“This is Jay, Moody, and Kai, and today we are searching for Makaro House.”
The video was shot in shaky cam, the footage hard to watch without getting a little seasick. Officer Wiley, Detective Wiley now, had seen a lot in his time on the force, but a double homicide perpetrated by this fourteen-year-old kid in front of him was something he hoped he would never see. A double homicide, and carried out against two of his best friends, at that. The two kids in question, Marshal Moody and Kai Dillon, had been friends with Jason Weeks since elementary school, and there had never been any reports of violence or any other alarming behavior, at least none reported to the police. The boys had operated a YouTube channel, JMK Occult, for the last two years, and while their content was pretty typical for kids online, they had been uploading steadily every week since their first video about a strange deer in the North Woods around Cadderly.
Hell, Wiley even watched their stuff sometimes when he was bored.
People in the community knew them, and this was out of character for any of them.
Wiley paused the video, the three boys blundering through the South Woods and chattering like a pack of squirrels, and looked at Jason.
Jason, Jay to his friends, looked like he had aged a decade. He had a gaunt look usually reserved for soldiers who come back from war. His hair had been long and blonde for as long as anyone had known him, but the kid sitting here now was as bald as an egg and his scalp looked scoured instead of shaved. The shirt he had been wearing in the video was gone. He was still wearing the ring of it around his neck, the stretched fabric like a collar, and the jeans he wore were stained and ragged in places that looked fresh. He'd been found with no shoes or socks, but he was wearing the orange flip-flops of a jail resident now.
Wiley knew his parents wanted to bail him out, but he wasn't sure if the judge was going to extend him bail or not, given the nature of his crime.
The way those kids had been ripped apart was something that would haunt him for a long time.
“So, Jason, Officer Russel tells me that someone picked you up beside the road and you told them that your friends were dead and that you had killed them. Is that true?”
Jason nodded, not speaking a word as he continued to stare at the wall.
The woman in question was Darla Hughes, a mother of three who had stopped when she saw a young teenage boy walking on the side of the road in the state he was currently in. Stories of kidnapping and kids held in basements for months while God knew what happened to them were clear in the public consciousness. Darla thought she had found some kid who had escaped his situation, and when she stopped to help him, she said the poor lamb had said eight words and then nothing else.
“He said, my friends are dead, and I killed them.”
They had found the kids in a clearing in the woods about three miles in, a site he was familiar with.
How many times had he and his friends gone looking for the Makaro House?
Everyone in Cadderly knew about Makaro House, and most people's childhoods had been spent looking for it. John Makaro, a prominent figure in Cadderly's history, had been a prominent importer and exporter in England. He had come to America before the Revolutionary War to try to set up a similar business here, and Cadderly had been a large enough port to satisfy his needs without being so big that a new face would be lost. He established a manor in the South Woods, despite being told that it was Indian Land, and the bill of sale did very little to dispatch the native tribe that was living there. He survived two raids by the natives somehow, but his wife and daughter were not so lucky the second time. As such, he rallied a mob of townspeople to go into the woods and help him flush out the natives who were living there. The raid took weeks, but by the end, they had killed or scattered every member of the tribe that lived there.
Satisfied, Mr. Makaro built his lavish estates there, but strange things surrounded it from the first. Workers went missing, people reported strange lights and sounds after dark, and a shriveled figure in skins and feathers could be seen lurking after moonrise. Animals on the property acted strangely, and sometimes people found wolves or bears on the grounds. Usually, they were in a rage, but sometimes they simply fled as if they had been drawn there and weren't sure what to do now that they were. Once the house was finished, John Makaro had a hard time keeping staff. None of the hands he had hired to keep his livestock would stay more than a week, and they all refused to stay on the property after dark. His servants would likewise disappear suddenly, and none of them would stay at night besides his butler, who had been with him for years. People said that Mr. Makaro talked about hearing chanting in the house and seeing strange shadows, and when even his butler disappeared one evening, John locked the doors and stayed in the house alone for a long time. People who came to see him said he could be seen wandering the halls like a ghost, calling out for people only he could see.
When his mansion was seen in full blaze one night, those who were first on the scene said they saw a lone man silhouetted in the flames, his feathers and skins on full display.
He disappeared when they got close, but he had been seen by many in the years to come.
“What did you see out there, Jason?”
Jason continued to stare at the wall.
“I wanna help you, kid, but you have to help yourself first.”
He couldn't help but glance down at the kid's fingers as he left them splayed on that table like sleeping spiders. The nails were dirty, the beds crusty with something like blood, and several of them were torn and ragged. There was grime around his mouth too, and Wiley would have bet his next paycheck that it wasn't a Kool-aid ring. It looked like mud or paint, but it was probably blood.
Jason remained silent as the grave.
“Jason, none of us believe that you killed your friends. You,”
“You're wrong,”
Wiley had been fiddling with the remote, trying not to look at the kid's hands, but when he spoke, he looked up. Jason was still staring at the wall, but his head was shaking as his teeth chattered together. The kid looked like he was staring into the mouth of hell instead of the creme-colored wall of the interrogation room. Wiley almost didn't want to ask him what he had seen, but he needed to know. He needed to know how this kid had killed two other kids, one of whom was bigger than him by a head and sixty pounds.
“Would you like to elaborate?” Wiley asked.
He didn't think the kid would for a minute, but finally, he just reached slowly and pushed play on the remote. He kept looking at Wiley like he thought he might slap his hand, but when he let him get all the way across the table unsmacked, he relaxed a little. The video went on as they walked through the woods, joking and laughing as the woods lived their quiet existence around them.
“We went in at eight, just after Kai's mom went to work. She wouldn't have liked us going into the South Woods, but we wanted to investigate Makaro House. We wanted to do it for our first episode, but Moody said it was something we should work up to. The Makaro House was something big, and we needed to be ready for it. Turned out we weren't.”
On the screen, the kids kept walking through the woods, checking their compass and making their way carefully through the thick brush. They were still chattering, talking about what they might find when they got there, and whether they would find the clearing or see the mysterious mansion that people talked about sometimes. Legend said that a ghostly manor appeared in the clearing sometimes, the ghost of the house and that people who went inside were never seen again. Wiley didn't believe that, but as a kid, he had to admit that the clearing where the house had sat was spooky. All the wood had long ago rotted, the stones taken away for use in other things, but the land just felt wrong. Wiley had never been there after dark, but people claimed to hear footsteps and see things after the sun went down.
Wiley pushed fast forward on the tape and watched as the kids plodded on and on.
Jason wished that he could have sped through that part of the trip.
They had set out at eight, waving to Kai's mom as she pulled out of the driveway. The packs had been pulled out of the garage after she was down the road a piece, and the three set out for the woods. They knew the rough direction of the Makaro House, but no one really came upon it in the same way. Danny Foster had said it was a three-mile walk from the forest's edge to the property, but Jamie had claimed that he and his friends had walked for what seemed like hours.
“When we found it, though,” he said, “we found the house instead of an empty lot. We kept daring each other to go in, but we left when someone lit a fire on the grounds.”
Jason and his friends were hoping to find the house instead of the lot, and as their walk turned into a hike, Kai stopped and looked at the compass.
“We should have gotten there by now.”
Moody chuckled, “Maybe we're going in the wrong direction.”
“Can't be,” Kai protested, “The directions are to go south into the south woods for three miles. Then you'll come to the clearing where Makaro House once sat.”
Jason didn't want to jinx it, but at the time he thought that boded well for them finding the house.
They kept walking, Kai good for an endless stream of conversation, and as the sun began to set, Jason found he was out of breath. His tongue felt like leather as it stuck to the roof of his mouth, and the lunch they had brought had been eaten hours ago. Moody had argued that they should turn around and head back, but Jason had finally vocalized that this could mean they were going to find the house instead of an empty lot.
He was hopeful right until they got what they wanted
When the sun began to go down, Wiley knit his brows together.
“I thought you and your friends were only in the woods for a few hours?”
Jason shook his head slowly, “We were, and we weren't. The time on the camera says we walked for eight hours before I turned it off, but when I got picked up by the side of the road, it was barely noon.”
Wiley pursed his lips, “How is that possible?”
The video cut out, the battery in the camera having been exhausted, and Jason nodded at the screen.
“Those batteries have a max life of three hours. Dad said it was the best battery they had when he ordered it for me, and it was pretty expensive. There's no way one of those batteries could have recorded for eight hours, but it did.”
The recording came back on, and Wiley was shocked to see that they were standing on the lawn of an old Gothic mansion. The sun setting behind the house made a perfect backdrop for the shot, and the boys were oooing and ahhing appreciatively. None of them seemed to believe what they were seeing, the whole thing a little otherworldly, and there seemed to be some argument about who was going to approach the house first.
“Is that,” Wiley stopped to wet his lips,” it can't be. The Makaro House burned down hundreds of years ago.”
“But there it is,” Jason said, his eyes still fixed on the wall, “in all its glory.”
And oh, what glory there had been in it.
Moody had gawped at the house as he had never seen one before.
“No way, there is no way.”
“That's impossible,” Kai breathed, “that house burned to the ground before our father's fathers were even thought of.”
“But there it is,” Jason said, mirroring his later statement, though he could not know it, “in all its glory.”
As the sun set behind it, Jason thought it looked even spookier than it would at night. The mansion rose like an obelisk towards the sky, its towered roofs looking naked without flags or pinions. The boys stood at the edge, trying to shame or bluster one of the others into going there first, but in the end, Jason took the first step. The others looked surprised at his boldness, but they followed closely after, not wanting to be thought less of.
Jason expected the house to disintegrate as he approached, an illusion or a trick of the light, but as his foot came to rest on the boards of the old house, he felt their solidity and continued to climb.
When the doors opened for them, the broad double doors swinging jauntily on their hinges, the three boys pulled back as they prepared to run.
The camera captured their indecision, the portal yawning wide as it waited to receive them, and Jason seemed to surprise even himself as he came forward to investigate it.
“Jason, What if it's a trap?”
“This whole place shouldn't exist, and if you think I'm going to pass up the chance to explore it, you're wrong."
Jason went in, pausing just inside the doors as if waiting for them to crash shut.
When they didn't, Moody followed him and Kai brought up the rear.
Makaro House lived up to its Gothic exterior, the inside full of soft dark velvet and antique furniture. There was a fire burning in the hearth inside the sitting room, tables spread with books in the library, and as they came up the long hall that led towards what was undoubtedly a dining room, Jason began to smell something. It was something like a stew or maybe a roast, and the smell of meat brought them to the dining room. A long table sat in the middle, eight chairs on each side of it, and at the end sat a wrinkled old man eating soup from a bowl.
It was hard to tell before they had gotten close, but the old man looked like he might be Native American. He was dressed in hides, feathers adorning his head and necklace, and he wore a beaded necklace with bones and claws on it. He looked up as they approached, glowering at them evenly, before returning to his meal. He ignored the boys, all three standing back apprehensively before Jason found the courage to speak.
“Excuse me, sir. Is this your house?”
The spoon froze on the way to his mouth, and the old man looked like he'd been slapped.
“My house?” he asked, his voice sounding thin and whispery, “No, child, but it was paid for by my people. We paid with our blood, we paid with our lives, and in the end, the cost was high. I took some of that cost from the previous owner of this home, and now it's only me who lives here.”
Kai made an uncomfortable noise in his throat, like a dog trying to tell its owner that something wasn't safe, and Jason understood the feeling.
“Well, we'll leave you to it then. We didn't mean to,”
“Leave?” the old man said, sounding amused, “oh no. No one leaves Makaro House until they've played the game. It was always a way for our warriors to test their metal, and I have so longed to see it played again. Will you join me? If not, I'm afraid you might find it quite hard to leave.”
Moody took a step back, and Jason heard his heavy footsteps on the carpet as he tried to retreat.
“What's the game?” Jason asked, figuring they could outrun this old coyote if it came down to it.
Jason would wonder why he had thought of him that way, but he didn't have time to ponder it then.
“Choose your piece from my necklace,” the old man said, slipping it off and laying it on the table, “Claw, Talon, or Fang.”
“Then what?” Moody asked, Kai moving behind him as if afraid to come too close.
“Then we start the game.” the old man said, smiling toothily.
For an old man, he certainly had a lot of sharp teeth.
“Okay,” Moody said, walking forward as Kai followed in his wake, “I choose claw.”
“Talon,” said Kai, reaching out to touch it.
“Fang,” said Jason, and as he put his hand out, he felt a sudden, violent shifting in his guts.
He was shrinking, the world moving rapidly all around him. He was smaller, but also more than he was, and he was trapped. His legs scrabbled at the thing that held him, and he tore it to pieces as he freed himself. He heard a loud roar and something big rose up before him. The bear was massive, ragged bits of something hanging from him, and Jason was afraid that he would kill him before he could get fully free of his snare. Something screeched then, flying at the bear's face and attacking him. Jason saw blood run down the snout of the bear, and as it tried to get the bird, a large hawk, off its face, Jason circled and looked for an opening. He was low, on all fours, and he could smell the hot blood as it coursed down the bear's muzzle. Blood and meat and fear and desire mingled in him, and as something laughed, he turned and saw a large coyote sitting at the table. Its grin was huge, its snout longer than any snout had a right to be, and he was laughing in a strange half-animal/half-man way.
The hawk suddenly fell before Jason, twitching and gasping as it died, and he knew the time to strike was now.
Jason leaped on the bear, its arms trying to crush him but not able to find purchase. He sank his teeth into the bear's throat, and for a moment he was afraid he wouldn't make it through all that thick fur. The bear tried to bring its claws to bear, but as the wolf worried at it with its fangs, he was rewarded with a mouth full of hot blood. The bear kept trying to rake him with its claws, but its movements were becoming less coordinated. When it fell, the whole room shook with the sound of its thunder, and Jason rolled off it as it lay still.
“Bravo, bravo,” cried the coyote, clapping its paws together in celebration, “Well fought, young wolf, well fought.”
Jason took a step towards him, but suddenly he was falling. It was as if a whirlpool had opened up beneath him and he was being sucked into it. Jason thrashed and snarled, trying to get his balance, but he was powerless against the pull as it flung him down and into the depths of some strange and terrible abyss.
He came to in the empty clearing where the house had been, and that was where he found his friends.
Wiley rewound the tape, not quite sure what to make of this.
“So this strange man offered to play a game, and then he changed you three into animals?”
Jason nodded, looking like one of those birds that dip into a glass of water, “I picked Fang, so I was the wolf. The game wasn't fair, we didn't know what we were doing, but I still killed Moody. I killed both of them because I had been the one to approach the house first. I killed them when I agreed to play the game. It's my fault, I'm a murderer.”
Wiley wasn't so sure, but it was hard to argue with the evidence. The video showed Jason dropping the camera and then suddenly there was a lot of snarling and screeching. Wiley heard the animals fighting, but he heard something else too. Something was laughing, really having a good belly chuckle, and it sounded like a hyena. He couldn't see it, it was all lost amongst the carpet, but suddenly that carpet had turned into grass, and the camera was lying outside in the midday sun. Someone got up, someone sobbed and moaned out in negation, and then they walked away.
That was where the video ended.
In the end, Jason was sent for psychiatric evaluation and the whole thing was chalked up to a drug-induced episode. Jason and his friends were drugged by an old man in the woods and while under the influence of an unknown substance, a substance that didn't show up on any toxicology screening, they killed each other. Blood was found on Jason, blood belonging to Marshall Moody, but blood from the fingernails of Moody was determined to belong to Kai Dillon, which really helped push the narrative that Detective Wiley was working with. He told the press to report an old man in the woods who was drugging people and pushed the stranger danger talks a little harder than usual that year on school visits.
After that day, the tape he took from Jason Weeks was never seen again, but Wiley believed that the boys had run up against something they weren't prepared for. When John Makaro had led the extermination of the Native People that dwelt on his land, he had angered something he wasn't prepared for either. Wiley's grandmother had liked to tell stories about Coyote, the trickster god, and how he could be as fierce as he was cunning when he needed to be. Wiley didn't think they would ever find an old man out there in the woods, but he didn't doubt others would find him.
Coyote liked his games, especially when the players were people he saw as interlopers.
Makaro House remained a town legend, and Wiley had little doubt that those foolish enough to enter would be presented with the same game these three boys had been given.
Wiley shuddered to think how the next challenge might go when Coyote needed more amusement.
Makaro House
“This is Jay, Moody, and Kai, and today we are searching for Makaro House.”

(J.R. Miller, "What Is a Christian Life?") A great many people seem to misunderstand Christianity and the Christian life.
In some cases, no more is implied than an intellectual belief of the doctrines of Christianity. Some people seem to think that a Christian is one who is "sound in the faith"--although the personal character may be very faulty, and there may be no practical application of the principles of the gospel to the conduct. Pride, bitterness, selfishness, malice, dishonesty, and harshness may abound. But because the person believes the facts of the gospel, he then considers himself to be a Christian man.
A Christian life is a ~regenerated~ life. Thus the teaching of the Scriptures is that a true Christian life is one that has come under new influences, a new life, a divine principle--entering the heart and changing all within, and then without. It is the Spirit entering into him and influencing his whole life.
In a true Christian life, the beliefs in the heart manifest themselves, in a greater or lesser measure--in the conduct and the character. Thus it is character which is the true and final test of religion. "The ~fruit of the Spirit~ is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control." These are the things that manifest one to be a Christian. Not those who say, "Lord, Lord"--but those who "obey His commandments," shall enter into Heaven. Men talk about holiness and pray for it, as if it were something entirely apart from their everyday life--something that has nothing whatever to do with their conduct in their domestic, social, and business relations. But ~holiness is not a mere sentiment~--it is the most real and practical thing in this world! If being holy means anything at all, it means being true, honest, upright, noble, pure, gentle, patient, unselfish. Holiness is not only church-going and hymn-singing--it is life and conduct. It is not a Sunday religion, but a every-day lifestyle. We really have no more religion than we get into our everyday life--at home, in business, in all our conduct. ~We are Christians only so far as the Christ living in us, is manifested in a Christlike life~!

“This is Jay, Moody, and Kai, and today we are searching for Makaro House.”
The video was shot in shaky cam, the footage hard to watch without getting a little seasick. Officer Wiley, Detective Wiley now, had seen a lot in his time on the force, but a double homicide perpetrated by this fourteen-year-old kid in front of him was something he hoped he would never see. A double homicide, and carried out against two of his best friends, at that. The two kids in question, Marshal Moody and Kai Dillon, had been friends with Jason Weeks since elementary school, and there had never been any reports of violence or any other alarming behavior, at least none reported to the police. The boys had operated a YouTube channel, JMK Occult, for the last two years, and while their content was pretty typical for kids online, they had been uploading steadily every week since their first video about a strange deer in the North Woods around Cadderly.
Hell, Wiley even watched their stuff sometimes when he was bored.
People in the community knew them, and this was out of character for any of them.
Wiley paused the video, the three boys blundering through the South Woods and chattering like a pack of squirrels, and looked at Jason.
Jason, Jay to his friends, looked like he had aged a decade. He had a gaunt look usually reserved for soldiers who come back from war. His hair had been long and blonde for as long as anyone had known him, but the kid sitting here now was as bald as an egg and his scalp looked scoured instead of shaved. The shirt he had been wearing in the video was gone. He was still wearing the ring of it around his neck, the stretched fabric like a collar, and the jeans he wore were stained and ragged in places that looked fresh. He'd been found with no shoes or socks, but he was wearing the orange flip-flops of a jail resident now.
Wiley knew his parents wanted to bail him out, but he wasn't sure if the judge was going to extend him bail or not, given the nature of his crime.
The way those kids had been ripped apart was something that would haunt him for a long time.
“So, Jason, Officer Russel tells me that someone picked you up beside the road and you told them that your friends were dead and that you had killed them. Is that true?”
Jason nodded, not speaking a word as he continued to stare at the wall.
The woman in question was Darla Hughes, a mother of three who had stopped when she saw a young teenage boy walking on the side of the road in the state he was currently in. Stories of kidnapping and kids held in basements for months while God knew what happened to them were clear in the public consciousness. Darla thought she had found some kid who had escaped his situation, and when she stopped to help him, she said the poor lamb had said eight words and then nothing else.
“He said, my friends are dead, and I killed them.”
They had found the kids in a clearing in the woods about three miles in, a site he was familiar with.
How many times had he and his friends gone looking for the Makaro House?
Everyone in Cadderly knew about Makaro House, and most people's childhoods had been spent looking for it. John Makaro, a prominent figure in Cadderly's history, had been a prominent importer and exporter in England. He had come to America before the Revolutionary War to try to set up a similar business here, and Cadderly had been a large enough port to satisfy his needs without being so big that a new face would be lost. He established a manor in the South Woods, despite being told that it was Indian Land, and the bill of sale did very little to dispatch the native tribe that was living there. He survived two raids by the natives somehow, but his wife and daughter were not so lucky the second time. As such, he rallied a mob of townspeople to go into the woods and help him flush out the natives who were living there. The raid took weeks, but by the end, they had killed or scattered every member of the tribe that lived there.
Satisfied, Mr. Makaro built his lavish estates there, but strange things surrounded it from the first. Workers went missing, people reported strange lights and sounds after dark, and a shriveled figure in skins and feathers could be seen lurking after moonrise. Animals on the property acted strangely, and sometimes people found wolves or bears on the grounds. Usually, they were in a rage, but sometimes they simply fled as if they had been drawn there and weren't sure what to do now that they were. Once the house was finished, John Makaro had a hard time keeping staff. None of the hands he had hired to keep his livestock would stay more than a week, and they all refused to stay on the property after dark. His servants would likewise disappear suddenly, and none of them would stay at night besides his butler, who had been with him for years. People said that Mr. Makaro talked about hearing chanting in the house and seeing strange shadows, and when even his butler disappeared one evening, John locked the doors and stayed in the house alone for a long time. People who came to see him said he could be seen wandering the halls like a ghost, calling out for people only he could see.
When his mansion was seen in full blaze one night, those who were first on the scene said they saw a lone man silhouetted in the flames, his feathers and skins on full display.
He disappeared when they got close, but he had been seen by many in the years to come.
“What did you see out there, Jason?”
Jason continued to stare at the wall.
“I wanna help you, kid, but you have to help yourself first.”
He couldn't help but glance down at the kid's fingers as he left them splayed on that table like sleeping spiders. The nails were dirty, the beds crusty with something like blood, and several of them were torn and ragged. There was grime around his mouth too, and Wiley would have bet his next paycheck that it wasn't a Kool-aid ring. It looked like mud or paint, but it was probably blood.
Jason remained silent as the grave.
“Jason, none of us believe that you killed your friends. You,”
“You're wrong,”
Wiley had been fiddling with the remote, trying not to look at the kid's hands, but when he spoke, he looked up. Jason was still staring at the wall, but his head was shaking as his teeth chattered together. The kid looked like he was staring into the mouth of hell instead of the creme-colored wall of the interrogation room. Wiley almost didn't want to ask him what he had seen, but he needed to know. He needed to know how this kid had killed two other kids, one of whom was bigger than him by a head and sixty pounds.
“Would you like to elaborate?” Wiley asked.
He didn't think the kid would for a minute, but finally, he just reached slowly and pushed play on the remote. He kept looking at Wiley like he thought he might slap his hand, but when he let him get all the way across the table unsmacked, he relaxed a little. The video went on as they walked through the woods, joking and laughing as the woods lived their quiet existence around them.
“We went in at eight, just after Kai's mom went to work. She wouldn't have liked us going into the South Woods, but we wanted to investigate Makaro House. We wanted to do it for our first episode, but Moody said it was something we should work up to. The Makaro House was something big, and we needed to be ready for it. Turned out we weren't.”
On the screen, the kids kept walking through the woods, checking their compass and making their way carefully through the thick brush. They were still chattering, talking about what they might find when they got there, and whether they would find the clearing or see the mysterious mansion that people talked about sometimes. Legend said that a ghostly manor appeared in the clearing sometimes, the ghost of the house and that people who went inside were never seen again. Wiley didn't believe that, but as a kid, he had to admit that the clearing where the house had sat was spooky. All the wood had long ago rotted, the stones taken away for use in other things, but the land just felt wrong. Wiley had never been there after dark, but people claimed to hear footsteps and see things after the sun went down.
Wiley pushed fast forward on the tape and watched as the kids plodded on and on.
Jason wished that he could have sped through that part of the trip.
They had set out at eight, waving to Kai's mom as she pulled out of the driveway. The packs had been pulled out of the garage after she was down the road a piece, and the three set out for the woods. They knew the rough direction of the Makaro House, but no one really came upon it in the same way. Danny Foster had said it was a three-mile walk from the forest's edge to the property, but Jamie had claimed that he and his friends had walked for what seemed like hours.
“When we found it, though,” he said, “we found the house instead of an empty lot. We kept daring each other to go in, but we left when someone lit a fire on the grounds.”
Jason and his friends were hoping to find the house instead of the lot, and as their walk turned into a hike, Kai stopped and looked at the compass.
“We should have gotten there by now.”
Moody chuckled, “Maybe we're going in the wrong direction.”
“Can't be,” Kai protested, “The directions are to go south into the south woods for three miles. Then you'll come to the clearing where Makaro House once sat.”
Jason didn't want to jinx it, but at the time he thought that boded well for them finding the house.
They kept walking, Kai good for an endless stream of conversation, and as the sun began to set, Jason found he was out of breath. His tongue felt like leather as it stuck to the roof of his mouth, and the lunch they had brought had been eaten hours ago. Moody had argued that they should turn around and head back, but Jason had finally vocalized that this could mean they were going to find the house instead of an empty lot.
He was hopeful right until they got what they wanted
When the sun began to go down, Wiley knit his brows together.
“I thought you and your friends were only in the woods for a few hours?”
Jason shook his head slowly, “We were, and we weren't. The time on the camera says we walked for eight hours before I turned it off, but when I got picked up by the side of the road, it was barely noon.”
Wiley pursed his lips, “How is that possible?”
The video cut out, the battery in the camera having been exhausted, and Jason nodded at the screen.
“Those batteries have a max life of three hours. Dad said it was the best battery they had when he ordered it for me, and it was pretty expensive. There's no way one of those batteries could have recorded for eight hours, but it did.”
The recording came back on, and Wiley was shocked to see that they were standing on the lawn of an old Gothic mansion. The sun setting behind the house made a perfect backdrop for the shot, and the boys were oooing and ahhing appreciatively. None of them seemed to believe what they were seeing, the whole thing a little otherworldly, and there seemed to be some argument about who was going to approach the house first.
“Is that,” Wiley stopped to wet his lips,” it can't be. The Makaro House burned down hundreds of years ago.”
“But there it is,” Jason said, his eyes still fixed on the wall, “in all its glory.”
And oh, what glory there had been in it.
Moody had gawped at the house as he had never seen one before.
“No way, there is no way.”
“That's impossible,” Kai breathed, “that house burned to the ground before our father's fathers were even thought of.”
“But there it is,” Jason said, mirroring his later statement, though he could not know it, “in all its glory.”
As the sun set behind it, Jason thought it looked even spookier than it would at night. The mansion rose like an obelisk towards the sky, its towered roofs looking naked without flags or pinions. The boys stood at the edge, trying to shame or bluster one of the others into going there first, but in the end, Jason took the first step. The others looked surprised at his boldness, but they followed closely after, not wanting to be thought less of.
Jason expected the house to disintegrate as he approached, an illusion or a trick of the light, but as his foot came to rest on the boards of the old house, he felt their solidity and continued to climb.
When the doors opened for them, the broad double doors swinging jauntily on their hinges, the three boys pulled back as they prepared to run.
The camera captured their indecision, the portal yawning wide as it waited to receive them, and Jason seemed to surprise even himself as he came forward to investigate it.
“Jason, What if it's a trap?”
“This whole place shouldn't exist, and if you think I'm going to pass up the chance to explore it, you're wrong."
Jason went in, pausing just inside the doors as if waiting for them to crash shut.
When they didn't, Moody followed him and Kai brought up the rear.
Makaro House lived up to its Gothic exterior, the inside full of soft dark velvet and antique furniture. There was a fire burning in the hearth inside the sitting room, tables spread with books in the library, and as they came up the long hall that led towards what was undoubtedly a dining room, Jason began to smell something. It was something like a stew or maybe a roast, and the smell of meat brought them to the dining room. A long table sat in the middle, eight chairs on each side of it, and at the end sat a wrinkled old man eating soup from a bowl.
It was hard to tell before they had gotten close, but the old man looked like he might be Native American. He was dressed in hides, feathers adorning his head and necklace, and he wore a beaded necklace with bones and claws on it. He looked up as they approached, glowering at them evenly, before returning to his meal. He ignored the boys, all three standing back apprehensively before Jason found the courage to speak.
“Excuse me, sir. Is this your house?”
The spoon froze on the way to his mouth, and the old man looked like he'd been slapped.
“My house?” he asked, his voice sounding thin and whispery, “No, child, but it was paid for by my people. We paid with our blood, we paid with our lives, and in the end, the cost was high. I took some of that cost from the previous owner of this home, and now it's only me who lives here.”
Kai made an uncomfortable noise in his throat, like a dog trying to tell its owner that something wasn't safe, and Jason understood the feeling.
“Well, we'll leave you to it then. We didn't mean to,”
“Leave?” the old man said, sounding amused, “oh no. No one leaves Makaro House until they've played the game. It was always a way for our warriors to test their metal, and I have so longed to see it played again. Will you join me? If not, I'm afraid you might find it quite hard to leave.”
Moody took a step back, and Jason heard his heavy footsteps on the carpet as he tried to retreat.
“What's the game?” Jason asked, figuring they could outrun this old coyote if it came down to it.
Jason would wonder why he had thought of him that way, but he didn't have time to ponder it then.
“Choose your piece from my necklace,” the old man said, slipping it off and laying it on the table, “Claw, Talon, or Fang.”
“Then what?” Moody asked, Kai moving behind him as if afraid to come too close.
“Then we start the game.” the old man said, smiling toothily.
For an old man, he certainly had a lot of sharp teeth.
“Okay,” Moody said, walking forward as Kai followed in his wake, “I choose claw.”
“Talon,” said Kai, reaching out to touch it.
“Fang,” said Jason, and as he put his hand out, he felt a sudden, violent shifting in his guts.
He was shrinking, the world moving rapidly all around him. He was smaller, but also more than he was, and he was trapped. His legs scrabbled at the thing that held him, and he tore it to pieces as he freed himself. He heard a loud roar and something big rose up before him. The bear was massive, ragged bits of something hanging from him, and Jason was afraid that he would kill him before he could get fully free of his snare. Something screeched then, flying at the bear's face and attacking him. Jason saw blood run down the snout of the bear, and as it tried to get the bird, a large hawk, off its face, Jason circled and looked for an opening. He was low, on all fours, and he could smell the hot blood as it coursed down the bear's muzzle. Blood and meat and fear and desire mingled in him, and as something laughed, he turned and saw a large coyote sitting at the table. Its grin was huge, its snout longer than any snout had a right to be, and he was laughing in a strange half-animal/half-man way.
The hawk suddenly fell before Jason, twitching and gasping as it died, and he knew the time to strike was now.
Jason leaped on the bear, its arms trying to crush him but not able to find purchase. He sank his teeth into the bear's throat, and for a moment he was afraid he wouldn't make it through all that thick fur. The bear tried to bring its claws to bear, but as the wolf worried at it with its fangs, he was rewarded with a mouth full of hot blood. The bear kept trying to rake him with its claws, but its movements were becoming less coordinated. When it fell, the whole room shook with the sound of its thunder, and Jason rolled off it as it lay still.
“Bravo, bravo,” cried the coyote, clapping its paws together in celebration, “Well fought, young wolf, well fought.”
Jason took a step towards him, but suddenly he was falling. It was as if a whirlpool had opened up beneath him and he was being sucked into it. Jason thrashed and snarled, trying to get his balance, but he was powerless against the pull as it flung him down and into the depths of some strange and terrible abyss.
He came to in the empty clearing where the house had been, and that was where he found his friends.
Wiley rewound the tape, not quite sure what to make of this.
“So this strange man offered to play a game, and then he changed you three into animals?”
Jason nodded, looking like one of those birds that dip into a glass of water, “I picked Fang, so I was the wolf. The game wasn't fair, we didn't know what we were doing, but I still killed Moody. I killed both of them because I had been the one to approach the house first. I killed them when I agreed to play the game. It's my fault, I'm a murderer.”
Wiley wasn't so sure, but it was hard to argue with the evidence. The video showed Jason dropping the camera and then suddenly there was a lot of snarling and screeching. Wiley heard the animals fighting, but he heard something else too. Something was laughing, really having a good belly chuckle, and it sounded like a hyena. He couldn't see it, it was all lost amongst the carpet, but suddenly that carpet had turned into grass, and the camera was lying outside in the midday sun. Someone got up, someone sobbed and moaned out in negation, and then they walked away.
That was where the video ended.
In the end, Jason was sent for psychiatric evaluation and the whole thing was chalked up to a drug-induced episode. Jason and his friends were drugged by an old man in the woods and while under the influence of an unknown substance, a substance that didn't show up on any toxicology screening, they killed each other. Blood was found on Jason, blood belonging to Marshall Moody, but blood from the fingernails of Moody was determined to belong to Kai Dillon, which really helped push the narrative that Detective Wiley was working with. He told the press to report an old man in the woods who was drugging people and pushed the stranger danger talks a little harder than usual that year on school visits.
After that day, the tape he took from Jason Weeks was never seen again, but Wiley believed that the boys had run up against something they weren't prepared for. When John Makaro had led the extermination of the Native People that dwelt on his land, he had angered something he wasn't prepared for either. Wiley's grandmother had liked to tell stories about Coyote, the trickster god, and how he could be as fierce as he was cunning when he needed to be. Wiley didn't think they would ever find an old man out there in the woods, but he didn't doubt others would find him.
Coyote liked his games, especially when the players were people he saw as interlopers.
Makaro House remained a town legend, and Wiley had little doubt that those foolish enough to enter would be presented with the same game these three boys had been given.
Wiley shuddered to think how the next challenge might go when Coyote needed more amusement.
Makaro House
“This is Jay, Moody, and Kai, and today we are searching for Makaro House.”

I do not know for a sure answer But I want to see your comments maybe I'm wrong,
I see now in Egypt the gov is celebrating the opening for the first time data center in the new capital for sure
I think that's why we need to support Open Souce projects for sure in our region It will help young people like me to do great things by learning how things work
waiting for your answer
BTW I don't trust the gov but the way we take technology is good for us and people

“This is Jay, Moody, and Kai, and today we are searching for Makaro House.”
The video was shot in shaky cam, the footage hard to watch without getting a little seasick. Officer Wiley, Detective Wiley now, had seen a lot in his time on the force, but a double homicide perpetrated by this fourteen-year-old kid in front of him was something he hoped he would never see. A double homicide, and carried out against two of his best friends, at that. The two kids in question, Marshal Moody and Kai Dillon, had been friends with Jason Weeks since elementary school, and there had never been any reports of violence or any other alarming behavior, at least none reported to the police. The boys had operated a YouTube channel, JMK Occult, for the last two years, and while their content was pretty typical for kids online, they had been uploading steadily every week since their first video about a strange deer in the North Woods around Cadderly.
Hell, Wiley even watched their stuff sometimes when he was bored.
People in the community knew them, and this was out of character for any of them.
Wiley paused the video, the three boys blundering through the South Woods and chattering like a pack of squirrels, and looked at Jason.
Jason, Jay to his friends, looked like he had aged a decade. He had a gaunt look usually reserved for soldiers who come back from war. His hair had been long and blonde for as long as anyone had known him, but the kid sitting here now was as bald as an egg and his scalp looked scoured instead of shaved. The shirt he had been wearing in the video was gone. He was still wearing the ring of it around his neck, the stretched fabric like a collar, and the jeans he wore were stained and ragged in places that looked fresh. He'd been found with no shoes or socks, but he was wearing the orange flip-flops of a jail resident now.
Wiley knew his parents wanted to bail him out, but he wasn't sure if the judge was going to extend him bail or not, given the nature of his crime.
The way those kids had been ripped apart was something that would haunt him for a long time.
“So, Jason, Officer Russel tells me that someone picked you up beside the road and you told them that your friends were dead and that you had killed them. Is that true?”
Jason nodded, not speaking a word as he continued to stare at the wall.
The woman in question was Darla Hughes, a mother of three who had stopped when she saw a young teenage boy walking on the side of the road in the state he was currently in. Stories of kidnapping and kids held in basements for months while God knew what happened to them were clear in the public consciousness. Darla thought she had found some kid who had escaped his situation, and when she stopped to help him, she said the poor lamb had said eight words and then nothing else.
“He said, my friends are dead, and I killed them.”
They had found the kids in a clearing in the woods about three miles in, a site he was familiar with.
How many times had he and his friends gone looking for the Makaro House?
Everyone in Cadderly knew about Makaro House, and most people's childhoods had been spent looking for it. John Makaro, a prominent figure in Cadderly's history, had been a prominent importer and exporter in England. He had come to America before the Revolutionary War to try to set up a similar business here, and Cadderly had been a large enough port to satisfy his needs without being so big that a new face would be lost. He established a manor in the South Woods, despite being told that it was Indian Land, and the bill of sale did very little to dispatch the native tribe that was living there. He survived two raids by the natives somehow, but his wife and daughter were not so lucky the second time. As such, he rallied a mob of townspeople to go into the woods and help him flush out the natives who were living there. The raid took weeks, but by the end, they had killed or scattered every member of the tribe that lived there.
Satisfied, Mr. Makaro built his lavish estates there, but strange things surrounded it from the first. Workers went missing, people reported strange lights and sounds after dark, and a shriveled figure in skins and feathers could be seen lurking after moonrise. Animals on the property acted strangely, and sometimes people found wolves or bears on the grounds. Usually, they were in a rage, but sometimes they simply fled as if they had been drawn there and weren't sure what to do now that they were. Once the house was finished, John Makaro had a hard time keeping staff. None of the hands he had hired to keep his livestock would stay more than a week, and they all refused to stay on the property after dark. His servants would likewise disappear suddenly, and none of them would stay at night besides his butler, who had been with him for years. People said that Mr. Makaro talked about hearing chanting in the house and seeing strange shadows, and when even his butler disappeared one evening, John locked the doors and stayed in the house alone for a long time. People who came to see him said he could be seen wandering the halls like a ghost, calling out for people only he could see.
When his mansion was seen in full blaze one night, those who were first on the scene said they saw a lone man silhouetted in the flames, his feathers and skins on full display.
He disappeared when they got close, but he had been seen by many in the years to come.
“What did you see out there, Jason?”
Jason continued to stare at the wall.
“I wanna help you, kid, but you have to help yourself first.”
He couldn't help but glance down at the kid's fingers as he left them splayed on that table like sleeping spiders. The nails were dirty, the beds crusty with something like blood, and several of them were torn and ragged. There was grime around his mouth too, and Wiley would have bet his next paycheck that it wasn't a Kool-aid ring. It looked like mud or paint, but it was probably blood.
Jason remained silent as the grave.
“Jason, none of us believe that you killed your friends. You,”
“You're wrong,”
Wiley had been fiddling with the remote, trying not to look at the kid's hands, but when he spoke, he looked up. Jason was still staring at the wall, but his head was shaking as his teeth chattered together. The kid looked like he was staring into the mouth of hell instead of the creme-colored wall of the interrogation room. Wiley almost didn't want to ask him what he had seen, but he needed to know. He needed to know how this kid had killed two other kids, one of whom was bigger than him by a head and sixty pounds.
“Would you like to elaborate?” Wiley asked.
He didn't think the kid would for a minute, but finally, he just reached slowly and pushed play on the remote. He kept looking at Wiley like he thought he might slap his hand, but when he let him get all the way across the table unsmacked, he relaxed a little. The video went on as they walked through the woods, joking and laughing as the woods lived their quiet existence around them.
“We went in at eight, just after Kai's mom went to work. She wouldn't have liked us going into the South Woods, but we wanted to investigate Makaro House. We wanted to do it for our first episode, but Moody said it was something we should work up to. The Makaro House was something big, and we needed to be ready for it. Turned out we weren't.”
On the screen, the kids kept walking through the woods, checking their compass and making their way carefully through the thick brush. They were still chattering, talking about what they might find when they got there, and whether they would find the clearing or see the mysterious mansion that people talked about sometimes. Legend said that a ghostly manor appeared in the clearing sometimes, the ghost of the house and that people who went inside were never seen again. Wiley didn't believe that, but as a kid, he had to admit that the clearing where the house had sat was spooky. All the wood had long ago rotted, the stones taken away for use in other things, but the land just felt wrong. Wiley had never been there after dark, but people claimed to hear footsteps and see things after the sun went down.
Wiley pushed fast forward on the tape and watched as the kids plodded on and on.
Jason wished that he could have sped through that part of the trip.
They had set out at eight, waving to Kai's mom as she pulled out of the driveway. The packs had been pulled out of the garage after she was down the road a piece, and the three set out for the woods. They knew the rough direction of the Makaro House, but no one really came upon it in the same way. Danny Foster had said it was a three-mile walk from the forest's edge to the property, but Jamie had claimed that he and his friends had walked for what seemed like hours.
“When we found it, though,” he said, “we found the house instead of an empty lot. We kept daring each other to go in, but we left when someone lit a fire on the grounds.”
Jason and his friends were hoping to find the house instead of the lot, and as their walk turned into a hike, Kai stopped and looked at the compass.
“We should have gotten there by now.”
Moody chuckled, “Maybe we're going in the wrong direction.”
“Can't be,” Kai protested, “The directions are to go south into the south woods for three miles. Then you'll come to the clearing where Makaro House once sat.”
Jason didn't want to jinx it, but at the time he thought that boded well for them finding the house.
They kept walking, Kai good for an endless stream of conversation, and as the sun began to set, Jason found he was out of breath. His tongue felt like leather as it stuck to the roof of his mouth, and the lunch they had brought had been eaten hours ago. Moody had argued that they should turn around and head back, but Jason had finally vocalized that this could mean they were going to find the house instead of an empty lot.
He was hopeful right until they got what they wanted
When the sun began to go down, Wiley knit his brows together.
“I thought you and your friends were only in the woods for a few hours?”
Jason shook his head slowly, “We were, and we weren't. The time on the camera says we walked for eight hours before I turned it off, but when I got picked up by the side of the road, it was barely noon.”
Wiley pursed his lips, “How is that possible?”
The video cut out, the battery in the camera having been exhausted, and Jason nodded at the screen.
“Those batteries have a max life of three hours. Dad said it was the best battery they had when he ordered it for me, and it was pretty expensive. There's no way one of those batteries could have recorded for eight hours, but it did.”
The recording came back on, and Wiley was shocked to see that they were standing on the lawn of an old Gothic mansion. The sun setting behind the house made a perfect backdrop for the shot, and the boys were oooing and ahhing appreciatively. None of them seemed to believe what they were seeing, the whole thing a little otherworldly, and there seemed to be some argument about who was going to approach the house first.
“Is that,” Wiley stopped to wet his lips,” it can't be. The Makaro House burned down hundreds of years ago.”
“But there it is,” Jason said, his eyes still fixed on the wall, “in all its glory.”
And oh, what glory there had been in it.
Moody had gawped at the house as he had never seen one before.
“No way, there is no way.”
“That's impossible,” Kai breathed, “that house burned to the ground before our father's fathers were even thought of.”
“But there it is,” Jason said, mirroring his later statement, though he could not know it, “in all its glory.”
As the sun set behind it, Jason thought it looked even spookier than it would at night. The mansion rose like an obelisk towards the sky, its towered roofs looking naked without flags or pinions. The boys stood at the edge, trying to shame or bluster one of the others into going there first, but in the end, Jason took the first step. The others looked surprised at his boldness, but they followed closely after, not wanting to be thought less of.
Jason expected the house to disintegrate as he approached, an illusion or a trick of the light, but as his foot came to rest on the boards of the old house, he felt their solidity and continued to climb.
When the doors opened for them, the broad double doors swinging jauntily on their hinges, the three boys pulled back as they prepared to run.
The camera captured their indecision, the portal yawning wide as it waited to receive them, and Jason seemed to surprise even himself as he came forward to investigate it.
“Jason, What if it's a trap?”
“This whole place shouldn't exist, and if you think I'm going to pass up the chance to explore it, you're wrong."
Jason went in, pausing just inside the doors as if waiting for them to crash shut.
When they didn't, Moody followed him and Kai brought up the rear.
Makaro House lived up to its Gothic exterior, the inside full of soft dark velvet and antique furniture. There was a fire burning in the hearth inside the sitting room, tables spread with books in the library, and as they came up the long hall that led towards what was undoubtedly a dining room, Jason began to smell something. It was something like a stew or maybe a roast, and the smell of meat brought them to the dining room. A long table sat in the middle, eight chairs on each side of it, and at the end sat a wrinkled old man eating soup from a bowl.
It was hard to tell before they had gotten close, but the old man looked like he might be Native American. He was dressed in hides, feathers adorning his head and necklace, and he wore a beaded necklace with bones and claws on it. He looked up as they approached, glowering at them evenly, before returning to his meal. He ignored the boys, all three standing back apprehensively before Jason found the courage to speak.
“Excuse me, sir. Is this your house?”
The spoon froze on the way to his mouth, and the old man looked like he'd been slapped.
“My house?” he asked, his voice sounding thin and whispery, “No, child, but it was paid for by my people. We paid with our blood, we paid with our lives, and in the end, the cost was high. I took some of that cost from the previous owner of this home, and now it's only me who lives here.”
Kai made an uncomfortable noise in his throat, like a dog trying to tell its owner that something wasn't safe, and Jason understood the feeling.
“Well, we'll leave you to it then. We didn't mean to,”
“Leave?” the old man said, sounding amused, “oh no. No one leaves Makaro House until they've played the game. It was always a way for our warriors to test their metal, and I have so longed to see it played again. Will you join me? If not, I'm afraid you might find it quite hard to leave.”
Moody took a step back, and Jason heard his heavy footsteps on the carpet as he tried to retreat.
“What's the game?” Jason asked, figuring they could outrun this old coyote if it came down to it.
Jason would wonder why he had thought of him that way, but he didn't have time to ponder it then.
“Choose your piece from my necklace,” the old man said, slipping it off and laying it on the table, “Claw, Talon, or Fang.”
“Then what?” Moody asked, Kai moving behind him as if afraid to come too close.
“Then we start the game.” the old man said, smiling toothily.
For an old man, he certainly had a lot of sharp teeth.
“Okay,” Moody said, walking forward as Kai followed in his wake, “I choose claw.”
“Talon,” said Kai, reaching out to touch it.
“Fang,” said Jason, and as he put his hand out, he felt a sudden, violent shifting in his guts.
He was shrinking, the world moving rapidly all around him. He was smaller, but also more than he was, and he was trapped. His legs scrabbled at the thing that held him, and he tore it to pieces as he freed himself. He heard a loud roar and something big rose up before him. The bear was massive, ragged bits of something hanging from him, and Jason was afraid that he would kill him before he could get fully free of his snare. Something screeched then, flying at the bear's face and attacking him. Jason saw blood run down the snout of the bear, and as it tried to get the bird, a large hawk, off its face, Jason circled and looked for an opening. He was low, on all fours, and he could smell the hot blood as it coursed down the bear's muzzle. Blood and meat and fear and desire mingled in him, and as something laughed, he turned and saw a large coyote sitting at the table. Its grin was huge, its snout longer than any snout had a right to be, and he was laughing in a strange half-animal/half-man way.
The hawk suddenly fell before Jason, twitching and gasping as it died, and he knew the time to strike was now.
Jason leaped on the bear, its arms trying to crush him but not able to find purchase. He sank his teeth into the bear's throat, and for a moment he was afraid he wouldn't make it through all that thick fur. The bear tried to bring its claws to bear, but as the wolf worried at it with its fangs, he was rewarded with a mouth full of hot blood. The bear kept trying to rake him with its claws, but its movements were becoming less coordinated. When it fell, the whole room shook with the sound of its thunder, and Jason rolled off it as it lay still.
“Bravo, bravo,” cried the coyote, clapping its paws together in celebration, “Well fought, young wolf, well fought.”
Jason took a step towards him, but suddenly he was falling. It was as if a whirlpool had opened up beneath him and he was being sucked into it. Jason thrashed and snarled, trying to get his balance, but he was powerless against the pull as it flung him down and into the depths of some strange and terrible abyss.
He came to in the empty clearing where the house had been, and that was where he found his friends.
Wiley rewound the tape, not quite sure what to make of this.
“So this strange man offered to play a game, and then he changed you three into animals?”
Jason nodded, looking like one of those birds that dip into a glass of water, “I picked Fang, so I was the wolf. The game wasn't fair, we didn't know what we were doing, but I still killed Moody. I killed both of them because I had been the one to approach the house first. I killed them when I agreed to play the game. It's my fault, I'm a murderer.”
Wiley wasn't so sure, but it was hard to argue with the evidence. The video showed Jason dropping the camera and then suddenly there was a lot of snarling and screeching. Wiley heard the animals fighting, but he heard something else too. Something was laughing, really having a good belly chuckle, and it sounded like a hyena. He couldn't see it, it was all lost amongst the carpet, but suddenly that carpet had turned into grass, and the camera was lying outside in the midday sun. Someone got up, someone sobbed and moaned out in negation, and then they walked away.
That was where the video ended.
In the end, Jason was sent for psychiatric evaluation and the whole thing was chalked up to a drug-induced episode. Jason and his friends were drugged by an old man in the woods and while under the influence of an unknown substance, a substance that didn't show up on any toxicology screening, they killed each other. Blood was found on Jason, blood belonging to Marshall Moody, but blood from the fingernails of Moody was determined to belong to Kai Dillon, which really helped push the narrative that Detective Wiley was working with. He told the press to report an old man in the woods who was drugging people and pushed the stranger danger talks a little harder than usual that year on school visits.
After that day, the tape he took from Jason Weeks was never seen again, but Wiley believed that the boys had run up against something they weren't prepared for. When John Makaro had led the extermination of the Native People that dwelt on his land, he had angered something he wasn't prepared for either. Wiley's grandmother had liked to tell stories about Coyote, the trickster god, and how he could be as fierce as he was cunning when he needed to be. Wiley didn't think they would ever find an old man out there in the woods, but he didn't doubt others would find him.
Coyote liked his games, especially when the players were people he saw as interlopers.
Makaro House remained a town legend, and Wiley had little doubt that those foolish enough to enter would be presented with the same game these three boys had been given.
Wiley shuddered to think how the next challenge might go when Coyote needed more amusement.
Makaro House
“This is Jay, Moody, and Kai, and today we are searching for Makaro House.”

To start I like to give some background. I have worked with sockets in both C# and Java for different kinds of applications ranging from game servers to web servers. So I am quite familiar with it at this point. One of them is on GitHub: AdvancedSockets. Also, while I work on both Windows and Linux I primarily use Linux desktop.
This month I decided I like to learn more about doing socket programming in C++ as a project I am working on could benefit from this. A quick research pointed me to some SO articles and tutorials. But all of them are using the socket API in C. Not once did I find anything about a high-level socket library in C++.
Okay.. no prob right? I decided to give C sockets a try. Surely it isn't that hard? After all I got experience already! And sure enough it didn't take me long to get a TCP client up 'n running. But then.. I learned. It only works on *NIX systems. Yep. For some reason, Windows does it differently. Imagine my surprise when I learned it required a near complete rewrite of my code because now I had to approach it differently just for WinSock.
Okay, a couple of days and cursing later. I managed to make a TCP client that connects to my humble Java server both on Linux and Windows. Cool. Now, time for timeouts. Doing so in C# and Java is easy enough. Surely it cannot be such a problem in C, right? Setting read and write timeouts was easy enough. Just using setsockopt and I am good to go. Now as for connection timeouts. Maybe also with setsockopt? Nope, need to unblock the whole damn socket and need to do stuff with either select or poll apparently. Never read anything about them and neither did I find any useful docs aside from the manual text I get in CLion. SO articles make me only more confused about the subject too.
And if that isn't bad enough. Some answers on SO claim I should avoid select all together and use poll instead. But I fail to find any good examples or tutorials about the use of poll while I find examples for select. And who is to say it is even the right approach as of today? Honestly it is getting frustrating at this point. I am not interested in writing a TCP socket class like this. I am only interested in using a TCP socket class. I only went this far because it didn't seem to be so much work at first. But I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Therefore I would like to ask:

1. Is there actually good documentation for socket programming in C?
2. How to set connection timeouts the right way?
3. Is there actually an up-to-date cross-platform C++ sockets library that I can use instead?

TLDR;
Screw socket programming in C. Any good tutorials on C sockets and how to set a connection timeout with a C socket the right way? Is there actually an up-to-date cross-platform C++ sockets library that I can use instead?
My current progress can be located here: https://github.com/thebonejarmearqanore-sockets.

1. Animations are too stupid, I know every CS has differences or things you have to get used to, however I swear if you recorded the same peek, set up with a script or bots or whatever you would see a different peek every time. Whether its the broken leg pinning, ping difference, or just someone peeking without counter-strafing and getting the full running headshot, its all ridiculous and too different for you to really know what's happening in the moment.

2 It also feels like if you peek and headshot someone sometimes you will miss for no reason. I'm not talking about being outside the weapon's effective range or failing to crouch before shooting a long range target you sneak up on. I'm talking AK 1 meter away just seems to whiff even if you're in the center of an enemy's head. Almost like you are seeing things in the past. As I know there are 2 types of missed center of head shots. The first is people who don't move, even if I stop shooting and go into cover I will get the kill in the killfeed 1-3 seconds later. However if I miss and wonder how, they seem to just strafe and either kill me or shoot at me as I go back into cover. (Like your screen is almost on a delay, even at sub 30 ping).
3 Being bad makes you good, this might be dramatic but I think the following statement tracks: Previous Counter-Strikes were tactical shooters, CS2 is a movement shooter.
This might seem ironic given that movement in CS2 is scuffed, however what this saying means is that instead of headshotting or having good movement, the best strategy is holding W with an SMG. Or more realistically since tagging/getting hit moves you back and messes up your crosshair placement, that should be your focus. After all, why would you go for a clean headshot on a full speed (215 units with rifle or more with SMG/pistol ) when you could aim for the body, mess up the enemy's aim, thus giving you more time to keep body-tapping instead of being more precise?
4 performance: Frametimes are terrible and I would still take CS:GO back over CS2. Even if it was no Faceit 64 tick only. The biggest factor for this is not knowing when I'm going to get a 1% low or framedrop. Its not as unplayable or unfair as it was in beta but its still just not acceptable for a competitive game. If CS:GO went another 10 years I would still defend it as the best game ever. But what do you do when someone runs right into your crosshair and your perfect pre-aim gets merced by needing to be standing still+bad first shot accuracy on the 2nd/3rd best gun in the game? Just buy MP9 and running triple dink people on long ranges. Also peeker's advantage in this game...
5 SMGs currently obliterate the balance of the game: Even if you mess up you will likely have additional chances and the heightened aim and under-reliance on core mechanics like counter-strafing. You're unironically better off pre-firing long range at where you think the enemy's head is with an SMG than you are doing the same with a rifle. Sure the rifle might kill in 1 or 2 hits but your counter-strafing+aim must be perfect (I like this about the game and think its how it should be). The problem is that why would I bother when I can just CC people with a teleport back and slow movement to make my kill easier? Why put yourself through the starfish peek+ full running+ allowing the enemy to counter-strafe whenever they want when you could just spray in their general direction and ruin their whole game? I'm not kidding, go run MP9/Mac-10 in comp/premier and you'll have a much easier time than with the rifle you've used for the past 5,000 hours of gameplay.

My boyfriend (30M) and I (27F) have been together for two and a half years, and started dating 3-4 months after he had broken up with his ex (23F). We have a great relationship together and understand each other very well, but every now and then i think about this which makes me very annoyed, jealous and keeps me wonder if im doing the right thing..
Our relationship officially started in the beginning of March two years ago and at that time i knew he was still in touch with his ex, he had told me they are texting from time to time but he had significantly reduced the amount of communication. That didnt bother me as I was aware they had been together for a while and we were still very new to each other. (Note that they broke up on good terms due to long distance)
Fast forward to October, I was going through my boyfriend’s instagram (which he was aware of) and stumbled upon his ex profile, in which she had still kept photos of them together. This made me curious as to what they are texting, and I made the bad decision to go through his messages, where I found video calls and random texts and pics (confirming he was right about them communicating less and less). The texts would usually be sent by her and met with a short answer but he would sometimes call as well.
What caught my attention was her sending him a bunch of beach photos of her wearing bikini in different poses, and asking him to pick a few for her to post. He had responded by “oh fuck” and they had commented a bit on her “delicious ass”. These were sent towards the end of march, almost one month after we started dating, and although there were no other pictures like that in the next months, the fact that it happened really bothered me and i confronted my boyfriend about it. He apologized and assured me he hadnt even opened the pics (which i dont believe its true) and proceeded to delete his ex from instagram, cut all ties with her and stopped talking with her.
It’s been two years now since we started dating but i am still bothered and hurt by this every once in a while. I am also very insecure about our age difference as this girl is younger than me. I realise these things are not all black and white and that i should be looking at his actions and the fact he has been actively avoiding her instrad of this one accident but it’s tough for some reason.
I would appreciate any advice on how to deal with the situation and my feelings.
Thank you
Tl;dr - boyfriend’s ex has sent him sexy pics when we first started dating. He had stopped communicating with her after but it still bothers me after 2 years and affects my relationship. Any advice appreciated.

Hello there, my name is Jack. I'm a nerd from Oregon, who is looking for someone who wants to spend time with me. I'm a 6'4 chubby guy, with curly hair that cannot be tamed and a passion for life.
Before I go on shamelessly promoting myself, a I'll open with the things that people have found to be deal breakers. I am slightly overweight. I identify as demisexual, and have minimal interest in NSFW topics. Religiously I am agnostic. I have a dry sense of humor, a tendency towards sarcasm, and less of a filter than I probably should. My only ambition in life is to be happy. Fame and fortune are all well and good, but I would rather have smile on my face.
Now onto the rest of me. Physically I am 6'4, Caucasian, I have green eyes and curly hair that never looks the same twice. I am introverted, and I will probably be shy at first, but if I feel we have a connection I tend to ramble on. I tend towards a more rational approach to things, but I can get emotional very easily when it comes to things I am passionate about.
I mentioned I am a nerd, and that extends to many areas. I play games a lot, usually whatever my friends are playing. I read more than I probably should. I enjoy most kinds of music, and enjoy learning simply for the sake of learning. I play DND, and it is by far my favorite activity. Outside of the nerdier activities, I enjoy nature, and want to start hiking, and I want to travel a bit more.
As for you, the only real requirement I have is be between the ages of 20 and 27, and be willing to put up with my dumbass. I hope you have a good night and/or day, and I hope to talk to you soon.

Yoo Quiz on the Block is on tvN/et cetera, don't forget the Youtube channel (no English subtitles for the clips though): https://www.youtube.com/@youquizontheblock_official/videos
Synopsis:
Yoo Jae Seok and Jo Se Ho are back with season 4 of "You Quiz on The Block". More stories to listen to from both celebrities and every day people bringing the spotlight on them and their lives and bringing a refreshing and different kind of day.

Panelists

Yoo Jae-suk
Jo Se-ho
Someone asked for Episode 245 last night: https://www.reddit.com/koreanvariety/comments/1b2ip4l/you_quiz_on_the_block_episode_233_240228_timothee/l598c7k/?context=10000
This is the newest Yoo Quiz on the Block episode with PSY (Park Jae-sang) and Byeon Woo-seok (Lovely Runner, Record of Youth, Search: WWW, etc.). Gangnam Style is legendary, can't believe it's been over a decade, time flies.
Past Yoo Quiz on the Block thread: Episode 233 with Timothee and Zendaya
As usual, these links will automatically expire after say 10 days or so (it's that website's current default policy), so definitely get them ASAP.

Title	Version
You Quiz on the Block (유 퀴즈 온 더 블럭) Episode 245 English Softsub	720p/1080p (~2.2GB/3.6GB/5.8GB: https://gofile.io/d/2l4JLL)
You Quiz on the Block (유 퀴즈 온 더 블럭) Episode 245 English Hardsub	1080p (~2.1GB: https://gofile.io/d/MFVsGw)

These are AI-generated/machine translation subtitles. It's missing the OCR or embedded Korean/Japanese/Chinese/etc. subtitles for the commentary/signage of buildings/mission cards/TV announcements/specs lists/etc.
A bit more info about sharing big files and difference between softsubs/hardsubs and also OpenAI Whisper v2 model and v3 model subtitles with language learning info: https://www.reddit.com/koreanvariety/comments/1ctoo1m/love_after_divorcedivorced_singles_5_episode_2/l4yzcg1/?context=10000 and https://www.reddit.com/IamSolo/comments/1cc1i5s/i_am_solo_s20e01_ep_146_20240424/l24u7f
Centralized post about Korean/Chinese/Japanese/et cetera variety shows and how to access them (with AI-generated/machine translation info, language learning, and other stuff): https://www.reddit.com/useMNLYYZYEG/comments/1clzy6asian_varietyreality_shows_language_learning/
As a time travel (time loop, do-over, regression, etc.) superfan, everybody gotta watch Lovely Runner's finale next week (May 27/28, 2024). The drama's premise is essentially: Byeon Woo-seok's character (famous idol/actocelebrity/etc.) has a wristwatch that can grant time travel and his paraplegic fan Kim Hye-yoon (Snowdrop, Extraordinary You, SKY Castle, etc.) somehow ends up with it. Kinda understating the whole show, but it's so hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, lol. Definitely one of the favorites of 2024.
Though ya, prepare for the inevitable UAP/USO/etc. disclosure this 2024 year (or the next yeaetc.), and let's all wish that time travel is possible in reality like all the new AI-related stuff instead of just lucid dreams, lol.
These Non-Human Intelligences and so on better be benevolent, like I said several times before (smh lol), I am volunteering as tribute for that time passage, lmao. Recent UAP/USO/etc. developments (nothing new, just more whistleblowers stuff with the DoD/DoE/NRO/etc.) that will hopefully change the world: thread 1 and thread 2 and thread 3

Hello there, hope you are having a great day, I am a guy who like to make online friends and enjoy having a nice conversation throughout the day, witty banter and silly humor is my style.
I enjoy making online friends and keep contacting with them for years, and I am looking for more of those friends, because these kinds of friends are rare I find myself keep looking.
I am looking for someone who enjoy the same reply to all their messages like me, having energy and being talkative is great thing, asking questions and being curious like me, and who likes to say good morning and good night.
Someone who is open to voice chats, sometimes it makes friendship feels real, not just a text on screen.
Sometimes I find myself be the one that keep carrying the conversations and that can be tiring if the other person doesn't show much interest and don't have much energy.
I enjoy talking to smart and intriguing conversations about a lot of topics like social, psychology, anime, games, politics, science, art, and real life stories.

We can vent and be there for each other's if we want to talk about things or when we feel lonely give support and be nice and kind.
So if you read so far means I got you interested so what are you waiting for hit me up 😀 .

Writing this here because I won`t ever text her again, i told her that she can be 100% sure that I`ll think of her, but I won`t reach out.
A part of me hates how you treated me often, the things you said, how you didn`t even apologize for your shit part of our relationship, how you rarely took accountability for your own (re)actions, how you were more in your head than in the reality or in our relationship in the last months of us, you acted after our breakup. If you will be like this in your future & don`t change for the better and work on yourself, I don`t want to hear from you ever again, or see you again. A part of me wishes you`d be able to see the reality & open your damn eyes, but that isn`t on me anymore, you`ll have to do it yourself and idk if you`ll ever be able to do that, even if you feel the same pain and get in a similar situation, I always wanted you to grow.
The other side of me just wishes you the best, a great birthday, a great life, we`re exes not our worst enemies. I love(d) you for sooo many reasons and you did the same, I have a shitty day today and knew that already weeks ago, I`m happy the bad times, moments & your bad sides of our relationship are over, but I miss you/us, we were special in many ways, I miss all the good sides, we were able to give each other so much love, power, stability,... and it`s sad that you didn`t want to fight for it, because I`m 100% sure it would`ve been worth putting in the effort, your commitment was missing but mine was absolutely there. I`m disappointed in you, I`m angry & sad because you left & because of the situation. I`m doing okay in general, but damn this week is hitting me hard, especially today. I`d have loved to think of which present I`ll get you today, we always gave us the best presents we ever had, now it`s gone. Goodbye.

Im not sure about this one. A broad match will probably open the door to searches that are not exactly what the site is selling. Anyone has a good strategy for this? Maybe adding the broad match but forcing specific words to show?

Gender: f Age 25
Medication: cymbalta 90mg (night because it makes me sleepy), lyrica 150 morning, clonazepam 0.5mg night.
I need some insight, I don’t know where or if this is the correct place. But, i need help.
I developed depression in 2016 due to stress of having to put more effort in studying for subjects like algebra, physics, chemistry, etc and always failed. I was sent to a psychiatrist who put me on zoloft 100 mg. It helped a bit, until, I changed psychiatrist due to him retiring.
It wasn’t until 2018 when I developed a tca because I made the wrong choice of weighing myself after eating pizza, and the lack of knowledge regarding weight fluctuations, muscle and fats and liquids, etc.. I started to have a distorted view with food and started to limit my intake and purge because I feared of gaining weight. I started to recover after my mom found out, it was not fully treated, as I still had some distortions/traits (still have) with food and weight. But, I stopped purging and started to stop obsessing over the scale’s number, and added more food to my diet.
2019-2020 was stable for me, my depression and tca were controlled and I was better. Enjoying life, sure, I still had some restrictions which is more about control. But, my life was sustainable, enjoyable, open.
Now, my family house was not stable though. My father is someone very dry and would argue a lot with my mom. I had to step up to protect my mom even though I knew that my father would never hit my mother. But, his words were hurtful. They divorced in 2021, and although for you guys might not seem as a shock, for me, it was. Having your father walk out of the house suddenly and never coming back was a shock.
It was then that I developed panic attacks and anxiety. I never knew how horrible panic attacks were until I experienced them. Everything was unsure, the house, everything (although my father always provided with the economy he is very controlling and you have to walk carefully or else he’ll treat you awfully) i have been somewhat sentimental regarding my house and family in some ways. Nostalgic ,even, to my childhood when things were happy. It was because I knew that things would change, forever.
My anxiety, depression, panic attacks were somewhat controlled by a psychiatrist who changed my meds, but then I decided to leave him because he was acting oddly (I found out later that he has mental issues and that his license should be revoked) i was stable with going to a psychologist who helped me a lot. In 2022-3 i started to work on a brand , and finally started in 2023. My depression, anxiety, and fears were basically gone. I still take my meds (under the guidance of another psych, but it was mostly about routine check. The one who helped me work on the issues was the psychologist) it was amazing and for the first time I felt happy.
Until rotavirus hit me and ended up hospitalized, lost weight which was a triggering factor, had to change psychologist because of my father, and that’s when my life went downhill.
I was too anxious and developed intrusive thoughts that I was desperate I thought that by returning to the psych from 2021 was a good idea. He told me that he would treat me with TMS for anxiety, I was vulnerable, desperate, so I accepted. The thing is he did it in 5 days, multiple sessions, and for the last two days he put me theta burst (also on day 4 he put me ketamine + tms and after I felt weird and overstimulated) I asked him why and he didn’t respond, changed subjects and said that I needed to go to Costa Rica.
Then Thursday came and it was awful, the psychiatrist told me that I was a danger for myself, that I had no words or say in the matter whether i should or shouldnt go to Costa Rica. My mother had to pick me up, so I could leave. (i was not suicidal, I asked him why I was feeling weird) also throughout the session he said that my business was not stable and that i should abandon my parents and forget about them, and that he doesn’t have the time to carry me. I was never heard, my questions were not answered.
I finally decided to find a better psychiatrist and told me everything about TMS, and finally fgave me a diagnosis which is making sense OCD.
She stabilize me and I have to see her on Friday.
The problem is that my sister psychologist spoke with me and told me that I was BPD. Because of OCD, depression, and anxiety. And I was like what? As far as I’m concerned I needed to complete a list of criteria to be BPD. I’m no medical professional, but I did my research.
I don’t have explosive emotions I dont have angry outburst e I dont have intense feelings or mood swings I don’t have impulsivity like reckless driving etc.. I dont have unstable self image My fear of abandonment is only 10% I have self harmed but it was due to the intense anxiety I dont disassociate or have paranoid ideation
Yet she says that I’m BPD. She told me that BPD was not a disorder , but as far as I’m concerned it is.
Im anxious, please, give me some insights.

God he’s just so annoying all he can go on about is how Tana saved him, he is just so clearly one of those guys who thought women were one thing and then met a woman he matched his energy and had like an enlightening moment realising that women aren’t just one category. Also why has he been claiming to be sober this whole time when he’s always on something? Just feel like he has this good guy that’s been through massive struggles complex.
Like the talking about DV in Hawaii and saying he was ready to lay his life on the line to go save a woman he thought was being abused, for it then to end with well they went quiet so I left it. Why even tell that story?! Just so clearly like thinks of himself as this great guy it’s just ew

Hello there, hope you are having a great day, I am an artist who like to make online friends and enjoy having a nice conversation throughout the day, witty banter and silly humor is my style.
I enjoy making online friends and keep contacting with them for years, and I am looking for more of those friends, because these kinds of friends are rare I find myself keep looking.
I am looking for someone who enjoy the same reply to all their messages like me, having energy and being talkative is great thing, asking questions and being curious like me, and who likes to say good morning and good night.
Someone who is open to voice chats, sometimes it makes friendship feels real, not just a text on screen.
Sometimes I find myself be the one that keep carrying the conversations and that can be tiring if the other person doesn't show much interest and don't have much energy.
I enjoy talking to smart and intriguing conversations about a lot of topics like social, psychology, anime, games, politics, science, art, and real life stories.

We can vent and be there for each other's if we want to talk about things or when we feel lonely give support and be nice and kind.
So if you read so far means I got you interested so what are you waiting for hit me up 😀 .

Hello there, hope you are having a great day, I am an artist who like to make online friends and enjoy having a nice conversation throughout the day, witty banter and silly humor is my style.
I enjoy making online friends and keep contacting with them for years, and I am looking for more of those friends, because these kinds of friends are rare I find myself keep looking.
I am looking for someone who enjoy the same reply to all their messages like me, having energy and being talkative is great thing, asking questions and being curious like me, and who likes to say good morning and good night.
Someone who is open to voice chats, sometimes it makes friendship feels real, not just a text on screen.
Sometimes I find myself be the one that keep carrying the conversations and that can be tiring if the other person doesn't show much interest and don't have much energy.
I enjoy talking to smart and intriguing conversations about a lot of topics like social, psychology, anime, games, politics, science, art, and real life stories.

We can vent and be there for each other's if we want to talk about things or when we feel lonely give support and be nice and kind.
So if you read so far means I got you interested so what are you waiting for hit me up 😀 .

I am currently applying for a number of competitive government positions and am filling out some lengthy applications. I am stressing tf out about asking my former OIC for a recommendation letter.
This OIC was a hardass; in a good way. He just had high expectations for his Marines. Since I and my boys have gotten out, he's given most of us recommendation letters. We all deployed together and he told me after I got out that if I ever needed anything, to just reach out. To be clear, I was not an all-star Marine. I was no fucking stud. I was not the go-to guy to solve a problem on deployment. I was not one of the Marines he counted on on a regular basis for getting shit done.
On the other hand, I was not a piece of shit either. I showed up to work on time, passed my PT tests, did what the fuck I was told, never got hemmed up for some stupid shit. I was just an average Marine. Not bad, not great.
I am nervous to reach out to him and ask for a letter of recommendation, because I know I did not excel under his command. So, if he does write the letter of recommendation for me, I don't even know what great things he can say about me. To be fair, he wouldn't have anything bad to say either.
He has told me to reach out if I need a letter of recommendation and I need one for the job I am applying for. I just do not know how to go about asking at this point. Should I call him? If so, what time? Should I send him a text and ask when he's available for a phone call? If I text him, do address him by his first name now that I am out of the Marines? I'm tripping about this ngl. Any advice helps. Thanks bros.

Hello there, hope you are having a great day, I am an artist who like to make online friends and enjoy having a nice conversation throughout the day, witty banter and silly humor is my style.
I enjoy making online friends and keep contacting with them for years, and I am looking for more of those friends, because these kinds of friends are rare I find myself keep looking.
I am looking for someone who enjoy the same reply to all their messages like me, having energy and being talkative is great thing, asking questions and being curious like me, and who likes to say good morning and good night.
Someone who is open to voice chats, sometimes it makes friendship feels real, not just a text on screen.
Sometimes I find myself be the one that keep carrying the conversations and that can be tiring if the other person doesn't show much interest and don't have much energy.
I enjoy talking to smart and intriguing conversations about a lot of topics like social, psychology, anime, games, politics, science, art, and real life stories.

We can vent and be there for each other's if we want to talk about things or when we feel lonely give support and be nice and kind.
So if you read so far means I got you interested so what are you waiting for hit me up 😀 .

Games being released buggy and unfinished, everything having dlc that cost as much as the base game, extra download able content, pay to win items, games being 100% online cosmetic items that do fuck all but cost a fortune.
Some of these things are fine in moderation or if it goes with the style of game but it's EVERY SINGLE FUCKING GAME!
Train simulator for example has over $2000 worth of dlc! That's fucked up.
GTA 5 is a relatively short game with no extras whatsoever, most of the game is online which is unplayable because of idiots that ruin it for you by blowing you up the second you log on or just fucking you about in lobbies.
Pokemon go, yes it's free to play but it's hard for new players to get into as you need so much money for some events and coins which is very difficult for rural players.
Fifa, being the exact same game every year just with different skins and slightly better graphics but somehow people still pay for it.
And for a game to have most of these features is insane. Like what's the point in ingame currency IF YOU CANT MAKE THE MONEY IN GAME! You always have to pay for it so why even have in game money?
Open world games are barely games, it's just a whole host of side quests and mini games that are never ending. Like the witcher 3 for example. I've had that game since lock down and I tried my best to do everything on the map but it just ended up being mind numbing grinding which I'm sure some people like but I don't and it's a big part of what's on the map. Assasians creed and fall out are other good examples of this.
Mobile games are pretty bad. Constant ads, pay for everything or be constantly behind everyone else with no hope for any decent progression and being bombarded with notifications to log in every day or you loose your streak even though there's no worth while price for it.
It's all just a big money grab which I get, they need money, but why pay over $100 to pre order a game that you get later than promised and is so full of bugs it's unplayable.
Yes some bugs are always going to happen, yes schedules change, but it's honestly every single game.
I miss the days of completed games being released, you get the entirety of the game, for one price and everyone had to put in the same effort to get the fancy end game items rather than just buying them online.
I know, this is the way the world is now. Completing the story and having some post game stuff was always fun in pokemon but now completing the main story isn't enough, you've gotta complete hours of post game "content" which is usually online stuff or boring grinding or dlc that you need to pay a fortune for.
Absolutely keep these features, in some game, not all of them in every game. Make more offline content for those that don't like playing online and for the love of all that is holy, complete a game before its released, fuck your corporate deadlines, I'd rather wait for a game I can actually play and enjoy.
And finally some games need to know when to die like world of warcraft or Minecraft. The spaghetti code on these games is insane making it very hard for them to add something new in the game without fucking up something old. I would happily pay monthly for wow and Minecraft actually cared about their customers to make their games better.
And finally LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Do they not do any research anymore? Like the entire community asked for this one very specific thing and you added a very shitty knock off version that kinda resembles it.
The whole industry just infuriates me right now.

Hello there, hope you are having a great day, I am an artist who like to make online friends and enjoy having a nice conversation throughout the day, witty banter and silly humor is my style.
I enjoy making online friends and keep contacting with them for years, and I am looking for more of those friends, because these kinds of friends are rare I find myself keep looking.
I am looking for someone who enjoy the same reply to all their messages like me, having energy and being talkative is great thing, asking questions and being curious like me, and who likes to say good morning and good night.
Someone who is open to voice chats, sometimes it makes friendship feels real, not just a text on screen.
Sometimes I find myself be the one that keep carrying the conversations and that can be tiring if the other person doesn't show much interest and don't have much energy.
I enjoy talking to smart and intriguing conversations about a lot of topics like social, psychology, anime, games, politics, science, art, and real life stories.

We can vent and be there for each other's if we want to talk about things or when we feel lonely give support and be nice and kind.
So if you read so far means I got you interested so what are you waiting for hit me up 😀 .