’t even sleep there, she sleeps in the room with my mom. She yells at me and I check her in a calm voice and am still the “overly emotional” one. Other people have said that she is spoiled and that the person she is becoming is worrisome. She doesn’t have empathy for others, she knows she can get whatever she wants simply by asking, and she is constantly just rewarded for her bad behavior.
It’s been hard to see all of this during my pregnancy especially, because (and my mom had admitted this to this day) my mom was the hardest on me out of all my siblings. I have 2 brothers but it was always me who was getting yelled at the most for doing normal kid things, dragged by the haiears for breathing the wrong way, thrown to the floor and beat for messing up in the slightest, and called “fast” before I even knew what that meant. When I bring up my sisters behavior to my mother she dismisses what I say by telling me that I’m jealous of the fact that my sister isn’t enduring the same abuse I did and that I’m just projecting. (my mom hasn’t been to a day of therapy but learned the word projecting and has been running with it ever since)
I simply avoid my sister and don’t really speak to her anymore. I’m worried about my child’s safety for when he gets here and she isn’t the center of attention anymore. My mom also dismissed me when I said that and said "if anything, she's going to want to help with the baby!" I don't want her near him.
My mother is gone at work all day during the day and I'm here in the house alone. Most days after work she has to take my sister to practices and games for the 1000 activities she's in (she's actually tired doing all of this and I feel bad. Mind you, when I played sports I was the kid who got dropped off and picked up or had to find a ride home bc my mom complained and made me feel like a burden for having to take me to things.) by the time they get home it's late and almost bedtime. I've spent pretty much my entire pregnancy alone. on top of dealing with the feeling of not having a partner, feeling behind because I was supposed to have graduated college by now, living in a small (and racist) town that I absolutely HATE, and this is barely the tip of the iceberg. She knows all of these things and Ive been crying out to her for help and support and she continues to treat me like a burden and like spending time with me is torture. I have nowhere to go and feel trapped in a house no one wants me in. She loves it. And she loves that she can play perfect grandmother while completely disregarding me this entire pregnancy. After the things she went through while pregnant I just cant fathom how she could treat me how she has been while I am. She's also supposed to be there when I give birth and I'm not even sure if I want her there because I want someone supporting ME and not just there to meet the baby and say that they were there. She also knows I don't have anyone else and its like because she knows that she knows she can treat me however she wants because i don't have anywhere else to go. It's awful to be around/with someone but for that same person to not be there for you. I feel so trapped. I hate this.
submitted by Significant_Weird_73 to pregnant [link] [comments]
This is my mom’s first grandchild and once I told her I’d decided to keep the baby, she was all excited. She was supportive at the very beginning and said she would have my back with whatever choice I decided to make. I found out I was pregnant in October and by December I’d moved back home, was still in school but going online. I’ve had to put off graduation because the last thing I had to do was an internship which I wasn’t able to complete due to my pregnancy and not having my car for the first few months of coming back home. I’ve come to terms with that and only have to put off my degree for one more semester.
I’m now 38 weeks and due any day. Since coming home (I live with my mom and my sister who is 11) my mother and sister have both pretty much ignored me during my pregnancy other than in ways that benefit them. My mom wanted to announce sooner than I was comfortable with and kept pressuring me to do so. I announced around 6 months but wanted to wait a little longer but I almost felt like I HAD to. Her way of announcing was not saying that I was pregnant but that SHE was getting a grandbaby and that SHE just couldn’t wait. If my pregnancy is talked about outside of that, it’s about how I’m pregnant and hormonal, being mean, etc. etc. and I’ve spent most of my pregnancy in the house, alone. She even said she was concerned about me mentally (prenatal depression because I’ve been diagnosed with depression when I wasn’t pregnant and she knows this) but she doesn’t actually care.
My sister (11) has been having a hard time not being the center of attention and even tried to make my own baby shower about her. I’ve talked to my mom about her behavior because it’s becoming unbearable. She constantly interrupts conversations that aren’t centered around her, she consistently leaves messes in the living room and bathroom that we share. And not regular messes. She had a nosebleed and there was blood all around the sink and it sat there for over a week. When I brought it up I was again the bad guy and poked fun at for being “hormonal.” She’s blatantly disrespectful to me and to my mother and my mother enables her behavior and gives her whatever she wants and takes her wherever she wants. She refuses to clean her room and it’s so bad that she doesn’t even sleep there, she sleeps in the room with my mom. She yells at me and I check her in a calm voice and am still the “overly emotional” one. Other people have said that she is spoiled and that the person she is becoming is worrisome. She doesn’t have empathy for others, she knows she can get whatever she wants simply by asking, and she is constantly just rewarded for her bad behavior.
It’s been hard to see all of this during my pregnancy especially, because (and my mom had admitted this to this day) my mom was the hardest on me out of all my siblings. I have 2 brothers but it was always me who was getting yelled at the most for doing normal kid things, dragged by the haiears for breathing the wrong way, thrown to the floor and beat for messing up in the slightest, and called “fast” before I even knew what that meant. When I bring up my sisters behavior to my mother she dismisses what I say by telling me that I’m jealous of the fact that my sister isn’t enduring the same abuse I did and that I’m just projecting. (my mom hasn’t been to a day of therapy but learned the word projecting and has been running with it ever since)
I simply avoid my sister and don’t really speak to her anymore. I’m worried about my child’s safety for when he gets here and she isn’t the center of attention anymore. My mom also dismissed me when I said that and said "if anything, she's going to want to help with the baby!" I don't want her near him.
My mother is gone at work all day during the day and I'm here in the house alone. Most days after work she has to take my sister to practices and games for the 1000 activities she's in (she's actually tired doing all of this and I feel bad. Mind you, when I played sports I was the kid who got dropped off and picked up or had to find a ride home bc my mom complained and made me feel like a burden for having to take me to things.) by the time they get home it's late and almost bedtime. I've spent pretty much my entire pregnancy alone. on top of dealing with the feeling of not having a partner, feeling behind because I was supposed to have graduated college by now, living in a small (and racist) town that I absolutely HATE, and this is barely the tip of the iceberg. She knows all of these things and Ive been crying out to her for help and support and she continues to treat me like a burden and like spending time with me is torture. I have nowhere to go and feel trapped in a house no one wants me in. She loves it. And she loves that she can play perfect grandmother while completely disregarding me this entire pregnancy. After the things she went through while pregnant I just cant fathom how she could treat me how she has been while I am. She's also supposed to be there when I give birth and I'm not even sure if I want her there because I want someone supporting ME and not just there to meet the baby and say that they were there. She also knows I don't have anyone else and its like because she knows that she knows she can treat me however she wants because i don't have anywhere else to go. It's awful to be around/with someone but for that same person to not be there for you. I feel so trapped. I hate this.
2024.05.23 02:17 alvask88z4 [USA] [H] Switch, SNES/NES, GameCube, N64, DS, 3DS, Pokémon, Wii, Gameboy/color, VHS [W] SNES/N64 boxes, Earthbound, Phantasy Star Master System, Wario World, Windwaker, Billy Hatcher, Persona 3 Portable switch, Pokemon Silver, Pokemon Firered, Pokemon cards
[USA] [H] Switch, SNES/NES, GameCube, N64, DS, 3DS, Pokémon, Wii, Gameboy/color, VHS [W] SNES/N64 boxes, Earthbound, Phantasy Star Master System, Wario World, Windwaker, Billy Hatcher, Persona 3 Portable switch, Pokemon Silver, Pokemon Firered, Pokemon cards
UPDATED LIST 05/22/24
Switch (CIB):
submitted by alvask88z4 to gameswap [link] [comments]
UPDATED LIST 05/22/24
Switch (CIB):
- Catherine Full Body (GameStop case)
- Metroid Dread
- Live a Live
- Smash Ultimate
- Pokémon Arceus
- Tony Hawk 1+2 Remake
- BOTW
- Super Mario Maker 2
- AI: the Somnium Files ***
- DBZ Kakarot
- Pokken DX Tournament
- Super Mario Wonder
- TMNT Cowabunga Collection
- TMNT Shredder Revenge
- Shenmue Limited Edition CIB
- Atomic Purple GBC
- Warioland 3
- Dragon Warrior 3
- Darkwing Duck
- Pokémon Yellow (dead battery)
- Pokémon Gold (dead battery)
- Super Mario Advance 4 Box + Inserts only
- Mario Golf Japanese
- Banjo Gruntys Revenge + manual
- Scooby Doo
- Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets
- Shrek Fairytale Freak Down
- Tony Hawk 2 (bad label)
- X-men Mutant wars
- Croc 2
- Marble Madness
- Game and Watch Gallery 2 game boy
- Construction Zone
- Little Mermaid Gameboy
- Ducktails (Japan cart gameboy)
- I SPY CIB
- Spider-Man 2
- Hulk GBA CIB
- Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
- Spyro Season of ICE (bad label)
- Game and Watch Gallery 4 (BOX and manual only)
- 007 Nightfire (players choice)
- Luigis Mansion (players choice)
- Pikmin
- Magical Mirror (sealed)
- Metroid Prime (players choice)
- Mario Golf Toadstool (players choice)
- Mario Strikers (case only no game)
- Sonic Mega Collection (players choice)
- Sonic Adventure DX
- Disney Sports Skateboarding no manual
- Super Monkey Ball 2 (players choice)
- Cel Damage (no manual)
- Super Monkey Ball
- Need For Speed Undergound 2 (Players choice)
- Teen Titans
- Jimmy Neutron (no manual, beat up disc)
- Mario Party 5
- Tony Hawk 3, 4, THUG1
- X-men Legends
- X-men next dimensions
- Finding Nemo
- Spider-Man
- Shrek Extra large
- Shadow the Hedgehog (game + case)
- Various Madden games
- Tarzan Untamed
- Star Wars 2 Lego (no manual)
- Mario Kart Double Dash w/ bonus disc
- Homerun King
- The Hobbit (no manual)
- Dragonball Z Sagas
- Thrasher: Skate n destroy
- FF7 Greatest Hits
- Coolboarders 4
- Pokémon Y CIB
- Pokémon Black
- Pokemon Omega Ruby (GameStop case)
- 999
- Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon (loose with repro case)
- Fire Emblem Awakening
- Smash Bros 3DS
- Zelda Link Between Worlds
- New Super Mario bro’s
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
- Ghost Trick
- Kingdom Hearts Recoded
- Mario Kart DS
- Mario 64 DS
- Tony Hawk American Sk8land
- Virtues Last Reward
- Majoras Mask 3D
- Dragon Quest 9 (loose)
- Actraiser (cart + box)
- Actraiser 2 (cart + manuel/Poster)
- Chrono Trigger
- TMNT IV Turtles in Time
- Simpson’s Barts Nightmare + manual
- Mario Kart
- Contra III
- Sunset Riders
- Innido Way of Ninja
- Battletoads n double dragon
- Flashback
- DKC 3
- DKC 2
- Road Runner
- Castlevania IV
- Dragon Quest V japanese CIB
- Street Racer CIB
- Prince of Persia CIB
- Super game boy CIB
- Power rangers + Box
- Wizard of Oz
- Cool world
- Star Fox
- Super Mario all stars + Mario world
- Ken Griffey Baseball CIB
- Mickey Mouse Circus
- Lion King
- LoZ: Link to the Past
- F-Zero
- The Pagemaster
- Foreman For Real
- Batman Forever
- Star Ocean famicom
- Mechwarrior 3050
- Populous
- Jurassic Park
- Toy Story
- brutal paws of fury
- demolition man
- Super Off Road
- Frogger
- Mickey Mania
- X-men Mutant Apocalypse CIB
- Funtastic Fire orange console/ controlle
- Rogue Squadron
- Beetle Adventure Racing
- Super Smash Bros
- Ocarina of Time
- NBA Live 2000
- NBA JAM 2000
- NFL Blitz
- Star Wars Racer
- Pokémon Snap
- DK 64
- Pokémon Stadium (NTSC, JP
- Mario Golf Japanese
- Mario Kart 64 Japanese
- Custom Robo V2 Japanese
- Project Wonder Japensea
- Stars Wars Japanese
- Pilot Wings Japanese
- Diddy Kong racing japanese
- Mario Party 1 Japanese CIB
- Mario Party 3 CIB
- 1080 Japanese CIB
- Snowboard Kids 2 Japanese CIB
- Snowboard Kids
- Snowboard Kids 2
- Retron HD system
- TMNT
- Zelda II: Adventure of Link
- Yoshi
- TMNT 2 Arcade
- Batman
- Dr Mario
- Orange and Grey Zapper Gun
- System with GameCube hookups
- Smash Bros Brawl
- Warioware Smooth Moves
- Zelda Skyward Sword
- Zelda Twilight Princess
- Mario Galaxy
- Captain Falcon loose
- Dr Mario loose
- Waluigi loose
- literally Boxes full of vhs (Disney, horror, family classics, power rangers, ninja turtles, James Bond, pokemon
- horror bangers : https://www.reddit.com/VHS/comments/oiuvz0/got_all_of_this_for_free_for_my_30th_bday_lolz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
- Lots of Vintage Power Rangers Toys from the Mighty Morphin era
2024.05.23 02:04 The_SENATE_sixtysix Dear young lonely single men as a former lonely single man
Dear young lonely single men, I would call you by a name that starts with an i and ends with an l but I don't know if that would be consider a slur. I used to be one of you. I've seen too many things on Reddit where there are young lonely single men who feel like they will never find a girl or get their life on track. I (22M) and living proof of changing your life from being a young lonely single man to a respected man. I went from being so unpopular in high school that even the unpopular students didn't want anything to do with me. I had to eat lunch with my teachers because the students wouldn't want me near them. I played video games all day after school or work, my only friends were on the internet. Wasted untold hours of my life watching certain content. I was fat, didn't take care of myself, lonely, and envious. I worked on myself, and all of that has changed. Here's what I've seen are the biggest problems with young lonely single men that I experienced as a young lonely single man and what I see now.
submitted by The_SENATE_sixtysix to selfimprovement [link] [comments]
- Quit the p*rn. How many GenZ boys are addicted to this thing? Like 99%? I know you've been watching this for the better part of 10 years now multiple times a day but it is seriously holding you back. Not only is it seriously affecting your sexual health, it's affecting how you look at yourself. Your self confidence will dramatically increase after quitting. Your testosterone will go up. Some of your issues that I cannot mention here will improve with time as well. My advice for quitting, fill your schedule with so much stuff you don't have time to watch or even think about it. Which brings me to my next point.
- Find a purpose. It's sad when I see people a couple years older than me, my age, or those younger than me think they have no purpose. They don't know what to do with their spare time. They believe they have a place in the world. They don't think they really have anything to live for. They only go from one dopamine rush to another. Find a purpose. It doesn't need to be huge. While I developed many purposes for myself, one simple one that I think every young man to strive for is to be the best future husband and father that I can be. But I'm not married and I don't have a family yet, how can I live up to this purpose? By taking actions now to set myself up for when I have to step into those roles. A purpose will give you a reason to get out of bed. A purpose will give you something to do every single day. A purpose will prevent you from going down bad roads you cannot come back from. A purpose will also make people like you. If you're driven, know what you want, and have a vision on how to get there, you will attract people to you. Girls want someone who is hardworking and most likely ambitious. Your ambition does not need to be king of the world. But some goals in life and actively working towards it will be attractive.
- It's not every girl's fault. You cannot blame women as a whole for your "singleness" or why no one is into you. That is only on you. I wonder why no girl liked me when I was overweight, full of acne, improper hygiene, and a terrible haircut. Yet, I blamed women because why wouldn't a girl like me. Fix yourself before you criticize the whole gender. Are there some girls who are extremely picky and not wife material? Yes. Go hit the gym, go redo your hair, go take care of your health. I guarantee you if you're relatively healthy, have a pretty okay haircut, and take care of yourself, someone will eventually like you. Girls want someone masculine, you don't need to be completely shredded, but having a little muscle and adopting responsibility is huge. And stop going solely for looks! This is a path for the fools. As Judge Judy said: "Beauty fades, dumb is forever." Find a girl of substance, not a facade. Find a girl who isn't looking for constant validation but your validation. Find a girl who wants to be loyal. Sometimes it's not down to "women" as a whole, it's the women you're going after.
- Food. You are what you eat. How much processed and fast food did you eat this week? How much food and drinks that cause cancer did you consume? You wonder why you're not losing any weight despite eating "healthy" it's because you're not looking at the cancerous ingredients on the food label. Change up your eating habits. Cutting out soda for me made me lose 15 pounds. No working out, just cutting out soda alone. You'll be surprised what benefits you'll find when you cut out certain foods/drinks.
- Stop complaining. I know I'm semi-complaining here, but no one wants to hear how hard your life is? Why? Everyone thinks their life is infinitely harder than yours. And it drags people down. Do you really want everyone to pity you? Oh my life is so sad that X Y Z happens, feel bad for me. Stop it. Everyone's life is hard, get over it.
- Social skills. As an autistic, I can say this really was a problem for me. I had no social skills, couldn't read a face, and was probably the most annoying person ever. Learn some social skills. Start with the most fundamental small talk with the people around you and grow from there. You don't need to turn every conversation into a Joe Rogan podcast length discussion about various topics, but just little small talk here and there and most importantly, asking people about their days/weekends/life is huge. I can't tell you how many relationships I've develop just through listening to people talk about their life. It may be boring, sure, but there is a benefit from it. You develop bonds and the people feel like they can talk to you and trust you. Then the people want to talk to you instead of ignoring you.
2024.05.23 01:34 DevelopmentSure9214 Riddle me this Batman
I’m (F23) about 5, going on 6 months NC from a 4 year relationship with ex(M25) (mutual, but I did ask him if we could fix it). During the breakup I asked him to remove me from his family group chats and friend group chats just to preserve my feelings. He removed me from the family one immediately but I had to ask twice for the friend one and a month after the BU I was still in it. Since it’s a iPhone android gc I couldn’t just leave, I could only block it so I did for the sake of starting No Contact. He also was very passive during our breakup process since we shared an apartment, I essentially had to handle everything even though I wanted to work things out. which then led to me texting him about actual important financial stuff with one word responses or half ass responses, having to remind him to pay the move out fees, and literally having to txt his mom to tell him to respond because he was just playing video games while we were gaining overdue fees because he didn’t pay his half. Naturally he’s a very laid back forgetful, person. Today I’m transferring my iCloud stuff onto a new iPhone and for some reason my phone forgets that these convos are blocked and I see that I’m still in it, and it’s still very active.
I’m purely asking to prove a point to someone, I have no intention of texting him about it and I already reblocked it. Im not on bad terms with any of these people but they are 100% more his friends than they are mine. Is this not a weird thing to do? More than likely he just forgot given the time, but I find it interesting that one of the friends who I thought would have no idea messaged me about it 2 weeks ago. So I would imagine his friends that he’s close enough to have a group chat with would make a new group chat by now(they also have group chats made to exclude certain people so it’s not far fetched) There’s also the chance that they didn’t know I blocked it so why carry on like usual? I know it’s weird because if I texted let alone reacted to a message things would get weird.
If any men could tell me I’m being delusional I’d love that.
submitted by DevelopmentSure9214 to ExNoContact [link] [comments]
I’m purely asking to prove a point to someone, I have no intention of texting him about it and I already reblocked it. Im not on bad terms with any of these people but they are 100% more his friends than they are mine. Is this not a weird thing to do? More than likely he just forgot given the time, but I find it interesting that one of the friends who I thought would have no idea messaged me about it 2 weeks ago. So I would imagine his friends that he’s close enough to have a group chat with would make a new group chat by now(they also have group chats made to exclude certain people so it’s not far fetched) There’s also the chance that they didn’t know I blocked it so why carry on like usual? I know it’s weird because if I texted let alone reacted to a message things would get weird.
If any men could tell me I’m being delusional I’d love that.
2024.05.23 01:30 GDT_Bot Playoff Game Thread: Florida Panthers (0-0) at New York Rangers (0-0) - Game 1 - 22 May 2024 - 08:00PM EDT
Florida Panthers (0-0) at New York Rangers (0-0)
Madison Square Garden
Comment with all tablesLive Updates
| Time Clock |
|---|
| FINAL |
| Teams | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FLA | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| NYR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Team | Shots | Hits | Blocks | FOW% | Giveaways | Takeaways | Power Play | PIM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FLA | 27 | 29 | 19 | 0.516667% | 2 | 2 | 0/3 | 4 |
| NYR | 23 | 28 | 18 | 0.483333% | 12 | 6 | 0/2 | 6 |
| Period | Time | Team | Strength | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 16:26 | FLA | Even | Matthew Tkachuk (5) snap shot, assist(s): Gustav Forsling (6), Carter Verhaeghe (6) |
| 3rd | 16:12 | FLA | Even | Carter Verhaeghe (7), assist(s): None |
| 3rd | 18:41 | FLA | Even | Sam Bennett (3) wrist shot, assist(s): Matthew Tkachuk (11) |
| Period | Time | Team | Type | Min | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 10:26 | NYR | MIN | 2 | Jacob Trouba hooking against Aleksander Barkov |
| 2nd | 07:43 | NYR | MIN | 2 | Jack Roslovic high-sticking against Oliver Ekman-Larsson |
| 2nd | 18:34 | FLA | MIN | 2 | Sam Bennett holding-the-stick against Adam Fox |
| 3rd | 10:28 | NYR | MIN | 2 | Alexis Lafrenière hooking against Dmitry Kulikov |
| 3rd | 13:11 | FLA | BEN | 2 | too-many-men-on-the-ice served by Evan Rodrigues |
- Referees: Dan O'Rourke, Steve Kozari
- Linesmen: Steve Barton, Matt MacPherson
Time
| PT | MT | CT | ET | AT | UTC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05:00PM | 06:00PM | 07:00PM | 08:00PM | 09:00PM | 12:00AM |
Game Info:
| TV | ESPN, ESPN+, SN, CBC, TVAS |
| Other | Preview - Boxscore - Recap |
| GameCenter | On NHL.com |
Thread Notes:
- Keep it civil
- Sort by new for best results
- This thread is completely bot-generated, unfortunately it can only be as accurate as the sites it pulls data from
- If you have any suggestions for improvements please message TeroTheTerror
- Thanks to Sentry07 and Obelisk29 for their code!
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Panthers and Rangers
Join the discussion in the /Hockey Discord.2024.05.23 01:28 ecstaticchimera It Would Have Been Our Anniversary Today
In March, since you refused to take accountability and get help, I went no contact and said if you wanted to be a part of my life again you would need at least of therapy with a CSAT before you even spoke to me again. You didn’t care about my safety and comfort, so I had to. Like usual, I tried to get you to chose your path, but you wanted both. You wanted to “be yourself” but also have me as a friend since I wasn’t ok with participating in you using sex as self harm (something you admitted). You also said your true love would be able to cure you of your need for it, so you even know it’s not the true you. I told you that’s now how love works. Love’s a strong motivator, but you need to change you.
The way we met was practically out of a romance novel. We were on a job together, I worked on the office, you on site, and we were on a scattered schedule. It was your day off, but I had to get the details of last minute equipment that was playing tomorrow. You were so annoyed on the phone, but I am great at getting people to like me. Not to toot my own horn, but I am charming and can read a room to know what to say and how to act to get what I need to happen. You loosened up quickly. But it wasn’t just that. We had a quick rapport – effortless. We had an instant bond that I could feel. All my close friends and impactful people on my life I have felt this bond. Like they’re supposed to be there. We didn’t even meet in person for over a month. We texted nonstop and you called “for work” to ask a quick question then chat for twenty minutes. I finally went to the job site to meet in person. It was both awkward and so right. I went back a few times just to hang on your truck. You were so chivalrous, you’d give me your chair and you’d sit on an applebox. You would jokingly show off your ladder collection on the truck.
The last week of the job you called me and formally asked me out. I’d never had a man do that. It was always flirting at a party or a bar and trying to get me home, then maybe he’d see me after. That was one of my rules I set for myself after finding hook up culture to be a way guys took advantage without real effort. A man actually interested would put himself out there and ask a woman out and let her know he liked her. Sounds like a low bar, but it had been two years since I set that rule and you were the first one.
The date was so much fun. We went to a jazz bar, the conversation was easy. We ended up playing shuffleboard. I was kicking your ass – a Midwestern girl knows her way around a shuffleboard. Then you did an amazing shot, it slipped in and knocked both mine off and stayed in play. As if in slow motion we looked at each other roaring in excitement, then both leaned into each other and started making out. We were totally in sync, it was magically. I hadn’t ever had this connection with a guy before.
You took me home. Any new partner for me is high stakes, I’ve had mediocre to bad experiences and only a few good ones. You were sweet and gentle. Liked foreplay, which I had only experienced with Latino and European men. It was always begrudging if an American did it. When we finally got to the main event, you lost your erection inside of me. You were embarrassed, sat back on my bed and started vaping and said “I’ve… been having dick issues lately.” I knew nothing about PIED or even that Porn/Sex Addiction was a thing and just assumed it was the alcohol. But a voice in my head, calm and even toned said “Make note: this is going to be important later.” Like it was stating a fact.
The morning after you made a point to tell me you wanted to see me again, and we did. We didn’t have any more sexual issues – I was having the best sex I’d ever had. I felt free and vulnerable. You seemed to be letting me have the space to open up. I’m guarded and distrustful of men, but you seemed to have the patience to let me come out. You were making sure you let me in your life. You live two hours up north and made a point to visit me regularly. You introduced me to your brother. We were discovering food together, going to baseball games, movies. Having deep conversations, sharing music. You made a point to show me you wanted me in your life, and I was starting to open up and let you into mine. So when I realized I loved you, I decided I would tell you first because you had seemingly been so vulnerable and open with me.
It took a beat, we both went on trips on different weeks, and the tone suddenly seemed different. After us talking and laughing on the phone constantly you told me you actually hated talking on the phone and was like a cold indignant teenager when I called. You seemed disinterested in my things. My trip was for screenwriters and my screenplay won an award. I called you first because I wanted you to know first. You were monotone and distant. Then later you texted me telling me how inspiring I was and now you wanted to write. Which felt good, but disjointed… you never showed interest in writing. Conversely friend when I texted her about the news called me immediately and gushed for a half hour about how talented I was and asked all the details about the event and the award. I don’t need my ego stroked but… I wanted that level of excitement from you.
We finally saw each other again and we went to a football game – I knew how important they were to you and I was happy you wanted to share that with me. We had taken a selfie outside the stadium before the game and when I showed my mom (I hadn’t even told my parents about you yet) she told me how happy we looked. I told you I loved you after your team scored and we were both cheering. The moment felt right. Your bashful smile and the beam in your eyes will be forever burned in my mind. You told me I was drunk. I asserted myself, and told you again. You didn’t say it back, but I didn’t take it personally. Love is a gift. You don’t love someone on terms that they love you back. You would when you were ready.
You were erratic after the game. You said you felt ill. We went straight to bed. I had to work the next day, from home, but it was the second day on a new job. When you finally woke up you were angry, despondent. You asked me if I had time to get coffee. I said sure. In the coffee shop you almost got into a fist fight with the barista because he messed up your order. I was appalled – who was this person? We sat in a park, and you told me you wanted to share something. You started telling me a little bit of your sexual trauma (little did I know it wasn’t even close to the extent of it), and saying how it informed certain sexual interests, and you wanted to pursue them, and we could be friends, I could just let you pursue them on the side, or I could participate. You said you were thinking of just breaking up, or not telling me (like your last girlfriend), “But it’s you”, you said.
I had just told you I loved you, and breaking up over sex felt cruel. And I wasn’t against exploring things sexually… I had friends in my circle who pursued similar interests in a healthy way. But the way you brought it up…. You asked me not to tell anyone… you were embarrassed… then when I said I would be open to it… a switch flipped. You were obsessively talking about your interests. Things that even before this conversation I said I wouldn’t be ok with because they’re “hip” now and I wanted to be open about what I was looking for so we didn’t waste time. And even when I reaffirmed no, you kept bringing it up. The way you spoke about things were red flaggy… it felt obsessive… you spoke about it like when you participated you dissociated. In the act to do it. I had felt a bond with you before, and my gut feeling kicked in with a hard “his is bad”. My friends who were interested in kink had described exploring that as different. More whimsical. Communicative on wants, a chill vibe. You, after obsessively telling me, would shut down and stop communicating. Saying it was embarrassing to talk about and I should just take charge. But then things had to be a certain way. And everything I researched about what you were interested and people in the community… it felt abusive. That I would be playing into your traumas. I voiced that to you, sobbing. You told me the fact I was worried was a “good sign”. Even in the community your behavior was marked as red flags.
After a month of not sleeping and panic attacks, my friends intervened. I told them all your behaviors, my kinky friends told me you weren’t behaving appropriately. One told me she was a sex addict, and I should research it. That it sounded like you fit the type. I broke up with you the next night, my friends on standby with thai food and ice cream. You told me you had been trying to be a better person for me. I told you you never even bothered to read my screenplay.
I did do the research… you had most the “symptoms” of having a sex/porn addiction. The depth of the addiction scared me. I eventually asked to meet. It felt correct, something inside me told me I needed to give you the opportunity to change and offer support. You never had much support in your life. When we did meet, you were receptive. You took ownership. You didn’t realize the scope of what you had done. Some things still didn’t sit right, but I figured since you wanted to change, we would get there. You told me you’d read my screenplay. The next two months there wasn’t much progress. You didn’t want to acknowledge issues, you would get upset when I mentioned that I didn’t like when you interrupted me. We got into a huge fight where I said I was upset and you were angry that I started something on a work night and tried to punish me by saying I wasn’t allowed to come over if you have to work in the morning. I ignored you until you apologized. You suggested maybe we should write letters with issues. So I did. I wrote a letter full of my pending issues and concerns. Red flaggy behaviors that weren’t resolved. How you treated me poorly still. How your sexual behaviors concerned me. How I didn’t feel the way you had treated me before was fully addressed and you didn’t fully take accountability. Things I needed to feel safe. I sent it to you and felt relief. I felt hopeful for some reason.
You responded with a hate letter degrading me and my concerns, telling me I was abusive and condescending. I responded simply with an email that I wasn’t sure, but now I know you are a sex addict, linking to 12 step groups and the resource library and told you you needed a therapist or you won’t get better. I figured I wouldn’t speak to you again. But the next day you texted me telling me you were writing another letter. A better one that addressed more. I said I didn’t think you were going to speak to me again, and you responded “no, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Then I said something about how I felt ignored and you went off via text. For hours. The sun went down and up before you were done texting me and sent me a new letter. A letter that in trying to tell me how I was wrong described perfectly that all my intuition was correct, my assumptions of trauma, abuse, the depths of your fantasy was correct, and that is self harm, but that’s the way you wanted to cope. That you used it to not be yourself. That you were afraid to be vulnerable with me, and just wanted me to tell me who to be so I would love you.
I responded with my hard boundaries, and you respected them. You never responded or tried to get me back. In the letter I pleaded for you to get help, that you wouldn’t be happy if you didn’t. You were worth love and happiness, but the path you were choosing wouldn’t lead there. That if you had to dissociate to participate in sex acts, you weren’t enjoying it. That I hoped I would hear from you again because that would mean you had gotten help. You respected my boundary. You never responded.
After I sent that letter I felt contentment. I still do. I told you I felt a strong bond with you, and I still do. It feels like what happened was supposed to happen, that we met for a reason. Like I told you, I am not sure if that means this chapter is over or the book is closed, but things happened the way they were supposed to.
You never did read my screenplay though.
submitted by ecstaticchimera to loveafterporn [link] [comments]
The way we met was practically out of a romance novel. We were on a job together, I worked on the office, you on site, and we were on a scattered schedule. It was your day off, but I had to get the details of last minute equipment that was playing tomorrow. You were so annoyed on the phone, but I am great at getting people to like me. Not to toot my own horn, but I am charming and can read a room to know what to say and how to act to get what I need to happen. You loosened up quickly. But it wasn’t just that. We had a quick rapport – effortless. We had an instant bond that I could feel. All my close friends and impactful people on my life I have felt this bond. Like they’re supposed to be there. We didn’t even meet in person for over a month. We texted nonstop and you called “for work” to ask a quick question then chat for twenty minutes. I finally went to the job site to meet in person. It was both awkward and so right. I went back a few times just to hang on your truck. You were so chivalrous, you’d give me your chair and you’d sit on an applebox. You would jokingly show off your ladder collection on the truck.
The last week of the job you called me and formally asked me out. I’d never had a man do that. It was always flirting at a party or a bar and trying to get me home, then maybe he’d see me after. That was one of my rules I set for myself after finding hook up culture to be a way guys took advantage without real effort. A man actually interested would put himself out there and ask a woman out and let her know he liked her. Sounds like a low bar, but it had been two years since I set that rule and you were the first one.
The date was so much fun. We went to a jazz bar, the conversation was easy. We ended up playing shuffleboard. I was kicking your ass – a Midwestern girl knows her way around a shuffleboard. Then you did an amazing shot, it slipped in and knocked both mine off and stayed in play. As if in slow motion we looked at each other roaring in excitement, then both leaned into each other and started making out. We were totally in sync, it was magically. I hadn’t ever had this connection with a guy before.
You took me home. Any new partner for me is high stakes, I’ve had mediocre to bad experiences and only a few good ones. You were sweet and gentle. Liked foreplay, which I had only experienced with Latino and European men. It was always begrudging if an American did it. When we finally got to the main event, you lost your erection inside of me. You were embarrassed, sat back on my bed and started vaping and said “I’ve… been having dick issues lately.” I knew nothing about PIED or even that Porn/Sex Addiction was a thing and just assumed it was the alcohol. But a voice in my head, calm and even toned said “Make note: this is going to be important later.” Like it was stating a fact.
The morning after you made a point to tell me you wanted to see me again, and we did. We didn’t have any more sexual issues – I was having the best sex I’d ever had. I felt free and vulnerable. You seemed to be letting me have the space to open up. I’m guarded and distrustful of men, but you seemed to have the patience to let me come out. You were making sure you let me in your life. You live two hours up north and made a point to visit me regularly. You introduced me to your brother. We were discovering food together, going to baseball games, movies. Having deep conversations, sharing music. You made a point to show me you wanted me in your life, and I was starting to open up and let you into mine. So when I realized I loved you, I decided I would tell you first because you had seemingly been so vulnerable and open with me.
It took a beat, we both went on trips on different weeks, and the tone suddenly seemed different. After us talking and laughing on the phone constantly you told me you actually hated talking on the phone and was like a cold indignant teenager when I called. You seemed disinterested in my things. My trip was for screenwriters and my screenplay won an award. I called you first because I wanted you to know first. You were monotone and distant. Then later you texted me telling me how inspiring I was and now you wanted to write. Which felt good, but disjointed… you never showed interest in writing. Conversely friend when I texted her about the news called me immediately and gushed for a half hour about how talented I was and asked all the details about the event and the award. I don’t need my ego stroked but… I wanted that level of excitement from you.
We finally saw each other again and we went to a football game – I knew how important they were to you and I was happy you wanted to share that with me. We had taken a selfie outside the stadium before the game and when I showed my mom (I hadn’t even told my parents about you yet) she told me how happy we looked. I told you I loved you after your team scored and we were both cheering. The moment felt right. Your bashful smile and the beam in your eyes will be forever burned in my mind. You told me I was drunk. I asserted myself, and told you again. You didn’t say it back, but I didn’t take it personally. Love is a gift. You don’t love someone on terms that they love you back. You would when you were ready.
You were erratic after the game. You said you felt ill. We went straight to bed. I had to work the next day, from home, but it was the second day on a new job. When you finally woke up you were angry, despondent. You asked me if I had time to get coffee. I said sure. In the coffee shop you almost got into a fist fight with the barista because he messed up your order. I was appalled – who was this person? We sat in a park, and you told me you wanted to share something. You started telling me a little bit of your sexual trauma (little did I know it wasn’t even close to the extent of it), and saying how it informed certain sexual interests, and you wanted to pursue them, and we could be friends, I could just let you pursue them on the side, or I could participate. You said you were thinking of just breaking up, or not telling me (like your last girlfriend), “But it’s you”, you said.
I had just told you I loved you, and breaking up over sex felt cruel. And I wasn’t against exploring things sexually… I had friends in my circle who pursued similar interests in a healthy way. But the way you brought it up…. You asked me not to tell anyone… you were embarrassed… then when I said I would be open to it… a switch flipped. You were obsessively talking about your interests. Things that even before this conversation I said I wouldn’t be ok with because they’re “hip” now and I wanted to be open about what I was looking for so we didn’t waste time. And even when I reaffirmed no, you kept bringing it up. The way you spoke about things were red flaggy… it felt obsessive… you spoke about it like when you participated you dissociated. In the act to do it. I had felt a bond with you before, and my gut feeling kicked in with a hard “his is bad”. My friends who were interested in kink had described exploring that as different. More whimsical. Communicative on wants, a chill vibe. You, after obsessively telling me, would shut down and stop communicating. Saying it was embarrassing to talk about and I should just take charge. But then things had to be a certain way. And everything I researched about what you were interested and people in the community… it felt abusive. That I would be playing into your traumas. I voiced that to you, sobbing. You told me the fact I was worried was a “good sign”. Even in the community your behavior was marked as red flags.
After a month of not sleeping and panic attacks, my friends intervened. I told them all your behaviors, my kinky friends told me you weren’t behaving appropriately. One told me she was a sex addict, and I should research it. That it sounded like you fit the type. I broke up with you the next night, my friends on standby with thai food and ice cream. You told me you had been trying to be a better person for me. I told you you never even bothered to read my screenplay.
I did do the research… you had most the “symptoms” of having a sex/porn addiction. The depth of the addiction scared me. I eventually asked to meet. It felt correct, something inside me told me I needed to give you the opportunity to change and offer support. You never had much support in your life. When we did meet, you were receptive. You took ownership. You didn’t realize the scope of what you had done. Some things still didn’t sit right, but I figured since you wanted to change, we would get there. You told me you’d read my screenplay. The next two months there wasn’t much progress. You didn’t want to acknowledge issues, you would get upset when I mentioned that I didn’t like when you interrupted me. We got into a huge fight where I said I was upset and you were angry that I started something on a work night and tried to punish me by saying I wasn’t allowed to come over if you have to work in the morning. I ignored you until you apologized. You suggested maybe we should write letters with issues. So I did. I wrote a letter full of my pending issues and concerns. Red flaggy behaviors that weren’t resolved. How you treated me poorly still. How your sexual behaviors concerned me. How I didn’t feel the way you had treated me before was fully addressed and you didn’t fully take accountability. Things I needed to feel safe. I sent it to you and felt relief. I felt hopeful for some reason.
You responded with a hate letter degrading me and my concerns, telling me I was abusive and condescending. I responded simply with an email that I wasn’t sure, but now I know you are a sex addict, linking to 12 step groups and the resource library and told you you needed a therapist or you won’t get better. I figured I wouldn’t speak to you again. But the next day you texted me telling me you were writing another letter. A better one that addressed more. I said I didn’t think you were going to speak to me again, and you responded “no, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Then I said something about how I felt ignored and you went off via text. For hours. The sun went down and up before you were done texting me and sent me a new letter. A letter that in trying to tell me how I was wrong described perfectly that all my intuition was correct, my assumptions of trauma, abuse, the depths of your fantasy was correct, and that is self harm, but that’s the way you wanted to cope. That you used it to not be yourself. That you were afraid to be vulnerable with me, and just wanted me to tell me who to be so I would love you.
I responded with my hard boundaries, and you respected them. You never responded or tried to get me back. In the letter I pleaded for you to get help, that you wouldn’t be happy if you didn’t. You were worth love and happiness, but the path you were choosing wouldn’t lead there. That if you had to dissociate to participate in sex acts, you weren’t enjoying it. That I hoped I would hear from you again because that would mean you had gotten help. You respected my boundary. You never responded.
After I sent that letter I felt contentment. I still do. I told you I felt a strong bond with you, and I still do. It feels like what happened was supposed to happen, that we met for a reason. Like I told you, I am not sure if that means this chapter is over or the book is closed, but things happened the way they were supposed to.
You never did read my screenplay though.
2024.05.23 01:24 CIAHerpes Don’t eat at the diner called Happy’s Restaurant. They serve absolutely delicious human meat.
I lost my job a couple months ago when the entire business I worked for abruptly went bankrupt and shut down. To make ends meet, I started driving for Uber late into the night. It was about 3:30 or 4 AM when I made the last drop-off on the night it happened.
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
submitted by CIAHerpes to scaryjujuarmy [link] [comments]
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
2024.05.23 01:24 CIAHerpes Don’t eat at the diner called Happy’s Restaurant. They serve absolutely delicious human meat.
I lost my job a couple months ago when the entire business I worked for abruptly went bankrupt and shut down. To make ends meet, I started driving for Uber late into the night. It was about 3:30 or 4 AM when I made the last drop-off on the night it happened.
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
submitted by CIAHerpes to ZakBabyTV_Stories [link] [comments]
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
2024.05.23 01:23 CIAHerpes Don’t eat at the diner called Happy’s Restaurant. They serve absolutely delicious human meat.
I lost my job a couple months ago when the entire business I worked for abruptly went bankrupt and shut down. To make ends meet, I started driving for Uber late into the night. It was about 3:30 or 4 AM when I made the last drop-off on the night it happened.
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
submitted by CIAHerpes to horrorstories [link] [comments]
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
2024.05.23 01:23 CIAHerpes Don’t eat at the diner called Happy’s Restaurant. They serve absolutely delicious human meat.
I lost my job a couple months ago when the entire business I worked for abruptly went bankrupt and shut down. To make ends meet, I started driving for Uber late into the night. It was about 3:30 or 4 AM when I made the last drop-off on the night it happened.
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.
submitted by CIAHerpes to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
The passenger was a strange, quiet man with a greasy T-shirt. His brown eyes looked flat and dead. I glanced into the rearview mirror as I dropped him off at a Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, making sure he left my car so he could wander off and wear a mask made of human skin or whatever people like that did on their days off. The house looked like something from a horror movie, all sharp turrets and dark windows with a blood-red exterior.
Dawn came early that day, a cancerous orange sky looming overhead. Needles of rain abruptly started falling sideways. Tired and hungry, I kept an eye out for somewhere to stop and eat as I drove through the filthy torrents of rain. I turned on the GPS for my apartment and sped through the dirty, empty streets of Frost Hollow.
Dark, dead trees rose overhead on both sides of me. I drove on for a few minutes, seeing only a single house far back at the beginning of the road that entire time. I didn’t know this area, so I was pleasantly surprised when a brightly-lit diner appeared on my left. A blinking sign cheerily read “Happy’s Restaurant”.
The parking lot was entirely empty except for a truck that looked like it had been there for weeks. Leaves and dirt covered its windshield, and someone had written “CLEAN ME” in the grime in giant letters. I heaved a deep yawn as I pulled into the parking lot. I tried to check my phone, but there was no internet or service all the way out here. I hoped they had Wi-fi in the diner.
Happy’s Restaurant had enormous plate-glass windows wrapping around the sides and front of the restaurant. Light burst out onto the dark parking lot in harsh white streams as birds chirped in the forests around me, waking up to the new dawn. The architecture of the place looked straight out of the 1950s. I could imagine James Dean going there and chain-smoking cigarettes over a burger and a coffee.
I got out of the car, heading over to the front of the restaurant where I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The spicy menthol tobacco gave me a sudden jolt of energy. Blinking quickly, I smoked the cigarette as quickly as I could, feeling wide awake by the end of it. I stood under the canopy of the building, watching lightning erupt like missile flashes across the sky. The street remained dead and empty. I hadn’t seen a single other person since I had dropped off the weirdo at the nearby Victorian house.
I opened the glass door of the diner, hearing a bell ring overhead. I looked into the empty restaurant, seeing its sparkling clean tables. The smell of fresh coffee rose out in fragrant waves. Shrugging, I went down and sat at a table next to a TV in the corner. It was playing some twenty-four hour news channel, talking about a mass break-out in a nearby mental asylum.
“Two patients of the Graypath Psychiatric Hospital were able to break out by murdering a doctor and taking a nurse hostage. They had apparently planned the attack for weeks, making homemade knives out of screws taken out of the walls and other contraband that went undetected. The facility is considered a maximum-security hospital, with the majority of patients considered criminally insane and held until…”
“Hey, sorry bud, didn’t see you there,” a voice called out from the back of the empty restaurant. I jumped, turning to see who was speaking.
A man came out in a streaked, dirty apron. He was incredibly fat, probably at least three or four hundred pounds. Four greasy chins hung down on his neck like the wattles of a rooster. He reminded me of a circus freak, a slug-like man whose heavy footsteps shook the ground as he approached my table. He had red hands like a butcher. His face, too, was beet-red and covered in sweat with a tiny nose in the middle and giant, rubbery lips. His nametag said, “Frank”.
“Morning,” he mumbled. “What can I get for you? Our waiter never showed up so I’m the only guy here. I’ll have to take your order and cook it, if that’s OK.” I nodded happily.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I just want a coffee with extra cream and sugar and a Reuben with fries and an extra side of coleslaw.” He wrote it down on a dirt-streaked pad he pulled from his apron, taking a very long time and writing as slowly as possible. I watched his face closely. He reminded me of a clown, but his eyes were gray, the color of steel. They seemed freezing cold, almost inhuman. There was nothing clownish about them.
“OK, bud, that’ll be right up,” he said, grinning down at me. His yellowed teeth were covered in a thick layer of filmy grime. I noticed that some in the front were broken, as if he had a habit of getting his teeth knocked out in fights. He turned around, heading back into the kitchen in his strange, waddling gait. I wondered how Frank had gotten here. There was certainly no public transportation anywhere in this part of the state. But I figured he must have gotten dropped off. I looked down at my phone, hoping to find an open Wi-Fi connection to pass the time, but there was nothing here. Sighing, I looked around the restaurant.
A creepy clown mannequin stood in the corner, holding a sign that read, “BE HAPPY. EAT THOSE FEELINGS AWAY.” Its red-and-white make-up was all sharp points and hard angles. Around its grinning mouth, the red paint formed into a pointed half-circle, accentuating the gleaming white teeth that shone between its thin lips.
A few moments later, Frank came out with a steaming hot cup of coffee and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets. He plopped them down in front of me, grunting and ambling back towards the kitchen. I smelled the odor of roasting meat and cooking oil rising from the kitchen in delicious, aromatic waves.
I couldn’t wait for my Reuben. Out of all sandwiches in the history of sandwiches, I thought Reubens were probably the most delicious. The way the corned beef mixed with the Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut and marble rye bread made it seem like those ingredients were made by God specifically to make such a divine sandwich.
My stomach growled as I waited eagerly. I continued scanning the restaurant, listening to the hum of the TV next to me when I spotted what looked like spatters of blood in front of the swinging kitchen doors. I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teenager, a crappy little pizza place, and I remembered how the ground beef always came soaked in wet blood. I found it odd that no one had cleaned it up yet, though. It looked dried and clotted, as if it had been there for days.
The TV was still talking about the escaped mental patients when Frank brought out a giant plate of delicious, fragrant sandwich and golden fries. I could feel my mouth watering as he laid it out with a clunk on the table in front of me.
“Enjoy, buddy,” he said, giving me a sly wink. His fish-like lips formed into a faint half-smile. He turned away, and I immediately dug in.
The Reuben was probably the best Reuben I’ve ever tasted. The corned beef was perfectly cooked, the bread crisp and fresh. The fries were golden and had a nice, satisfying crunch. I wanted to compliment Frank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, I finished the first half of my sandwich.
As I got to the last bite, I noticed something odd and crunchy in the meat. I thought it was a coin or something at first. I immediately spit out the entire wad of half-chewed sandwich onto a napkin, looking down.
In the middle of the meat sat a painted human fingernail. It was ripped-off, the bottom jagged and sharp. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to vomit.
***
I sat there for a few seconds, simply staring, my mind racing in circles like a rat in a wheel. Was it a fake fingernail? How had it gotten into my sandwich?
I picked it up, bringing it closer to my right eye. I saw black, clotted blood and thin strands of flesh still hanging from the bottom. It was definitely not fake.
Rising quickly, I grabbed my car keys and phone off the table and started stumbling towards the door. There were no rational thoughts at that moment, just an insistent rising sense of panic and dread. That was the moment the lights at the diner cut out. An eerie, gurgling laugh floated out of the kitchen.
The cancerous yellow light of the new day was filtering through the stormy clouds. I looked through the plate-glass front door and saw a face peering in with wide, insane eyes. I recognized the man I had dropped off at the Victorian house down the road. He had carved a fresh question mark into his forehead sometime after I had last seen him. His face looked slack and empty as he stared inside, his dead, blank eyes roaming left and right, looking for someone- looking for me.
In his right hand, I saw an enormous meat cleaver streaked with fresh, dripping blood. He raised a trembling left hand and started opening the door. In the darkness and silence of the diner, I could hear every sound amplified a thousand-fold: every drop of rain hitting the roof, every thudding beat of my heart, every tiny creaking of the door as it swung open.
I heard the doors to the kitchen swinging open at the same moment. In terror, I frantically looked around, seeing the bathrooms only a few feet away in the corner of the restaurant. As silently as I could, I slunk towards them, afraid to look back. I ripped open the women’s restroom door, peeking out as I closed it behind me.
I could see the man holding the meat cleaver slowly creeping past the tables, bending over to check underneath them. I could hear him whispering to himself.
“I must baptize them in the blood and send them out into the world,” he muttered quietly. “Must find the blood… eat the body, drink the blood to see God…”
Silently, I closed the door and groped around in the dark until I found the lock. Inhaling deeply, I clicked it to the side. The subtle clicking noise seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence.
I took my cell phone out of my pocket and turned, seeing a scene from a nightmare. Corpses littered the floor of the bathroom. A waitress in a button-up vest sat up against the wall in a corner. She looked to be in her mid-twenties with dark brown eyes, black hair and pale, creamy skin. Dozens of deep stab wounds gleamed in her chest and stomach. Her neck had been so deeply slashed that her head had nearly been decapitated.
Even worse, I saw chunks of flesh cut out of her body, chunks from the meat of her cheeks, arms, legs and fingers. I suddenly had a very good idea of where the fingernail had come from and what I had been eating. I gagged, retching.
Next to her sprawled the corpse of an old man in a business suit. His shirt and jacket had been ripped open, and a giant question mark carved deeply into the loose skin of his bird-like chest. Stuck in one eye, I saw the gleam of a wicked butcher’s knife. It had sliced the eye in half, the blade disappearing deeply into his brain and skull. The other eye stared glassily up at the ceiling.
I heard a light tapping at the bathroom door, a kind of polite knocking that someone might use if they were wondering if it was occupied. I was afraid to breathe. I spun, looking at the wooden door, the only thing standing between me and certain death at this moment.
“Is anyone in there?” a low, raspy voice asked, the same voice that had mumbled about drinking blood. “Occupado?”
“Hey, Question Mark, what the fuck you doing?” the gruff voice of Frank asked. “Did you find him?” His tone rose into one of utter excitement, like a child on his way to Disneyworld.
“The bathroom’s locked,” Question Mark replied. “I think we got a little lamb in there, ready for the slaughter.”
“Ready for the grill, you mean!” Frank said, giving an insane laugh that reminded me of the coldness of empty space. I turned, running over to the old man’s corpse. The game was up, i knew. I wrapped my hands around the sticky, blood-coated handle of the butcher’s knife. I started pulling up, but it was firmly implanted in the old man’s skull. At that moment, I heard a sound that sent waves of terror dancing up my spine: the sound of keys jingling in a lock.
A rush of adrenaline made the world brighten and my vision turn white in the harsh glare of the phone’s light. I laid the phone down on the top of the toilet and, with all of my strength, yanked up on the knife. There was a cracking noise, then a wet sucking sound as cold blood sprayed my face and neck. The knife slipped out in a rush, sending me flying back.
At that moment, the door flew open. Frank and Question Mark stood there, side by side, two grinning lunatics with knives in their hands. The orange light from the sunrise dimly illuminated their silhouettes. They looked over to where the cell phone lay on the toilet, not seeing me leaning against the back wall, breathing heavily in an animal panic. Before they had time to react, I ran forwards, the blade facing out towards my attackers.
Question Mark turned towards me at the last second as I brought the knife into his throat. It sliced easily into the flesh. His eyes widened in pain and surprise as he gurgled, choking on his own blood. He tried to bring the meat cleaver up, but his foot slipped on the slick blood coating the floor.
I yanked the knife back out, turning to Frank. I saw a flash of metal and felt something pierce deeply into the side of my stomach. A roaring pain like acid burned its way through my flesh. Screaming as warm spurts of blood shot from the stab wound, I ran at Frank with the last of my energy, stabbing upwards into his belly and aiming at his aorta in the center. We fell into each other, both critically injured. The blood burst from his ruptured artery, spurting like a firehose with each rapid beat of his heart.
His eyes rolled up in his head as he fell back, landing on the corpse of Question Mark. Staggering and leaning against the wall, I tried making my way towards the front of the store, but felt the energy draining out of me like water through a sieve. Waves of agony crashed through my body, taking my breath away. I collapsed to my knees, crawling slowly towards salvation. Frothy bubbles of blood flowed over my lips as I coughed, choking.
I heard sirens in the distance, approaching rapidly. It sounded like dozens of police cars were heading in our direction. Screaming and crying, I dragged myself towards the front door, leaving warm streaks of blood smeared across the restaurant floor. The gurgling death gasp of Frank rattled noisily behind me. I could feel my life draining out of the deep stab wound in the side of my stomach.
As I reached the door, police cars came into the restaurant parking lot with a screeching of tires. Men began running out with their guns drawn. The world went black as I reached up towards the door, wanting only to get out of this restaurant and never see this town again.
***
I woke up in the hospital a couple days later. Emergency surgery had stopped the bleeding, and many blood transfusions had saved my life. Police were waiting around my bed as I regained consciousness, frantic to ask me questions. I told them I didn’t know anything, that I had just stopped at the restaurant to eat and gotten attacked.
“We had gotten multiple missing persons reports over the last couple weeks,” the gruff homicide detective with a face like a bulldog said, “but we didn’t connect the victims to the diner until the day we found you there. Both of the escaped patients are dead, though, thanks to you.” He patted me on the shoulder. I shook my head, too weary to respond. If only they had investigated sooner, I could have avoided this entire nightmare.
But, then again, I wouldn’t have tasted the best Reuben sandwich in the universe, either.