Free off road buggy plans

Hello everyone! 25M. First time writing on this topic, lurked for a couple of months reading everyone experiences with this disease and types of medications used.
I will start by saying this is a long story, but one i think will be of help to someone in the future.
Been diagnosed with UC in November 2023, severe pancolitis, scope proved with biopsy. My GI put me on prednisone (60 mg 2 weeks, tapering off 5 mg over every week after that) and mesalamine - Salofalk (oral: 3000 mg/ day; suppositories: 2000 mg/day ). This first flare i was having passed instantly after getting on Salofalk, 1-2 days and my symptoms were already under control.
Over the next couple of months everything went smoothly, kept following the GI recommendations and hanging to the meds as planned.
After ending prednisone, sometimes in March 2024, thus feeling well and no real symptoms showing a rebounce on a flare, i started having the morning instant need to go to the bathroom. This didn't ring any bell at that time since i was trying to have a more healthy diet and put more fibers into play, the poop was looking fine, just the instant need in the morning when i woke up was something worth mentioning. All this time still going with the mesalamine as instructed by the GI (1500mg/day).
April 2024 brought some stressful days for me, which i could not cope very well at that time, and fell again into a flare. Back to more BM/day, sometimes cramps, blood in stools, fatigue after a while, loosing almost 10 pounds. Schedueled an appointement with the GI that brought me back to the same meds described on my first encounter with this disease (prednisone 60mg and increased dose of mesalamine). Ultrasounds showed thickening of the descendent and sigmoid colon, everything else above that not being the main problem. (the location would be important to take some conclusions).
Starting 4 weeks ago with the refreshed meds count, i hoped things would move around in some direction, knowing the path to remission is not always a straight one. So i kept monitoring my symptoms.

• Sadly for me it seemed like, for some reason unknown to me at that time, symptoms were worsening.
  • BMs frequency increased to something like 12-15 times a day
  • Most of bathroom trips would result in watery stools tinged with blood, the possibility to distinguish anything else than red water in the toilet was slim at best.
  • Nightly BMs became more ocurent, maybe 4-5 times per night.
  • Cramps and pain
    • Thus cramping was a symptom from the beginning, it was restricted to the left flank consistent with the ultrasound discovery. Now after 1 week on the refreshed meds, cramping was more time persistent and no longer restricted, it was all out abdominal cramping and pain, like someone took out my bowel and decided to drain it like a towel.
    • This would most of the time take me out, either resorting to lying on the floor, in bed, or on the toilet.
    • The ending of the cramping episodes would eventually bring me to another bathroom trip, and this trips were the bad ones: it was only blood, or at least from what i could see, blood was the predominant traveler in my poop.
  • After 2 weeks i was starting to feel more like a dead body, fatigue increased, my mental state was in bad shape and i could not even hope to get some decent hours of sleep without this disease pinching me in some way or another.
• In the meantime my GI had instructed me to do some blood and stool tests to see some actual data we could play upon in the future. As expected, CRP was increased 4x times, and Calprotectin was near the 850 ug/mg, which overall seemed like mild flare.
• All this time i tried desperately to keep some good levels of hydration and eat as correctly as i can, possibly this prevented me to end up in the ER.

At his point i think is important to note i got a license and master`s degree in Pharmacy so i started to put some of my symptoms under scrutiny as for the current blood and stool tests and the ultrasounds, something was fishy. So i decided to investigate more on this:

1. For the past week i would intentionally miss some of my Salofalk doses, especially the afternoon ones, and that led to some interesting facts. It would seem that missing the afternoon doses would allow me to have slightly less watery blood tinged stools over the night (slightly because i kept the suppositories).
   • Besides this i would also notice that it was a mandatory routine for me, after taking the Salofalk pills to go to bathroom with cramps and watery stools/ bloody ones also after 2-3 hours of the ingestion. All the water i would try to drink in order to keep my self alive you just pass through me, so this with all the above ringed some bells.
2. This Saturday i started doing some research. Being a Pharmacist at my core really allowed me to easily navigate through clinical trials and studies to really get to some proof of something being wrong with the medication.
   • Just to note, Saturday was one of the worse days in this flare. I have been travelling for 5 hours between cities, driving, got home, and just passed out for 3-4 hours in bed from being so exhausted from the very likely electrolyte imbalance and dehydration.
3. I managed to found what i was searching for, at least 8 studies, some of them with clinical trials, testing the mesalamine intolerance, mechanism of this intolerance and symptoms. After a couple of hours of reading and putting things head to head i decided to stop the Salofalk pills for Sunday.

Not a religious guy... But GOD... That made a big difference....
Sunday went all in all better than the last 3 weeks, reduced watery stools, blood starting to ease off, and the cramps starting to wonder off and just bothering me from time to time. Also felt like my body was now desperately begging to drink as much water as i could, it was like a man in the desert, sucking any drop of water i would get in.
Sunday night i did another experiment, that i would regret. Thus my finding were already something i could put my GI to think off, i thought about testing the suppositories also. Removing them along with the pills didn't really proved it was from the route of administration or anything at all unrelated to the main active substance, mesalamine. So i wanted to give it a try and find if different routes could lead to different responses.

• It turned out to be as i expected initially, taking the suppository before bed, led me to watery bloody stools (again, the same day symptoms started to turn off during day time). In my research i discovered that in one of the clinical trials regarding the suppositories, 500 mg were enough to cause the subject to have watery tinged stools 4 hours after administration. My dose was already 1000mg at once before bed, so this checked. Got it in at 11 pm and went to the bathroom sometimes between 3-3:30 am with watery tinged stools. In order to get this out of the way now and forever, i got on with another suppository at 4 am and that as you might guess, turned my morning into hell with the same symptoms, cramps also kicking back in.

Getting to the end of this, Monday morning had my appointment with the GI, i went all prepared to give the speech of my life, which i did, stating all the research and my background to further ground my ideas. At first it seemed like my GI was a bit sceptic at best, thinking at first it could be a steroid resistant UC form, but after hearing all i had to say, and thinking about how the symptoms improved in such a short time, she decided to get me off Salofalk for the next week.
How am i feeling now you might wonder? Already 2 full days out of any mesalamine:

• Cramps went down a lot, still pinching me from time to time, but now they are bearable and don`t lead to urgencies anymore. Important to note is that now they are again restricted the the left flank rather than my all abdomen loosing it in pain, which somehow enforces the ideea that mesalamine intolerance was causing my entire bowel to suffer.
• NO MORE WATERY STOOLS. Still having loose stools but the feeling is they keep getting more and more formed by the day.
• Blood tinged stools/ blood overall dropped a lot, most of my toilet visits must now conclude with a careful inspection to see any sings of blood overall. Most of them appear to be free of blood.
• The fatigue/ exhaustion is now something i can tun my back to, being able to do house chores, going shopping, went to the office 2 days in a row, things i just could not have done in the last weeks.
• The nausea associated with taking the pills dropped. (this i now realize i didn`t put in my initials stating of symptoms)
• Dropping 10 pounds before increasing meds and 10 pounds after that with the mesalamine possible intolerance really got me to the brink of extinction, but now i am already starting to put something back and feel more on my feet.

I know i am still in this flare, i would not have expected to just cure off after stopping mesalamine. But at least now, the prednisone can do the work undisturbed from any bad effects from the Salofalk. I am full of hope this could bring some changes at least for me, and possibly getting more improvements with each passing day. I got another appointment with the GI next Monday and hopefully this insights will open some new ways of handling this flare.
** As a side note for anybody interested, the actual mechanism of mesalamine working in the UC are still highly debated, modulating the arachidonic acid transformations, it is agreed this is mostly done by inhibiting COX pathway. One of the studies i found suggest that by this, it would lead to increasing on the LOX pathway that would to some extend increase swelling. ** Also the main reason for the exacerbated symptoms, like watery stools and cramps, is, as suggested in the studies, the inhibition of Na/K/ATP-azic pumps that actively help with water absorption, so practically the water would keep puddling in the bowel and cause more harm than good.
I could give more intel on the mechanism stuff and provide with what studies I managed to look upon if anyone is interested.
Hope this helps anyone that has been struggling with this kind of issue and raise alarm over the possibly increasing intolerance to medications.
Keep safe and keep stress out of you life as much as possible.

Long story short. I work multiple jobs, including running a hotel.
Amy, my wonderful gf helps me a lot even with hotel work. She makes me lunch if I'm working or even volunteers to help out with the hotel despite her having grad school + full time job. I appreciate her a lot.
This also creates a complex situation where in a way I am her employer (she is getting paid), but also she is doing this out of kindness, does not need the job, and has no obligation. She is doing van-life and lives freely.
Amy & I are two different people. Amy is very planned and calculated, context & documentation is important to her.
I am the opposite. 2.5 Jobs means that I have to be ready for constant chaos/fires to put out.
This has naturally caused arguments in our relationship, however we both have been putting in the work and learning to properly love each other in the way that it needs to happen.

Buildup

I asked Amy earlier in the day if she could work from 4:30pm-6:00pm because I had an important remote work meeting that is crucial for me to manage the upcoming move. I only ask for help if its incredibly important as I can just manage myself, and topic switching 4-5 times in a meeting is a lot of stress for me.
She says yes she can. I ask her, if she's sure, she can say no and I won't mind it's okay. She says yes she can. (She feels obligated, even if I tell her not to be)

Work

I had an important task of installing a new system. I got it 90% done and was managing both jobs and it was almost time for my remote work meeting 1 on 1. All that was left was to stay on the phone with a IT tech who was controlling the computer and unplug/plug in a few things. Amy was with me before this just hanging out but hadn't started her shift and was doing her own thing.
I get 4-5 different calls all at once, schedule 3 of them for later. It is now 4:27pm and time for Amy to take the shift. I tell her to take the phone, all she has to do is plug/unplug a few cables for the tech, and she can ask me any questions she needs to. Her head goes "kaboom" because no context. And tells me "I didn't sign up for this" 2-3 times, saying she will still do it. I feel bad for asking for help and tell her, if you don't want to do it that's fine, I will manage. You're free to go, essentially relieving her of the entire shift. She is silent for a bit, leaves, comes back because she feels bad. Still doesn't actually help while I'm in front of her stressed out because I have two people doing a 1 on 1 with me at the same time context swapping.
Her issues are:

• I didn't ask her to do the computer work, and it was my task
  
• I didn't give her any context and just gave her the phone
  
• She feels obligated to say yes
  
• She is a human being with feelings, and not an employee
  

My issues are:

• She signed up for the shift even after I asked her twice
  
• I hate it when I hear complaining. It's extra negativity. If you don't want to be here or do the work, I won't hold it against you. Just leave, I'll do it myself. If you didn't want to do it in the first place, just say no. There won't be an issue. I hate feeling bad that I asked for help, and wish I never asked for it in the first place if she was just going to complain about it.
  
• She didn't leave after I asked her to, and barely helped after
  
• I feel she responds aggressively/abrasively sometimes when I ask her for help if she is in the middle of another task
  

I understand at the heart of this its my issue to have this kind of life and I'm working on fixing it (super close). I understand she is not a real employee and is only doing this out of kindness, however if I'm doing 5 things at once and she willingly took the 1.5hr shift, I do feel it is acceptable to tell her what work needs to be done. We had a conversation where I had just gotten off a 10.5 hour shift of hell, where we decide to talk & I feel she is taking no accountability for her actions. I said she is mixing up employee/partner expectations which is natural because it's a very hard dynamic. She said she's not an employee, but even if she was I'd be a bad boss. This triggered me a bit, and I told her as an employer if she wants to go that route, I'd be very frustrated with her unprofessionalism. That triggered her into crying, and after a few more back and forths she stormed out saying she needed a break from the conversation. I really am trying to empathize with her, and I do understand that I could've given context, I could ask instead of tell, & she is a human being with feelings. However so am I, I can admit my faults and work on it, but I felt ZERO accountability for her actions on her end.

Long story short. I work multiple jobs, including running a hotel.
Amy, my wonderful gf helps me a lot even with hotel work. She makes me lunch if I'm working or even volunteers to help out with the hotel despite her having grad school + full time job. I appreciate her a lot.
This also creates a complex situation where in a way I am her employer (she is getting paid), but also she is doing this out of kindness, does not need the job, and has no obligation. She is doing van-life and lives freely.
Amy & I are two different people. Amy is very planned and calculated, context & documentation is important to her.
I am the opposite. 2.5 Jobs means that I have to be ready for constant chaos/fires to put out.
This has naturally caused arguments in our relationship, however we both have been putting in the work and learning to properly love each other in the way that it needs to happen.

Buildup

I asked Amy earlier in the day if she could work from 4:30pm-6:00pm because I had an important remote work meeting that is crucial for me to manage the upcoming move. I only ask for help if its incredibly important as I can just manage myself, and topic switching 4-5 times in a meeting is a lot of stress for me.
She says yes she can. I ask her, if she's sure, she can say no and I won't mind it's okay. She says yes she can. (She feels obligated, even if I tell her not to be)

Work

I had an important task of installing a new system. I got it 90% done and was managing both jobs and it was almost time for my remote work meeting 1 on 1. All that was left was to stay on the phone with a IT tech who was controlling the computer and unplug/plug in a few things. Amy was with me before this just hanging out but hadn't started her shift and was doing her own thing.
I get 4-5 different calls all at once, schedule 3 of them for later. It is now 4:27pm and time for Amy to take the shift. I tell her to take the phone, all she has to do is plug/unplug a few cables for the tech, and she can ask me any questions she needs to. Her head goes "kaboom" because no context. And tells me "I didn't sign up for this" 2-3 times, saying she will still do it. I feel bad for asking for help and tell her, if you don't want to do it that's fine, I will manage. You're free to go, essentially relieving her of the entire shift. She is silent for a bit, leaves, comes back because she feels bad. Still doesn't actually help while I'm in front of her stressed out because I have two people doing a 1 on 1 with me at the same time context swapping.
Her issues are:

• I didn't ask her to do the computer work, and it was my task
  
• I didn't give her any context and just gave her the phone
  
• She feels obligated to say yes
  
• She is a human being with feelings, and not an employee
  

My issues are:

• She signed up for the shift even after I asked her twice
  
• I hate it when I hear complaining. It's extra negativity. If it's such a big deal, I'd rather do it myself. If you don't want to be here or do the work, I won't hold it against you. Just leave, I'll do it myself. If you didn't want to do it in the first place, just say no. There won't be an issue.
  
• She didn't leave after I asked her to, and barely helped after
  
• I feel she responds aggressively sometimes when I ask her for help
  

I understand at the heart of this its my issue to have this kind of life and I'm working on fixing it (super close). I understand she is not a real employee and is only doing this out of kindness, however if I'm doing 5 things at once and she willingly took the 1.5hr shift, I do feel it is acceptable to tell her what work needs to be done. We had a conversation where I had just gotten off a 10.5 hour shift of hell, where we decide to talk & I feel she is taking no accountability for her actions. I said she is mixing up employee/partner expectations which is natural because it's a very hard dynamic. She said she's not an employee, but even if she was I'd be a bad boss. This triggered me a bit, and I told her as an employer if she wants to go that route, I'd be very frustrated with her unprofessionalism. That triggered her into crying, and after a few more back and forths she stormed out saying she needed a break from the conversation. I really am trying to empathize with her, and I do understand that I could've given context, I could ask instead of tell, & she is a human being with feelings. However so am I, I can admit my faults and work on it, but I felt ZERO accountability for her actions on her end.

Greetings, Huntsmen, Huntresses, and gender neutral Hunters! Welcome to another week of writing prompts! If you are new here, this is a community-driven weekly event, and the purpose is primarily to generate creativity and have fun while doing so (whether you are a 100% real-meat person or not, we don't judge).

What will be involved Special Note for Spoilers!:

Each week, three RWBY-related topics will be posted (subject to ties and special events!). Participants can write a short piece of fiction or dialogue based on that prompt. When writing, the suggestion is to aim for 1k-3k words, however, this is not a requirement. There is no goal - this is not a popularity contest - just write and have fun! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! :)
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The Prompts!:

• Pyrrha Nikos was once a nobody.
• Jaune and Pyrrha find themselves in a single hotel room for the night. There is only one bed.
• Penny's rescue dog causes chaos at the family dinner party.

Optional prompts that must be combined with one or more of the above:

• The avalanche scene from Disney's Mulan (1998), but Mulan is Jaune and Shan Yu is Cinder.
• "And that's why mosquitoes don't bite me."
• An AU where Weiss is a terrible singer.
• Ironwood gains a Tsar nuke.
• Upon arriving Atlas, Ruby bumps into Penny - only, she isn't the Penny she knew.
• Team RWBY and JNPR decided to plan for a Halloween party at Beacon Academy. Hilarity ensues.
• The Most Awkward Date in Remnant's History.
• Jaune takes up a side-gig as a matchmaker and to everyone's surprise, he's [really] good at it.
• Weiss Schnee, but she has the powers and abilities of Wonder Woman from DC.
• The Red trailer, but written in the style of your favorite author.
• RWBYJNPR + Qrow at Haven, Yang eats Weiss’s leftovers and the blame game ensues.
• RWBY characters meet people voiced by the same voice actor from other RT shows (E.G. Ruby, Kimball, Hilda and Space Kid).
• Blake wasn't just a member of the White Fang, she was their version of a pop Idol with a multitude of endorsements, merchandise, etc.

Next Week's Poll:

The Poll!

Previously, on Writing Prompt Wednesday:

As experiments go, I must confess this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I don't know about you guys, but I went through several books and nothing clicked.
The thread
The Prompts:

• - Pick a fiction book off of your shelf, go to the 8th page, use the 8th sentence to kick off your story.

Alternate-Secondary Prompts:

Upcoming Events:

New Year, new events! And now we have the quarter of spring leading into summer and the 4th of July FFA, I hope you all had a great holiday if you celebrated one!

Important Stuff and Things!

I have managed to rescue /RWBYFanfiction from an untimely demise! If you would like to share your fanfic or make recommendations, head on over there! I know that I've said something special was coming for this, but Ruby on Rails is hard and not cheap to operate. The fanfiction indexer that I was trying to set up just isn't working and probably needs someone with more experience in RoR programming/design. I haven't completely put it to bed, but it might be a while before I can circle back to it. In the meantime, the fanfic sub has actually had a decent amount of postings - head on over and say hi! :)
No matter how bad things may get, words will always have meaning. Now get out there and write something, but most importantly, have fun! :)

Hello everyone and welcome to another Welcome Wagon Wednesday!
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New Members: - Introduce Yourself: Tell us a bit about yourself! What kind of vehicle do you drive? What area are you from? - Share Your Story: Have you ever found yourself in need of roadside assistance? What happened and how did you manage? If you've used Rick’s services before, we'd love to hear your feedback!
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This post is probably going to be too long so here's a TLDR, Most of it was good. About 800 of the 1089 albums I rated a 6 or above. Here's the list and here's a link to my spreadsheet, recommended to view in Excel. Also I will probably post this on other music related subreddits, so if it's not allowed here please feel free to delete it mods.
I've considered myself a music fan for a large part of my life, and I am always the person in the group who seems to have the most music based knowledge. Whether it be lyrics, history, funny anecdotes, most of my public facing personality revolves around my love of music.
In 2020, as you might very well remember, the world came to a screaming halt. All at once the constant cycle of media just stopped. Like 1000 voices being silenced all at once. At some point in that year I came across a website, listchallenges.com, and on that website there was a list called the 1001 Club List, a list of 1001 albums "you have to listen to before you die". I decided to go through the list, because I was curious. Surely a person who listened to as much music as I have has listened to most of it, but I made myself a rule, I could only check off the album if I was 100% sure that I have listened to that album from front to back.
I ended up checking off less than 200.
Needless to say I was pretty surprised at how lacking I was in my musical history. Up until this point I prided myself in the amount of music I had listened to, and this was a serious ego hit. I stewed on it for a bit and then I committed. No matter what, I would listen to all 1001 albums in the list, in chronological order. Even if I was 100% sure I had heard them before, I wanted to discover music how it was discovered back then, in the order it was discovered. I made myself a few ground rules for this. First, no skipping any albums or songs, no matter what. Even if I hated it, which there are a few cases in which I did, I had to listen to the whole list. Second rule was I could only listen to the original release, or as close to it as I could find. This mostly just boils down to no deluxe editions, or releases with "bonus tracks".
The third rule was I wanted to rate every album I listened to. This part might be controversial, but this isn't meant to be a review of every album on this list. My scale of 1-10, on which I consider 6 and up to be varying levels of good albums, 5 to be okay, and 4 and under to be varying levels of bad, is mostly a list of first impressions, save for the 200~ albums I had listened to before. I will say this now, if I rated an album you like too low for your taste, it's not because I don't like you, it's because I didn't jive with it. If I had it my way I would rate all music 6+ because I love music, and I like nothing more than enjoying music.
One of the biggest mental takeaways I've had from this project that I believe with 100% of my heart is that every album on this list, and for the most part in general, is some body's favourite album, and it doesn't feel good having someone insult your tastes. So again, I wish I could like every album, but sadly that's not possible.
Life took me all kinds of places over the proceeding 1347 days, I lost 2 close friends, I moved 2376 km across the country, changed careers, was diagnosed with PTSD, and came close to ending it all, but one constant was the list. I discovered so many amazing artists that I would never have given the time of day before. Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Nick Cave, John Grant, Monks, Johnny Cash, Os Mutantes, Mike Oldfield, Anohni and the Johnsons, and many many more. After 1089 albums (due to different publication versions that I found out about during this project), totaling 852 hours, 43 minutes and 10 seconds, spanning 12665 songs, I finished the list on May 29 2024.
It's kind of amazing to me that there are albums on the list that hadn't even been released when I started this project, whether or not I think they will stay on the official list is another question for another day. As for the other inclusions, there are some criticisms to be had for sure. The real issue is, you could make 10 of these lists in 100 different countries, and have almost 0 crossover. You can tell the author is from the UK as there are a lot of questionable inclusions from UK based acts, especially in the 80s and 90s, but honestly, I can't be mad at that. If I made the list there would probably be 7 Rush albums, 2 Tragically Hip albums, Marianas Trench, Simple Plan, Sum 41, etc.
Anyways, 1089 albums later, here I am, with an excel file full of data and a rate your music profile full of ratings to back it up just in case. Shout out to the user kavikovi on RYM who published this list, which was a breath of fresh air to turn to after dealing with my excel file and that list challenge website for so long. I kept the excel file going, and now this file is a fully interactable dashboard that displays all kinds of cool data based on this project. A couple of interesting numbers that I will put in this post:
Average Rating: 6.57
Shortest Runtime: 15 minutes
Average Runtime: 46 minutes 59 seconds
Longest Runtime: 3 hours, 12 minutes, 11 Seconds
Shortest track count: 2
Average track count 11.63
Longest track count: 69
Albums with a nice runtime (1 Hour 9 Minutes) : 5
40 out of the 1089 albums were in languages other than English.
I started this project with a favourite album, 2112 by Rush. I still consider it my favourite, but I have gained 25 new 10/10s, and a whole new appreciation for music that I will not lose any time soon. If you've read this far, what's you're favourite album off this list? Thanks for indulging me.

• Bert

The global car tire market is anticipated to grow at a considerable CAGR of 2.2% during the forecast period (2023-2029). Tire makers are turning to green energy in their production as companies are working to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, with investments in the direction of zero-carbon technology, energy efficiency, and green energy. For instance, in February 2021, Michelin Group announced that it is working toward making its tires 100% sustainable by 2050. For this, Michelin partnered with various organizations like Axens, IFP Energies Nouvelles, Pyrowave, Carbios, Enviro, and BlackCycle.
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The global car tire market is further segmented based on geography including North America (the US, and Canada), Europe (UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and Others), Asia-Pacific (India, China, Japan, South Korea, and Others), and the Rest of the World (the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America). Among these, the Asia-Pacific regional market is expected to cater to prominent growth over the forecast period.
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· Market Coverage
· Market number available for – 2024-2031
· Base year- 2024
· Forecast period- 2024-2031
· Segment Covered- By Source, By Product Type, By Applications
· Competitive Landscape- Archer Daniels Midland Co., Ingredion Inc., Kerry Group Plc, Cargill
· Inc., and others
Global Car Tire Market Report Segment
By Tire Type

• Winter Tires
• Summer Tires
• Others

By Application

• On-the-Road
• Off-the-Road

By Vehicle Type

• Passenger Cars
• Commercial Vehicles

By End-User

• OEM
• Aftermarket

Global Car Tire Market Report Segment by Region
North America

• United States
• Canada

Europe

• UK
• Germany
• Italy
• Spain
• France
• Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific

• China
• India
• Japan
• South Korea
• Rest of Asia-Pacific

Rest of the World

• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa

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Hi everyone! Sorry ahead of time, as this post is everywhere and ver long, but I really just want to rant and get this off my chest…
My ex (white 28M) and I (Asian 23F) broke up back in January after nearly 3 years together. We had agreed to still be friends, but we "drifted apart" due to various reasons (both him and I at fault, no matter how you look at it). Months before we broke up, I had agreed to be in his cousin's wedding (fiancee's side), and I still plan on being in it because her and I grew pretty close throughout my ex's and my relationship.
Here's where it gets messy...
Before we broke up, we had obviously planned to go together to the wedding (taking place in a different state in July). But after we had broken up, I asked him if that was still the plan, he said, "I haven't thought that far out yet, I don't care." I spoke with my parents about carpool advice, especially since my car is not reliable right now (I can not afford maintenance atm), and my mom said that she will drive me since it's a weekend and she happens to be free. I texted my ex to let him know (1 month ago), so he has ample time to put something together. Last I spoke to his mom, she was planning on going too, so I naturally thought the new plan for them would be to carpool together. Long story short, he blew up on me for "throwing him under the bus," since the plan was to carpool together. He pettily responded, "thanks for letting me know ahead though, I guess." And we haven't really spoken or texted since.
Fast forward to yesterday and into today, I finally unadded him on everything, as I saw he moved on with a new girl (less than 5 months after we broke up), and I was cleaning out my purse and found his house key, so I texted him saying, "Hey, I found your key in my purse, do you want it back? You can give it to your girl." I genuinely did not intent for this to come across as petty. But he blew up at me for being "the most petty human ever", and said, "I just have a friend I ride [motorcycles] with." My coworker lurked his instagram... Low and behold, they're together... Another piece of info I should add is we were having sex up until like 1 month ago. So, I'm sure you can imagine why this hurt. Not only becuase he straight up lied to me, but because it feels and seems like he's had her lined up for when we officially cut contact. A couple of his cousins have even messaged me to see if I was okay and expressed how they feel "he really did [me] dirty." But I really want to get outsider perspective and opinion, because I feel broken. I had an emotional and mental breakdown at work today because it all felt so real that we are forever done now.
Other info I forgot to add…

1. Of the nearly 3 years we were together, he has been unemployed for more than half of that time. He also still lives with his mom and doesn't pay rent. (I also live with my parents at age 23, but I do pay rent). He uses taking care of his grandma as an excuse to not have a job, but his mom goes in to work late morning and he wakes up late (gaming until 3/4 AM or riding his motorcycle late into the night), and immediately hits the gym for 2-3 hours as soon as her husband gets home. IMO, he has plenty of time to at least have a PART TIME JOB and still have time for his hobbies. Where I know I may be wrong is that I called him out on this, but he accused me of bashing his grandmother (which I did not).
   
2. I graduated undergrad in 2023, but throughout the time we were together while I was in college, I would go to his place after a long day of school and work (1-2 jobs a day) and was expected to cook dinner for him and his family. I did this because A. I needed to eat, and B. I loved him, so I did it while he played his video games. I got fed up with this because he would get mad the days I didn't come over after work after graduation (I am a behavior therapist for kids diagnosed with ASD, so it's very exhausting).
   
3. The reason we broke up came down to because I want to have kids and he doesn't (never held this against him, as this is a valid opinion and desire to have), and I didn't want to move away from my family and everything I know to across the country with him, where there are little to no Asian Americans I can connect to (family and my roots are very important to me).
   

For context. I am a white(24M) and I miss my ex gf(who is Latina 24F) For privacy reasons I will refer to her as Emma.
I met her at work back in 2021, I met her and her mom in the service department of my old job and we hit it off pretty good. Told her some of my dumb jokes which made her laugh and moved the cart she was using to get parts(made her confused for a sec lol). After that day, I was teased by her coworkers about liking her(which I did) but I had just gotten out of a bad relationship and didn't want to pursue her and possibly make her uncomfortable. We met every now & then in her department always a good conversation, then she came up to me mid August and stated she was going back to college. All I could think is(damn) then I asked if she had any social media I could keep in contact with her? She said she had no social media and asked for my number(which I provided and failed to get hers), I gave her my number and she said she will contact me when she got the chance. We said our goodbyes for now, I waited a week for a text but nothing came up, I thought(well damn. But oh well I guess).
I didn't see Emma till the following summer and we picked up where we left off jokes and all. She came up to me(again) mid August and said she was back off to college and I asked for her phone number this time. She gave it to me and I texted her that evening and we talked for a few weeks then it died off for awhile. I was interested in a different woman at the time(57F) I like older women lol. But that got broke off for reasons I'll explain in a different story. But I got through all that bs and stayed single for 3-4 months. Then I decided that I was tired of being alone and not being a bright cookie, I took the experience I had with just talking to other women and the two relationships I did have. I figured if I used that experience of what to do and what not to do on Emma. So I shoot her a text one day and she texted awhile back, we got caught up on each other's lives a bit(crucial part here) she told me that she was thinking about going back home(mexico). It saddened me. But i had to give it a shot right? We talked for about a month and I finally popped the question "will you go out on a date with me?" And she responded with "yes! Where we going?" I was raised to be a gentleman and I told her "where ever you would like." She told me she and her family don't go out much and wouldn't know where to start so I asked her if Red lobster would do? And she said "yes!" We planned for the following Saturday night at 6:30pm, I had called ahead to get a reservation and Red lobster only allows a 45min ahead reservation. So when Saturday came I was soooo nervous and anxious. But I pushed through and told myself "you got this!" And we texted before the date and we both admitted we were excited, I got on the road and called the restaurant for our reservation and picked up a rose. I got to the restaurant early to make sure I got everything right and the hostess and waitresses proceeded to tease me and tell me they were jealous like saying "awww, what a lucky girl, my bf didn't do that for me, she better keep you, etc" by this point I'm turning redder than the lobsters(pun intended) so our waitress sat me down at our booth and I ordered myself a drink while I waited. I texted her saying I was there, I didn't get a response back(she was driving) and 6:30 came I had begun to think I was stood up. But at 6:32pm I got a text from her "I'm here. I don't see you" I texted back "I'm coming to get you" I sprang up from the booth with confidence and nervousness and I met her at the front door. She was standing there and the first time me seeing her all dressed up all I could do was stare at her for a moment, her hair was long, glistening Shiney black with bright blue highlights, she wore this floral blouse, a brown leather jacket, blue jeans and air Jordans. The way she looked I had went completely monkey brained and heard the song "you're the inspiration" by Chicago in the back of my head. Next thing I heard was "hey."(her) (me)"huh?" (Her)"are you going to take me to our table?" (Me short circuiting)"yeah, yeah! Right this way!" I got her to our table and she noticed I had a drink and asked about it, I told her I got here early to make sure everything was right and she went "aww" she ordered her drink and I gave her the rose and she of course said "thank you" We ordered our food and started talking about life, work, home, etc. Then we got our food but never finished cuz of her and I talking. She noticed my necklace and asked about it, I told her about my necklace which it's a mjolnir necklace I bought because I'm a norse pagan. She then said she liked it and I of course said "thank you" and she began to tell me about a transformers necklace she's been looking at and I stopped her mid sentence "wait, wait, wait...... you like transformers?" She said "DUDE! I love transformers!" I said " No freaking way! I do too!" (I actually really love transformers) she said "nu uh!" We then proceed to show off each other's collections and be jealous of what we had and didn't have lol. We ended up being there for four hour's(even after closing time) we got the rest of our food to go and I offered to walk her to her car. As we walked out the hostess looked at us and gave me a smirk that said "I see you got this and your welcome." I took her to her car and we said our goodnights and I asked her if she would want to do this again? And she said "yeah, I had fun with you tonight." I said "cool, I'll set up our next date!" She said "okay." She was smiling and blushing like I was. She drove off and I got into my car and drove off and the entire way home I was just grinning ear to ear and saying "yes, yes, yes yes!!!!"
I'll end this here. It's gonna be in multiple parts, I'll post it when I have time and thank you for listening.

The earth opened and the monsters came, and it was the end of the world. But it didn’t feel like it because we were still here.
There was never a time I can remember where the creatures did not lurk in the shadows, kidnapping stray helpless children or hapless adults; sometimes it would be that someone of Golgotha would go missing and whispers over breakfast would be the consequences of it. Funerals were frivolous, even if there were sometimes candles lit in the absence of the missing. Generally, it would be the elders that would sit around wooden tables, hum old hymns and maybe they would whisper a few kind words to Elohim or Allah or perhaps a more pagan variety; I came from a fully loaded Christian household where the paganistic murmurs were often seen as little better than the monsters that came from the earth.
Whatever the case may be, it was simple mourning, simple human mourning and it was sad and miserable and more numbing every time I’d see it happen. Sometimes it would be Lady (she was an old shamanistic-style woman with tattered robes and graying hair, even some whiskers on her chin too) that would culminate a hymn in the streets with her incense or more for the missing, but it was Christian and good in that way. Always about Jesus, always good clean words and simple gospels that were quiet and weak.
It was a young woman that’d gone missing sometime the previous night; there’d been a patrol sent out among the old ruins too because the missing girl was the daughter of a Boss. The Bosses were distinguished leaders in Golgotha, due to their tendency for extreme and untempered cruelty and whenever someone crossed a Boss or whenever a Boss lost something precious, everyone took notice, because the Bosses controlled the functions of Golgotha. It just so happened the Boss whose daughter went missing was also the fellow that controlled the water supply. His name was Harold and that wily sonofagun shut off the pumps that moved ground water into our homes. He was the only one with the key and said he’d not divulge it to a soul if the girl wasn’t returned.
Some of the boys on the compound cultivated a posse with impassioned cries of mutual aid and such, but Boss Harold, no matter how much they threatened or how many of his fingers they snapped in their desperate grasp for humanity, would not comply. Most of the boys surmised it was likely the girl was dead and her remains would be impossible to find due to the way monsters tended to grind bones into powder and dry swallow even the gristle of our fragile bodies; there’d be nothing left—or if there was anything left of her it wouldn’t be her any longer (assuredly she’d be a husk or unworthy of saving). When hard torture failed, the boys cried for more reason, and yet Boss Harold would not budge. The old Boss said, “I’ll stop the motor of the world until she’s found!”
A group of rabblerousing youths had absconded with his daughter or so he said; the reality was much more likely that she had run from home of her own free will either by wanderlust or ignorance. When all was said and done, the families came to me and said, “Hey, Harlan, buddy, pal, you’ve lost weight. You’re looking good, Mister Harlan, did you get a haircut?”
I’d heard about the girl. I’d heard about the posse sent out to Boss Harold’s abode—the compound ain’t that big—and knew they’d be coming for me because I was a scavver, a person that wades through the old ruins either for illusory history pages or weapons or even (and this one was a rare treat) lost people. I knew they’d come for my services and had already put together my pack for travels with rations and light tools—no gun; drawing attention in the old ruins was a dumb thing because sound could travel forever.
“I’m going,” I told the group that’d been sent for me, “I don’t reckon any of you’d like to come with me?” I looked over the dirty faces, the faces of men, women, children that could scarcely be called grown, and none stood out because they were all tired and dirty and I imagined I looked much the same.
Then a girl’s voice broke out from the crowd, and she stumbled forward from the line of strangers that’d come to see me at my door. “I’ll go!” she said, “I want to go with you, Mister Harlan.”
It was unsurprising. Youngsters always thought the old ruins were like a field trip, like maybe they’d find a souvenir for their sweetie and come home with a good story. Most didn’t come back, and those that did usually came back with scars beneath the skin from what they’d seen in the out there. It was like a game for them and when they saw what the world outside the walls held, they would retreat into themselves for fear. It wasn’t just the monsters. It was the ruins themselves, the overwhelming demolition of us; we were gone and yet we were here. It’s a hard thing to cope. I looked over the skinny girl with a grimy face; she couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Her hair was cropped very short, and I could see no immediate deformities that might slow my travels, so I asked, “What’d your parents say?”
Without flinching, the girl shouldered her pack straps with her thumbs and almost cheerily answered, “They’re dead, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.” I stepped nearer her, looked over her face and saw perhaps a will I’d not seen in some time. Maybe she would be more of a help than a hinderance. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes.”
“Then we leave immediately.” I shouldered my own pack and followed up with, “Do not bring any fucking guns.”
“Got it! No fuckinguns.” Her tone was sarcastic, but not unserious. It was the best I could hope for, and besides it was always better whenever I travelled with someone else.
We took off from my small hidey-hole and moved through the narrow stretches of street, tall metal and concrete stood on either of our sides, mostly housing and hydroponics, with a few spots with stools where a person could stop in for a drink of cool water. Although a few of the Bosses had toyed with the idea of expanding the hydroponics so that we might produce corn whiskey in bulk, this was scrapped when the math was done; the space was insufficient for such luxuries, but this did not stop some from fermenting small berries in batches when no one else was paying attention. Wine was incredibly rare, had a moldy taste to it, but was sweet and a further reminder of maybe why we held on. I liked wine pretty good, but sometimes I’d find an old bottle in the ruins or get a jug of liquor from one of the far settlements and that’s what I really cherished.
“You ever been out of town?” I asked her.
“No.”
“Don’t act a hero, don’t be funny out there, don’t make noise, don’t get in my way. If I tell you something, you do it without questions.”
First, I heard her footsteps fall slowly, then more quickly before she answered me as though she had to stop and think about what she was going to do next; perhaps she was having second thoughts? “Don’t try to scare me from the ruins,” she said, “I’ve wanted to go out there for years now and everyone always says there’s old stuff. Our old stuff. Stuff that used to belong to us.”
“Used to belong to us? What do you mean?”
“Humans or whatever. It used to be ours.”
“It hasn’t been ours within my lifetime. Leave it to them, because it’s theirs now. If you find some small thing out there that you like, then take it, but otherwise, it ain’t home no more.” There was no need for me to elaborate on who I meant whenever I said them, because anyone knew exactly who they were: the creatures from beneath the earth, the demons, the monsters.
We came to the outer sections of town near the gate and the walls stood high over our heads while morning breeze kicked up spirals of sand wisps across the ground. The walls were probably fifty or sixty feet tall, and several yards thick with titanium and concrete and rebar; along the parapets of our fortifications were patrolmen that watched the horizon and fired at anything that moved with fifty-caliber bullets. The men up there, and they were mostly men (the show-off types), wore ballistic weaves, bent and tarnished war helmets of the past, and carried mottled fatigue colors on their bodies like for-real militiamen. There hadn’t been an attempt on Golgotha from the monsters in days; it was a quiet week.
The nearest dirt street spilled into an open square with sandbag barricades overlooking the gate from atop a small hill. I waved down Maron. Boss Maron wore boots and an old-school cowboy hat with an aluminum star pinned on its forehead center; he swaggered over, “Going out, Mister Harlan?” His mustache caterpillar wiggled, nearly obscuring a toothy grin.
I nodded.
“It’s ‘cause Harold ain’t it?”
I nodded.
“You know that crazy bastard had some of my guards lock up the boys that stormed his home? If you ask me, he deserved whatever pain those fellas brought to him for shutting the pumps off.”
I idly studied the sidearm holstered on his hip then looked at the nearby guards by the gate, each with automatic weapons slung across their chests. “You still locked them up, didn’t you?”
Boss Maron spat in the dirt by his feet and laughed a little dry. “Sure did. Harold’s got the key to the water, and I won’t be crossing him. Don’t want the riffraff questioning Bosses.” He flapped his hand at the notion then swaggered away and waved at his guards to open the gate. The one nearest a breaker box on the righthand side of the gate opened the electrical panel, flipped a switch then the hydraulics on the gate began to decompress as it unlocked and rusty gears began to rock across one another to slide the great, tall metal door open.
“Try not to lose any fingers or toes while you’re out there. Oh!” he seemed to take notice of the young girl following me, “Got a new companion? Does she know what’s happened to the last few that’s traversed those desperate lands with you?”
“Hm?” asked the girl.
“Oh? Harlan?” Boss Maron smiled so hard I’d think his mustache might fall of his face from the sheer tension of the skin beneath it, “He’s a real globetrotter, quite a dealmaker, but just don’t be surprised if he leaves you behind.” This was followed by a sick chuckle.
I refused to respond and merely watched the clockwork gate come to a full open while the guards on either side prepared to angle their guns at the opening like they half-expected something to come barreling towards them. The doorway was empty and through the haze of the wasteland I could scarcely make out the familiar angles of the old ruins far out.
The girl didn’t engage either, for which I was thankful.
Boss Maron wide-stepped closer then patted my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Don’t forget the shiny flag.” He tucked a foil sheet into my front shirt pocket, “His daughter was due west supposedly. Good luck.” Then he clapped me on the back before returning to his post by the sandbags where a small table displayed his game of solitaire.
We moved through the gate, and I could sense the uneasy rhythm of the young girl’s movement just over my shoulder. As the gate closed behind us with a large and final shudder, I heard her breath become more erratic.
“The air feels thicker out here,” she said.
“It is sometimes,” I tried talking the nerves out of her, “It’s hot and cold all at the same time, ain’t it? Know what I mean? It’s hot devil air, but also you feel chills all over, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Her pace quickened so that we walked alongside one another.
“It’s just the nerves. You get used to it. Or. Well.”
“Or?”
“Or you don’t get enough time to.”
“What did ol’ Maron mean about other people dying with you?”
“Not many people venture outside the compound and even fewer go into the ruins. It’s all very dangerous. Most don’t make it back. That’s all he meant.”
“But you do. Make it back, I mean.”
I sighed. “I do, yeah.”
“My name’s Aggie, by the way. Sorry I didn’t say that before, Mister Harlan.”
“What’d your parents do when they were still around?”
“Dad was a farmer that worked with the hydroponics and Mom was a general fixer. She liked making clothes when we had the material.”
“Good people, it sounds like.”
“Sometimes,” said Aggie, “Hey, please don’t let me die, alright?” The words weren’t constructed so much as blurted; they came as a joke but did not seem like one.
“Okay.”
For a mile out in a measured circle, there was open sandy, flat ground stretching from around the perimeter walls of Golgotha; all the clutter, junk, and buildings had been disposed of years prior to grant the compound’s snipers comfortable sights in all directions. The openness went out for a mile and in every direction, one could see the ruins, the crumpled dead vehicles, half-snapped spires that lie in angles, and the gloom-red tint in the air that seemed to emanate from the ground like heat waves off fire. It was scarred air, where the creatures had unearthed some great anomaly from beneath the dirt. In honesty, it was like passing through the foul stench of death and painted everything in a blood hue. It stank and it was hot and it was cold.
We moved in relative silence; only the sounds of our boots across granular dirt or the clink of zippers whenever either Aggie or I was to readjust the packs on our shoulders. As we came upon the edges of the ruins, where we entered the red mist, and the air was alien. Finally, Aggie cleared her throat and mentioned through mildly exerted breathing, “Think we’ll find her?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Keep quiet and whisper. We can talk but keep it low.” We began to enter the thick of the ruins where ancient structures crept up on either side of us. “What made you come with me?” It was a question I’d wondered the whole time and figured her reasoning was weak.
“There’s not much home. I’d like to see some of the world before I go. Seems like things get worse and worse and for when I do leave this world, I want to see something other than the walls of home.”
“Fair answer.” Her reasoning was weak. “What if you’ve bit off more than you can chew?”
“Maybe.” She followed this up with another question of her own,” What made you start venturing out?”
“I wanted to see something other than the walls of home.” I felt a smile creep around the corners of my mouth, but quickly tempered myself. “Whenever people go out on their own without a guide, they die. I doubt we’ll find Harold’s daughter.” I left a pause. “You’re nearly her age, ain’t you? Did you ever know her?”
“You speak like she’s dead for sure.”
“Most likely, she is. Did you know her?”
“No, but I guess I’m an optometrist.”
“Optimist,” I corrected.
“Whatever. She’s a piece of home. I feel like I’m old enough to take care of myself and I want to help people. Not everyone thinks that way, but we’re all one big family, aren’t we?”
“While I appreciate your thoughts on it, I doubt the daughter of a Boss would feel the same about you.”
“The Bosses protect us.”
The ruins began to swallow us whole as we ventured through the ancient pathways, broken asphalt and wreckage littered the wide-open street. A nearby, worn post named the path: Fif Aven. I’d gone there before and left most things untouched. Although there were a few open holes in the structures on either side—places where large entryways might’ve gone hundreds of years ago—they were mostly empty, black with shadow, and picked clean long long ago. Non ideal for an alcove of respite from the open air. We shifted down the street, my eyes darting from old signs and vehicles bent and rusted and abandoned. I motioned for Aggie to come closer as I sneaked through the rubble towards a wall where there were no entryways into the monolithic structures. We hugged the wall and moved with trepidation, sometimes climbing across overturned wreckage tiptoeing in our boots to muffle all sound. Every footfall felt like a scream.
“We should go on for another mile or so before we find a place to rest. I know one up the way.”
“Rest? Are you tired already? That’d burn what daylight we have,” said Aggie.
I shook my head, “The last thing you want is to be without your wits in a place like this. If you’re too tired to run, you’re too tired to live.”
“Aren’t they fast? If they catch you in the open, they’ll get you, won’t they?”
I thought of a lie then thought better, “Yes.”
“Oh.”
“If you see one. Don’t scream. Don’t even breathe. If they haven’t seen you, you still have a chance.”
The air grew wet and smelled of chlorine, and I snatched Aggie’s sweating hand in my own before grappling her into my arms; she was small and fought noiselessly for only a second before going still. I shifted us into a concrete doorway with a half-destroyed awning and whispered a quick hush as I glided us near a piece of wreckage.
I felt her tenseness leave and let go of her before she crouched alongside me in the shadowed cover of an old van that had, ages before, slammed into a nearby wall. The door of the vehicle had been removed and we angled in slowly, silently, crawling towards the rear of its cabin to peer from the broken windows, all the while hoping its old axles would not creak. Feeling her hand on my shoulder, I twisted round to look Aggie in the eye; terror erupted from her face in tremors while she mouthed the words: what’s that?
Simply, I put a finger to my lips and took a peek at the thing moving down Fif Aven. The creature was on the smaller side, closer to the size of a run-of-the-mill human, but twitched its muscles in a fashion that contested humanity. The thing walked upright on two feet, but sometimes used its hands to move like an animal. The most intricate and disturbing of its features, however, was its head. With vibrant green skin, with speckles of yellowed globules across the surface of its body (likely filled with creamy pus), with a mishappen balloon head that first opened in half with a mouth folded as an anus, dispersed a corrosive gas into the air while it deflated, then reinflated and quivered—the creature’s head moved as a sack filled with misty gas, wobbly and rubbery. It had no eyes, no other features besides that awful head.
We watched it go, stop, disperse its toxic mist into the air, then leave. I kept my eyes on it, nose and mouth tucked beneath the collar of my shirt, and glanced at Aggie to see she’d followed suit. The smell could choke.
Once I was certain the thing had decided to move well outside of earshot (not that it had ears) I motioned for Aggie to follow me out of the van, down the sidewalk, through an intersection of roads, and into a small opening in one of the smaller structures. Our feet were swift, and I was grateful she was graceful. We moved through the darkness of the structure, and I led with intimate knowledge of the place. There was a safe spot near the rear of the building. I reached out in the dark, felt a handle and pushed into a small closet and pulled Aggie through.
My lantern came alive and bathed us in a warm glow. Shelves across the small room were lined with various supplies I’d left. A few boxes of matches, oil for lanterns, a bedroll, blankets, and other miscellaneous baubles.
Aggie inhaled sharply, “I’ve never seen anything like that! It was. I don’t know. It was weird and gross. Little scary. Is that what they look like?”
I shifted around onto the floor and opened my pack while placing the lantern between my legs. “You’ve been up on the compound’s walls before, ain’t you?”
“Once.”
“Well, sometimes those things get closer to home. I don’t know what you’d call them. Some of the wall guys call them fart heads because when you shoot one in the head with a rifle it goes pfffft. Lotta’ that chlorine shit comes out of them too.”
“Do bullets kill them?” She asked while removing her own pack and fixing her legs alongside mine in the closet; it was a snug fit, but we managed. “Like really kill them or does it just empty those heads?” I could feel her shaking still.
“If you use enough, sure. Durable, but manageable if you have enough firepower. Those are small fries. Normally they wouldn’t sneak up on me though. Normally I’d smell them from far off before they ever get close.”
“Did I distract you?”
“Maybe.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It was bound to happen, I reckon.” I plunged my hand into my pack and removed a water gourd, taking a deep swallow from it.
She started, “Have,” she stopped then started again, “I wish,” another stop came then she gave up on whatever she was going to say and laid her pack across her lap, seemingly searching for something within.
“We should rest up here for a while. At least until you’ve calmed yourself. Then we’ll set out. Maron said the girl went west. You should have that detail in case this trip happens to be my last. I figured we’d search the northern area first then make our way south, but—I hope she ain’t south.” I exposed the face of my compass.
A thought seemed to occur to Aggie while she removed her own water gourd and took a healthy swig. Sweat glistened off her brow in the dancing light of the lantern, its fire caught in her pupils while she thought. “You don’t actually think you’ll find her, do you?”
I grinned, surprised. “Why do you say that?”
“You think she’s dead already, so why do it?”
“Because they’ll believe me when I come back. I suppose we’ll return in two days, maybe three, then tell them we found her corpse.”
“Well why don’t we just stay here for the remainder?”
“We’ll look for her,” I said.
“But why?”
“It’s the right thing to do, I suppose. Maybe your optometristism is rubbing off on me.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” said Aggie, but I could see her sheepish grin. She held out a hand flat across her eyes and watched the nervous tremors in her fingers.
“Just nerves,” I told her.
“It’s a little exciting.”
“Now that’s a dangerous thought,” I took another swig from my water gourd before returning it to my pack. “Do you know where your parents hailed from?”
“Somewhere up north. Cold lands, but it was hard not to freeze in the winter up that way. Said they came down here years before I was born, hoping they could find a place to settle, but it was all the same. That’s what they said.”
“Never been further north than Golgotha, if I’m being honest. I’m from a place that once was called Georgia, but I’ve not been there in years.”
“Is it true what they told me, Mister Harlan?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it the same everywhere? Is there no place around that’s not got those awful things?”
“If there’s a place like that, I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Mom used to read to me when I was a little kid,” she said, “I never could pick up reading, but she loved old books that were written before bad times and in those books, people talked about things like green fields that stretched on forever, and places where water streams were clear enough to drink from. Do you remember anything like that?”
I chuckled while continuing to rummage through my pack, “Geez, how old do you think I am? All that was a long time ago.”
“Yeah. You think it’ll ever be like that again?”
I shook my head. “Wishful thinking.” Then I found what I’d been searching for and removed it from my pack. A small tin of tobacco; I sat to rolling a makeshift cigarette then lit it off the lamp.
“That smells funny.”
“Yeah.”
We shared the cigarette in the dark closet, passing it back and forth; her lungs, not being used to the smoke, forced from Aggie a few whimpering coughs that she tried to hide in the hem of her shirt.
I ducked the tobacco out beneath my heel and began reorganizing my pack so that it was less lumpy. “I hope you’re ready for it again. Like I said, that one you saw was a small fry. There’s bigger things out there. Worse things.”
“Should I go, or should I just stay here?” She hadn’t reorganized herself at all and remained seated while I shouldered my pack and peered through a crack in the door.
“Of course, you should come with me. I know it, you’re scared.”
“What if I make it worse and I attract one of those things right to you?” She asked.
I reached down and she took my hand; I lifted her to her feet and we met eyes, “Aggie, you’re coming with me. You’ll do fine. I promise.” It was not often that I’d try and charm someone, but I put forth a smile.
She smiled back and I shut off my lantern before leading her gently through the dark, into the open street where midday sun caught the ruins shadows long and deep. West was where the girl had gone and I intended to follow. Though I’d seen no signs of survivors, I was certain that if they’d braved the previous night, they were likely about in the daytime. Certainly, things would be made easier if I could cup hands around my mouth and echo my voice through the dead city like a game of Marco-Polo. Aggie maintained both energy and quiet alongside me as we moved through the rubble, vaulting over wide-open holes in the street where I could spy the arteries of the dead beast (the old sewer network).
We conversed frankly and in whispers when we came upon a place in the road that was impassible on foot due to a collapsed structure and we stalked more like wounded deer in a forest than humans in a city; our shoulders remained slouched, our bodies were huddled near to each other, and we delved into the dark recesses of another building—possibly a market from old days when patrons congregated for frozen fish sticks. There were massive steel shelves and we took their avenues till we came upon an aperture on the far side of the dark building. We shifted over the broken glass of an old torn out window and landed firmly on an open street.
Then came a sound like firecrackers and I felt cold and Aggies eyes went wide in the dull evening glow of the sun.
“Someone’s brought a gun,” I said.
Before she could say anything, I hugged the wall on our side of the street and moved down the sidewalk, following the sound of those gunshots.
“Maybe it’s someone that could help us?” she tried.
I shook my head.
“What do you mean?” she whispered a bit louder.
“It’s bad news,” I said, then came to a full stop at a corner while another hail of bullets spat from some unseen weapon and echoed all around; we were getting much closer. “Have you ever seen a dead body?” I asked Aggie.
She shook her head, but then stopped. “I was the one that found my mom. She was stiff and cold.”
“She went peacefully?”
Aggie shook her head, “Flu.”
“Any blood?”
“No.”
“If you’re not ready for blood, you might not want to look.”
We rounded the corner to find a small blockade of burnt-out vehicles creating a barrier between us and the action.
Two men with assault rifles fired at a creature towering over them. The creature in question stood thirty feet tall on spindly legs like a spider, but each of its legs were tumorous and its muscles were strangely uneven and mushy; although an arachnid may have eight legs, this one moved sluggishly along on no less than twenty shambling stilts so that the rounded body where the legs met looked more akin to a sea urchin. Several of its long legs stood out on its sides to angle its body through the narrow corridor of the street, its whiskery feet pushing along the walls of buildings overhead. Its whole body stank of wet dog and brimstone.
The men—they looked like young militiamen of Golgotha—staggered in awe of the thing and attempted to walk backwards while reloading. Another spray of bullets erupted from their rifles, and they were empty and the men screamed and one of them tripped across some unseen thing on the ground.
Quick as a fly, one of the massive creature’s legs sprang onto the prone man’s abdomen. Their was a brief cry of pain and then—I felt Aggie pinch onto my shoulder with her thumb and forefinger and I glanced at her to see she’d chewed into the corner of her bottom lip for purchase in response to such a fantastical display of awfulness—the man had no skin, no clothes, he’d been stripped to runny red fibrous tissue with strips of white muscle that twitched in the presence of the air.
“Oh god please god!” screamed the other man while watching his comrade writhe in pain beneath the stalky foot of the skin-taker.
I shuffled lower among the arrangement of vehicles we’d taken refuge behind and me and Aggie breathed softly, glancing eye contact while sitting in the dirt. There wasn’t anything to say.
The sound of the spider creature removing the second man’s skin was slower, torturous, seemingly enjoyed; his screams did not end for too long. I fisted my hands into my jacket pockets then stared at the ground between my knees. I felt Aggie’s thin fingers reach into my pocket and it took me flinching to realize she intended to hold my hand. She was shaking and I was shaking, but she was good and did not scream. And we held hands while we listened to the thick trunks of the spider creature shift on away. And we didn’t move. And we were statues frozen like we belonged among the dead ruins. And we didn’t move. And then Aggie shifted to look before I’d gathered my feelings and motioned me on.
“What’s that?” she asked as simply as she’d asked the color of the sky.
“Bad.” I shook my head and looked for an opening in the blockade of vehicles.
Two meaty blood ponds marked where the men were and on approach, I covered my face in the collar of my shirt; Aggie lifted her forearm to her nose. The stench of the beast and of the viscera was strong in the air.
I examined the ground then found one of their rifles. Standard M16. The strap on the rifle was frayed to ribbons and the barrel of the gun appeared to be slightly bent, but salvageable. I handed the rifle to Aggie and she took it.
“What about no guns?” she asked.
“There’s no bullets left. Besides, it’ll be good to bring it back.” Examining what was left of the bodies, my eyes went away and into my mind where all things become ethereal and difficult to grasp; I looked without seeing and imagined a place where green grass was, a place like in the books Aggie’s mother read. No grass here. Just misery.
“Who were they?” she asked.
“The men?”
“Yeah.”
“They sent out a patrol looking for Boss Harold’s daughter. Looks like we’ve found it. Never should’ve sent them.”
“I want to go home,” said Aggie.
“Me too.” I blinked and shifted around to look at her through the red hue that’d gathered between us. Try as I might, the smile on my face almost hurt. “If you stick with me, you’ll be safe.”
We took up in one of the safehouses I’d developed over the past several years, a room hidden up two flights of stairs and large enough to host a party. In the lantern glow we heated rations—eggs and hearty bread with water-thinned weak tomato paste—then ate in relative quiet so that the only thing heard were our jaws over the food that tasted bitter; food always felt slimy and bitter in the ruins where the demons reigned supreme. Their stink was on us. Like sulfur, like rot, like sorrow.
I rolled us each a cigarette and we smoked while looking out through a brackish window that overlooked the black street. No lights in the darkness save blinking yellow eyes caught for moments in dull moonlight whose owners quickly skittered towards an alley.
“How don’t you get lost?” asked Aggie.
“I do sometimes.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“I mean, I know the ruins fine enough, I reckon, but then I feel like I’m drowning in it every time I come here.” I took a long draw from my cigarette, finished it, then planted it beneath my boot.
“Did you have parents?” she asked.
“Everyone has parents.”
“What were they like?” Aggie held her cigarette out from her like she didn’t actually want it, but just as I looked over at her, pulling my eyes from the window, she jammed it into her lips.
“They were fine. Just fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish it was better,” said Aggie.
“Don’t imagine there’s ever been a point in history where we didn’t want it to be better.”
“Maybe.” She coughed through smoke.
I moved to dim the lamp and sat atop my bedroll. “You should sleep.”
“Don’t think I could sleep. I’ll have nightmares.” She pitched the remainder of her cigarette.
“Can’t be worse than the real deal.”I shut off the lamp and we laid in pitch black.
“How do you do it?” she asked.
“Most of the time, it feels like I’m not.” I stared at the ceiling I couldn’t see. “Go to sleep.”
At daybreak, we ate bread and water then gathered our things before setting into that awful wasteland. Sand gathered around our legs in wisps as we trundled tiredly onto the street of the ruins and Aggie said nothing. There wasn’t a thought in my mind as my joints protested at us climbing over the wreckage of an overturned semi-truck; first I went, then I hoisted Aggie up by her lanky arms then we jumped onto the other side, moving less like scouts and more like hungover comer-downers.
Passing through the ruins, each step feeling more like a glide and less creaky, Aggie spoke from over my shoulder as I kept my eyes sharp on the buildings’ shadows, “I doubt we’ll find her,” she said.
“What happened to the optimism?” I shifted to catch her face; she seemed dejected, tired, perhaps disillusioned by the previous day’s happenings.
“I didn’t know there were things like that in this world. Like that spider thing. Those men didn’t stand a chance.”
I shook my head, and we continued moving. “There are worse things still over the horizon. Most assuredly there is. Now you asked me before why I come out here in these ruins, why I’ve trekked the wasteland, and I’ll give you the opportunity to ask it again—maybe I’ll have something different to say.”
“Okay. Why then?”
“Because,” I kicked at a half eroded aluminum can left on the ground, “Places like Golgotha, or even where I’ve come from, there’s nothing like the red sky or the open road. There are no ties, no people. There’s only the next step.”
She took up directly beside me as we turned onto a street corner where the sidewalk mostly remained intact. “Sounds stupid to me.”
“There it is then.”
“Sorry,” she muttered, then she spoke even more clearly, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t get it.”
“It’s because I’m a dealmaker,” I said.
“That’s what Maron called you before, wasn’t it?” Aggie absently stared at the sky, at the edges of the high spires overhead that seemed to swallow us whenever clouds passed over the sun. “What’s that mean?”
“It means it’s harder for me to die.”
“Just luck, if you ask me.”
I clenched my jaw. “Probably, it is. Yeah.”
Then, with time, we came to the garden. A place in the ruins where greenery existed—even if the plants that grew from the soil were otherworldly and aggressive. There was the solitary sound of dirt catching crags in the structures as hard wind pushed silt through the narrow streets of the ruins, then there was also the sound of a flute, a flute made of bone and skin. The sound was sickly sweet, illusive, something no human could play even if they listened carefully and practiced for hundreds of years. There was the flute, the greenery, the clacking of hooves against old stone that’d risen from the earth much the same as the demons.
Aggie whispered, “What’s that music?”
I reached out my hand so that she would hold it and I tried to smile. “There are worse things still over the horizon.”
Her delicate scrawny fingers wrapped around my own and though I felt her trembling, she trusted me (I hoped she really did). I led her towards the garden, through a walkway with tall obelisks of flame on either side. “What is this place?” whimpered Aggie.
“If you are asked your name, tell it plainly without hesitation,” I said, “Do not leave my side. Do not run.”
“Where are we going?” her eyes scanned the garden, the flames dancing in the midday reddish light, the trees bent at impossible angles, the glorious green grass that looked cool and soft. I’d been in awe the first time I’d seen it.
I smiled, “Just like your mom’s old books. Green grass.”
The flute grew louder as we came closer and the hoof beats on stone shifted with enthusiasm.
There in the center of the garden stood Baphomet, ten feet tall, feminine midsection with goatish head and legs. It pranced with the flute to its mouth, and the tune resounded playfully all around. The creature danced across an area of stones in the center of the garden, a place where there were rock tables and chairs and sigils upon the ground—amid the open furniture, there stood a throne of human bones and near where Baphomet played its wily tune, there was a covered well, rope tautly hanging from its crank as if there was something heavy on the other end.
I smelled you coming, said Baphomet. Even as it spoke, it continued to play its flute without pause. Its muscular shoulders glistening with reddish sweat, its horns gloriously pointed and reveled in its merriment.
“Let us convene,” I said, mouth dry and feeling heady.
Convene?
“I’m here for the girl.”
I felt Aggie shift uncomfortably beside me, but I kept my eyes locked on Baphomet.
It seems you have one already.
“She came west, towards here two days ago. She was a runaway. You have her.”
Come, Harlan, come and dance with me. Baphomet did not stop its flute or its dancing.
I sighed. “I’m here to make a deal.”
Baphomet froze, allowing the boney flute to drop from its goatish lips. Its animal eyes casually switched between me then Aggie, before it turned to face us completely. A deal?
“Y-yes,” I nearly choked.
You’ve brought so little to bargain with. Baphomet shifted and walked to its throne to sit, clacking its long nails against the armrest. Unless. The creature allowed the word to hang against my brain like a splinter.
I lifted the hand holding Aggie’s. “A deal,” I tried.
Quick as a flash, Baphomet disappeared in a haze of black smoke then reappeared over Aggie’s shoulder. I dropped her hand and stepped away while the creature exhausted dew from its nose before sniffing Aggie’s ear.
Aggie swallowed hard, “Harlan?” she asked, “What’s it doing?”
“I’m sorry, Aggie.”
Baphomet took its hands through her short hair and inhaled sharply. A long tongue fell from its mouth and saliva oozed before it snapped its snout shut. The pleasure will be all mine.
“Harlan, let’s go—I want to go home.” Aggie’s tears rolled down her face in full while the large hand of Baphomet lightly squeezed her cheeks into a pucker.
You are home.
Baphomet took Aggie and moved her casually; her legs moved feebly, knees shaking.
Sit darling. Said Baphomet, motioning to its throne. Aggie took the chair and the creature snorted approval.
The demon moved jauntily to the well, where its strong arms began to roll the crank; with each rotation, the sound of cries grew closer. Until finally, all limbs pulled backwards in bondage, there dangled Boss Harold’s daughter; deep cuts and blood painted her mangled, distorted body. She’d been pushed into the well belly first, suspended by her wrists and ankles. I bit my tongue.
“Oh god,” I heard Aggie say. It sounded like a far-off girl from an unknown planet.
Baphomet lifted the girl from her bondage then sliced the rope with a razor-sharp fingernail. I hesitantly moved closer to the scene and removed my jacket.
RoyalRoad
Archive

A cabin remained half-rooved on its eastern face by pelts of dead things while the west slanted with a freshly cleared and smooth metal—it stood alongside a dugout stocked with crates; the structures overlooked an open plane of snow from their hilly perch and beyond that there were black jagged trees against the dreary yonder. Though the wind pushed as an abrupt force against the cabin’s walls, within the noise was hardly a whisper and the heater lamps along the interior walls of the large singular room offered a steady hum that disappeared even that.
The room had two beds—one double and another short cot pushed into a corner— and each was separated by a thin curtain nailed to the overhead support beams; the curtain caught in the life of the place, the gust from the heater lamps, the movement of those that lived there, and it listed so carefully it might not have moved at all.
Opposite the beds on the far wall, there stood a kitchen with cabinets and a stove, and the stove was attended by a thin young woman; she was no older than her second decade. In the corner by the stove just beyond where the kitchen counter ended, there sat a rocking chair where an old man nestled underneath pelts and a wool blanket, and he puffed tobacco and he watched the woman as she worked—she stirred the pot over a red eye and examined the liquid which lowly simmered. The man watched her silently, eyes far away like in remembrance. He absently pushed his gray mustache down with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. Smoke came from the pipe in spider string and the man blinked dumbly.
Amid the place where pelts lined the floor between the far wall of beds and the far wall of the kitchen, there sat a young pale boy with a scrap of canvas rubbish in the center—he used the canvas strip, browned and filthy, like a bird in his play, spreading the strip out and letting it fall to the ground. “Fly,” whispered the small boy to the strip; each time he lifted the rubbish, it fell to the floor by his crossed legs, and he repeated this process.
The adults ignored the boy, and the woman swiped the back of her hand across her forehead then wiped her knuckles down the front of her blouse. “It’ll be ready soon,” she said.
The man nodded then drifted off in his long expression again, staring at the door which remained closed. Wind speed pitched and the door seemed to warp inward. Alongside the door, there sat a thick glass porthole which one could use to look out on the snow-covered landscape; the curtains before the porthole were mostly drawn but on late evenings, light splintered through ghostly.
Shrugging of his warm coverings, the man lifted from the chair and crossed the room to pull aside the curtains; he stood there in the light of the hole, painted dull in his gray thermals. He watched outside, scratched his receding hairline and when he moved to shut the curtain, he saw the boy had joined him there at the window. The man smiled, lifted the curtain, and angled from there, allowing the boy to peer outside; he puffed on his pipe heavily, holding the thing stiffly with his free hand and offering a glance to the woman by the stove who watched the pair from where she was.
“I can’t even see the road,” said the boy.
The man nodded, “Snow covered it.”
“It’s winter?”
Again, the man nodded.
Winter, with the mutated ecology of the planet, was nearly a death sentence in northern Manitoba. Those places just north of Lake Winnipeg were mostly forgotten or abandoned, but there still lingered a few souls that dared the relative safety of the frozen wasteland—sometimes curious vagabonds, sometimes ex-convicts, or slaves, sometimes even criminals upstarted townships where there was nothing prior.
“Pa, I see someone,” said the boy.
The man angled forward again, squinted through the porthole, and puffed the pipe hard so his face glowed orange then moved surprisingly quickly to hand the pipe to the woman; she fumbled with the object and sat it upright on the counter while he rushed to remove a parka from a wall hook by the door. He shouldered into the thing and then leapt to the place by the door where his boots were kept and slammed into them each, knotting them swiftly.
“What is it?” the woman’s voice shook.
They caught one another’s eyes. “Snowmobile,” said the man.
“One?”
He nodded and strapped his gloves on then moved to the latch of the door—before levering the thing, he took another glance at the boy.
“We’ll shut it behind you,” said the boy. The woman nodded.
The door swung inward with explosive force and the outside wind ripped into the warm abode. The man immediately shivered and stumbled into the snow, appropriately clothed save his legs where only his gray thermals clung to him.
After spilling into the boot-high snow, the man twisted around and aided the others in shutting the door behind him; he pulled as they pushed, and he listened past the howling wind for the latch on the opposite side of the door. He let go of the door and spun to inspect the far-off blinding whiteness—clouds of snow were thrown up in the wake of a barreling snowmobile; it headed towards him, first from between the naked spaces between the black trees then into the open white. The man threw up both his hands, waving the snowmobile down, long stepping through the arduous terrain till he came to the bottom of the perch that supported the cabin. His shouts of, “Hey!” were totally lost in the wind but still he shouted.
The snowmobile braked twenty yards out from the man and the stranger on the machine killed the engine, adjusted the strings around their throat and threw off the hood of their own parka to expose blackened goggles beneath a gray tuque; a wrap obscured the lower half of their face. The stranger took a gloved hand to yank the wrap from their mouth and yelled over the wind a greeting then removed themselves from the seat to land in the snow.
“Cold?” offered the man with a shout.
The stranger nodded in agreement and removed an oblong instrument case from the rear storage grates of the snowmobile then took a few careful steps towards the man.
“Dinner’s almost ready! I’m sure you’d like the warmth!” The man waved the stranger closer and the stranger obliged, following the man towards the cabin; each of the figures tumbled through the snow with slow and swiveling footwork. The man stopped at the door, supporting himself on the exterior wall by the porthole.
The stranger angled within arm’s reach, so the man did not have to yell as loudly as before. “Guitar?” The man pointed at the case which the stranger carried.
The stranger nodded.
“Maybe you’ll play us something.” he pounded on the metal of the exterior door, “It’s been some time since I’ve heard music.” The door opened and the two stumbled into the cabin.
The stranger shivered and snow dust fell from their shoulders as they deposited the guitar case on the floor by their feet—they moved directly to help the man and the boy close the door while the woman watched and held her elbows by the porthole.
With the door sealed and the latch secured, the man removed his parka so that he was in his boots and thermals.
The stranger removed their own parka, lifted the goggles to their forehead, and stepped to the nearby heater lamp to remove their gloves and warm their hands against the radiating warmth; the stranger was a young tall man with a hint of facial hair just below his nose and along his jaw. He wore a gun belt occupied on his right hip with a revolver. His fingers were covered in long faded scars all over. “Thanks,” said the young man, “Clarkesville far? I think I was turned around in the snow. I’m not so used to it.”
The older man went to his rocking chair to cover himself with the wool blanket; he huffed and shivered. “At least a hundred kilometers west from here. You’re looking for Clearwater?”
The young man nodded then shifted to place his back to the heater lamp so that he could look on the family fully. “I’m Gomez,” he said to them. The man in the rocking chair stiffened in his seat and craned forward so that his boots were flatly planted before him.
The boy offered his name first with a smile so broad it exposed that his front two teeth along the bottom row were missing entirely. “Patrick,” said the boy.
The woman spoke gently and nodded in a quick reply, “Tam-Tam.”
“Huh?” asked the man in the chair, “You’re unfamiliar of the area? Where are you from?”
Gomez stuffed his arms beneath his armpits. “Originally?”
The man motioned for his pipe and Tam-Tam handed it to him—puffed on the dead tobacco and frowned. He nodded at Gomez.
“I’ve been making my way across the U.S. Mostly western territories, but I heard it was safer in Canada—North Country. Fewer prowlers. Originally though? Far south. Zapatistas—joined their cause for a bit, but,” Gomez looked to the guitar case on the floor, “I was better at music than killing. Or at least preferred it.” The young man let go of a small laugh, “Do you know anything of the Zapatistas?”
The man nodded, stroked his great mustache, and craned far to lift matches from the counter. He lit the pipe, and it smoked alive while he shook the match and puffed. “Durango.” The man hooked a thumb at himself.
Gomez nodded. “I played there before. Good money. Good people.”
The man grinned slyly over his pipe, “What are the odds? All the way up here?”
“It’s a small world,” Gomez agreed, “It’s getting smaller all the time. What are you doing so far from home?”
“Same as you. It’s safer, right? Everyone said, but I’m not so sure.”
The boy interjected, “You play music?” Patrick neared the case which sat on the floor, and he leaned forward to examine the outside of the object; it was constructed from a very hard, shining, plastic material.
“I do,” said Gomez.
“I haven’t heard music before. We sing sometimes, but not music for real,” said the boy.
Gomez frowned. “How old are you?”
Patrick turned to the man in the chair. “Pa?”
“He’s six,” said the man.
Tam-Tam shook her head, removing the pot from the hot eye. “He’s almost six.”
“Almost six,” said the boy, turning back to look at the stranger.
Gomez shook his head. “Almost six and you’ve never heard music? Not for real?” He sniffed through a cold clog and swallowed hard. “I’ll play you some.”
Patrick’s eyes widened and a delicate smile grew across his mouth.
“I’m Emil,” said the man in his chair, “You offered yours, so my name’s Emil.” Smoke erupted from his mouth while the pipe glowed orange. The older man wafted the air with his hand to dispel the smoke.
Tam-Tam Shut off the oven and placed the pot of stew on the counter atop a towel swatch and she pressed her face to the brim and inhaled.
“Is it good, dear?” asked Emil leaning forward in his chair by the counter to question the woman; the woman lifted a steaming ladle to her mouth and sipped then nodded and Patrick moved quickly to the woman’s side.
The boy received the first bowl and then turned to look at the interloper, metal spoon jammed into the side of his jaw while he spoke, “Play some music.”
“After,” said Emil, placing the pipe on the counter to grab himself some grub.
Emil ate while rocking in his chair and Tam-Tam leaned with her back against the counter, sipping directly from her bowl without a utensil. Gomez took his own bowl and squatted by the front door, pressing his lower back against the wall for support; Patrick, eyes wide, remained enamored with the strange man and questioned more, “Pa said it's warm in other places, that it’s not so dark either. What’s it like where you come from?”
Gomez smiled at the boy, blew on the spoonful he held in front of his lips then nodded, “It’s dangerous, more dangerous.”
Patrick nodded emphatically then finished his food with enthusiasm.
The stranger examined the bowl while turning the stew in his mouth with his tongue; the concoction had long-cut onions, chunked potatoes, strange jerky meat. “Pelts,” said Gomez.
Emil perked with a mouthful, unable to speak.
“You have pelts all over—are you a hunter?”
Emil swallowed back, “Trapper,” he nodded then continued the excavation of his bowl.
“Elk?”
The old man in the chair hissed in air to cool the food in his mouth then swallowed without hardly chewing, and patted his chest, “Sometimes.”
Gomez stirred his bowl, took a final bite then dipped the spoon there in the stew and sat the dish by his foot and moved to kneel and open his instrument case.
“It’ll get cold,” protested Tam-Tam.
Gomez smiled, “I’ll eat it. Your boy seems excited. Besides, I’d like to play a little.” He wiggled his scarred fingers, “It’ll work the cold out of my hands.”
He pressed the switches of the case while turning it on its side and opened it to expose a flamenco guitar. Patrick edged near the stranger, and Gomez nodded at the boy and lifted the guitar from its case, angling himself against the wall in a half-sit where his rear levitated. Gomez played the strings a bit, listened, twisted the nobs at the head of the guitar.
“Is that it?” asked the boy.
Gomez shook his head, “Just testing it. Warming my hands on it.”
In moments, the man began ‘Paloma Negra’, singing the words gently, in a higher register than his speaking voice would have otherwise hinted at. Patrick watched the man while he played, the boy’s hands remained clasped behind himself while he teetered on his heels and listened. Emil rocked in the chair, finished his meal, and relit the pipe. Tam-Tam listened most absently and instead went for seconds in the pot; she turned with her lower back on the counter and watched the man with the guitar.
There was no other noise besides the song which felt haunted alongside the hum of the heater lamps. Once it finished, the boy clapped, Emil clapped, Tam-Tam nodded, and Gomez bowed then sat the guitar beneath the porthole by the doorway.
“Thank you,” said Gomez.
“That’s quite good,” said Emil. As if spurred on by the music, the man gently rotated a palm around his stomach and rocked in his chair more fervently, “Where’d you learn to play like that?”
“All over,” said Gomez, “I like to pick up songs where I find them. Sometimes a fellow musician has a piece I like, almost never their own anyway, so I think we all share in some way.”
“Poetic,” offered Tam-Tam.
Gomez caught the woman’s eyes, nodded. “I guess it is.”
“Where’d you find that one?” asked Emil, “I heard it a few times but never this far north. It’s like a love song,” he offered the last sentence to the others in the room.
“You’re right—sort of,” Gomez placed his body against the wall by the door, glanced at the bowl of food he’d left on the floor then sighed and bowed again to lift it—the interloper tilted the bowl back on his bottom lip and sipped then casually leaned with the utensil against his sternum. “Somewhere in Mexico is where I heard it first. Maybe same as you.”
Patrick examined the guitar under the porthole, put his face directly up to the strings and peered into the hole in the center of the instrument; his expression was one of awe. He quickly whipped from the thing and stared at the guitarist and opened his mouth like he intended to ask a question. The boy stared at the scars on the interloper’s hands. “What’s those from?”
Not understanding the direction of the question, Gomez looked down to examine his fingers then shifted on his feet and nodded. “Mechanical work.”
Emil continued rocking in his chair and gathered the wool around his throat. “Where did you do that?”
“Zapatistas,” Gomez sipped from the bowl again and chewed, “It’s work I was never good at.” The young man shrugged.
“I wasn’t going to pry, but seeing as the boy’s asked, I’ll push more some if it’s not impolite.”
“It’s not,” Gomez agreed.
“That’s a lot of deep scarring for mechanical work,” Emil rocked in his chair, puffed, raised a furry eyebrow, “What stuff did you work on?”
“You want to know?”
Emil nodded, withdrew the pipe from his mouth and rolled his wrist out in front of himself then slammed the mouthpiece into his teeth.
“I worked with the army, but before then—well there was a boy, a little Chicano lad taken into one of the El Paso houses way back and all the girls that worked there loved him, but his mother perished, and no one even knew who she was. That was, oh,” Gomez tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling, “Twenty-two years ago or a little more.”
“Your hands?” asked Tam-Tam.
Gomez smiled warm and continued, “Well this little boy was given a name, but what’s in a name?” He seemed to pose the question to Emil who shook his head like he didn’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” said Emil aloud.
The younger man continued with the tale, “There was this boy, but he was taken over the Republican border by a group of desperados calling themselves Los Carniceros,” Gomez angled down to look at the boy, “Patrick, do you know what a desperado is?”
The boy shook his head, his expression one of total bafflement and a twinkle of nervousness. “A music-people?”
Gomez laughed heartily while Emil shuffled under his wool blanket—the older man stopped rocking in his chair, craned forward so his elbows rested on his knees and his thermals showed as the blanket slipped around his armpits. The hum of the heater lamps continued beside the silence.
“Los Carniceros are a group of fancy criminals that hail out of Veracruz, but they have networks all over. San Luis Potosi.” Gomez’s eyes locked with Emil’s, “Durango. They have connections with the cattle industries all over Mexico. Their name’s tongue-in-cheek, but that shouldn’t fool anyone—they are just as ready to butcher a man as they are a cow. They control the food; they control the politicians; they control trade.” Gomez shook his head. “I’ve gotten carried away. This is no history lesson. There was a boy taken into Los Carniceros territory. He was bought—I’m glad that never happened to you, Patrick—boys that are bought are never kept good for long. So, they brought Johnny-Boy, that’s what they called him, into their inner circle and they used to have Johnny-Boy fight dogs in a ring for the amusement of Los Carniceros’s officers. Sometimes they gambled on the whether the boy would die, but he never did.”
Tam-Tam shivered aloud and rubbed her biceps with her hands and shook her head. “What’s that have anything to do with your hands?”
“You’re right,” said Gomez, “I guess what I mean is when you spend time fighting dogs, they bite—they bite hard, and they break skin that needs to heal. But just as well as dogs bite, so too does the boy that is raised as a dog.” Gomez shrugged.
“Quite the story,” said Emil; he’d refrained from rocking in his chair and stayed very still. “You fought dogs?”
“I did. It’s been a helluva long time, but you know I did, Emil Vargas.”
The older man took a long drag from his pipe then cupped the thing in his hands while his vision drifted around the room. “Have you come to take me back?” asked the older man.
The interloper shook his head.
Emil’s gaze drifted to the faces of Patrick and Tam-Tam. “Will it just be me?”
Gomez shook his head, “I can do you first. You won’t need to see it.”
“What?” clamored Tam-Tam, “What the hell is going on?”
Patrick stumbled away from the stranger, clung to Tam-Tam, and said nothing but began to let out a low sob.
Emil took one last drag and tossed the pipe to the counter. “It wouldn’t help to beg?”
“Would it stop you?” asked Gomez.
“Probably not,” nodded the older man, “Me first then.”
Gomez withdrew his revolver and Tam-Tam let go of an awful shriek as Emil’s head jerked back in his chair to the bullet entering his chest. At the second bullet, Emil’s limbs shot out from him like he was a star.
Patrick and Tam-Tam gathered around each other, shuffled to the counter of the kitchen.
Juan Rodriguez—that was the interloper’s real name—took a step forward and fired the gun again and Tam-Tam struck the counter and blood rained down from her forehead; to perhaps save Patrick, she shoved the boy away in her death spasm. The boy stumbled over onto his knees and when he raised his head, Juan towered over him.
Patrick, almost six, shook violently and wept.
“Turn around,” said Juan.
Patrick turned away from the interloper, stared at the corpses of his mother and father.
Juan fired the revolver one last time and the boy hit the floor; the man holstered the pistol and wiped his cheek with a sleeve. His face was touched with blood splatter; he searched the floor, found a scrap of canvas, bent to snatch it. He wiped his face clear with the canvas and sighed and tossed the scrap away.
The cabin was entirely quiet, save the hum of the heater lamps, and Juan set about clearing the bodies from the cabin, first by opening the door. He chucked the corpse of the boy into the snow by the door, piled his mother alongside him, and fought with the heavier corpse of Emil till Juan fell into the snow beside the others. He pulled himself from the thick storm, staggered through the whistle-blow wind and fought through grunts and mild shouts to close the door.
Upon spinning with the closed door at his back, he saw several of the heater lamps had gone out in the wind. Shivering, teeth chattering, Juan found Emil’s matches on the counter and set about relighting each of the heater lamps which had gone out; he did the act automatonlike, a person driven by force but no lively one.
Through the harsh outside wind, which sounded like breathing against the boards, he hummed a tune to himself that manifested into him whistling a light tune—the River Kwai March—then rifled through the cabinetry of the kitchen, went through the footlocker by the double bed and dumped the contents onto the floor; he kicked the personal affects—papers, trinkets—across the boards. Among the things, he found a shiny glass-reflective tablet, lifted it, pocketed the thing into his parka, then kept looking for what else might catch his attention. He found a small square picture, frameless, face down and lifted it to his eyes then angled over to the nearest heater lamp with it pinched by the corner. The photo was of a woman too young to be a mother—she was more of a girl, really; she carried a fat-bellied infant on her hip in one arm and with the other, she held up a dual-finger peace sign. Juan stared at the picture in complete silence then chuckled at the blank expression of the baby, then threw the square photo like a shuriken across the room; it thunked against the wall and disappeared behind the double bed, never to be seen ever again.
As it went full dark outside, the chitter sounds of outside became prevalent, and Juan went to the porthole by the door, pulled the curtains tightly closed and offered no response to the alien sounds which culminated around the walls of the cabin. It was delirium incarnate—abyssal noise which swallowed even the blizzard howl. Things moved outside and Juan went to the kitchen again, looked over the cabinet doors, opened and slammed them; he huffed with exasperation and moved to the pot where the cooled stew sat and began to eat directly from there with the ladle. His far-off eyesight glared into the dimness of the heater lamps, his face glowing by them, and once he was finished with the pot, he chucked the thing and watched the leftover contents splatter into a wild configuration across the single room’s floor.
Only after removing his boots, he fell onto the double bed, removed his revolver from the holster and placed it there on the well-maintained bedding beside himself; he slept with his parka draped over his torso.
He did not open his eyes for the insect noises of the outside.
In the morning, he promptly wiped sleep from his eyes, rebolstered his weapon, and stared across the room with a blank expression. In a moment, spasm-like, he removed the tuque he slept in to reveal a head of black hair, and scratched his fingers over his head. He replaced the tuque, went to the porthole; upon swiping away the curtains, he stared into the white expanse, the black forest beyond—he took the sleeve of his thermal shirt and wiped across the porthole’s glass where condensation fogged.
Knee-high snow hills spilled inward as he opened the door, and he kicked the snow out lazily and stomped into the mess while shouldering his parka on; the hood flapped helplessly till he stiffly yanked it down his forehead. The wind was entirely mild, still. Through goggled eyes, he examined around the entrance, but there was no sign of the corpses—he waywardly stomped through the heavied snow in the place he’d deposited them and there was nothing below the surface.
Juan stumbled through the high snow around to where the dugout stood alongside the cabin and traced a smallish hill where he crawled for a moment to gather his footing. Snow had fallen in through the high apertures of the dugout, but there was a small door-gate attached between two of the pillars which held the slanted roof of the dugout. After fighting the door-gate out, he squeezed through, removed a flashlight from the inner pocket of his parka and settled down the few steps which led into the earth. A bit of morning light spilled in through those spaces of the wall along the high points, just beneath the roof, but Juan held the flashlight in his mouth and began examining the mess of snow-dusted containers.
Along the lefthand were sacks, well preserved if only for the weather; he kicked a tobacco sack—there was a crunch underfoot. Opposite the piled sacks of grains, vegetables, and dried meats were many metal crates, each one with hinges. At the rear of the dugout were a series of battery banks which seemed to hum with electricity.
He stomped each of the sacks, cocked his left ear to the air and began making a mess of the dugout. One crate contained expensive wooden boarding, he tipped this over into the little hallway created by the goods and carefully examined the contents and then he went to the next. The next crate was bolts of fabrics and twine and he sneered, shook his head.
The interloper took a moment, fell rear-first on the sacks, pulled the flashlight from his mouth and pawed across his forehead and throat; he sighed and sat quiet—in a moment, he was back at the search, more furiously. He rocked his head backward, so the parka hood fell away; sweat shined his face. There were condensed snares and jaws and there was a small crate of maple-infused wine; Juan froze when holding one of the bottles up to the higher natural light. He grimaced but set the box of bottles by the entryway, removing one which he slid into his parka. The Clarkesville Winery stamp was impressed on the metal wall of the package.
After several crates of canned goods, his movements became more sluggish and Juan came upon a crate that seemed to be more of the same, but whenever he tipped it over for the contents to spill out, a smaller, ornate wooden box fell out and he hushed, “Fuck,” while hunkering into the mess to retrieve the box. Some old master carved Laelia Orchids into the grain alongside stalkish invasive sage; the wood—Acacia—was old but well kept. The bronze hardware shone cleanly enough.
The container was no longer than his forearm and he briefly held the thing to the high-light and moved to the entrance and fell haphazardly onto the strewn and half-deflated frozen tobacco sacks.
He opened the small box’s latch and flipped it’s top open and smiled at the contents and quicky slapped the box shut.
In a flash, he unburied his snowmobile with his hands, harnessed his guitar case to its rear, then trailed through the snow gathered against the side of the cabin, using the exterior wall as support with his hand. He came to the backside of the structure, tilted his head to gaze again over at the dugout then swiveled to look at the thick metal tank buried in the ground and marked by a big hump in the snow. Juan moved to the tank, brushed off the snow with gloved hands, nodded to himself. Quickly, he returned to the tank with a hand-pick and bucket he snatched from the dugout. With a few swings, fuel spilled through the punctures he’d created; he placed the bucket beneath the handmade spigots to catch the fuel—in seconds the bucket sloshed full as he lifted it and wavered round to the front of the cabin where the door remained open.
He doused the innards of the structure with the bucket and whipped the object against the interior wall then removed the matches from the counter. Standing in the doorway, he lit the awaiting inferno; the heat explosion pushed him wobble-legged outside while he covered his face from it; he hustled to the snowmobile without looking back.
The vehicle came alive, and Juan trailed across the plane he’d used the day prior. As the snowmobile met the sparse black tree line, the flames too met the fuel tank at the back of the cabin; a heavy eruption signaled, and blackbirds cawed as they trailed across the milk-blue sky.
Among the rush of trees there was a translucent figure and Juan roundabouted the snowmobile. Upon edging to the place of the forest, still very near the trapper’s cabin, Juan caught sight of a stickman among the wide spaced trunks. The noises exhausted from its face the same as a cicada’s tymbal call. Juan killed the engine, removed his pistol, leapt from the snowmobile.
The stickman fought in the snow with something unseen, bulbous-jointed limbs erratically clawed against the ground; it seemed more crab than humanoid. Juan approached with the pistol leveled out in front of himself. The stickman, a North Country native, took up great armfuls of snow as it tumbled to the ground, slanted onto its feet, then tumbled over again. It was caught in a bear trap and as the thing fought against the jaw, its leg twisted worse and worse, and the cicada call grew more distressed. Its hollow limb, smashed and fibrous like a fresh and splintered bamboo shoot, offered no blood at the wound.
“Huh,” said Juan, lowering the gun to his side. He shook his head. The stickman called to him.
The interloper returned to his snowmobile and went west.
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My (m21) friend (m20) has a gf that he has had since he was in like 5th grade. We have been friends since like sophomore year, group of 4 guys. We used to hang out a bit more back in school but really this has always been a problem. No matter what if his gf is free, he will be with her. If we have plans and she becomes free, he will cancel and be with her basically. If we are in the middle of hanging out and she goes on break at work, he literally ends the meet and goes to be with her on her break or leaves for an hour and comes back (this bugs me the most). We are so low on his important list that we meet like once a month. Back then when we were like 18 I would ask the group like every day to hang out but now I wait for them to initiate it usually.
The main problem where I went off came when I would try to plan something and I'll say for even years that I wanna go on like a trip to some place, he would like kinda on board then at the end be like oh actually my gf wants to do that and she actually said that she wanted to first so I'm gonna do it with her instead.This happened so many times. A good example being I wanted to go to this springs like a couple hours away so I been like guys we gotta go to this springs, sporadically for over 2 years. He was even like lol imagine I went to the springs with my gf instead, and I was like lol I'd be so pissed. 6 months go by and guess what, his gf actually mentioned she wanted to go to the springs long before I did so now she's top priority.
On Halloween we had plans to hang out. Ope her gf got off work early so she can be with him. Now our plans for cancelled.
Im always complaining about this to him but I really went off this time when I been wanting to go see inside out 2 with the gang so the moment I found out about it like a year ago I was like preeorder for inside out 2. Then within that time I reminded them twice I have a preorder to see that movie with them. Now comes time its about to come out he's like "ask my gf". Bro no this is ur decision, I've been talking bout this forever. And he says "when you have a gf you will understand" "this is a serious relationship this isn't just for fun" "these are the types of movies we watch together so we want to watch together" which I kinda get but I been asking for a year for this specific movie that isn't even a romance movie. They like Disney but this same thing happened kinda for a movie that wasn't Disney. My other friends back him up saying "I'm saying ---- got a lot on his plate, if he starts hanging with us more Jenny gonna feel neglected and express that to cleb which will make cleb sad and make tension in the relationship" and "When you get a gf and really want the girl you gonna have to choose between boys and her sometimes" WE MEET ONCE A MONTH. I feel like this is not normal and other guys and guy friend groups are not like this. Ig this is more of a rant it's so long but if u actually read this, Tell me if I'm overreacting or this isn't normal behavior.

~Truck and bus radial (TBR) tire market~ is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 6.0% during the forecast period. The growth of the market is attributed to factors such as the increasing demand for commercial vehicles, expanding transportation and logistics industry, and technological advancements in tire manufacturing. Furthermore, factors such as the need for fuel efficiency, improved vehicle performance, and increased safety standards are expected to drive the demand for TBR tires. For instance, in August 2022, Apollo Tyres launched five new truck-bus radial tires in India, catering to various positions and applications. One of the tires, Apollo EnduTrax MA, is designed for tipper trucks, offering superior cut resistance and durability for challenging terrains. The Apollo EnduRace RA is a regional tire known for its mileage, durability, and traction on wet and dry roads. Additionally, three tires, Apollo EnduMile LHD, LDR, and LDT, are designed for long-haul operations, providing improved fuel efficiency, longevity, and highway traction. This launch aims to enhance Apollo Tyres' market presence in India's truck and bus radial tire segment.
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Based on the type, the market is segmented into steer tires, drive tires, trailer tires, and others. Steer tires are designed for the front axle of the vehicle, providing control and manoeuvrability. Drive tires are installed on the vehicle's powered axle, delivering traction and power transmission. Trailer tires are fitted on the trailer's axle, supporting the load and enabling smooth transportation. The "others" category includes specialized tires for specific applications, such as off-road or construction vehicles.
full report of Truck and Bus Radial (TBR) Tire Market available @ https://www.omrglobal.com/industry-reports/tbr-tire-market
· Market Coverage
· Market number available for – 2024-2031
· Base year- 2024
· Forecast period- 2024-2031
· Segment Covered- By Source, By Product Type, By Applications
· Competitive Landscape- Archer Daniels Midland Co., Ingredion Inc., Kerry Group Plc, Cargill
· Inc., and others
Global Truck and Bus Radial (TBR) Tire Market Report Segment
By Application

• Truck
• Bus

By Type

• Steer Tires
• Drive Tires
• Trailer Tires
• Others (All-Position Tire)

By Sales Channel

• Original Equipment Markets
• Aftermarket

Global Truck and Bus Radial (TBR) Tire Market Report Segment by Region
North America
• United States
• Canada
Europe
• UK
• Germany
• Italy
• Spain
• France
• Rest of Europe
Asia-Pacific
• China
• India
• Japan
• South Korea
• Rest of Asia-Pacific
Rest of the World
• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa
The Report Covers

• Market value data analysis of 2022 and forecast to 2030.
• Annualized market revenues ($ million) for each market segment.
• Country-wise analysis of major geographical regions.
• Key companies operating in the global truck and bus radial (TBR) tire market. Based on the availability of data, information related to new product launches, and relevant news is also available in the report.
• Analysis of business strategies by identifying the key market segments positioned for strong growth in the future.
• Analysis of market-entry and market expansion strategies.
• Competitive strategies by identifying ‘who-stands-where’ in the market.

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About Orion Market Research Orion Market Research (OMR) is a market research and consulting company known for its crisp and concise reports. The company is equipped with an experienced team of analysts and consultants. OMR offers quality syndicated research reports, customized research reports, consulting and other research-based services. The company also offer Digital Marketing services through its subsidiary OMR Digital and Software development and Consulting Services through another subsidiary Encanto Technologies.
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Like every other RE FAN, I was greatly disappointed in Welcome to Raccoon city, it could have been a fantastic resident evil reboot film, but it wasn't. But I'm Not gonna elaborate more because it's all pretty much been said already.
I decided to just put out a fun little story for how I would start a reboot and do my own resident evil trilogy.
Film 1, Part 1: RE 0 & 1
We open with a 11 year old boy, Chris Redfeild, walking in the rain, he walks past rows of graves in this cemetery, he walks all the way until he comes across a small statured girl. She holds a bright red umbrella above herself, “what are you doing here Claire” Chris says. Claire responds, saying she was just visiting mom and dad, Chris tells her that Mr and Mrs Walker were panicking back at home. Claire just gives Chris a look of sadness, Chris embraces his sister, and they mourn their parents. They both hear a scream, Chris tells Claire to stay there, Chris walks towards where the scream came from, and he spots a woman. Dead, but in her neck are puncture marks…in the shape of human teeth.
CUT TO BLACK
A montage of newspaper clippings go by as the opening credits roll, each newspaper clipping being bits and pieces of resident evil lore. Stuff like “Orphan brother and sister escape car crash” “Walker Family Adopt boy and girl” “Umbrella Police Scholarship” “Claire Elza Walker: All star biker” “S.T.A.R.S: Rise of The Super Cops” etc…
10 YEARS LATER, 1998
Chris wakes up in his bed, alone, next to him is a note. “sorry babe, got called in while you were asleep, see you tonight, love you~Jill” Chris lets out a long Sigh, he gets up and prepares a small breakfast for himself. He turns on his television as he eats, the morning news claims A 15th victim has been found, they discuss the fact that all of this madness occurred in the span of 2 months. Chris calls his sister Claire, she doesn't pick up. Chris leaves a voicemail to her.
NEXT SCENE
Jill Valentine, a police officer and member of the elite Police Team, S.T.A.R.S She walks the halls of the RPD, equipped in her uniform and gear. As she heads through the department, she passes by a good looking rookie cop working at the front desk. She eventually makes it to where she was heading, the S.T.A.R.S office, residing in the office are Bravo team and Alpha Team. Barry welcomes Jill with a warm hug, Wesker walks up behind her, and she salutes him as their captain. They all discuss how the murders have been getting much worse, especially with the description of what the 15th victim looked like when they found him. Brad mentions how chief irons is not letting them onto the case for whatever reason. Barry tries to defend it, saying that maybe he doesn't want to lose his top officers. Wesker objects against what Barry said, and tells everyone that the chief probably has something to do with it. Rebecca objects against Wesker, and he doesn't try to respond.
NEXT SCENE
We cut to a train riding through the Arklay mountains and Forrest, A man with a long black mullet sits alone in his seat, he stares at a photo of him, Chris, and Claire, in front of the umbrella corporation. It's Billy coen. A woman with a trolly cart passes by and asks him if he would like anything, Billy orders a basic water. He notices that the woman's eye is bleeding, he gestures to her about it, and she heads straight to the bathroom nearby. Billy turns to look back out the window, brushing off what he just saw.
NEXT SCENE
Chris is walking through Raccoon city, Wearing his “Made in Heaven” brown Leather Jacket. He visits the RPD with a bag of food, he walks up to the front desk, and he tells the young cop at the desk that he is there to bring food to Ms Valentine. Jill heads down with Barry, Brad, and Rebecca at her side. Chris delivers them all their sandwich orders, Jill's food box says “The Jill Sandwich” Barry and they all laugh at her, saying that it should be a real thing. Jill gives Chris a long kiss, and Rebecca looks at them adorably. Wesker walks downstairs and greets Chris, Wesker gives him a firm handshake. Chris gets an odd feeling when being around Wesker. Wesker offers Chris the opportunity to train on the force, telling him that he could probably be a member of S.T.A.R.S one day, Jill smiles at Chris about that opportunity. Barry agrees with Wesker. Chris says that he is fine with where he is at, jokingly saying he doesn't wanna steal Jill's thunder.
NEXT SCENE
Chris sits back in his apartment, the news is talking about how umbrella is beginning a secret project with the military. After the news report, we see an advertisement for the various nationwide umbrella pharmacies. Chris ignores the advertisements as he heads to the fridge to grab a beer. The phone rings, Chris answers, “Chris, hey! It's Billy”, Chris is speechless.
NEXT SCENE
Chris walks towards the raccoon city pond at 10 PM, he sits at a bench, he has a flashback to when he was a kid, a month after his parents died. Chris was sitting in that sane bench, alone, until some drunk guys from his highschool came up to him and tried to push him, he ignores them and they just leave him be, then they see a kid sitting under a tree, reading a book on Greek mythology, with the dog Cerberus on the cover. They proceed to give the kid a hard time, and it's Billy, they try to steal Billy's stuff, Chris comes up to them and proceeds to kick their behinds to kingdom come. Chris helps Billy up, they introduce themselves, and they become friends, they sit on the bench together and then we cut to the present, Chris is sitting alone again. He looks at a duplicate of the same photo that Billy had, he hears the voice of a girl screaming “HELP!” Chris immediately runs towards where the scream is coming from. He pulls out a combat knife from the holster of his boot. He finds a girl, her face is turned away from completely, but her backside appears covered in blood, Chris tries to get a good look at her, but she refuses, it's only until she collapses suddenly that Chris gets a look at her. Her face…it's been half eaten off.
NEXT SCENE
30 minutes later, the police arrive at the park, Chief Irons is there too, they question Chris about everything, Chris answers all the questions he can. He tells them how he got called to meet up at this park by an old friend of his, the Chief gives him a look of suspicion, then when the reporters come along, irins immediately put on his TV face, with a performance that would make Broadway actors blush. The police tell Chris that he is free to go, a reporter catches him as he is leaving, asking him what happened. Chris responds saying “I don't know, why don't you ask the chief”.
NEXT SCENE
Chris enters his apartment, washing off the blood of the woman he had held in his arms. There is a knock at his door, it's Rebecca Chambers, she tells Chris that she heard the report about what happened in the park. Rebecca comes to ask for Chris's honest words, not as a cop, but as a friend. Chris tells her everything that happened, and she is in shock. Afterwards, Chris's phone says that he received 1 new message an hour ago, it was while he was waiting for her at the park. It's Billy, he's panicking in the message “Chris! Don't go to the park! I won't make it! Please, call the police, come find me, I'm in a train, we crashed in the middle of Arklay! Hurry please!”
NEXT SCENE
Chris and Rebecca drive out to Arklay, Rebecca says that she called in the bravo team. Until they arrive, they should look for the train that Billy was talking about. They walk through the Forest, they spot a torn off part of the train here, a small fire spot there, and then finally, a huge claw mark in a tree, right next to a fresh pool of blood. Chris and Rebecca examine it, then they hear growling behind them, but not normal growling. They turn, and they see a dog behind them, savage white eyes, bloody drool, and chunks of its body are gone, exposing its meat and bone. The dog leaps at Rebecca, and Chris immediately kicks it away, Rebecca pulls her gun and shoots it. It appears dead, and then gets back up 30 seconds later. They are in complete shock, they question how it's not dead, and they continue to try and kill it, it doesn't go down…until a second gunshot hits the dog directly in the skull, and its head blows completely. “Chris…? Is that you?” “Billy!?” “Is that your friend Chris?” Chris and Billy embrace, Billy has one half of a pair of handcuffs wrapped around his wrist, it's covered in blood.
NEXT SCENE
Jill gets called off work, she finally shows up back home to her and Chris's apartment. “Babe! I'm home! Are you here?” Jill walks around, looking for him. She tries to call friends, asking them if they have seen Chris, they haven't. Jill eventually finds a note on the table, it's a note from Chris. He is telling her in the letter that he went to meet up with his best friend Billy, saying that he came back to town. Jill lets out a sigh of relief, and she heads to the bathroom to take a shower.
NEXT SCENE
Billy tells Chris and Rebecca what had happened, there was this trolley woman who delivered him a beverage, he noticed that her eye was bleeding, and she headed for the bathroom. A few hours later he called Chris, telling him that he was almost gonna be off the train, he told Chris that he wanted to meet up at the park where they hung out. But moments after he called, he heard a loud groan of pain coming from the same bathroom that the woman went into, Billy questions “has she been in there the whole time?”. Billy knocks on the door, he asks her if she is ok, then he hears a responding knock on the other side of the door. Then the knocking repeats, and gets more intense, more violent, and more intense. Until finally, the train employees come and break the door down. They just unleashed hell. The woman had become a nearly unkillable zombie, she bites the first guy, then the second guy, then the third, and it just expands and spreads, as death and decay happened over the course of 2 hours, to where they are now. Billy said that he got handcuffed to a door as bait for the monsters, it was by some crazy selfish man. He got eaten when he tried to run..Billy said he got out when he found a gun in a security officer's pocket, he struggled to grab it, but he eventually did, he shot off the lock of the cuffs.
NEXT SCENE
Chris, Billy, and Rebecca proceed to investigate the train, Billy led them back. The carts are all busted down, the front cart is completely demolished. They hear a loud ominous roar in the distance, Chris says that they should try to avoid whatever in God's name that was, they know it was definitely something bad.
NEXT SCENE
Wesker and Barry are sitting with the alpha team in the STARS office, late at night. Just going over all the reports of the murders, and then going over the recent event that happened at the park, they see that Chris was there. They ask chief irons about it, and irons says that he thinks Mr Redfeild has something to do with them. He is a possible suspect of all the murders. Barry and Wesker don't believe him one bit, and they continue to investigate the crimes. Irons says that the Bravo team left to investigate some kinda train crash.
NEXT SCENE
The three head into the train, they spot various corpses, all in different states of death and decay, each one worse than the next. Rebecca vomits from the sights along with the smell. Chris and Billy discuss what they've been respectively doing during the past 2 years. Chris says that he met and is now dating a babe cop, he tells Billy that Jill is the best girl he's ever had in his life, besides his mother and sister of course. Billy is so happy for his friend. As they continue to see the most grotesque things ever, Billy finally says that he had gotten a promotion to be a top scientist in the umbrella corporation, he worked on a team, the men being named John, William, Marcus, and We—rebecca tells them that the bravo team is almost there. Billy says that he wanted to surprise Chris, he wanted to spend time with his best friend again. He asks about Claire. Chris tells Billy that Claire is currently an all star motorcyclist at her school, she's going by the professional name of Elza Walker(Her full name is Claire Elza Redfeild). After the trip down memory lane is over. Enrico, a member of the Bravo team, finally finds Rebecca and them. The rest of the bravo team follows close behind shortly after.
NEXT SCENE
Barry knocks on the door of Chris and Jill's apartment. Jill answers, Barry asks Jill if she saw Chris, Jill says that he is out with his best friend. Barry hands Jill the report about what happened at the park. She is in speechless shock. She immediately tries to call anyone, and absolutely begs them to be honest “Have. You. Seen. Chris!?”
NEXT SCENE
Chris, Billy, Rebecca, and Bravo team walk to the back end of the train, they encounter…a giant spider. They shoot at it, and it immediately runs away, giving them no time to react. They search for it. They hear crawling from the other side of the walls. They search for a good few minutes, until they hear the pain-filled scream of Enrico, they run to where he was, and they see the spider wrap itself around Enrico's body, biting into his skull. Enrico's body suddenly gets up. He is dead, but his body is still alive, a puppet vessel for the Spider… this…Spider Man runs towards them. Its movements are a mix of a human and a spider. It's incredibly disturbing. They cannot seem to get a clear shot of it, all they can do is run…they lock it into a room. It just claws at the glass, trying to break it, they know it's only a matter of time until it breaks through.
NEXT SCENE
Wesker in his office, receives an anonymous call, the call tells him that a Bravo team is in the Arklay Forest, investigating an event that may have something to do with the crisis of murders. Wesker, seeing this as an opportunity to finally get something done, and put an end to this 2 month long madness, they do not have time to call Barry or Jill. All the remaining STARS operatives get geared up, Brad starts up a chopper and the team proceeds to head for Arklay, they don't tell the Chief.
NEXT SCENE
Everyone in the train continues on, they continue to face various small monsters, they encounter savage Crows flying through windows, baby spiders the size of an average skull hatching from giant eggs. Piles of leeches in the shape of humans, etc. They all finally agree that they have to call in for backup, they need to get out of there and tell the entire city and RPD what had happened. Then they can investigate further.
NEXT SCENE
Alpha Team flies over the forest, Wesker observes the whole area with his binoculars. Until he finally spots the light of the train. Wesker orders them to land.
NEXT SCENE
The crew of the bravo team are running back to the area that they entered from. They run, frantically trying to avoid the various monsters they encounter. They eventually get out, but two unknown members of the bravo team didn't make it out. They don't have time to mourn however, and they try to head back to their vehicles. More dogs appear, and they are chasing them close behind, almost getting them. Chris is the one lagging behind, he trips over a loose branch. A dog leaps at him…until a gunshot hits it straight away from Chris. “This way Chris!” Wesker says. Alpha team showed up in the nick of time, proceeding to slay all of the dogs and monsters coming at them.
NEXT SCENE
“Why would Chris not call me about this?” Barry exclaims he doesn't know either. They proceed to look into things further. They call Wesker, but he doesn't answer. “Amazing, now our oh so great leader is nowhere to answer.”
NEXT SCENE
Everyone in the forest has been brought up to speed on what has happened so far, they don't know where these monsters came from. They need to report back to the RPD, tell the Chief everything, and announce to raccoon city and the world what they saw, but the plan won't be happening. They hear the roars from earlier, they feel rumbling beneath their feet, and forest from the bravo team is stabbed and thrown away into the darkness by a giant claw. It's…a giant man…creature…thing…its heart and chest organs are exposed, it's uglier than sin, it's right hand is bigger than it's left, equipped with a giant claw, and it's twitching uncontrollably(it is the tyrant T-001). It lets out a huge roar. Everyone is paralyzed in fear. They all try to process if this is real, is this all just a dream, is there no human shaped abomination of God in front of them. Wesker is the only one of them all that is not scared one bit, he truly is their brave fearless leader, he earned his STARS. Wesker tells them that they need to run, he shoots the monster directly in its heart, and they run as fast as they can. They head for the chopper, but Brad beats them to it; he proceeds to leave them all as he flies away, screaming and terrified. Wesker yells “Coward” towards brad. The tyrant lets out an even louder roar than ever, and they hear it begin to run, each heavy footstep getting louder and closer. They all run, they don't know where they are going, they're just running. Billy and Chris run closely near each other, Rebecca follows close behind Wesker as he leads them to wherever they are going. They see a bright glow in the distance. They head towards it…The Mansion.
NEXT SCENE
Jill and Barry head back to the STARS office, it's completely empty. They try to see if they left anything behind to indicate where they went. They find nothing, until they hear running coming from outside the door. It's Brad, he barge's into the office, he is frantic, he's panicking, disturbed, and barely clear in his words. Only say “I left them” over and over and over. Jill and Barry try to ask him what happened. Brad finally calms down, and tells them that the alpha and bravo team are in Arklay, that they were with Chris, and his friend Billy. Jill berates Brad about the fact that she abandoned them for dead. Barry restrains her back and calms her down. She tears up and hugs Barry, she is scared that it's too late, that Chris and her friends are dead.
NEXT SCENE
Chris, Wesker, Rebecca, and Richard Eiken made it to the mansion, everyone else is…they don't know. “Billy!? Where's Billy!?” Chris heads for the door. Wesker stops Chris, telling him that they're all probably dead, and that he's sorry. They then suddenly hear a gunshot in the distance, they all hope that the others may have survived, Chris said that he will go and see if he finds anyone, Wesker agrees and says that he will go on his own and look for a way out. Rebecca and Richard agree to stick together and just stay alive.
FINAL SCENE
Chris walks through a dining room, getting closer to where the gunshots came from. He wounds up in a dark quiet hallway. The only thing he hears is the sound of “Sploshing” and groaning. He sees a trail of fresh blood on the floor, it's a trail, Chris immediately follows the trail. And wounds up at a dead end of the hallway…he finds where the blood is coming from. The body of dead STARS member, being devoured by a blood covered pale man shaped creature, it turns its head slowly, revealing its disgusting, blood covered face, with its flesh filled mouth…
THE END…TO BE CONTINUED.
I hope you enjoy the story of this first part. I'm excited to write the next two parts of my film. This first part story was inspired by an excellent video by Score PN, titled "The untold story of Resident evil 0". Here's a tease at what is to come.
Part 2, Film 2: RE 3 & 1.5
Part 3, Film 3: RE 2 & 1

This is mostly just a long, rambling diatribe on the state of education. Feel free to ignore, discuss, or debate as you choose.
I have been an adjunct for 3 years in a technical college program. Before that, I was a substitute instructor for about 12 years while working in industry. My colleagues and I have discussed many times lately our frustrations with the lack of initiative our students seem to have. There seems to be almost no desire to really sink their teeth into the program content. Homework answers are typically copied and pasted (and it’s not uncommon for the pasted response to be completely off topic as if they googled a term and just selected the first response regardless of context). From my reading here, I don’t think we’re alone.
Our program has a large capstone project that is very industry specific and relevant. Recently, I started compiling data from our capstone projects over the last 20 years. Let’s say this is Underwater Basketweaving. For their capstone, students must create plans for weaving, test their designs, figure out the materials to use, teach underclassmen how to weave their designs, price out costs for creating the baskets, and analyze a profitable selling price. They even get to sell the baskets in a store on campus open to the public. They always think it’s pretty cool to see their ideas become real items on a shelf. The parameters around the designs they create are pretty open ended, but each of them must fit into a particular category.
Here’s where this gets interesting to me. When I look at the designs from 10, 15, 20 years ago, they were elaborate and detailed. The Easter baskets had intricate woven patterns. The picnic baskets had multiple compartments. It wasn’t uncommon to see students turn in 6 well done designs when only 5 were required. In the last 5 years or so, there’s been a massive shift towards the most basic, boring designs. Like painfully, annoyingly boring. We reiterate to students that this is their opportunity to show off their growth through the program. They show excitement for the whole program about getting to do this capstone, and yet when it comes up, everything is just meh. It’s like their goal is to do as little work as humanly possible and still pass.
This got me looking deeper at students’ work in general. Recently, a student had an assignment that required him to use a pretty basic material. As a newer student, we certainly didn’t expect anything spectacular, but when he came up to me and asked if he could make X with the material [side note: I’m running out of basket analogies, so just accept that X would be an absolutely simple, home weaver level task that wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes], I was dumbfounded. I asked “have you ever made X before?” Yes. “Per the assignment instructions, you can choose whatever you want, but do you think it might be a better use of your educational time to challenge yourself to make something you haven’t done before?” Blank stare. “I mean, we’ve got just about every material and tool available to you here. I won’t stop you from making X, but I would like you to consider challenging yourself.” Mind you, this is a simple get-to-know-the-material assignment, so we’re not concerned with the quality of the final project, just trying to get their hands on it.
In the past, students took these assignments as an opportunity to try something a little crazy, to push themselves, to see how they could come up with something new. This student made X. And it’s just par for the course now.
Maybe this is common knowledge to the rest of you, but it’s dawning on me that the biggest difference with today’s students is that they’re simply here for the grade. They’re not here for education. They don’t retain anything. They learn just enough to regurgitate the right answer at the right moment, then they promptly forget. They have no interest in being inquisitive or curious. Because they don’t retain anything they learn in the program, these capstone projects are jokes.
Then I chatted with my high school age kid. I asked him if he feels like school is about education or grades. I barely finished my question before he said “grades”. He said teachers will quickly shut down questions with “that won’t be on the test.”
I don’t know. Honestly, I’m just rambling. I guess I always assumed at least some of the frustrations had more to do with a “back in my day we were much better students” and the fact that most of us in academia happen to genuinely enjoy learning while while that isn’t inherently true for all students. While my data isn’t even enough to consider it any sort of study, it does show (at least in my program) a marked decline in effort, initiative, and desire to learn.

This is gonna be a long one, but you need all of the information to get an idea on why I’m planning this. TW: Abuse and Self-H@rm
So I (19M) have been planning to go Low or No contact with my parents for the past 4 years and i wanted to see if I was overreacting. A little bit of background on my relationship with my parents: My mother (40F) and father (45M) had a relationship while my mom was married to my older sister’s (Terri-21F) dad, who was in jail and eventually I was created. During the first four years of my life, my father was absent due to being in jail and I was raised by my mom and my second sister’s (Carey-18F) father. When I turned four, my parents got back together, then we moved out of state where they had my third sister (Janice-14F). It was a good year until they broke up and we were forced to move back to our original state because they could not stand to live in the same household. From 5-9 years old, I would be sent to live with my paternal aunt and my cousins as my mom couldn’t afford to keep all of us together and my dad was still out of state trying to find work. This time would be the happiest I have ever been as I had close friends, great grades and enjoyed every second I spent with my family. My father made his way back to our state when I turned 7 and would visit or hang out with me every weekend while living with my grandmother. During fourth grade when I had moved back in with my mom, as she had her own place with her then boyfriend and i had a new sister (Kelly-10F), There was a day where I hadn’t cleaned the dishes bc there was’t any dish soap so when my mom came back I told her and she told me to still clean them and when I did them only using water (as there is no dish soap), she proceeded to throw me to the ground and start choking me while my sister’s are trying to pull her off of me. This was after making us undress and line up against the wall as she hit us with a belt on our bare skin. Afterwords she acted like the situation never happened all the way until i moved in with my dad after he got his own place. This is where I played this game of roundabout for years where I move back in with my mom then back with my paternal aunt where I would have my first argument with my father over an unfair punishment and he would hold me over the stairs and threaten to throw me down them in front of my aunt (I was 13 and barely half his size.) I would later after move with my maternal aunt in my freshman year and then back to mom for the rest of high school in a small one bedroom apartment. During all of this, we all had our own personal issues with our mother’s actions and lack of respect towards us. During these she would try to attack us, fistfight with my sisters, verbally attack us and constantly wait for us to apologize, which we did because we had no choice as we could only live with her at some points. During this time, she would kick my sisters out and my mental health decline caused me to start h@rming myself and I stopped sleeping from freshman year to senior year. Janice has a moderate intellect disability so she needs help to understand when she did something wrong and someone to watch over her. During my senior year of high school, Janice pooped in the garbage and I didn’t know until my mom started screaming at her and hitting her with a broom. As I tried to get her to stop and grabbed the broom, she then pushed me and started yelling at me for trying to stop her. I sprung up and looked her dead in her eyes to never put her hands on me again as I am now bigger than her and took weightlifting as my gym class. She then proceeded to yell at me some more and tell me to get out or she’s calling the police. Even though I was 17 and knew she couldn’t kick me out, I still didn’t want her to get arrested as we still needed a place to stay and she was our only and best option. I called my father to pick me up and when explaining the situation, he starts making excuses for her saying she’s mentally ill as she has diagnosed BPD and how I need to apologize as we need to live with her and respect her. Even as he called her and told her she was wrong, he still kept trying to keep peace between us rather than defend either me or my sister. The next day I had to apologize and she pretends like it never happened, but I started planning to go to a college as far as I could to get away from her no matter what. We would have frequent arguments and screaming matches until my graduation and eventually when I left I finally felt free and happy and my mental health got better until I eventually came back home after my first year was over. I came back to live with her for the summer as I don’t have anywhere else I can stay and we would reignite our strained relationship as I no longer hold my tongue to her yelling like everyone else. Our argument was over the way I swept and how I left out my air mattress that I was sleeping on, and I could see her get closer and her fist shake at her side as she knows she cant hit me anymore especially since my maternal grandma moved in and eventually we drop it, but then she tries to involve my dad who tries to explain how I have to do what she says when she says it because I live in her house and I tried to explain that her first reaction does not need to be yelling and how I still did what she asked. It fell on deaf ears as he kept cutting me off and getting angry every time I tried to speak, even as he asked me to explain my side and insulted my job and the fact that I don’t listen to their unsolicited advice. Nothing I said mattered to them and i realized my mother would always snap anytime her power was threatened and my father would never defend us for any reason.
WIBTA for planning to go no-low contact with my parents when I go back to college?

Hi all!
So I've been living in my '05 Prius for a total of almost 10 months consecutively now and 2 months during the summer of '22. I've found a lot of neat things out from here and other places however, some of these things aren't as well known and can increase your quality of life a bit more. Some of these things are pretty frugal friendly too, especially for me since I have usually zero income and don't have much money to begin with, since I spend all of my time studying, doing doordash from 12am-4am only when I'm below $500.
To start:

• Inverters are extremely helpful and easy to install almost mandatory if you use a hybrid. I have a small 150w ($18) one up front in lighter socket. I have a pure sine wave one @ 1500w ($160) but realistically I never push past 1200-1300w and if I do, not for extended periods of time. I can run my hair dryer on high heat low fan or medium heat and high fan with no problems. I can cook with my induction hot plate, rice cooker, etc. I always have my app open to monitor 12v voltage levels and amps drawn too, never dipping below 13.4v for more than a few minutes (when I use high heat high air for example). Also, make sure to buy a wattage meter (~$10) before doing anything serious, as some appliances will use more energy at the beginning
  
• Window socks (~$11) are awesome for the summer. It's like a cheap tint but also protects from insects. I had serious mosquito bite problems in summer of '22, and this made them a non factor. Also helps with light to medium rain, with windows at 50-80% rolled up. Not very stealth imo but I've had more people ask what they are and how to get them than anything else.
  
• Window tint is amazing hands down, and I wish I did this at the start. I opted for vinyl, so you can take it off and reapply it as needed. Takes about 1 min for each window to put it back on completely or about 30 seconds if you just pull it down, spray, then squeegee it back into place. It's about $20 a roll, and I have 5% on all windows. Needing about 2.5 rolls. I watched a few videos and my cuts are pretty decent but not the best. It's hard to see out of and does not get clearer, but it's fine to drive during the day for the back windows. I live in California, so 70% up front and back doesn't matter. During the day I pull down or remove the tint in the front windows if I'm driving far or if cops are nearby I roll down the front windows np. No one can see in, allowing me to setup for bed in peace at my sleep spots or to nap if it's cooler with windows cracked during the day. It reduces heat so much it's insane, as my car has no working AC, it's amazing going from 95-100F inside to 80-88F in the sun. Also it makes you feel like a gangster inside, everything is darker heh.
  
• Rain guards are also worth it (~$40, make/model ymmv) and took about 5 minutes to install for all of them. That combined with the tint allows me to blend in with no problem. Allows you to crack windows for air, less chance for insects to come in and so far no rain has gotten in, even with high wind horizontal rain.
  
• Sun shade (~$5) obviously is a must for stealth and heat, however I see other dwellers around me who don't use them which I find odd.
  
• Gym membership ($60). I used to use PF until 2 months ago. I got tired of creepy male PF employees barging in the women's locker room and a few other creepy dwellers following me around (seriously go away LOL). I use anytime now and the private showers and atmosphere is much better, also they have barbells! Definitely worth it to me, but if I was a guy I probably wouldn't have switched.
  
• UPS Store PMB (~$75), I used for 2 months in '22 and it was ok. Luckily I got an apartment so I didn't change my address to my mailbox, but this workaround will allow you to get your mail, apply for jobs without problems, and even get the address on your driver's license. However, I've been using a PO Box now for the last 10 months due to money and my last employer while homeless didn't seem to care I put a UPS Store address as my residence.
  
• Small rear view mirrors (~$5) have helped a lot! Everyone should use these, as it's helped me see when drugged out homeless stroll by and I can roll up my windows or drive away.
  
• Car jumper (~$40), the one I have serves as another power bank and can jump my car. Everyone should have one or at least have AAA.
  
• Tire air compressor (~$20), has been helpful. I have a small leak in one of my tires but not enough to warrant a change. Once every other week I use it and it's been helpful when traveling 500mi+ at a time (I drive from norcal to socal sometimes, so grapevine can be annoying).
  
• Organizers (~$10, $1.25 ea) have helped immensely and de-cluttered my car. Amazon or Dollar store made it possible. Also small trash can holder (~$8) from Amazon makes trash disposal much easier, it hangs around behind a front seat.
  
• Storage unit (~$40-60 for first few months, then double usually) is like a mini house. I have all my stuff there, portable washedryer for when I move back into a place, my car repair tools like jacks & ramps, bicycle, stationary bicycle, and much more. I can even change clothes in there without worries and store my medicine since it's climate controlled. I only go early morning or late at night. It helped remove excess clutter and...it's nice to have somewhere mostly private.
  

TIPS:

• Every time I move to a new city, I make sure to do doordash within the first week at least 1-2 times from 12am-4am. Doing this allows me to scout out spots, see and spot other dwellers, but also to find out what "No Overnight Parking Sign" areas are actually ok to park overnight. I currently sleep in the same spot at the library that has these signs, which is also directly adjacent both to a small apartment complex and a Police station. The police drive by and have never given me or any of the other 10+ dwellers here problems. It's next to a main road, but its much better than the others spots I have in this city. Seriously, this is a big one and worth the loss of sleep for a few days.
  
• Make friends with the local PD. The local PD here are pretty chill and check up on car dwellers frequently, there's some insane people but most are just quiet and chill. I make sure to let all officers know that I'm a student, just waiting for school to start. They've helped point out resources and pointed out slyly that they "can't kick anyone out" of some spots because it's private property. One also gave me a heads up that my old spot was going to get burned because someone purchased the building, and the parking lot for it was going to be burned with private security. If your PD is bad (which most are) then make sure to look up resources, there's usually soup kitchens and food pantries everywhere.
  
• Safe parking programs are a godsend. I participated in one for 6 months before I moved and it was worth it. Free snacks/food, gift cards, and other resources are available at these places usually. It's like a shelter but you stay in your car. Usually allow for 12 months or more at a time. Definitely wroth checking out.
  
• The most important thing of all is: Don't give up. I'm living in my car because I don't have any choice, no friends or family. School is my salvation, just waiting until September. Find your salvation or stick with the lifestyle. Just find a goal and roll with it.
  

There's a few other things but these I found are pretty important to consider.

There's a a fairly decent sized community of auto enthusiasts in the US, much like the Low Rider community, centered around a classification of vehicle called Kei Vehicles. They include trucks, vans, etc. These are small mostly Japanese vehicles with a strict classification system. They have to be 660cc engines or under, weight limits, etc. Due to lobbying from Mercedes Bends in the 80's so import vehicles would stop eating into their bottom line they, like all foreign vehicles, are illegal to import for anything but off road use if the vehicle is 25 years or newer; due to the vehicles not meeting the EPA's or the US's safety requirements. But that's a whole other bag of worms that I'm not going to get into.
What I want to cause a stink about is that after 25 years (Now 1999) these vehicles become exempt from those EPA and safety requirements and are considered classic cars, "free" to import and theoretically register, title, and freely drive on the road. There is a quickly growing community surrounding these vehicles (see keitruck) and it's beautiful. I actually have my first on order from Japan for $2700 total. A friggin steal and it gets about 32 MPG. 20+ states have common sense laws surrounding kei vehicles, those laws being keeping them off the highways, limited to roads 45 -50 mph or lower, etc. 10+ other states have no laws what so ever regarding them. Recently Virginia has rescended all existing kei vehicle registrations and they will no longer be registering them going forward, Gorgia put out a notice saying that they will not respect other state's registrations of the vehicles. And then we have a few states, like Michigan (my state) that are quietly shadow banning them from getting registered and titled. All of this "due to safety."
I have emails going back and forth with Jackie Venton, the COO of the Michigan SOS where I'm asking her to quote the law that outright bans kei vehicles from Michigan roads, or titling and registering them. She replies with a law that bans them due to EPA and safety regulations. I remind her that the vehicles become exempt from those laws after 25 years, and again ask her to quote me the law that outright bans them. She couldn't. She sent me a NHTSA Interpretation that while does deal with kei vehicles (noted as "mini trucks" in the interpretation), if you notice the dates it's about a 2000 kei vehicle at a Congressional hearing of some sort set in 2009. So again has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, as after 25 years imported vehicles become exempt from those safety requirements and that mini truck was very shy of that requirement. She also responded with a statement basically saying that the department can do what it wishes. She never did quote me any laws about kei trucks.
Now don't get me wrong here, these vehicles are not safe by today's standards by any means. They are a cab over frame vehicle, which means that the body of the vehicle is bolted to the top of the chassis, instead of the chassis being a part of the body. There aren't any crumple zones, so if you get into an accident chances are you're going to get messed up if you're going over 45 mph. BUT they're safer than motorcycles (Which we let on the highways), mopeds, and A LOT of classic vehicles (Like the Model T) that we allow on the roads without batting an eye, and these kei vehicles aren't a danger to anyone other than the occupants. To add to this, here in Michigan we have what are colloquially known as "Rat Rods", and to the DMV as "Assembled Vehicles." These are vehicles that are just slapped together and can be titled and registered for on road use, so long as they have seat belts and lights. All you have to do is go to the police station and have an officer inspect the vehicle making sure that all of the part numbers match up so you aren't trying to hide stolen parts. That's it.
I'm not advocating for kei trucks to be allowed on highways by any means, they absolutely should not be. But there should be common sense legislature surrounding their use, as seen in those 20+ states that I mentioned. I personally want my kei truck purely to drive around my mid-size town (34k as of 2022) for misc house work, and purely to commute the 10 minutes to and from my work. Maybe if I get spunky I'll take it out of state on camping trips, making sure to take back roads the whole way.
Here are some bonus Youtube videos to give you an idea:
Doug Demuro's Review of a Subaru Sambar kei van
A Honda Acty and Suzuki Carry driving around on the roads and wilderness of Oregon - Courtesy of Olympic Overland

Want to get feedback and suggestions for our (mid 30s couple) two-night stay in Hakone this mid November. We'll be heading from and then back to Tokyo afterwards. We're currently booked the first night at Yama-no-Chaya and then Gora Kadan for the second night, and will be getting the three-day Hakone Free Pass.
The goal was to split up the different sections of the Hakone loop across the 2 days and try to also maximize our time to fully enjoy and experience both ryokans. We plan to pack somewhat light to Hakone and leave our larger luggage at the Tokyo hotel.
Some specific feedback we'd appreciate are:

1. Any major attractions we are missing that we should try squeeze in, especially if we want to see fall foliage at that time of the year.
2. Is it worth also experiencing a public onsen if we are already staying at two ryokens with onsens?
3. Is the itinerary too tight at any spots when accounting for the crowd/lines?
4. Any good spots to get lunch for each of the days?

Itinerary

• Day 1 (get to Hakone, explore southern part of the Hakone loop + take boat tour, check in to Yama no Chaya)
  • 7:30am - Checkout from Tokyo hotel and get to Shinjuku Station
  • 8:00am - Take Romancecar to Hakone-Yumato Station
  • 10:00am - Explore Yumato a bit, then drop off bags at Yama-no-Chaya
    • Should we explore Odawara Castle instead? or have time to fit in both somehow?
  • 11:00am - Bus to Amazake teahouse. Get snacks/tea.
  • 12:00pm - Walk the Old Tokaido to Moto-Hakone, visit Hakone Shrine
  • 1:00pm - Walk to Hakone-machi, visit surrounding areas, get lunch somewhere?
  • 2:30pm - Take sightseeing boat tour round trip on Lake Ashi
  • 4:30pm - Bus back to Yama-no-Chaya, check in, onsen, dinner, relax, sleep.
• Day 2 (explore northern part of the Hakone loop with ropeway, check in to Gora Kadan)
  • 8:00am - breakfast at Yama-no-Chaya
  • 9:00am - checkout, take Tozan Railway to Gora
  • 10:00am - drop off bags at Gora Kadan
  • 10:30am - Tozan Cablecar to Sounzan
  • 11:00am - Hakone Ropeway to Togendai, get volcano eggs at Owakudani
  • 1:00pm - Visit Botanical Garden and Glass Museum
    • Is it better to bus Togendai to Sengoku or take the ropeway back up first?
    • get lunch some where?
  • 4:00pm - Bus back to Gora
  • 4:30pm - Check in at Gora Kadan, dinner, onsen, relax, sleep.
• Day 3 (explore Gora area, head back to Tokyo)
  • 9:00am - Breakfast at Gora Kadan
  • 10:00am - checkout
  • 10:30am - Hakone Open Air museum, Gora park, get lunch somewhere.
  • early afternoon - Railway/Bus to Hakone Yumoto, then Romancecar back to Tokyo.