This is the sixth and final bonus track from the CD version of the Beach Boys’ nineteenth album, Holland. How do you feel about this song? What are some of your favorite lyrics? How would you rank it among the rest of the band’s discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?
Studio version
SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4: Not good. Regularly skip. 5: It’s okay, but I might have to be in the right mood to listen to it. 6: Slightly better than average. I won’t skip it, but I wouldn’t choose to put it on. 7: This is a good song. I enjoy it quite a bit. 8-9: Really enjoyable songs. I rank them pretty high overall. 10: Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.
Rating Results 1. Sail On, Sailor: 8.94/10 2. Steamboat: 9.02/10 3. California Saga - Big Sur: 8.04/10 4. California Saga - The Beaks of Eagles: 6.92/10 5. California Saga - California: 8.6/10 6. The Trader: 9.43/10 7. Leaving This Town: 9.39/10 8. Only With You: 8.05/10 9. Funky Pretty: 9.06/10 — 10. Mt. Vernon and Fairway – Theme: 8.44/10 11. Better Get Back in Bed: 8.46/10 12. Magic Transistor Radio: 13. I’m the Pied Piper: 14. Radio King Dom:

Just got chapter 3 finished. For this spring, I'm going to be aiming for a chapter every couple of weeks until my workload eases this summer. This is partly due to scheduling in other areas of life, but also because I'm aiming for fewer chapters but with a longer average word count. Good news is this gives me more time to bang out some of the details so hopefully I'll put that to good use.
As always, this story is available to read on fanfiction and AO3 with the links to the current chapter below:
Fanfiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14198757/3/Land-of-the-North-Wind
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45067345/chapters/115658854
Recruited
While the days were quickly getting shorter, the sun was still in the sky far more often than not. It would be weeks until the equinox and then from there the north country would start getting colder, and colder, and colder still until the land more resembled a glacier than the rolling hills. Shadow was the first to rise, having enjoyed a well-earned rest on the first soft bed in weeks. Getting fully dressed, Shadow took a minute to look out from the back window of the room. Above the walls in the far distance rose those mountains. They looked similar and yet so very different from the forested mountains of home in her youth.
“Get out of here, you’ve caused enough trouble.” The words came back to her as a bad memory, one she had tried to shake countless times. But even the slightest hint of home would bring those cutting last words of her family back to her. The cause was all over her body, the black fur and the hints of even blacker spots covered every inch of skin.
“But I didn’t do it…” Those were her last words to her mother and siblings. There was no goodbye, no “I love you.” Just stern faces and weapons at the ready. It had been five long years since that fateful day, no one would have guessed how far Shadow would travel since then, not even her. But, like Connor, Shadow sensed that being out here was a chance to start over. No guilds, no templar, just people curious and cautious of some strange outsiders. She’d always need to be careful, just like any keidran, but with the right connections she’d be as safe as anyone. Especially if Connor joined the city guard. Speaking of the gathering in the great hall was going to start soon.
“Hey guys, it’s time!” Shadow said, loud enough to wake everyone but still with a gentle tone. Connor groaned and, after ruffling Asher’s hair, stretched his arms and legs in bed. All that walking and riding was catching up with him now, and he could feel the tight muscles complaining about having to move yet again. Liz was quick to rise, having slept like a rock half the day. Asher was the most sluggish, the poor kid just wanted to sleep in. But, without warning, Connor was quick to scoop him up off the bed and put Asher down on his feet. The basitin wobbled on unsteady legs that weren’t ready to bear their weight, but Connor propped him up while fetching the kid’s shirt and jumper so that he could get dressed. Zephyr, just like a cat, got up from her spot on the window sill, the sun having moved on from where she fell asleep.
“So what are we doing?” Liz asked, rubbing eyes while fetching her jacket.
“There’s a meeting in the great hall and I thought we ought to go over there and get to know some of our new neighbors. Also, I’ve been thinking about a work offer and should follow up on it.”
“Really? And what is it?” Liz questioned.
Connor walked over to the corner and picked up his father’s sword, unsheathing it slightly to see the glinting steel exposed from its home inside the scabbard.
“Sam, Gerrick’s son, said I should join the town guard.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Asher said, finally awake enough to be listening.
“It’s a lot safer than being on the sea, and it pays more than a lot of the labor around here. Besides, especially in the winter there can’t possibly be that many hazards to worry about.”
“Well, if you think that’s the right thing, I guess I can’t argue. We’re going to need money to buy supplies for winter.” Liz said.
“My thoughts exactly.” Shadow added. “Besides, I’ve seen Connor in action, your brother can handle himself.”
“Oh come now Shadow, I’m far from being a confident fighter.”
“What about that guy in the fighting pits?”
“The what?” Liz asked. She hadn’t heard all the details yet.
“Shadow! You know I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Connor, you were in a fighting pit?”
“Uh… yeah. Like I was saying earlier Liz, it’s a very long story and not all of it is pleasant. Look, if we’re all ready, we had better get going.”
Tightening the sword’s belt around his waist, Connor donned his long black cloak and followed everyone out of the inn and into the street. The citizens were indeed making their way over to the great hall. Well, a lot of people anyway, plenty of others couldn’t care less. Following the crowd, Connor made sure that everyone stayed together, even grabbing Asher’s hand so that he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd.
Walking through the giant wooden doors, they all looked up to a hall lined with chandeliers made of caribou antler and brass candle holders. In the middle was a long, raging fire in a pit extending most of the length of the main room. The place reeked of smoke and sweat, but the seat of power was unmistakable. At the far end of the room, on a platform, were several well-built chairs behind a long table. Older folks were seated along the large tables that extended the length of the room while others stood. Shadow found everyone a spot to watch about halfway down the hall and near one of the large supports.
“I can’t see anything!” Asher exclaimed with frustration. Looking down, Connor rolled his eyes before hoisting the kid up onto his shoulders to watch.
“Better?”
“Much better, thank you.”
“Alright, but I can’t do that forever. You’re heavier than you look.”
“Are you calling me fat?” Asher teased.
“No, but you are growing up quick, so enjoy the view while you can.”
Almost as if on cue, men came out from a back room and took their places along the fancy chairs behind the big table. After all were sat down, the one on the right, but closest to the wooden throne, stood and held up his hands. At once, people began to quiet down. Then the Jarl came out from the back room. He wasn’t dressed as nicely as Connor would have thought. His clothes weren’t much different from the commoners, just a little better quality and with some muted colors.
For a moment, the Jarl paused to look out at his people before sitting down with one arm gripping each of the throne’s armrests. He wasn’t particularly old, perhaps in his thirties. Hair with just slightest hints of grey hung down to meet a beard that was several inches long. Winter was approaching and this apparently was the look of most men. Upon taking a good look at the crowd gathered, the Jarl began to speak.
“Harald, glad to see you could make it in time.” The Jarl greeted one of his friends, who raised a cup to his lord. “And Evan, how is your father?”
“He is improving, my lord.”
“Very good, be sure to send him my regards. Now then, lawspeaker, what is our agenda tonight?”
The man to his right cleared his throat before speaking out in a booming voice. “My lord, we are here to discuss preparations for winter.”
“Excellent. Do we have any news from the port on supplies?”
One of the freemen in the crows stood up. “The harbor master has informed me that there will be two more ships that are scheduled to arrive in the next month, and after that there’s no guarantee that the river will remain open to the coast.”
“We’ll have to put together some able-bodied men who can run the river then. It’s going to be a harsh one, just as my father predicted before his passing. Callow will need all the supplies we can muster.” The Jarl said, issuing his decision.
“Very good, my lord” the lawspeaker said. “Gerrick, I trust that you can assemble the necessary men and boats?”
Gerrick then stepped out so that he could be better seen. “Yes, my lord. So long as the weather holds, this should be a fairly simple task.”
The Jarl nodded, “then make it so, Captain. What is next?”
Another man stood up in the crowd to address the assembly, but waited to speak until the lawspeaker acknowledged him. “My lord, us loggers have been having a wolf problem.”
“Oh? And what is the nature of this problem?”
“You see, my lord, the local snow wolves say that we haven’t been abiding by our treaties. No one has been hurt yet, but they don’t want us venturing further into the forest.”
“This will have to be addressed when the representatives of the Snow Wolf clans arrive in a few days. Until then, are you going to need security to carry out your tasks?”
“No, my lord. We’ve cut about as many trees as we can handle before winter, so it is just a matter of processing what we already have. I should be able to keep my men out of trouble by telling the wolves that this is all the timber we’ll need to stay warm this winter.”
“Good, but that will only be a temporary fix. Lawspeaker, I’ll need to see those treaty documents again before our guests have arrived.”
The lawspeaker was quick to nod in understanding at the Jarl’s command and satisfied the logging foreman sat down. Opening the floor up for others to speak, a mining boss stood up to fill the void.
“Winston, any news from the mines?” the Jarl asked.
“Yes, my lord. This summer we hit a new vein of iron that we’ve been able to trace. It seems to go under the river and into Ditter’s Ridge. The problem is we won’t be able to access the iron from our current mine entrances, so next spring we are going to need permission from the wolves to expand into that section of land.”
“I think we can get that done; those wolves don’t seem too attached to the ridge.”
“Of course, my lord. But if we start mining this new vein, we are going to need even more timber and labor next spring.”
“And I’m sure that can be arranged, Winston. Did you have anything else to report.”
“Yes sir, it is with great sadness that I have to announce an accident in the mine two days ago cost us a dozen lives and made several weeks of work for my men. The families have all been notified of the loss.”
The crowd’s energy cooled at this news. It seemed the lost men were well-known by many people. The Jarl picked up on this.
“That was indeed a tragedy, Winston, but I know you and your men did all you could to get them out. Give me the names of the families after the meeting and I’ll see to it that our treasurer is able to give them compensation and supplies to make it through the winter. When spring comes, we’ll be sure to add onto the memorial.”
Connor was somewhat surprised by this. He hadn’t heard of a king, or even a local lord for that matter, taking such steps for people in the throes of grief. If only one such lord had been in Maine. As each member of the assembly spoke of their news, Connor noticed Gerrick and they locked eyes. A smile formed across the man’s face, and he nodded in approval for Connor.
Liz was watching the meeting from a few feet away when she felt someone tap her on the shoulder. Turning her head, she smiled to see Sam standing there right behind her. In a hushed voice, she said “hello.”
“Liz, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The name is Sam.”
“You were that guard looking at me earlier when I rode into town, aren’t you.”
Sam looked down trying not to show his embarrassment. “Yes, sorry about that. It’s just, we don’t get a lot of outsiders around here, especially not a proper lady like yourself.”
“Well now, I wouldn’t say I’m exactly proper. You know Connor is my brother, right?”
“Oh yes. I hope he and I will be fast friends.”
“Well, you should probably know, he’s a bit overprotective of his kin. Long story, maybe he’ll tell you some time.”
“I’m certain, Liz, that your brother wants you to build a life here. That’s going to include courting a boy or two.”
“And is that why you’re here Sam, to court me?” Liz asked with a hint of sass in her voice.
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t call it that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I just—”
“I never said I didn’t like it, Sam. Just want to give you enough warning to do things the right way if you want me to give you a chance.”
“So, what is the ‘right way’? I’m a little new to this.”
“Like this…” Liz then reached in a pecked Sam’s cheek, blood rushing to the boy’s face. He couldn’t even muster a word.
“Come see me at the inn sometime. I certainly don’t need my brother’s permission.”
“Oh, okay then. Well, I suppose I’ll see you soon.”
Liz winked at Sam as he disappeared into the crowd. She then looked over to see that Connor hadn’t noticed any of that conversation. He was too focused on the meeting. Oh, but Shadow noticed. She gave Liz a nod and a wink, so at least the only other girl in the family had her back.
Connor was starting to let his mind drift when he saw Gerrick step forward.
“My lord, there was one last piece of business to discuss, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh? Then go-ahead Gerrick, please speak.”
“We had some new visitors today.”
“We get visitors all the time Gerrick, so what about them?”
“Well, I guess I should call them residents. A new family has joined our town, Connor, could you please step forward?”
This took Connor by surprise, but he did as he was asked. Taking Asher off his shoulders and making sure Shadow had a hold of him, Connor stepped through all the people and between two of the long tables until he was visible to the whole room. He was nervous, having all this attention on him. But the Jarl smiled as Connor gave a small bow to show respect, not quite knowing the proper etiquette.
“So, this young man is Connor?”
“Y-yes, my lord.”
“Hey, you’re okay, please don’t be afraid. If Gerrick is correct, you plan on being part of this community anyway. Is your father here?”
“He… I’m sorry to say, my lord, but my father died.”
“Oh? Your mother then?”
“She… she has passed as well.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that, Connor. So who are you with.”
“Well, my lord, I’ve come here with my sister, Liz, my keidran friend, Shadow, a basitin named Asher, and my dragon, Zephyr.”
The crowd went silent for a moment before everyone burst with laughter. The Jarl wasn’t as amused though.
“Now boy, it’s rude to lie to your lord, you’re old enough to know that. Now, who are you actually here with?”
“He speaks the truth.” Gerrick confirmed, motioning for the rest of the family to step forward. Sure enough, Liz, Shadow, and Asher stepped toward the roaring fire in the middle of the hall while Liz flew down from the rafters and landed on Connor’s shoulder. The assembly gasped and gawked at this unlikely band of friends.
The Jarl was slack jawed for a moment before coming back to reality. “So, you are telling the truth. You have a basitin and a dragon with you?”
“Yes, my lord. Asher here, the basitin, I adopted him after the ship we were on sank in a storm. We’ve come up here so that he could be with other basitin. And Zephyr, well, she was an egg stored on that ship.”
Zephyr’s eyes glowed before jumping to the rim of the fire and bowing to the Jarl, instantly connecting everyone’s mind with her innate magic. “Yes, my lord, I am the last daughter of Nora.” The resemblance and visions were enough to convince everyone in the room. Some held their heads as the vision ended, not in pain, but because the unfamiliar intrusion.
“What? I-I didn’t know dragons could do that.”
“Apologies, my lord.” Connor said while shooting Zephyr a stern look. “She didn’t mean to cause discomfort, that’s just how dragons communicate… apparently.”
“I see. And this dragon, Zephyr, is yours? Like a pet?”
“No, my lord, of course not. She merely wanted to continue traveling with my party so that she could learn more about the world. Like Nora, she seems quite interested in humanity.”
“Well, anyways, on behalf of everyone here, welcome to Callow. We certainly are not strangers to oddities. If there is anything you need of me, you need only to ask.”
“Well, my lord, there is one thing.” Connor then motioned for his family to melt back into the crowd. “I am in need of employment, and as you can see, I have several mouths to feed. Captain Gerrick’s son, Sam, said that you could always use more people for the town guard.”
“Gerrick, can you confirm this?” the lawspeaker asked while looking at the captain of the guard.
“Yes, sir! My son tells me he’s a good lad. And just look at him, he’s young and strong, quite trainable, and he’s even brought his own sword.” Gerrick then pointed at the long scabbard hanging from Connor’s hip.
“May I see the blade, Connor?” The Jarl asked.
The teen did as he was instructed and removed the sword from its sheath before gently holding it out in front of him across both of his hands, then kneeling at the foot of the throne, sword held high above his head. The Jarl slowly got up from his seat and stepped down the stairs before gently taking up the sword in his own hands. The Jarl admired the blade in the dim light, running his fingers down it.
“This is a very fine blade, young man. How did you come across it?”
Connor looked up at his new lord, “It was my father’s, sir. He was a man-at-arms in his younger years.”
“Then perhaps service of this kind runs in the family. Go ahead Connor, bow your head down and don’t move.”
Connor felt the cold steel of the blade gently tap his head followed by his right and left shoulders. He then saw the lord’s hand extend down to his face.
“Kiss the ring, child, and you’ll declare your loyalty to me and this town.”
Connor gently grabbed the Jarl’s hand and kissed the ring.
“Rise up lad. What was your full name?”
“It’s Ulstad sir, Connor Ulstad.”
“Then by the powers invested in me as Jarl of Callow, I hereby make you, Connor Ulstad, a member of the town guard. Now, go back to your family and see Gerrick after the meeting.”
“Thank you, my lord, I won’t disappoint.”
“I have every confidence you’ll make a fine guardsman, now take your father’s blade and run along.”
The assembly then began to slam their fists on tables and clap. It was a basic ceremony, but it wasn’t common to have such a thing in the middle of a town meeting like this. Usually it was only with the lord, the captain of the guard, and a handful of others present. Once back with his family, Connor could barely stand. Just like that, he was hired as a guardsman.
The meeting was over soon after. First the Jarl stood up and exited, followed by his counsel. Next, the freemen and the elderly were allowed to exit, then everyone else. Walking out into the brisk night, Gerrick called Connor’s name. With a nod, Connor let Shadow escort Liz and Asher back to the tavern while Zephyr opted to stay perched on the teen’s shoulder.
“You made the right decision Connor. We’ll find permanent quarters for your kin, and you’ll get paid both with money and food.”
“Thank you, sir, I can’t begin to pay you back for this opportunity.”
“Do your best, boy, and you’ll pay me back a hundred times over. Now then, get a good night’s rest after your travels, and come by mid-morning tomorrow. We’ll start training you immediately and we’ll get you fitted with basic armor and weaponry.”
“Again, thank you sir. Would you mind of Zephyr joined?”
“Of course not. A dragon would be a great honorary addition to the guard. You should bring your sword too. I can tell you don’t have much experience with that one.”
“No sir, I don’t. In fact, most of my skill is in the bow, and even then, it’s just good enough to hunt.”
“Not to worry, lad, we’ll get you into fighting shape and give you some proper tools. Now go on and be with your family. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The sun rose early, far earlier than Connor would have liked. Still, he was up and out of the inn with Zephyr by his side, taking care to be quiet as a mouse so as to not wake up the others. Strolling down to the great hall. As per Sam’s instructions, Connor found the headquarters for the town guard and walked in to find that Gerrick was already going about his work for the day.
“Ah, Connor! You’re here early, I like the spirit lad! Now then, follow me and I’ll see to it that you have all the equipment you need, then you’ll start your training.”
Following Gerrick, Connor found himself in the armory. Boiled leather, wool, and chainmail. The bitter cold would make any plate armor a death sentence for the wearer. A belt and a seax were also provided. All the clothing gave the teen’s lean frame more weight, though there were certainly pockets of space where muscles would eventually fill in. The armorer offered Connor a sword, but he opted instead to keep his father’s blade.
Paperwork, and signing a new contract followed. Connor made sure to read every word to ensure that no one from his family would be taken to be worked in his place should he ever die. Afterward was another tour, but this time pointing out all the defensive structures, the locations of supply stashes in case of attacks, the station that Connor would man in case of a siege, and where everything was inside the guard buildings. Finally at the end of all the tedious work, Gerrick brought Connor up to the wall to shadow Sam.
“Connor, you remember Sam?”
“Of course sir!” The teen shot a hand to shake his new colleague.
“Glad to see you in uniform Connor! It suits you.”
“Well… I’ll get used to it I suppose. Not used to wearing armor much.”
Another guard cleared his throat, which made Sam realize he was forgetting someone.
“Oh yes, and this here is Smith. His family came here a few months ago and, like you, he chose to take the cloak.”
“Smith, eh? Where did you come from in Mekkan, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Riverton, sir.”
“No shit? I’m from Maine, myself. Just across the strait. And by the way, the name’s Connor, not sir.”
“Sure thing, I think we’ll get along just fine.”
“Indeed.”
“With pleasantries out of the way,” Sam said, “it’s time we start the route.”
“Don’t let me keep you boys.” Said Gerrick as he excused himself.
“Alright Sam, so what are we doing here?”
“Connor, what we are going to be doing is patrolling the walls. We’ll spend an hour on top of the wall, and hour outside the wall, and an hour inside. A total shift is twelve hours, and we do a full week in four days. Think you can handle it?”
“Well, my last job was 16 hours every day on the sea, so I’m just happy to be on solid ground this time.”
“Just wait until winter comes…” Smith said. Of course, he and Connor both knew that being near the coast afforded them a childhood of wet, but mild winters. Out here on the tundra it would be different. Their shift would continue for hours. Mostly, they sat in silence as befitting of guards tasked with keeping the town safe and peaceful. Of course, the occasional joke or short conversation would come up. Finally, as the sun was settling toward the western horizon, two guards came to relieve the trio.
“Alright gentlemen, back to the guard house.” Sam said to his two newer colleagues.
“Oh man, I can’t wait to get out of this armor.” Smith said with relief in his voice.
“You know Smith, you don’t have to wear every piece of armor you get issued. Connor over here is doing things right.”
“What do you mean?” Connor asked, mildly confused. After all, he had only worn what he was told to.
“The chainmail and wool makes for a far more comfortable shift than wearing thick plate armor. We typically just use that stuff when under attack.”
“Under attack? By whom?”
Sam explained, “The wolves, of course. In the early days, my dad said that the first settlers here would come under attack by the local snow wolves. It makes sense if you ask me, I’d be kind of pissed too if someone just decided to make my backyard their home.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t had problems lately.” Smith was quick to point out.
“True, but that was because Tostig’s father, the previous Jarl of Callow, brokered peace and made treaties. Just between us fellas, Tostig has been ignoring his father’s advice. The snow wolves are already mad about all the timber we’ve been harvesting and the new iron mines going up.”
“Really? I haven’t noticed a lot of tension.” Connor replied.
“I’m surprised, I would think you of all people would be able to feel the tension in the air.” Sam said.
“How so?”
“Well, you’re the only one of us who hangs out with a keidran. Heck, you seem to treat her like an equal. Most of the keidran in Callow are either laborers or slaves, only the snow wolves are free. They aren’t stupid you know, those wolves know that if humans gain too much of a foothold, it will be game over for them too.”
“I see. I guess that explains why so many of the town-folk were looking at Shadow when we rode in. She is a free keidran. I’m not her master, nor her employer. I’ll have to start paying more attention.”
“Best not let that fall on the wrong ears, Connor. There are some slavers out here too.”
“Smith is right, though I’m sure Shadow will be fine as long as she stays with your kin. The slavers are going after stray wolves mostly. That said, it’s especially important to pay attention to the snow wolves that come here to trade. While Tostig hasn’t told the guard to spy on visitors, we’re the eyes and ears of the town. If there is something brewing, we need to know about it.”
“Noted. Well, looks like we’re back at HQ.”
“Finally! I’m ready for a good ale after hiking around in all this armor.”
“Then let’s head in guys.” Sam led the way, motioning for Smith and Connor to follow. Gerrick was inside and ending his shift as well when his son and two recruits came inside.
“Ah, right on time lads! Connor, how was your first shift?”
“Uneventful sir, but I’m grateful to be stationed with a couple of decent guys.”
“Very good. You and Smith will be doing weapons training tomorrow before joining Sam, so I hope you two rest up tonight.”
“Yes sir!” Both teens replied.
“Oh, and Smith, why are you wearing so much armor?”
“I was, uh… I guess I just overdressed.”
“Well, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you try to lug all that around when winter comes. Just use mail and padding like the rest of us, okay?”
“Yes, sir…” Smith said before the trio walked passed Gerrick and headed to the armory to turn in their gear for the night. Truth be told, Connor was exhausted. Sure, he had rode and walked all the way across the continent with family in tow, but he didn’t have to wear sixty pounds of gear. Once out of his armor, Connor bid farewell to his two colleagues and made his way back to Anna Marie’s.

It’s been a couple months now that I’ve been trapped in this complex. The rules here are simple and few, but there’s a lot more lessons here than anything else. Countless unspoken knowledge of this place and its residents. One of the few lessons that I’ve learned is that a lot of things in here have almost a polar opposite or even an equal. Winthorp and the complex, Him and Her and the elevator and the stairs to list a few. I’ve noticed that my room moves from time to time. At first it was simple. Room #224, second floor, 12th door on the right when I first got here. Days later it was further down and a few days after that it was on the left side. Rooms near mine that matched the number sequence have changed from mixing and adding numbers to also adding letters and now sometimes display a text I can’t comprehend or something else altogether after the complex got comfortable with me.
I’ve also learned that the elevator seems to be friendly. It will always bring you to the floor where your room is despite it traveling around. The buttons in the elevator sometimes change from a standard elevator panel to displaying my unknown neighbors gibberish languages or even changing control panels entirely. The elevator’s interior is caged in a gold metal framework with a red and gold intertwining pattern carpet to match the hotel hallways that never change. However, no matter what button you press it will always bring you to the floor your room is on. I noticed this when I accidently pressed floor 20 instead of 22 when my room decided to ascend 20 floors up after a couple weeks in. Yet, when the doors opened to my mistaken early floor I saw my room number just a few doors down on the left. I thought I was mistaken until I entered and surely enough it was my room. Back when it housed a normal standard 1 queen mattress hotel room. Before I was punished for my destructive mental breakdown and given an empty trashed room.
The stairs however were not as kind as the elevator. I made the mistake of taking the stairs once to get in some form of cardio since my entrapment. I knew something was wrong when I noticed on what should have been floor 11 and 12, there weren't even doors. I went up a couple more floors and saw either random locked doors that didn’t match or more blank corners. I had enough and turned back to go back to floor 1 to leave. I was already somehow on the bottom floor just after running 2 flights back down. The ground floor’s door has also changed into a medieval time door with interlocking chains and a big padlock in the center holding them all together. I began cursing at myself. It was at this point that I remembered something Winthorp said when I first checked into this place.
I was given 2 keys and a garnet colored leather book when I first checked into this place. A dirty old gold key that was for my room and my room alone and a bright shiny new silver key that opens everything else, I was told. At first I thought this meant a closet, cabinets, side room or any other doo lock in my room, but after a few days I noticed there weren’t any other locks for this other key in my room. I always kept both keys linked on a key reel and on me just in case, but left the book in my room since it was filled with blank pages anyways. I took out the silver key and went to try it on the padlock, but when I looked up it was gone. I heard what sounded like a jingle of some kind echoing down from floors above. I looked up through the center gap in between the flights of stairs and saw that they seemingly go up infinitely. I stared up and could barely see what looked like someone looking down at me from about 20 floors up.
I suddenly felt my right foot drop a foot or less and looked down to notice there’s more floors beneath me now that also descend what looked infinitely. I heard the jingle again and turned back up and saw that whatever was looking down at me is now already a few floors lower. I got a better look at it from this distance. It looked like someone wearing a jester's cap. It leaned back out of sight and peaked out again to look back down like it descended 4 floors down in what felt like moments. Its face was loose and saggy like it was wearing it to pretend to be human. Its makeup is thrown on randomly and dripped down from the excess application. That jingling noise were bells that tipped the hat’s extensions. I descended the stairs as fast as I could. Desperate to find the next door. That’s when I heard its laughter. It was deep and loud like a talking child's toy with dead batteries. I can hear it getting closer and closer as I ran as fast as possible. At one point the stairs shifted to spiral in the reverse pattern to throw me off.
A few floors after that it shifted again to be ascending instead of descending and I fell face first onto the square cut stone steps. With my face and nose now bleeding I continued running up the steps on all fours when I saw a big red wooden door and had no time to hesitate. I grasped the handle and turned to see if it was locked and in that second I felt it was I already had the silver key heading for the key hole with my opposite hand. The stairwell jester was just a floor or two below me now and I could hear that deep echoing laugh and jingling rounding the stairwell behind me when I got the door open. I turned to slam the door in its face. Its limbs were as long as a man on stilts. It had 6 long limbs. Each with giant hands that had too many long fingers. It’s draped in an old clown's costume that seemed to be made for it. I can see now that it is in fact wearing a decrepit human’s face like a mask and its real face is too far in to be seen in the dim lights.
When I caught my breath to continue on I noticed that I’m not in what I was expecting to be a hallway in the complex, but what looked like a classic kid’s entertainment center. A warehouse sized building with brightly colored decor, furniture and a massive playground for kids that takes up about half of the building and is even connected to the ceiling to maximize the space. Long tables and chairs that can seat several large sized kids parties are covered in old moldy pizzas and cakes from being abandoned. The playground had long plastic windowed tubes and ball pits with trails of what looked like old dried up blood being dragged into them. My suspicions of this were confirmed when I saw the colored carpets had finger nail drag marks following the blood stains. There were so many drag marks. The plastic air filled balls in the pit began to shift.
Like something breaching the surface of water the balls parted towards the edge in my direction. Hard plastic slaps from something deep inside the giant tubes can also be heard in unison. I began running in the opposite direction towards a revolving door I can see in the distance that looked like an exit. Several Carnival-like music played loudly over each other behind me as I tripped over a pulled up rug. I turned back while getting up to see emerging from the ball pit, exiting the tubes and some already in full sprint behind me were old furry childrens animatronics of different animal and themed variety. Like a zoo from hell itself they were all pushing and running over each other to get to me. Each either playing its own music or shouting their own individual catchphrases and slogans. They’re covered in dried blood and missing patches of fur from most likely their victims desperately fighting back. I began running again towards the revolving door in the distance. If it wasn’t for their personal greed, one of them would’ve easily caught me due to their colossal sizes.
The revolving door’s windows were replaced with mirrors and I could see they weren’t far behind me in the reflection. I looked around quickly to find the lock. The horde was gaining on me fast. A giant dark brown animatronic beaver reached me first and desperately tried chomping hard at me. Its big head and arm got wedged in the door’s frame. I saw the keyhole in the center of the revolving door and turned my key inside of it, but the beaver’s big mechanical head and arm were stopping me from turning my exit. I tried kicking its face away aiming for the big cold dead plastic eyes and in my panic I missed on my 3rd kick and threw my leg into its maw stupidly. Its metal buck teeth took the opportunity and bit down hard on my mid shin. Immediately shattering my bone in two and pulled. My calf muscles tried to desperately keep my leg together. I was holding onto the handles on the revolving door tightly when the beaver was violently pulled back by a goliath sized green gorilla animatronic and took everything below my right knee with it. They began fighting like starving beasts.
Luckily I was leaning back on the revolving door and when the beaver was pulled away I fell back and through my exit. There was no more sound of carnival music or cheesy catchphrases with a murderous spin on them anymore. With no time to waste I was bleeding out fast and my body was still in shock so I couldn’t feel the pain, yet. I took off my shirt and tore it into long bands and tied my thigh as tight as I could. After the first tight makeshift bandage I did that 3 more times to try and stop the bleeding as best as I could. I heard a loud snap through the silence nearby and turned to my right. That’s when I noticed my surroundings. I seemed to be deep inside a heavy forested area. Sunlight is blocked by the tall foliage filled trees making it dark, but not unseeable. Like a well moonlit night.
Another snap was heard behind me and I saw something lean back behind a tree to hide from my view. I was looking around in panic when I noticed that the revolving door was also gone. I was surrounded by nothing but thick heavy forest and its occupants. Of course, I finally escape the complex and I die by being handicapped in a predator filled forest. I gave up and yelled for whatever was out there to come get me. There’s no way I can win or get out of this. My screams were a mix of impatience, sadness and anger. I just wanted this to finally be over. In the distance in front of me I can see a figure with glowing white eyes. Like that of a cat's eyes reflecting light. I turned up my wrists and hung my head low to just get this over with when suddenly I got asked if I’m okay.
I confusingly asked, what, and looked up. There in front of me was a small man wearing a long fur and leather trench coat and a cornucopia on his head. The man had tired sunken circles around his eyes and was pale from the lack of sunlight. I was stunned at the sighting of another person. Even if it was some whacko hermit. I rambled on like a madman about what I just went through in sobs. The stairwell, the clown man, the bloody playroom, me losing my leg and the complex I just escaped from. The man then stopped and corrected me. I was still in The Pandemonium Complex. This was a tenant and I was in his room. A part of me died again almost as soon as I saw hope. I told the thing to just kill me. I was in his room after all. I give up.
He reached inside of his coat and started pulling out whatever he was going to use to end me. I closed my eyes and held my head down again in defeat. He held something in front of my face and told me to eat it. It looked like an old dried up orange and purple striped pepper. Whatever this was, I didn't care anymore. Anything to just end me and my misery. I ate the strange fruit and my right thigh burned with intense pain. My right thigh got twice as thick and popped the bandages right off from the force. I held my prized pumpkin sized thigh in pain and something shot out. I screamed and cursed the thing that was torturing me only for me to suddenly realize that I can wiggle my right toes again. I looked down and saw a mucus covered leg that matched my old leg perfectly. My face was no longer cut and bruised.
I looked back up at the tenant and thanked him. He told me it was a ghurotabia (gor-o-ta-bae) fruit. He’s had it for a few years and was saving it for emergencies since it is extremely rare. It can heal and luckily humans are extremely simple in biology compared to his kind. The man introduced himself as Gunter. He was a Fae, an Akras to be exact, but was rejected by his kind. Humans believe Akras to be a single god fae, but they are actually a type of fae that control fertility, turnips, beans, peas, cabbage, flax, and hemp. Gunter however controls wood and summons fruit. I asked if that’s why he was casted out and he corrected and explained it was because he summoned a chunfrue (ch-oon-fru) fruit by accident and left it in a field. A fire fruit that bursts into flames when rotten and accidently burnt down half of the forest. He can summon all fruits, but can’t control which one he summons. It’s random, but luckily he has knowledge of all the fruits and wood he sees and knows which ones are safe to eat.
After testing my new leg and standing up I thanked him for his kindness again and asked where the exit was. He stopped me and told me nothing is free to the fae and he needs my help in return for healing my leg and eating his extremely rare fruit. Of course I should've known. Gunter has actually been trapped in his own room for many years. At first his room was an open field with a few trees, but the complex gave him a packed forest over the years and accidentally turned his room’s door into one of these trees. Creating a new door isn’t the problem. Gunter controls wood and can just make a new door, no matter how many times he tries the door is always locked. When he first arrived in the complex Winthorp gave him 2 things. A travel box full of assorted toothpicks with different types of wood and a key made of an unknown dead vine. I asked to see his key and it was the size of a grown man’s hand. It was woven together in dead vines and didn’t resemble a key in the slightest, but was told it was. Even Gunter said he doesn’t know what this vine is or anyone he’s ever asked when he was free. It never even worked on his room’s door so he always left it unlocked and barely anything in the complex is stupid enough to enter another’s room willingly.
Gunter also said leaving your door unlocked can stop it from moving around the complex wildly which is a big plus. I told him about my silver key and how I got here. I then asked him to turn one of these trees into a door so we could leave. He refused and said he can control wood, but will never harm a living thing. How would you feel if someone who controls flesh and blood turned you into a door? He explained. I apologized for any offense and asked what we should do. He pulled out the box of toothpicks and before my eyes took one out and kept pulling on it. Pulling and shaping it over and over like it was clay until before us was a red oak colored door with frame and vine patterns. I was in awe and told him that was amazing. He blushed a little at my compliment and unconvincingly told me to stop. I put my key inside and turned. We opened the door and stepped forward confidently towards our freedom. What we stepped into though was nothing but complete darkness.
The room we stepped inside of was almost fully black. Skies darker than anything I’ve ever seen before, like vantablack. A night sky with two yellowish moons and stars spaced out varying in shapes and shines, but nothing illuminated below them. We looked around but all we could see was the light coming from Gunter’s room behind us illuminating our backs. Then suddenly complete darkness. Just like the revolving door in Gunter’s room our exit was gone. As we turned around a blue rippling wave flowed away from our steps. The little light from Gunter’s room must’ve hidden this when we stepped in. The floor had about just a half an inch of this liquid that held some kind of bioluminescence algae. Every step made a small wave and lit the floor around us with a bright blue. Gunter giggled at this beauty and danced in the lit up water. He lightly tapped and laughed for just a moment of happiness before I put my hand on his shoulder and quietly told him to stop. We were not alone.
The waves kept flowing away from us into an endless void and in the distance were figures also standing in the shallow waters. The blue light wave continues and with it more and more differently shaped figures become visible by the light. Some tall, some short, some humanoids and some creatures I’ve never seen before. They all stood motionless looking up into the night’s sky. More and more became visible. Features were still unknown due to the darkness, but outlines of the things were displayed by the bioluminescence. When the second round of waves hit their feet they twitched, then on the third they moved slightly, the fourth caught their full attention. One seemed familiar to me and I hope I was wrong. We need to leave, I told Gunter. Make another door, now! The waves of Gunter’s dance from earlier displayed a familiar figure in the distance. A tall white skin reflected the light more than the rest. An apex predator, with rotten features, few thinning long hairs and big clouded eyes with no eyelids. That’s when I looked up and noticed.
Those moons are cracked with red and the few stars begin moving in unison towards each other into place under the moons. Waves of the bioluminescent water flowed toward us. The creatures in the distance began their approach. The familiar figure is exactly what I thought it was, a wendigo and a familiar one at that. I screamed at Gunter to hurry and make another door. He was already pulling and forming one as we spoke. I looked up into the sky and the stars formed their place while the moons began to turn towards each other. Looking closer I noticed the stars in the sky were actually teeth. All from a different thing. The moons had big spots of black that were turning completely around. Blacker than anything I’ve seen before, but I have seen this before. The teeth formed into a familiar smile that almost went on forever and The sky looked down at us. We were inside her room. We were inside of Her.
Her victims were slow at first and started getting faster towards our direction till they were charging at us. The floor was bright with blue light as her army stampede towards her trespassers. Gunter yells, done! I turned towards our exit and put my key in and turned. We jumped through not knowing where we were going, but anywhere is better than here. Gunter barely slammed the door behind us in time.
We were completely submerged in deep fresh water. We held our breaths and the water was so clear that we were able to look around easily. Once again, no door in sight, but we were somehow in what looked like a deep ocean. I know better than to think that though. Gunter swims towards me and gets close. He pulls out another toothpick and starts his craft again. This time he makes a small boat and we both hold on as we begin to rise. We both look down and see something massive and long below in the depths. Deep enough to not be fully illuminated by the light, but massive enough to look like it was a giant sea creature just a few feet away. We breach the surface and both of us gasp for air. We turned the boat over and got on. Gotta love cedar, Gunter jests. Gunter rubs his bald head and then suddenly starts looking around the boat desperately for something. He reaches over and from the waterside yells, Ah ha!, holding up his cornucopia and plops it back on his bald pale head with a big satisfied smile. We look around at this seemingly endless ocean. How big are these damn rooms?! I yell. Turns out some of these rooms can be on a planetary scale for some of its tenants, Gunter explains.
I asked Gunter if he knows where we are and he says he thinks he knows this tenant. A Kraken named, he then made a series of clicks and screeches. Apparently a Kraken is a massive squid octopus hybrid that has the body of an octopus, but the head of a squid giving them 16-18 limbs in total. It can be the size of an island if it wanted to or as small as the wolfi octopus. They can fly as well as they can swim, but prefer the cold dark depths. They can communicate telepathically, but if it does while it’s too big it can scramble a basic brain. The one he knows is nice by nature and could maybe help us get home. The artificial ocean we were floating on was as calm as a glass of water and the only waves emanated were from our boat. Gunter looked over the boat and into the depths while I scanned the surface. I saw a human shaped figure that was far out, but close enough to make out some features if I squint. Is that…? I whisper. This caught Gunter’s attention. That’s Winthorp! Unmistakable, straw boat hat and all. I yell out to him again and again while waving. He must be here to take us back to the complex. Why else would he be here? I thought.
It was Gunter this time to put his hand on my shoulder and quietly tell me to stop. He was wrong. This wasn’t The Kraken’s room like Gunter originally thought. Not Winthorp started to get closer and fast, but something big was behind him. Something massive that was breaching the ocean sized water was right behind the fake bellhop. Gunter began frantically patting his pockets saying no, no, no over and over again. I watched as the titan got closer and became more visible as it surfaced. A long stem that matched the blue of the sky and ocean was connected to the doppelganger god that bent far and back into the water. I yelled at Gunter to make another door, but he yelled saying he lost his picks. I looked back and breaching the water looked like a colossus angler fish with an eel body that was impossibly long. Massive long sharp translucent teeth the size of steel beams filled its mouth. Its head emerged with many lures that each resemble someone I loved in the past. What the hell is that?! I screamed.
A Leviathan! Gunter answers. I looked down into the water below us and saw Gunter’s picks floating around and away from the boat. I moved as quickly as I could, fishing them out and holding one behind me while using my other hand to fish out as many others as I could. Gunter grabs the one I held behind me and works his magic while I desperately grab any within reach. Waves from the behemoth tenant reached the boat and started pulling the picks away from me. I leaned out to grab more fast while Gunter leaned back on his side to balance the boat. Gunter used his two feet to hold onto my new right foot’s ankle so I didn't fall in, all while forming our escape. I looked up and couldn’t see anything beyond the giant maw of the beast in the water. Its huge ribbed throat had more rows of teeth going in like a funnel of death, like a megamouth shark’s. The boat shifted hard and I looked back to see that Gunter finished. He threw the door into the water and already jumped onto it. I braced myself and jumped, but didn’t take the waves into account and fell deep into the tenant’s watery domain.
I looked back again like a fool only to see we’re pretty much already in the giant's mouth. I looked down into the depths below and saw the teeth rising fast. Suddenly I’m pulled up with ease out of the water and onto the door by Gunter. He slaps me hard and yells, hurry! I pull out my key and shove it into the door’s lock. I turn the lock and knob simultaneously and suddenly we fall through hard. As we fall in gravity shifts towards the new floor and I land hard on my face while Gunter luckily lands hard on his back. We both groan in pain on a grassy bed and begin to laugh at our great escape. Gunter asks how many picks did I save and I hand him the small handful. Not much, I regretfully say. We analyze our new surroundings.
We were just on the side of a stone cut pathway just next to a long staircase. Surrounding us were bright pink and white cherry blossom trees with red spider lilies on the floor. On one side the pathway extends to a blank stone wall. The other goes up the staircase to a red torii. Gunter was in awe when I jokingly asked if we fell into an anime. Of course he didn’t understand the joke. What a waste. I asked if he knew where we were this time. Gunter had no idea. Do you hear that? Gunter asked quietly. I listened and at first I heard nothing, but then it slowly became louder for me to be able to hear. It sounded like a fast drum roll, but with more than one drummer. It became louder and louder. It was coming from up the steps. We looked up towards the torii.
A gigantic semi truck sized noh mask emerged from the top and looked down at us. We were frozen in fear knowing that as fast as that thing emerged there was no way we could run or make another door in time before it caught us. Gunter broke the silence first after a minute with a light, hello and wave. The noh mask went around the torii in an instant and down the 3 story tall flight of stairs in a matter of seconds. We now see what was making that sound from earlier. This thing's body was long and with countless legs of an insect. Its body was a gigantic centipede and moved with the ease of a natural born predator. It eclipsed us in its shadow and stared us down in silence for a minute. It asked in a loud female whisper. Why are you here? I answered and explained it was by accident and we didn’t mean to intrude. Gunter apologized too and told her we were lost and asked if she’d show us the way out.
The tenant looked towards the blank stone wall on the path behind us and explained that she was sealed inside her room by another rival tenant during their petty squabble years ago. Turns out you can’t break rule 5 if you just made something disappear. Can’t damage what’s no there. She can’t leave even if she wanted to and neither shall we. She then asked if we brought tribute. I can see the mandibles inside the mask's mouth and are drooling with hunger. The bulging veins from the giant porcelain mask connect to the insect's exoskeleton pulsate with anticipation. She’s getting impatient for us to say we don’t have an offering.
She is an Omukade and demands something in return for allowing us to breathe in their presence or our souls will be forfeit. Gunter started patting down his person and pulled out a red pear shaped fruit with white swirls from the left inside of his coat. He said no and tossed it back. Reached into the other side and pulled out a black watermelon with orange spots and set it down gently. Definitely not, he states with a yeesh facial expression. The Omukade and I watched him patiently do this a couple times with so many different kinds of fruit that I’ve never seen before. One looked like it was even made of water and another exploded into small pits like a grenade when it hit the ground far behind us. He began pulling from the cornucopia and on the 19th try pulled out a bundle of banana looking fruit that were brown and shriveled like they were old and rotten. Each had 3 red spots that formed into different facial expressions. Perfect, said Gunter with satisfaction.
The Omukade’s eyes became wide and she lunged towards Gunter. Gunter barley pulled back in time and the noh mask’s mouth cracked and split wide open revealing her massive fanged mouth as she ate the bundle of fruit in one bite. A loud audible gulp was heard from her and her neck got wide. The mass inside her traveled downwards inside her deeper and her exoskeleton popped when the mass passed. It looked like a snake eating a big round meal. She let out a sigh and said that it was satisfactory. I asked Gunter what that was and he said I’m better off not knowing. The now full Omukade seemed a lot more patient and asked how we got here since entering or leaving is impossible. We introduced ourselves and asked for her name. She explained Omukade’s don’t have names and if we wish to give her one we may. The way she looked when she ate the fruit reminded me of one of my favorite fighters from a 2-D fighting game I used to play. I named her Mila. Hard to tell, but I think she liked the name.
I let Gunter do the talking and he explained everything from me finding him to now in detail. I tagged in after and explained everything before that. Mila explained that I’m lucky that the stairs only released 1 minor creature and that I even had means to escape. Mila then asked to see our keys since she has knowledge of most artifacts that don’t predate her and we showed them to her. She analyzed them and told Gunter first that she’s never seen his kind of key before and that it must be older than ancient, he then sadly put his key away. Mine however she recognized as a reforged unstable skeleton key that has been reshaped into a common silver house key to put it simply. She explained that my key opens all doors, but what’s on the other side is random. For example, if I use this key even on my room’s door my room will never be the one on the other side. Perfect for a quick escape, but you don’t know if wherever you go next may be worse and seems to be now bound to the complex. There’s a shrine at the top of her room that has a door we could use instead of using another toothpick, but we’d just be gambling again.
She also asked to look at the golden room key that was also on the key ring. She stared for a while and stated that it seemed like a normal house key, but there’s something else there that basic eyes can’t see. Gunter stared at it too for awhile and agreed that there’s like some kind of hum coming from it. They asked about its origins and when I told them that Winthorp gave them to me they asked what were his instructions word for word, do not abbreviate. “The gold key was for my room and my room alone and the silver key can open everything else.” That’s it. They both stared at me. Humans either read too far into things or not far enough. Barely ever do we get a complete understanding from verbal communication.They didn’t say a word; Mila turned and proceeded up the steps and Gunter slapped me across the head before following behind her.
I asked them constantly what happened while following them. We got to Mila’s run down wood shrine and they told me to use the gold key on the sliding door and instead of the silver. I told them it won’t work on any door but mine. I paused for a minute, I’m an idiot, I whispered out loud. I put the key in, unlocked the door and entered into my room. My mattress had cheap sheets and a bed frame now. My laptop sat next to my gifted book on a basic wooden desk and with a matching wooden chair rested beneath. I invited my 2 guests to enter with me. Mila shrunk her size to enter. Gunter wows in awe at my room when he entered next. Your room sucks, Gunter states loudly while Mila agrees. We finally were free and I was home, but this makes me wonder. My book and Gunter’s key are still a mystery and I doubt Winthorp will give us any answers. I’ve made 2 new friends and learned a few more lessons, but I know this is just the beginning. We still know almost nothing about our mysterious gifts, our god Winthorp and his playground, The Pandemonium Complex.

It’s been a couple months now that I’ve been trapped in this complex. The rules here are simple and few, but there’s a lot more lessons here than anything else. Countless unspoken knowledge of this place and its residents. One of the few lessons that I’ve learned is that a lot of things in here have almost a polar opposite or even an equal. Winthorp and the complex, Him and Her and the elevator and the stairs to list a few. I’ve noticed that my room moves from time to time. At first it was simple. Room #224, second floor, 12th door on the right when I first got here. Days later it was further down and a few days after that it was on the left side. Rooms near mine that matched the number sequence have changed from mixing and adding numbers to also adding letters and now sometimes display a text I can’t comprehend or something else altogether after the complex got comfortable with me.
I’ve also learned that the elevator seems to be friendly. It will always bring you to the floor where your room is despite it traveling around. The buttons in the elevator sometimes change from a standard elevator panel to displaying my unknown neighbors gibberish languages or even changing control panels entirely. The elevator’s interior is caged in a gold metal framework with a red and gold intertwining pattern carpet to match the hotel hallways that never change. However, no matter what button you press it will always bring you to the floor your room is on. I noticed this when I accidently pressed floor 20 instead of 22 when my room decided to ascend 20 floors up after a couple weeks in. Yet, when the doors opened to my mistaken early floor I saw my room number just a few doors down on the left. I thought I was mistaken until I entered and surely enough it was my room. Back when it housed a normal standard 1 queen mattress hotel room. Before I was punished for my destructive mental breakdown and given an empty trashed room.
The stairs however were not as kind as the elevator. I made the mistake of taking the stairs once to get in some form of cardio since my entrapment. I knew something was wrong when I noticed on what should have been floor 11 and 12, there weren't even doors. I went up a couple more floors and saw either random locked doors that didn’t match or more blank corners. I had enough and turned back to go back to floor 1 to leave. I was already somehow on the bottom floor just after running 2 flights back down. The ground floor’s door has also changed into a medieval time door with interlocking chains and a big padlock in the center holding them all together. I began cursing at myself. It was at this point that I remembered something Winthorp said when I first checked into this place.
I was given 2 keys and a garnet colored leather book when I first checked into this place. A dirty old gold key that was for my room and my room alone and a bright shiny new silver key that opens everything else, I was told. At first I thought this meant a closet, cabinets, side room or any other doo lock in my room, but after a few days I noticed there weren’t any other locks for this other key in my room. I always kept both keys linked on a key reel and on me just in case, but left the book in my room since it was filled with blank pages anyways. I took out the silver key and went to try it on the padlock, but when I looked up it was gone. I heard what sounded like a jingle of some kind echoing down from floors above. I looked up through the center gap in between the flights of stairs and saw that they seemingly go up infinitely. I stared up and could barely see what looked like someone looking down at me from about 20 floors up.
I suddenly felt my right foot drop a foot or less and looked down to notice there’s more floors beneath me now that also descend what looked infinitely. I heard the jingle again and turned back up and saw that whatever was looking down at me is now already a few floors lower. I got a better look at it from this distance. It looked like someone wearing a jester's cap. It leaned back out of sight and peaked out again to look back down like it descended 4 floors down in what felt like moments. Its face was loose and saggy like it was wearing it to pretend to be human. Its makeup is thrown on randomly and dripped down from the excess application. That jingling noise were bells that tipped the hat’s extensions. I descended the stairs as fast as I could. Desperate to find the next door. That’s when I heard its laughter. It was deep and loud like a talking child's toy with dead batteries. I can hear it getting closer and closer as I ran as fast as possible. At one point the stairs shifted to spiral in the reverse pattern to throw me off.
A few floors after that it shifted again to be ascending instead of descending and I fell face first onto the square cut stone steps. With my face and nose now bleeding I continued running up the steps on all fours when I saw a big red wooden door and had no time to hesitate. I grasped the handle and turned to see if it was locked and in that second I felt it was I already had the silver key heading for the key hole with my opposite hand. The stairwell jester was just a floor or two below me now and I could hear that deep echoing laugh and jingling rounding the stairwell behind me when I got the door open. I turned to slam the door in its face. Its limbs were as long as a man on stilts. It had 6 long limbs. Each with giant hands that had too many long fingers. It’s draped in an old clown's costume that seemed to be made for it. I can see now that it is in fact wearing a decrepit human’s face like a mask and its real face is too far in to be seen in the dim lights.
When I caught my breath to continue on I noticed that I’m not in what I was expecting to be a hallway in the complex, but what looked like a classic kid’s entertainment center. A warehouse sized building with brightly colored decor, furniture and a massive playground for kids that takes up about half of the building and is even connected to the ceiling to maximize the space. Long tables and chairs that can seat several large sized kids parties are covered in old moldy pizzas and cakes from being abandoned. The playground had long plastic windowed tubes and ball pits with trails of what looked like old dried up blood being dragged into them. My suspicions of this were confirmed when I saw the colored carpets had finger nail drag marks following the blood stains. There were so many drag marks. The plastic air filled balls in the pit began to shift.
Like something breaching the surface of water the balls parted towards the edge in my direction. Hard plastic slaps from something deep inside the giant tubes can also be heard in unison. I began running in the opposite direction towards a revolving door I can see in the distance that looked like an exit. Several Carnival-like music played loudly over each other behind me as I tripped over a pulled up rug. I turned back while getting up to see emerging from the ball pit, exiting the tubes and some already in full sprint behind me were old furry childrens animatronics of different animal and themed variety. Like a zoo from hell itself they were all pushing and running over each other to get to me. Each either playing its own music or shouting their own individual catchphrases and slogans. They’re covered in dried blood and missing patches of fur from most likely their victims desperately fighting back. I began running again towards the revolving door in the distance. If it wasn’t for their personal greed, one of them would’ve easily caught me due to their colossal sizes.
The revolving door’s windows were replaced with mirrors and I could see they weren’t far behind me in the reflection. I looked around quickly to find the lock. The horde was gaining on me fast. A giant dark brown animatronic beaver reached me first and desperately tried chomping hard at me. Its big head and arm got wedged in the door’s frame. I saw the keyhole in the center of the revolving door and turned my key inside of it, but the beaver’s big mechanical head and arm were stopping me from turning my exit. I tried kicking its face away aiming for the big cold dead plastic eyes and in my panic I missed on my 3rd kick and threw my leg into its maw stupidly. Its metal buck teeth took the opportunity and bit down hard on my mid shin. Immediately shattering my bone in two and pulled. My calf muscles tried to desperately keep my leg together. I was holding onto the handles on the revolving door tightly when the beaver was violently pulled back by a goliath sized green gorilla animatronic and took everything below my right knee with it. They began fighting like starving beasts.
Luckily I was leaning back on the revolving door and when the beaver was pulled away I fell back and through my exit. There was no more sound of carnival music or cheesy catchphrases with a murderous spin on them anymore. With no time to waste I was bleeding out fast and my body was still in shock so I couldn’t feel the pain, yet. I took off my shirt and tore it into long bands and tied my thigh as tight as I could. After the first tight makeshift bandage I did that 3 more times to try and stop the bleeding as best as I could. I heard a loud snap through the silence nearby and turned to my right. That’s when I noticed my surroundings. I seemed to be deep inside a heavy forested area. Sunlight is blocked by the tall foliage filled trees making it dark, but not unseeable. Like a well moonlit night.
Another snap was heard behind me and I saw something lean back behind a tree to hide from my view. I was looking around in panic when I noticed that the revolving door was also gone. I was surrounded by nothing but thick heavy forest and its occupants. Of course, I finally escape the complex and I die by being handicapped in a predator filled forest. I gave up and yelled for whatever was out there to come get me. There’s no way I can win or get out of this. My screams were a mix of impatience, sadness and anger. I just wanted this to finally be over. In the distance in front of me I can see a figure with glowing white eyes. Like that of a cat's eyes reflecting light. I turned up my wrists and hung my head low to just get this over with when suddenly I got asked if I’m okay.
I confusingly asked, what, and looked up. There in front of me was a small man wearing a long fur and leather trench coat and a cornucopia on his head. The man had tired sunken circles around his eyes and was pale from the lack of sunlight. I was stunned at the sighting of another person. Even if it was some whacko hermit. I rambled on like a madman about what I just went through in sobs. The stairwell, the clown man, the bloody playroom, me losing my leg and the complex I just escaped from. The man then stopped and corrected me. I was still in The Pandemonium Complex. This was a tenant and I was in his room. A part of me died again almost as soon as I saw hope. I told the thing to just kill me. I was in his room after all. I give up.
He reached inside of his coat and started pulling out whatever he was going to use to end me. I closed my eyes and held my head down again in defeat. He held something in front of my face and told me to eat it. It looked like an old dried up orange and purple striped pepper. Whatever this was, I didn't care anymore. Anything to just end me and my misery. I ate the strange fruit and my right thigh burned with intense pain. My right thigh got twice as thick and popped the bandages right off from the force. I held my prized pumpkin sized thigh in pain and something shot out. I screamed and cursed the thing that was torturing me only for me to suddenly realize that I can wiggle my right toes again. I looked down and saw a mucus covered leg that matched my old leg perfectly. My face was no longer cut and bruised.
I looked back up at the tenant and thanked him. He told me it was a ghurotabia (gor-o-ta-bae) fruit. He’s had it for a few years and was saving it for emergencies since it is extremely rare. It can heal and luckily humans are extremely simple in biology compared to his kind. The man introduced himself as Gunter. He was a Fae, an Akras to be exact, but was rejected by his kind. Humans believe Akras to be a single god fae, but they are actually a type of fae that control fertility, turnips, beans, peas, cabbage, flax, and hemp. Gunter however controls wood and summons fruit. I asked if that’s why he was casted out and he corrected and explained it was because he summoned a chunfrue (ch-oon-fru) fruit by accident and left it in a field. A fire fruit that bursts into flames when rotten and accidently burnt down half of the forest. He can summon all fruits, but can’t control which one he summons. It’s random, but luckily he has knowledge of all the fruits and wood he sees and knows which ones are safe to eat.
After testing my new leg and standing up I thanked him for his kindness again and asked where the exit was. He stopped me and told me nothing is free to the fae and he needs my help in return for healing my leg and eating his extremely rare fruit. Of course I should've known. Gunter has actually been trapped in his own room for many years. At first his room was an open field with a few trees, but the complex gave him a packed forest over the years and accidentally turned his room’s door into one of these trees. Creating a new door isn’t the problem. Gunter controls wood and can just make a new door, no matter how many times he tries the door is always locked. When he first arrived in the complex Winthorp gave him 2 things. A travel box full of assorted toothpicks with different types of wood and a key made of an unknown dead vine. I asked to see his key and it was the size of a grown man’s hand. It was woven together in dead vines and didn’t resemble a key in the slightest, but was told it was. Even Gunter said he doesn’t know what this vine is or anyone he’s ever asked when he was free. It never even worked on his room’s door so he always left it unlocked and barely anything in the complex is stupid enough to enter another’s room willingly.
Gunter also said leaving your door unlocked can stop it from moving around the complex wildly which is a big plus. I told him about my silver key and how I got here. I then asked him to turn one of these trees into a door so we could leave. He refused and said he can control wood, but will never harm a living thing. How would you feel if someone who controls flesh and blood turned you into a door? He explained. I apologized for any offense and asked what we should do. He pulled out the box of toothpicks and before my eyes took one out and kept pulling on it. Pulling and shaping it over and over like it was clay until before us was a red oak colored door with frame and vine patterns. I was in awe and told him that was amazing. He blushed a little at my compliment and unconvincingly told me to stop. I put my key inside and turned. We opened the door and stepped forward confidently towards our freedom. What we stepped into though was nothing but complete darkness.
The room we stepped inside of was almost fully black. Skies darker than anything I’ve ever seen before, like vantablack. A night sky with two yellowish moons and stars spaced out varying in shapes and shines, but nothing illuminated below them. We looked around but all we could see was the light coming from Gunter’s room behind us illuminating our backs. Then suddenly complete darkness. Just like the revolving door in Gunter’s room our exit was gone. As we turned around a blue rippling wave flowed away from our steps. The little light from Gunter’s room must’ve hidden this when we stepped in. The floor had about just a half an inch of this liquid that held some kind of bioluminescence algae. Every step made a small wave and lit the floor around us with a bright blue. Gunter giggled at this beauty and danced in the lit up water. He lightly tapped and laughed for just a moment of happiness before I put my hand on his shoulder and quietly told him to stop. We were not alone.
The waves kept flowing away from us into an endless void and in the distance were figures also standing in the shallow waters. The blue light wave continues and with it more and more differently shaped figures become visible by the light. Some tall, some short, some humanoids and some creatures I’ve never seen before. They all stood motionless looking up into the night’s sky. More and more became visible. Features were still unknown due to the darkness, but outlines of the things were displayed by the bioluminescence. When the second round of waves hit their feet they twitched, then on the third they moved slightly, the fourth caught their full attention. One seemed familiar to me and I hope I was wrong. We need to leave, I told Gunter. Make another door, now! The waves of Gunter’s dance from earlier displayed a familiar figure in the distance. A tall white skin reflected the light more than the rest. An apex predator, with rotten features, few thinning long hairs and big clouded eyes with no eyelids. That’s when I looked up and noticed.
Those moons are cracked with red and the few stars begin moving in unison towards each other into place under the moons. Waves of the bioluminescent water flowed toward us. The creatures in the distance began their approach. The familiar figure is exactly what I thought it was, a wendigo and a familiar one at that. I screamed at Gunter to hurry and make another door. He was already pulling and forming one as we spoke. I looked up into the sky and the stars formed their place while the moons began to turn towards each other. Looking closer I noticed the stars in the sky were actually teeth. All from a different thing. The moons had big spots of black that were turning completely around. Blacker than anything I’ve seen before, but I have seen this before. The teeth formed into a familiar smile that almost went on forever and The sky looked down at us. We were inside her room. We were inside of Her.
Her victims were slow at first and started getting faster towards our direction till they were charging at us. The floor was bright with blue light as her army stampede towards her trespassers. Gunter yells, done! I turned towards our exit and put my key in and turned. We jumped through not knowing where we were going, but anywhere is better than here. Gunter barely slammed the door behind us in time.
We were completely submerged in deep fresh water. We held our breaths and the water was so clear that we were able to look around easily. Once again, no door in sight, but we were somehow in what looked like a deep ocean. I know better than to think that though. Gunter swims towards me and gets close. He pulls out another toothpick and starts his craft again. This time he makes a small boat and we both hold on as we begin to rise. We both look down and see something massive and long below in the depths. Deep enough to not be fully illuminated by the light, but massive enough to look like it was a giant sea creature just a few feet away. We breach the surface and both of us gasp for air. We turned the boat over and got on. Gotta love cedar, Gunter jests. Gunter rubs his bald head and then suddenly starts looking around the boat desperately for something. He reaches over and from the waterside yells, Ah ha!, holding up his cornucopia and plops it back on his bald pale head with a big satisfied smile. We look around at this seemingly endless ocean. How big are these damn rooms?! I yell. Turns out some of these rooms can be on a planetary scale for some of its tenants, Gunter explains.
I asked Gunter if he knows where we are and he says he thinks he knows this tenant. A Kraken named, he then made a series of clicks and screeches. Apparently a Kraken is a massive squid octopus hybrid that has the body of an octopus, but the head of a squid giving them 16-18 limbs in total. It can be the size of an island if it wanted to or as small as the wolfi octopus. They can fly as well as they can swim, but prefer the cold dark depths. They can communicate telepathically, but if it does while it’s too big it can scramble a basic brain. The one he knows is nice by nature and could maybe help us get home. The artificial ocean we were floating on was as calm as a glass of water and the only waves emanated were from our boat. Gunter looked over the boat and into the depths while I scanned the surface. I saw a human shaped figure that was far out, but close enough to make out some features if I squint. Is that…? I whisper. This caught Gunter’s attention. That’s Winthorp! Unmistakable, straw boat hat and all. I yell out to him again and again while waving. He must be here to take us back to the complex. Why else would he be here? I thought.
It was Gunter this time to put his hand on my shoulder and quietly tell me to stop. He was wrong. This wasn’t The Kraken’s room like Gunter originally thought. Not Winthorp started to get closer and fast, but something big was behind him. Something massive that was breaching the ocean sized water was right behind the fake bellhop. Gunter began frantically patting his pockets saying no, no, no over and over again. I watched as the titan got closer and became more visible as it surfaced. A long stem that matched the blue of the sky and ocean was connected to the doppelganger god that bent far and back into the water. I yelled at Gunter to make another door, but he yelled saying he lost his picks. I looked back and breaching the water looked like a colossus angler fish with an eel body that was impossibly long. Massive long sharp translucent teeth the size of steel beams filled its mouth. Its head emerged with many lures that each resemble someone I loved in the past. What the hell is that?! I screamed.
A Leviathan! Gunter answers. I looked down into the water below us and saw Gunter’s picks floating around and away from the boat. I moved as quickly as I could, fishing them out and holding one behind me while using my other hand to fish out as many others as I could. Gunter grabs the one I held behind me and works his magic while I desperately grab any within reach. Waves from the behemoth tenant reached the boat and started pulling the picks away from me. I leaned out to grab more fast while Gunter leaned back on his side to balance the boat. Gunter used his two feet to hold onto my new right foot’s ankle so I didn't fall in, all while forming our escape. I looked up and couldn’t see anything beyond the giant maw of the beast in the water. Its huge ribbed throat had more rows of teeth going in like a funnel of death, like a megamouth shark’s. The boat shifted hard and I looked back to see that Gunter finished. He threw the door into the water and already jumped onto it. I braced myself and jumped, but didn’t take the waves into account and fell deep into the tenant’s watery domain.
I looked back again like a fool only to see we’re pretty much already in the giant's mouth. I looked down into the depths below and saw the teeth rising fast. Suddenly I’m pulled up with ease out of the water and onto the door by Gunter. He slaps me hard and yells, hurry! I pull out my key and shove it into the door’s lock. I turn the lock and knob simultaneously and suddenly we fall through hard. As we fall in gravity shifts towards the new floor and I land hard on my face while Gunter luckily lands hard on his back. We both groan in pain on a grassy bed and begin to laugh at our great escape. Gunter asks how many picks did I save and I hand him the small handful. Not much, I regretfully say. We analyze our new surroundings.
We were just on the side of a stone cut pathway just next to a long staircase. Surrounding us were bright pink and white cherry blossom trees with red spider lilies on the floor. On one side the pathway extends to a blank stone wall. The other goes up the staircase to a red torii. Gunter was in awe when I jokingly asked if we fell into an anime. Of course he didn’t understand the joke. What a waste. I asked if he knew where we were this time. Gunter had no idea. Do you hear that? Gunter asked quietly. I listened and at first I heard nothing, but then it slowly became louder for me to be able to hear. It sounded like a fast drum roll, but with more than one drummer. It became louder and louder. It was coming from up the steps. We looked up towards the torii.
A gigantic semi truck sized noh mask emerged from the top and looked down at us. We were frozen in fear knowing that as fast as that thing emerged there was no way we could run or make another door in time before it caught us. Gunter broke the silence first after a minute with a light, hello and wave. The noh mask went around the torii in an instant and down the 3 story tall flight of stairs in a matter of seconds. We now see what was making that sound from earlier. This thing's body was long and with countless legs of an insect. Its body was a gigantic centipede and moved with the ease of a natural born predator. It eclipsed us in its shadow and stared us down in silence for a minute. It asked in a loud female whisper. Why are you here? I answered and explained it was by accident and we didn’t mean to intrude. Gunter apologized too and told her we were lost and asked if she’d show us the way out.
The tenant looked towards the blank stone wall on the path behind us and explained that she was sealed inside her room by another rival tenant during their petty squabble years ago. Turns out you can’t break rule 5 if you just made something disappear. Can’t damage what’s no there. She can’t leave even if she wanted to and neither shall we. She then asked if we brought tribute. I can see the mandibles inside the mask's mouth and are drooling with hunger. The bulging veins from the giant porcelain mask connect to the insect's exoskeleton pulsate with anticipation. She’s getting impatient for us to say we don’t have an offering.
She is an Omukade and demands something in return for allowing us to breathe in their presence or our souls will be forfeit. Gunter started patting down his person and pulled out a red pear shaped fruit with white swirls from the left inside of his coat. He said no and tossed it back. Reached into the other side and pulled out a black watermelon with orange spots and set it down gently. Definitely not, he states with a yeesh facial expression. The Omukade and I watched him patiently do this a couple times with so many different kinds of fruit that I’ve never seen before. One looked like it was even made of water and another exploded into small pits like a grenade when it hit the ground far behind us. He began pulling from the cornucopia and on the 19th try pulled out a bundle of banana looking fruit that were brown and shriveled like they were old and rotten. Each had 3 red spots that formed into different facial expressions. Perfect, said Gunter with satisfaction.
The Omukade’s eyes became wide and she lunged towards Gunter. Gunter barley pulled back in time and the noh mask’s mouth cracked and split wide open revealing her massive fanged mouth as she ate the bundle of fruit in one bite. A loud audible gulp was heard from her and her neck got wide. The mass inside her traveled downwards inside her deeper and her exoskeleton popped when the mass passed. It looked like a snake eating a big round meal. She let out a sigh and said that it was satisfactory. I asked Gunter what that was and he said I’m better off not knowing. The now full Omukade seemed a lot more patient and asked how we got here since entering or leaving is impossible. We introduced ourselves and asked for her name. She explained Omukade’s don’t have names and if we wish to give her one we may. The way she looked when she ate the fruit reminded me of one of my favorite fighters from a 2-D fighting game I used to play. I named her Mila. Hard to tell, but I think she liked the name.
I let Gunter do the talking and he explained everything from me finding him to now in detail. I tagged in after and explained everything before that. Mila explained that I’m lucky that the stairs only released 1 minor creature and that I even had means to escape. Mila then asked to see our keys since she has knowledge of most artifacts that don’t predate her and we showed them to her. She analyzed them and told Gunter first that she’s never seen his kind of key before and that it must be older than ancient, he then sadly put his key away. Mine however she recognized as a reforged unstable skeleton key that has been reshaped into a common silver house key to put it simply. She explained that my key opens all doors, but what’s on the other side is random. For example, if I use this key even on my room’s door my room will never be the one on the other side. Perfect for a quick escape, but you don’t know if wherever you go next may be worse and seems to be now bound to the complex. There’s a shrine at the top of her room that has a door we could use instead of using another toothpick, but we’d just be gambling again.
She also asked to look at the golden room key that was also on the key ring. She stared for a while and stated that it seemed like a normal house key, but there’s something else there that basic eyes can’t see. Gunter stared at it too for awhile and agreed that there’s like some kind of hum coming from it. They asked about its origins and when I told them that Winthorp gave them to me they asked what were his instructions word for word, do not abbreviate. “The gold key was for my room and my room alone and the silver key can open everything else.” That’s it. They both stared at me. Humans either read too far into things or not far enough. Barely ever do we get a complete understanding from verbal communication.They didn’t say a word; Mila turned and proceeded up the steps and Gunter slapped me across the head before following behind her.
I asked them constantly what happened while following them. We got to Mila’s run down wood shrine and they told me to use the gold key on the sliding door and instead of the silver. I told them it won’t work on any door but mine. I paused for a minute, I’m an idiot, I whispered out loud. I put the key in, unlocked the door and entered into my room. My mattress had cheap sheets and a bed frame now. My laptop sat next to my gifted book on a basic wooden desk and with a matching wooden chair rested beneath. I invited my 2 guests to enter with me. Mila shrunk her size to enter. Gunter wows in awe at my room when he entered next. Your room sucks, Gunter states loudly while Mila agrees. We finally were free and I was home, but this makes me wonder. My book and Gunter’s key are still a mystery and I doubt Winthorp will give us any answers. I’ve made 2 new friends and learned a few more lessons, but I know this is just the beginning. We still know almost nothing about our mysterious gifts, our god Winthorp and his playground, The Pandemonium Complex.

It’s been a couple months now that I’ve been trapped in this complex. The rules here are simple and few, but there’s a lot more lessons here than anything else. Countless unspoken knowledge of this place and its residents. One of the few lessons that I’ve learned is that a lot of things in here have almost a polar opposite or even an equal. Winthorp and the complex, Him and Her and the elevator and the stairs to list a few. I’ve noticed that my room moves from time to time. At first it was simple. Room #224, second floor, 12th door on the right when I first got here. Days later it was further down and a few days after that it was on the left side. Rooms near mine that matched the number sequence have changed from mixing and adding numbers to also adding letters and now sometimes display a text I can’t comprehend or something else altogether after the complex got comfortable with me.
I’ve also learned that the elevator seems to be friendly. It will always bring you to the floor where your room is despite it traveling around. The buttons in the elevator sometimes change from a standard elevator panel to displaying my unknown neighbors gibberish languages or even changing control panels entirely. The elevator’s interior is caged in a gold metal framework with a red and gold intertwining pattern carpet to match the hotel hallways that never change. However, no matter what button you press it will always bring you to the floor your room is on. I noticed this when I accidently pressed floor 20 instead of 22 when my room decided to ascend 20 floors up after a couple weeks in. Yet, when the doors opened to my mistaken early floor I saw my room number just a few doors down on the left. I thought I was mistaken until I entered and surely enough it was my room. Back when it housed a normal standard 1 queen mattress hotel room. Before I was punished for my destructive mental breakdown and given an empty trashed room.
The stairs however were not as kind as the elevator. I made the mistake of taking the stairs once to get in some form of cardio since my entrapment. I knew something was wrong when I noticed on what should have been floor 11 and 12, there weren't even doors. I went up a couple more floors and saw either random locked doors that didn’t match or more blank corners. I had enough and turned back to go back to floor 1 to leave. I was already somehow on the bottom floor just after running 2 flights back down. The ground floor’s door has also changed into a medieval time door with interlocking chains and a big padlock in the center holding them all together. I began cursing at myself. It was at this point that I remembered something Winthorp said when I first checked into this place.
I was given 2 keys and a garnet colored leather book when I first checked into this place. A dirty old gold key that was for my room and my room alone and a bright shiny new silver key that opens everything else, I was told. At first I thought this meant a closet, cabinets, side room or any other doo lock in my room, but after a few days I noticed there weren’t any other locks for this other key in my room. I always kept both keys linked on a key reel and on me just in case, but left the book in my room since it was filled with blank pages anyways. I took out the silver key and went to try it on the padlock, but when I looked up it was gone. I heard what sounded like a jingle of some kind echoing down from floors above. I looked up through the center gap in between the flights of stairs and saw that they seemingly go up infinitely. I stared up and could barely see what looked like someone looking down at me from about 20 floors up.
I suddenly felt my right foot drop a foot or less and looked down to notice there’s more floors beneath me now that also descend what looked infinitely. I heard the jingle again and turned back up and saw that whatever was looking down at me is now already a few floors lower. I got a better look at it from this distance. It looked like someone wearing a jester's cap. It leaned back out of sight and peaked out again to look back down like it descended 4 floors down in what felt like moments. Its face was loose and saggy like it was wearing it to pretend to be human. Its makeup is thrown on randomly and dripped down from the excess application. That jingling noise were bells that tipped the hat’s extensions. I descended the stairs as fast as I could. Desperate to find the next door. That’s when I heard its laughter. It was deep and loud like a talking child's toy with dead batteries. I can hear it getting closer and closer as I ran as fast as possible. At one point the stairs shifted to spiral in the reverse pattern to throw me off.
A few floors after that it shifted again to be ascending instead of descending and I fell face first onto the square cut stone steps. With my face and nose now bleeding I continued running up the steps on all fours when I saw a big red wooden door and had no time to hesitate. I grasped the handle and turned to see if it was locked and in that second I felt it was I already had the silver key heading for the key hole with my opposite hand. The stairwell jester was just a floor or two below me now and I could hear that deep echoing laugh and jingling rounding the stairwell behind me when I got the door open. I turned to slam the door in its face. Its limbs were as long as a man on stilts. It had 6 long limbs. Each with giant hands that had too many long fingers. It’s draped in an old clown's costume that seemed to be made for it. I can see now that it is in fact wearing a decrepit human’s face like a mask and its real face is too far in to be seen in the dim lights.
When I caught my breath to continue on I noticed that I’m not in what I was expecting to be a hallway in the complex, but what looked like a classic kid’s entertainment center. A warehouse sized building with brightly colored decor, furniture and a massive playground for kids that takes up about half of the building and is even connected to the ceiling to maximize the space. Long tables and chairs that can seat several large sized kids parties are covered in old moldy pizzas and cakes from being abandoned. The playground had long plastic windowed tubes and ball pits with trails of what looked like old dried up blood being dragged into them. My suspicions of this were confirmed when I saw the colored carpets had finger nail drag marks following the blood stains. There were so many drag marks. The plastic air filled balls in the pit began to shift.
Like something breaching the surface of water the balls parted towards the edge in my direction. Hard plastic slaps from something deep inside the giant tubes can also be heard in unison. I began running in the opposite direction towards a revolving door I can see in the distance that looked like an exit. Several Carnival-like music played loudly over each other behind me as I tripped over a pulled up rug. I turned back while getting up to see emerging from the ball pit, exiting the tubes and some already in full sprint behind me were old furry childrens animatronics of different animal and themed variety. Like a zoo from hell itself they were all pushing and running over each other to get to me. Each either playing its own music or shouting their own individual catchphrases and slogans. They’re covered in dried blood and missing patches of fur from most likely their victims desperately fighting back. I began running again towards the revolving door in the distance. If it wasn’t for their personal greed, one of them would’ve easily caught me due to their colossal sizes.
The revolving door’s windows were replaced with mirrors and I could see they weren’t far behind me in the reflection. I looked around quickly to find the lock. The horde was gaining on me fast. A giant dark brown animatronic beaver reached me first and desperately tried chomping hard at me. Its big head and arm got wedged in the door’s frame. I saw the keyhole in the center of the revolving door and turned my key inside of it, but the beaver’s big mechanical head and arm were stopping me from turning my exit. I tried kicking its face away aiming for the big cold dead plastic eyes and in my panic I missed on my 3rd kick and threw my leg into its maw stupidly. Its metal buck teeth took the opportunity and bit down hard on my mid shin. Immediately shattering my bone in two and pulled. My calf muscles tried to desperately keep my leg together. I was holding onto the handles on the revolving door tightly when the beaver was violently pulled back by a goliath sized green gorilla animatronic and took everything below my right knee with it. They began fighting like starving beasts.
Luckily I was leaning back on the revolving door and when the beaver was pulled away I fell back and through my exit. There was no more sound of carnival music or cheesy catchphrases with a murderous spin on them anymore. With no time to waste I was bleeding out fast and my body was still in shock so I couldn’t feel the pain, yet. I took off my shirt and tore it into long bands and tied my thigh as tight as I could. After the first tight makeshift bandage I did that 3 more times to try and stop the bleeding as best as I could. I heard a loud snap through the silence nearby and turned to my right. That’s when I noticed my surroundings. I seemed to be deep inside a heavy forested area. Sunlight is blocked by the tall foliage filled trees making it dark, but not unseeable. Like a well moonlit night.
Another snap was heard behind me and I saw something lean back behind a tree to hide from my view. I was looking around in panic when I noticed that the revolving door was also gone. I was surrounded by nothing but thick heavy forest and its occupants. Of course, I finally escape the complex and I die by being handicapped in a predator filled forest. I gave up and yelled for whatever was out there to come get me. There’s no way I can win or get out of this. My screams were a mix of impatience, sadness and anger. I just wanted this to finally be over. In the distance in front of me I can see a figure with glowing white eyes. Like that of a cat's eyes reflecting light. I turned up my wrists and hung my head low to just get this over with when suddenly I got asked if I’m okay.
I confusingly asked, what, and looked up. There in front of me was a small man wearing a long fur and leather trench coat and a cornucopia on his head. The man had tired sunken circles around his eyes and was pale from the lack of sunlight. I was stunned at the sighting of another person. Even if it was some whacko hermit. I rambled on like a madman about what I just went through in sobs. The stairwell, the clown man, the bloody playroom, me losing my leg and the complex I just escaped from. The man then stopped and corrected me. I was still in The Pandemonium Complex. This was a tenant and I was in his room. A part of me died again almost as soon as I saw hope. I told the thing to just kill me. I was in his room after all. I give up.
He reached inside of his coat and started pulling out whatever he was going to use to end me. I closed my eyes and held my head down again in defeat. He held something in front of my face and told me to eat it. It looked like an old dried up orange and purple striped pepper. Whatever this was, I didn't care anymore. Anything to just end me and my misery. I ate the strange fruit and my right thigh burned with intense pain. My right thigh got twice as thick and popped the bandages right off from the force. I held my prized pumpkin sized thigh in pain and something shot out. I screamed and cursed the thing that was torturing me only for me to suddenly realize that I can wiggle my right toes again. I looked down and saw a mucus covered leg that matched my old leg perfectly. My face was no longer cut and bruised.
I looked back up at the tenant and thanked him. He told me it was a ghurotabia (gor-o-ta-bae) fruit. He’s had it for a few years and was saving it for emergencies since it is extremely rare. It can heal and luckily humans are extremely simple in biology compared to his kind. The man introduced himself as Gunter. He was a Fae, an Akras to be exact, but was rejected by his kind. Humans believe Akras to be a single god fae, but they are actually a type of fae that control fertility, turnips, beans, peas, cabbage, flax, and hemp. Gunter however controls wood and summons fruit. I asked if that’s why he was casted out and he corrected and explained it was because he summoned a chunfrue (ch-oon-fru) fruit by accident and left it in a field. A fire fruit that bursts into flames when rotten and accidently burnt down half of the forest. He can summon all fruits, but can’t control which one he summons. It’s random, but luckily he has knowledge of all the fruits and wood he sees and knows which ones are safe to eat.
After testing my new leg and standing up I thanked him for his kindness again and asked where the exit was. He stopped me and told me nothing is free to the fae and he needs my help in return for healing my leg and eating his extremely rare fruit. Of course I should've known. Gunter has actually been trapped in his own room for many years. At first his room was an open field with a few trees, but the complex gave him a packed forest over the years and accidentally turned his room’s door into one of these trees. Creating a new door isn’t the problem. Gunter controls wood and can just make a new door, no matter how many times he tries the door is always locked. When he first arrived in the complex Winthorp gave him 2 things. A travel box full of assorted toothpicks with different types of wood and a key made of an unknown dead vine. I asked to see his key and it was the size of a grown man’s hand. It was woven together in dead vines and didn’t resemble a key in the slightest, but was told it was. Even Gunter said he doesn’t know what this vine is or anyone he’s ever asked when he was free. It never even worked on his room’s door so he always left it unlocked and barely anything in the complex is stupid enough to enter another’s room willingly.
Gunter also said leaving your door unlocked can stop it from moving around the complex wildly which is a big plus. I told him about my silver key and how I got here. I then asked him to turn one of these trees into a door so we could leave. He refused and said he can control wood, but will never harm a living thing. How would you feel if someone who controls flesh and blood turned you into a door? He explained. I apologized for any offense and asked what we should do. He pulled out the box of toothpicks and before my eyes took one out and kept pulling on it. Pulling and shaping it over and over like it was clay until before us was a red oak colored door with frame and vine patterns. I was in awe and told him that was amazing. He blushed a little at my compliment and unconvincingly told me to stop. I put my key inside and turned. We opened the door and stepped forward confidently towards our freedom. What we stepped into though was nothing but complete darkness.
The room we stepped inside of was almost fully black. Skies darker than anything I’ve ever seen before, like vantablack. A night sky with two yellowish moons and stars spaced out varying in shapes and shines, but nothing illuminated below them. We looked around but all we could see was the light coming from Gunter’s room behind us illuminating our backs. Then suddenly complete darkness. Just like the revolving door in Gunter’s room our exit was gone. As we turned around a blue rippling wave flowed away from our steps. The little light from Gunter’s room must’ve hidden this when we stepped in. The floor had about just a half an inch of this liquid that held some kind of bioluminescence algae. Every step made a small wave and lit the floor around us with a bright blue. Gunter giggled at this beauty and danced in the lit up water. He lightly tapped and laughed for just a moment of happiness before I put my hand on his shoulder and quietly told him to stop. We were not alone.
The waves kept flowing away from us into an endless void and in the distance were figures also standing in the shallow waters. The blue light wave continues and with it more and more differently shaped figures become visible by the light. Some tall, some short, some humanoids and some creatures I’ve never seen before. They all stood motionless looking up into the night’s sky. More and more became visible. Features were still unknown due to the darkness, but outlines of the things were displayed by the bioluminescence. When the second round of waves hit their feet they twitched, then on the third they moved slightly, the fourth caught their full attention. One seemed familiar to me and I hope I was wrong. We need to leave, I told Gunter. Make another door, now! The waves of Gunter’s dance from earlier displayed a familiar figure in the distance. A tall white skin reflected the light more than the rest. An apex predator, with rotten features, few thinning long hairs and big clouded eyes with no eyelids. That’s when I looked up and noticed.
Those moons are cracked with red and the few stars begin moving in unison towards each other into place under the moons. Waves of the bioluminescent water flowed toward us. The creatures in the distance began their approach. The familiar figure is exactly what I thought it was, a wendigo and a familiar one at that. I screamed at Gunter to hurry and make another door. He was already pulling and forming one as we spoke. I looked up into the sky and the stars formed their place while the moons began to turn towards each other. Looking closer I noticed the stars in the sky were actually teeth. All from a different thing. The moons had big spots of black that were turning completely around. Blacker than anything I’ve seen before, but I have seen this before. The teeth formed into a familiar smile that almost went on forever and The sky looked down at us. We were inside her room. We were inside of Her.
Her victims were slow at first and started getting faster towards our direction till they were charging at us. The floor was bright with blue light as her army stampede towards her trespassers. Gunter yells, done! I turned towards our exit and put my key in and turned. We jumped through not knowing where we were going, but anywhere is better than here. Gunter barely slammed the door behind us in time.
We were completely submerged in deep fresh water. We held our breaths and the water was so clear that we were able to look around easily. Once again, no door in sight, but we were somehow in what looked like a deep ocean. I know better than to think that though. Gunter swims towards me and gets close. He pulls out another toothpick and starts his craft again. This time he makes a small boat and we both hold on as we begin to rise. We both look down and see something massive and long below in the depths. Deep enough to not be fully illuminated by the light, but massive enough to look like it was a giant sea creature just a few feet away. We breach the surface and both of us gasp for air. We turned the boat over and got on. Gotta love cedar, Gunter jests. Gunter rubs his bald head and then suddenly starts looking around the boat desperately for something. He reaches over and from the waterside yells, Ah ha!, holding up his cornucopia and plops it back on his bald pale head with a big satisfied smile. We look around at this seemingly endless ocean. How big are these damn rooms?! I yell. Turns out some of these rooms can be on a planetary scale for some of its tenants, Gunter explains.
I asked Gunter if he knows where we are and he says he thinks he knows this tenant. A Kraken named, he then made a series of clicks and screeches. Apparently a Kraken is a massive squid octopus hybrid that has the body of an octopus, but the head of a squid giving them 16-18 limbs in total. It can be the size of an island if it wanted to or as small as the wolfi octopus. They can fly as well as they can swim, but prefer the cold dark depths. They can communicate telepathically, but if it does while it’s too big it can scramble a basic brain. The one he knows is nice by nature and could maybe help us get home. The artificial ocean we were floating on was as calm as a glass of water and the only waves emanated were from our boat. Gunter looked over the boat and into the depths while I scanned the surface. I saw a human shaped figure that was far out, but close enough to make out some features if I squint. Is that…? I whisper. This caught Gunter’s attention. That’s Winthorp! Unmistakable, straw boat hat and all. I yell out to him again and again while waving. He must be here to take us back to the complex. Why else would he be here? I thought.
It was Gunter this time to put his hand on my shoulder and quietly tell me to stop. He was wrong. This wasn’t The Kraken’s room like Gunter originally thought. Not Winthorp started to get closer and fast, but something big was behind him. Something massive that was breaching the ocean sized water was right behind the fake bellhop. Gunter began frantically patting his pockets saying no, no, no over and over again. I watched as the titan got closer and became more visible as it surfaced. A long stem that matched the blue of the sky and ocean was connected to the doppelganger god that bent far and back into the water. I yelled at Gunter to make another door, but he yelled saying he lost his picks. I looked back and breaching the water looked like a colossus angler fish with an eel body that was impossibly long. Massive long sharp translucent teeth the size of steel beams filled its mouth. Its head emerged with many lures that each resemble someone I loved in the past. What the hell is that?! I screamed.
A Leviathan! Gunter answers. I looked down into the water below us and saw Gunter’s picks floating around and away from the boat. I moved as quickly as I could, fishing them out and holding one behind me while using my other hand to fish out as many others as I could. Gunter grabs the one I held behind me and works his magic while I desperately grab any within reach. Waves from the behemoth tenant reached the boat and started pulling the picks away from me. I leaned out to grab more fast while Gunter leaned back on his side to balance the boat. Gunter used his two feet to hold onto my new right foot’s ankle so I didn't fall in, all while forming our escape. I looked up and couldn’t see anything beyond the giant maw of the beast in the water. Its huge ribbed throat had more rows of teeth going in like a funnel of death, like a megamouth shark’s. The boat shifted hard and I looked back to see that Gunter finished. He threw the door into the water and already jumped onto it. I braced myself and jumped, but didn’t take the waves into account and fell deep into the tenant’s watery domain.
I looked back again like a fool only to see we’re pretty much already in the giant's mouth. I looked down into the depths below and saw the teeth rising fast. Suddenly I’m pulled up with ease out of the water and onto the door by Gunter. He slaps me hard and yells, hurry! I pull out my key and shove it into the door’s lock. I turn the lock and knob simultaneously and suddenly we fall through hard. As we fall in gravity shifts towards the new floor and I land hard on my face while Gunter luckily lands hard on his back. We both groan in pain on a grassy bed and begin to laugh at our great escape. Gunter asks how many picks did I save and I hand him the small handful. Not much, I regretfully say. We analyze our new surroundings.
We were just on the side of a stone cut pathway just next to a long staircase. Surrounding us were bright pink and white cherry blossom trees with red spider lilies on the floor. On one side the pathway extends to a blank stone wall. The other goes up the staircase to a red torii. Gunter was in awe when I jokingly asked if we fell into an anime. Of course he didn’t understand the joke. What a waste. I asked if he knew where we were this time. Gunter had no idea. Do you hear that? Gunter asked quietly. I listened and at first I heard nothing, but then it slowly became louder for me to be able to hear. It sounded like a fast drum roll, but with more than one drummer. It became louder and louder. It was coming from up the steps. We looked up towards the torii.
A gigantic semi truck sized noh mask emerged from the top and looked down at us. We were frozen in fear knowing that as fast as that thing emerged there was no way we could run or make another door in time before it caught us. Gunter broke the silence first after a minute with a light, hello and wave. The noh mask went around the torii in an instant and down the 3 story tall flight of stairs in a matter of seconds. We now see what was making that sound from earlier. This thing's body was long and with countless legs of an insect. Its body was a gigantic centipede and moved with the ease of a natural born predator. It eclipsed us in its shadow and stared us down in silence for a minute. It asked in a loud female whisper. Why are you here? I answered and explained it was by accident and we didn’t mean to intrude. Gunter apologized too and told her we were lost and asked if she’d show us the way out.
The tenant looked towards the blank stone wall on the path behind us and explained that she was sealed inside her room by another rival tenant during their petty squabble years ago. Turns out you can’t break rule 5 if you just made something disappear. Can’t damage what’s no there. She can’t leave even if she wanted to and neither shall we. She then asked if we brought tribute. I can see the mandibles inside the mask's mouth and are drooling with hunger. The bulging veins from the giant porcelain mask connect to the insect's exoskeleton pulsate with anticipation. She’s getting impatient for us to say we don’t have an offering.
She is an Omukade and demands something in return for allowing us to breathe in their presence or our souls will be forfeit. Gunter started patting down his person and pulled out a red pear shaped fruit with white swirls from the left inside of his coat. He said no and tossed it back. Reached into the other side and pulled out a black watermelon with orange spots and set it down gently. Definitely not, he states with a yeesh facial expression. The Omukade and I watched him patiently do this a couple times with so many different kinds of fruit that I’ve never seen before. One looked like it was even made of water and another exploded into small pits like a grenade when it hit the ground far behind us. He began pulling from the cornucopia and on the 19th try pulled out a bundle of banana looking fruit that were brown and shriveled like they were old and rotten. Each had 3 red spots that formed into different facial expressions. Perfect, said Gunter with satisfaction.
The Omukade’s eyes became wide and she lunged towards Gunter. Gunter barley pulled back in time and the noh mask’s mouth cracked and split wide open revealing her massive fanged mouth as she ate the bundle of fruit in one bite. A loud audible gulp was heard from her and her neck got wide. The mass inside her traveled downwards inside her deeper and her exoskeleton popped when the mass passed. It looked like a snake eating a big round meal. She let out a sigh and said that it was satisfactory. I asked Gunter what that was and he said I’m better off not knowing. The now full Omukade seemed a lot more patient and asked how we got here since entering or leaving is impossible. We introduced ourselves and asked for her name. She explained Omukade’s don’t have names and if we wish to give her one we may. The way she looked when she ate the fruit reminded me of one of my favorite fighters from a 2-D fighting game I used to play. I named her Mila. Hard to tell, but I think she liked the name.
I let Gunter do the talking and he explained everything from me finding him to now in detail. I tagged in after and explained everything before that. Mila explained that I’m lucky that the stairs only released 1 minor creature and that I even had means to escape. Mila then asked to see our keys since she has knowledge of most artifacts that don’t predate her and we showed them to her. She analyzed them and told Gunter first that she’s never seen his kind of key before and that it must be older than ancient, he then sadly put his key away. Mine however she recognized as a reforged unstable skeleton key that has been reshaped into a common silver house key to put it simply. She explained that my key opens all doors, but what’s on the other side is random. For example, if I use this key even on my room’s door my room will never be the one on the other side. Perfect for a quick escape, but you don’t know if wherever you go next may be worse and seems to be now bound to the complex. There’s a shrine at the top of her room that has a door we could use instead of using another toothpick, but we’d just be gambling again.
She also asked to look at the golden room key that was also on the key ring. She stared for a while and stated that it seemed like a normal house key, but there’s something else there that basic eyes can’t see. Gunter stared at it too for awhile and agreed that there’s like some kind of hum coming from it. They asked about its origins and when I told them that Winthorp gave them to me they asked what were his instructions word for word, do not abbreviate. “The gold key was for my room and my room alone and the silver key can open everything else.” That’s it. They both stared at me. Humans either read too far into things or not far enough. Barely ever do we get a complete understanding from verbal communication.They didn’t say a word; Mila turned and proceeded up the steps and Gunter slapped me across the head before following behind her.
I asked them constantly what happened while following them. We got to Mila’s run down wood shrine and they told me to use the gold key on the sliding door and instead of the silver. I told them it won’t work on any door but mine. I paused for a minute, I’m an idiot, I whispered out loud. I put the key in, unlocked the door and entered into my room. My mattress had cheap sheets and a bed frame now. My laptop sat next to my gifted book on a basic wooden desk and with a matching wooden chair rested beneath. I invited my 2 guests to enter with me. Mila shrunk her size to enter. Gunter wows in awe at my room when he entered next. Your room sucks, Gunter states loudly while Mila agrees. We finally were free and I was home, but this makes me wonder. My book and Gunter’s key are still a mystery and I doubt Winthorp will give us any answers. I’ve made 2 new friends and learned a few more lessons, but I know this is just the beginning. We still know almost nothing about our mysterious gifts, our god Winthorp and his playground, The Pandemonium Complex.

I can’t believe I finally got the guts to post this to social media.
After three years, I’m finally ready to tell our story.
I know I shouldn't. This is a huge risk, and I’m putting both myself and my friends in danger of being caught by some pretty bad people who are currently hunting us down.
My life as I knew it ended in 2020. (I would talk about how ironic it was that it had to be 2020, but I don’t have time to ramble). I was volunteering as a lab assistant for a college professor I was close to. After graduating at the top of my class, I had been offered the opportunity to assist him overseas as a voluntary research assistant. I should have been working in his usual lab at the college, but due to certain ethical issues he didn’t want to deal with on campus, he decided to fly his most promising students to his primary lab on a tiny Indonesian island. He took on six of us.
The top of his class, as well as students who seemed far too interested in what he was really working on. Normally, college professor’s would discourage curiosity when it came to their private lives and work, but he welcomed it, allowing certain students glimpses into the research he was working on under his façade. I can’t say I wasn’t curious about the paperwork I happened to glimpse, paperwork covered in special plastic seals brandishing TOP SECRET in bold lettering which was definitely intriguing.
Sure, I wanted to know what was so special about his research that it warranted that kind of seal, but it’s not like I broke into his lab unlike my colleagues. (You would think biology students would be smart, but those idiots didn’t stand a chance with the amount of security our college had).
I thought that would be a sure fire suspension, and it almost was until the professor himself had pardoned them before inviting the group alongside me to work with him on this secret project. I know I sound crazy for taking a voluntary job, but the job was on a tiny island just off of the coast of Indonesia—which meant I was working in paradise. It was like being on a permanent vacation. We had the beach at our disposal, and the local resort was just a walk away. After sweating in the lab on weekdays, we headed to the private pool down the road.
Professor Quincy was a well-known local, so he had managed to get us free entry. I guess you could say I was living the dream. Three years prior, I was in my freshman year of college and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. Fast forward two years, and I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I was working in literal paradise.
It didn’t last long, of course. I had to wake up from my dream at some point, right? And I did.
March 2020.
I can’t remember which date it was. I just remember that it was right at the start of the pandemic, and I was supposed to be going home to see family I hadn’t seen in almost six months. Professor Quincy had been insistent we live and work with him for a certain amount of time, and then he would grant us permission to return home to see our family.
I couldn’t exactly argue against it. Like I said, and I will continue to elaborate through this post, our professor’s work was pretty private. Cell phones were not allowed, and internet access was limited. If I needed to phone home, I had to sign seven different forms to promise I wouldn’t leak any information on his work, and to declare that if I happened to do so I would be fired immediately and sent back to the US.
If that wasn’t enough, my parents would also be held accountable.
So, yeah. Obviously, I wasn’t going to start spilling our professor’s secrets.
It’s not like we were completely cut off. There was a phone in Professor Quincy’s office, as well as the reception at the dorms.
We were allowed three allocated phone calls a week. After a certain world event had enfolded, however, we were allowed to call our parents pretty much any time we wanted, as long as we signed those release forms. After a full day of none-stop paranoia and too much time skimming news articles on my laptop, I was itching to talk to mom. I just didn’t know how to tell her that I wouldn’t be seeing her in… I had no idea. The US borders were shutting, and I was at a loss what to do. If I am to be honest with you, I was terrified. This kind of thing only happened in movies, and there I was trying to figure out a way to tell my mom I wouldn’t be coming home—and I had no idea if I would ever be coming home again. The dorms were state of the art; a huge glass building with three floors. There was a gym, a swimming pool, and a girl’s and boy’s dorm on the top levels.
There were only six of us, so it was pretty fucking amazing. Sometimes in the summer when it was baking hot, like the kind of heat the human body can’t deal with, they opened the roof, and we would all lie in the reception area, drunk on cocktails from the resort.
But do you know what wasn’t state of the art?
The air-con.
I had grown accustomed to the stupid thing breaking every three days. Normally, I didn’t really care. I’d get a cold shower or stick my head in the freezer. That day, though, I had just been informed via email I wouldn’t be returning home for the foreseeable future.
The thing was, I was so used to knowing things in advance. I knew when work was cancelled, or when I was getting sick. Though with this, I had no idea what the outcome would be. Nobody did. The planet was holding a collective breath. I couldn’t even ask for a possible date, because no one knew how this huge, insane, life-changing thing would play out.
Well, it could play out either one way or the other. And I had seen the movies. I knew the basis, or at least the fictional re-enactment.
So, sweating through baking heat, I sat cross legged on prickly carpet, squeezing the phone in my palmy hands. I could glimpse Kaian through the window, slumped on a sun-lounger with his head tipped back. He was frowning at an odd looking bird which was perched on the upper deck. It was early evening, and the sun was starting to set. God, I loved watching the sunset. It was like the clouds had turned into cotton candy, streaks of burning red and pink enveloping crystal blue and dimming the sky, making it easier to get a good luck at the sun.
Kaian’s light brown hair exploded into hues of vivid red, and I was momentarily taken-aback by the sight—like the sky had set his hair on fire. Ever since meeting him in my freshman year, I’d had a crush on Kaian. Being half-Thai with striking features and a Hollywood smile, my ass was already on the floor.
However, after living with him for several months, and studying alongside him for years, I had come to realise he was more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Not exactly a dick, but not the nicest either. Kaian was deaf and had become the sort of “jock” of our little research group. He had been the one to stage the break-in attempt into Professor Quincy’s lab. I always wondered if they really had discovered something—and blackmailed Quincy into letting them in on the research.
I wouldn’t put it past my classmates. They were as nutty as our professor. I was half-wishing mom didn’t answer. Then I would have no choice but to tell her through email, which was better.
Still though, I wanted to hear her voice, even if it was going to send me over the edge. When my mom’s voice crackled through the phone, I panicked and said the first thing which came to mind. “I’m... I’m staying here for a little longer.” I said. “I was told this morning I can’t come home.”
Mom was silent for a moment before she sighed. “Yeah.” I was surprised when she chuckled. “I figured that, sweetie.”
“You’re not mad?” I whispered.
She didn’t reply for a moment before sighing. “Why would I be mad? It’s not like you can help it.”
Squeezing the phone tighter, I turned away so Kaian couldn’t see me sobbing like an idiot. “It’s not for long,” I said, or rather lied. I wasn’t just trying to reassure my mother, I was desperate to make myself feel better too. “I think it’ll be late April, or maybe May. I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, I’m excited to see you.”
Nodding, I swallowed a wracking sob. “I’m excited to see you too, mom.”
“Are you eating well?”
“Uh, yeah. The food here is great.”
“How is work?”
She was avoiding elaborating on a conversation neither of us wanted to have, and I didn’t blame her.
“It’s fine,” I said, “We’ve been working in some pretty, uh… intense heat. But I’m fine. I just cool off in the sea.”
“That’s good.” I could sense my mother’s smile, and it made me feel ten times worse.
“How… how are things over there?”
Mom hummed. “There’s no toilet paper,” she laughed, “But we’re all fine. Your little brother is baking cookies. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No.” I said, far too fast. “I mean… I don’t have much time, and I wanted to talk to you.” I swallowed. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course, honey.” Mom’s voice felt like warm water coming over me, relieving my stiff muscles. “Oh! Your father just finished cleaning your room out the other day! You would not believe how much stuff we had to take to a yard sale. Do you remember that dollhouse you had?”
“Uhh—”
She cut me off. “Well, I’ve given it to Mrs Jason’s daughter. Do you remember Lucy?"
“Lucy.” I said, my mind elsewhere. “She was that kid… umm…”
“You held her at your auntie Christine’s birthday party, do you remember? She’s always asking about you. She thinks you’re a marine biologist.”
“Oh.” I said helplessly. Sensing movement, I twisted around to find Kaian heading up the stairs. Probably to his room.
Usually, Monday nights were reserved for the beach. After lights out, we headed down to the coves which were a three minute walk from the dorms to paddle in bioluminescent plankton illuminating the stuffy night.
It was like dipping your feet in liquid stars. From the look on my colleague’s face however, a sort of not-entirely-there frown, I doubted anyone was in the mood for our usual trip to the beach. Offering the boy a wave, I pulled my knees to my chest. I didn’t realise I’d left an awkward pause until mom cleared her throat loudly, snapping me out of my trance.
“Wren, did you hear what I just said?”
“Wren.”
Mom only had to say my name to send my heart into my throat. “Honey, are you crying?”
I had to heave in a breath. “No.”
“You’re watching the news, aren’t you?”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Mom paused. “Wren, I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now, but I’m just a phone-call away.”
I nodded, my eyes burning. “I love you, mom.”
“I love you too, baby.” Mom’s voice hitched, and she was splintering. I could tell by her sharp breaths. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
That was the last time I ever spoke to my mother.
The sky was dark when I pulled open the door to my shared room and face-planted into my bed. Long after putting the phone down, I sat in the reception area and cried like an idiot. Then I went outside to attempt to read a book on a sun lounger, but with the lack of sun, and the fact that the outdoor light was broken, I gave up and retreated upstairs.
Riss, my roommate, was typing loudly on her laptop when I bothered lifting my head from my snot-drenched pillow.
She had been taking the news surprisingly well, despite her being the one in our group who was over-emotional. Riss was a natural redhead but had dyed her hair an odd pastel pink colour which was starting to come out. I could see her natural vivid red roots springing from her half-assed ponytail. “How’s your mom?”
Riss didn’t look up from her laptop screen, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. I glimpsed the word doc she had been working on earlier in the lab. We were supposed to type up all the findings from the days experiments earlier, and as usual Riss was the last to submit hers. She was the lazy daydreamer out of our group, often getting chastised for zoning out during lectures and falling asleep. Riss was smart though. Seriously smart. When she felt like it.
“Hello?” Riss slammed the space-bar. “How was the talk with your mom?”
“It was fine.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Riss hummed. “Come on, I know when you’re upset—fuck.” She hissed through her teeth, going to town on the backspace key. “Stupid fucking autocorrect.”
I didn’t reply for a moment, suffocating myself in my pillow. The air-con was broken again, so I was left to suffer, stewing in the same clothes I had been wearing all day. I needed a cold shower and something from the downstairs kitchen, but I couldn’t be bothered moving. Besides, Riss’s typing was comforting, lulling me into almost-slumber.
After a while of just basking in the sound of her typing, my roommate sighed loudly. I sensed her jump up from her bed and move to her desk. My roommate had a routine I was used to. After typing up her usually late reports, she jumped up, did some stretches, downed the bottle of water on her desk, and then jumped up and down with too much energy, awaiting the print out. Just as I thought, I cringed at the sound of our printer booting up. I hated the noise. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “It’s the end of the world as we know it.” Riss murmured with another loud, exaggerated sigh. “And we’re stuck in paradise.”
Refusing to lift my head from my pillow despite the heat, I scoffed into the material. “Stop saying that.”
“Stop saying what?”
“That it’s the end of the world.”
“I mean, it is. Certain events aside, have you seen the state of the ozone layer? Dude, we’re on a one way ticket to extinction.”
I really didn’t need Riss’s “comforting talks” right then. Her idea of reassuring was reminding me how many species were dying out.
“Uh-huh.” I said, cutting into her slightly manic polar bear rant. “Can we talk about something else.”
“But it’s true.” Riss chuckled. “The world is falling apart, and here we are trying to do the impossible.” She paused. “In one of the most beautiful places on the planet.” When I lifted my head to frown at her, my roommate was sprawled out on her bed, her ten page report awkwardly balanced on her chest. Riss’s eyes were somewhere else, delving into oblivion.
I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. She was smiling, but her eyes were sad. It had taken me a while, but eventually, after weeks and then months had gone by, I had gotten used to Professor Quincy’s research. It was hard to take in at first. Like, you have this huge secret and you can’t tell anyone—if you do you’re risking your own career. I imagined it as a neutron star collision going off in my head, an explosion of colours nobody else could see but us.
Locked away on this tiny island, we were the only ones who knew Quincy’s goal. There was one rule in the lab.
No emotions. We weren’t allowed to have emotions once stepping through the door. We had to stop being human for the sake of achieving successes and moving onto a different age. A better age. That’s what Quincy said, anyway. I wondered if Riss was thinking about the work we did earlier. She had broken down three times since starting, though she was getting better. Riss didn’t speak much after an awkward conversation we had about the end of the world, which bled into a conversation about The Walking Dead.
It fizzled out after I reminded her I was yet to finish it after dumping it halfway through season four. There’s not much to do in the dorm. I had my laptop and several dozen movies downloaded onto it, but I wasn’t in the mood to delve into fiction. I was falling asleep when our door flew open, and Riss almost catapulted her laptop across the room. My gaze flicked to the doorway, where Kaian stood, a scowl carved into his lips. It wasn’t unusual that my colleague was scowling or standing in our doorway. He was always the first one up on a morning, quick to wake everyone else up despite the sun not being up yet.
“Kaian?” Riss signed, her eyes glued to our damp-looking colleague. “What the hell?”
Looking at him, I could tell that Kaian wasn’t there willingly. His hair was a soaking mess plastered to his forehead, a plaid shirt clumsily buttoned over ratty shorts. He looked like he’d just gotten out of the shower. No, he didn’t just look like it.
I was sure Kaian had just gotten out of the shower. When he held up one hand, and started to furiously sign, the jingling noise brought my attention to the cuff attached to his left wrist. “Jem.” He signed his roommate’s name, and I resisted the urge to collapse back into bed. Nothing was good when Jem was involved. I loved my colleague, but the amount of stupid shit he had done since starting work on the island, he could make his own sitcom.
Riss groaned, shutting her laptop. She quickly signed, “What has he done now?”
Kaian’s expression twisted with fury. “What HASN’T he done?” He held up his wrist, signing manically. “He cuffed me to my bed!”
“Kinky.” I shot him a smile, and seeing his expression, I quickly regretted my words when his gaze flashed to a stuffed animal on the floor.
I had no doubt he wouldn’t aim for my face.
“What? Why did he cuff you your bed?” Riss was already pulling on her jacket. I jumped up too, slipping into my sandals.
“Rabbits.” Was all Kaian had to sign with wide eyes, before we were following him back down the dorm hallway, and down the stairs. I was practically falling over myself to keep up. Kaian ran in front, Riss stumbling beside him. If Jem was in the lab after hours, it wasn’t good. Ever since we made the switch from rats to rabbits, Jem had been very vocal that he was against it. But like Quincy said, we had to give up our humanity in that room. Our morals. Anything we thought, our opinions and emotions. We had to suppress it all.
Because once we started to give into them, our professor had proclaimed—that was when cracks would start to form. According to him, the first step in turning your back on science was giving into your humanity. I wasn’t quite there yet. It’s not like I didn’t have intrusive thoughts about saving the poor things, but Quincy had planted a very specific thought in our heads. If we rebelled, if we leaked information and went against him—our families were at risk of getting involved despite having nothing to do with it.
Jem had already submitted multiple complaints, and I didn’t blame him. But it’s not like we could all band together to stop Quincy’s experiments. Like I said, we were walking on eggshells around him and he was already a fairly paranoid man. And morals and humanity aside, his work was pretty fucking incredible. Disgusting and inhumane? Yes, of course. But truly incredible. The lab was a five minute walk from the dorms. Riss was out of breath as we ran across the shore, and I glimpsed a full moon light up the darkening sky, illuminating oblivion in milky white light. “What I don’t understand,” she panted, “Is why cuff you to your bed?”
She turned to Kaian, who signed, “He knew I was going to tell someone. When I got out of the shower, he grabbed me and cuffed me to the frame.” The boy scowled. “I’m going to kill him.” By the time the three of us were throwing ourselves through the doors of the lab, pressing our identity badges over the mechanical lock, I was sweating. Bad. I think all three of us wanted to collectively murder our colleague. The lab was usually out of bounds after work hours, but sometimes Professor Quincy made exceptions if we needed to finish reports or collect data.
Riss was stabbing in the eight digit code to get into Quincy’s office, and I was struggling to catch my breath, keeled over with my hands on my knees. The building was usually lit up, even at night. I had spent countless after work hours typing up research reports and listening to music, comforted by the warm glow from the lights overhead. But that wasn’t the case on that particular night. A coil of dread began to unravel in my gut as we bound down the main hallway which was swamped in darkness. Riss made a joke about failed experiments lurking around us, and I elbowed her sharply in the gut.
Thankfully, Quincy’s main lab was lit up. When the door swung open with a loud beep, the three of us bound straight into a startled looking Jem—whose expression almost matched the ones of the dozen baby rabbits cradled to his chest. If Kaian resembled a Hollywood star, then this guy reminded me more of a punk kid—maybe a theatre kid too. Jem was the wildcard in our group. He wasn’t the smartest, and he struggled sometimes. But Quincy had admired the boy’s curiosity in his research. Jem’s hair was always a mess of dishevelled curls, and his outfit choices were… odd. For example, Jem had opted for wearing pajamas to his rabbit heist.It was almost like he had an epiphany in his sleep and hurricane thoughts had led him right to the lab.
For a moment, I was unsure whether to laugh or start yelling at him. Jem peeked at us under his hood, his eyes almost cartoonishly wide. Like he was a kid being caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. The subjects he was holding seemed to cling onto him, and I had a moment—just a moment—where I cracked slightly. Especially when the largest one’s tiny eyes found mine.
It was frightened, its claws digging into his sleeve. “I can explain.” Jem finally spluttered, pressing the rabbits closer to his chest. “This is animal abuse.” He said in a hiss. “You’re not really going to stand there and watch that bastard hurt these little guys, are you?” I was sure Jem was convinced he could get away with it by showing us the power of cuteness.
I can’t say it wasn’t working. God, the one in the middle with large floppy ears and a brown smudge on its fur was really looking at me.
Like it was staring into my soul.
Next to me, Kaian’s expression was easing a little. He leaned against the door with his arms folded.
“They’re kind of cute.” He signed, smiling for the first time since earlier that morning when Riss spilled orange juice all over herself.
“See?” Jem’s smile was soft, and he gestured to them. “Look at them! They’re adorable. I’m not going to let him hurt them.”
Riss, however, seemed unfazed. She took a step towards him, her eyes darkening. “Are you fucking insane?” she gritted out. “So, what, you want to let Quincy’s test subjects go?”
Jem’s lip curled. “He’s got rats. I’m sure he’ll be fine.” He backed away, clutching the rabbits tighter to his chest. “You’ve seen what he’s done to them,” he whispered—and his gaze flicked to me, and then Kaian. “What WE have done to them. It’s not fair. They’re living creatures, and we’re… we’re hurting them.”
Fuck.
This was what I was afraid of. Ever since the six of us started on the island, and Quincy’s lecture on suppressing our humanity for the sake of science, I knew one of us was going to break when we saw what exactly he was doing to his subjects.
I’m not going to go into detail, because again, I am already putting myself at risk by writing this. But I will say that Quincy’s experiments weren’t.. normal. I’ve already told you they were inhumane and immoral.
But it didn’t end there. You see, our professor was sure—positive that he could ignite a certain part of the human brain with simple stimulation, a hell of a lot of drugs, and psychological tactics. He believed he could find that missing part that is missing in all of us which stops us from being the apex predator.
Abilities way beyond our comprehension.
Professor Quincy had been working his whole life to create a serum which would hack into the mind, and switch on that part of us we cannot find on our own. Rats didn’t give him the right results, so we moved onto rabbits.
So far, I had witnessed a rabbit which could teleport from one cage to the other, after several surgeries, serum injections directly into its brain.
Impossible.
I thought it was impossible, and yet somehow I was watching it with my own eyes. A living thing disappearing in one place and reappearing in its cage. Through research, we had come to realise the cage was the rabbit’s safe place. Whatever ability it had (and there were many), it would always return to its cage, no matter where we placed them. The serum wasn’t perfect, however. I had witnessed a rabbit interfere with the electronics in the lab, playing with the lights, before exploding into large fleshy chunks painting the metal prongs of its cage a startling gory red.
The rabbit’s in Jem’s arms were our only proof that the serum worked. They were our last surviving four. Subjects 2, 6, 10, and 15. I have to admit, subject 15 freaked me out. Fifteen’s ability was not yet known, but Kaian was sure that it was developing heightened intelligence. I didn’t know much about Fifteen, but from what I did know, there was no fucking way we could let Jem let the little guy run free.
Knowing what they were capable of, and what we could possibly lose if my colleague got his own way, snapped me out of my, “Aww they’re so cute,” trance. I stepped forward, cringing when I glimpsed remnants of the metal headset which had been drilled into Six’s skull.
“Give them here.” I said, and when Jem started to shake his head, I snapped. “Do you want to get fired?”
He wasn’t letting up. “They’re living things, Wren!”
I nodded, trying to keep my cool. “They are.” I said. “But they’re also valuable subjects—one of which can fucking teleport. I wouldn’t exactly say they’re normal rabbits.” I held my breath. “Look.” I gave up acting like I knew what the fuck I was talking about. “I don’t like it either, okay? It’s disgusting and immoral, and findings and psychokinetic abilities aside, I would be totally on your side if we didn’t have results.”
“But we do have results.” Kaian signed. He seemed to have snapped out of it too. “Give them back, Jem. They’re research subjects.”
“They’re rabbits! Have you guys lost your minds?”
“Yes.” Kaian signed. “It’s part of the job description, asshole.”
“You have a dog!” Jem shot back in a manic hiss. His expression was feral. I had never seen that kind of desperation, almost unbridled lucidity let loose. “It’s no different to your dog, right? Would you seriously put him through this? Would you stick a needle inside his skull?”
Kaian didn’t reply, his jaw clenching.
“No. You wouldn’t. So, why these guys, huh? Why are you willing to be cruel for the sake of science for these guys, but you wouldn’t fucking dream of doing this to your pets?” Jem took another shaky step back, so I figured hitting him with the hard truth would snap him out of it.
“It’s not the same,” Kaian seemed to be struggling, his hands trembling as he signed. “It’s… it’s different—”
“What’s different?” Jem demanded. “There’s no difference! If it were a rat I would feel the same way! We’re hurting living animals.”
“Your dad,” I said quickly, “Do you want to drag him into this?”
“Again.” Kaian started to sign, Riss elbowing him to shut up. It was no secret Jem and his father had been under fire back home after discovering a document he shouldn’t have. All he did was read it. According to the boy himself, he had the Men In Black trying to crash through his door at 4am. Jem was lucky Professor Quincy decided to use his curiosity as a tool instead of sending his family to jail.
Jem blinked, like he was waking from a trance. “No.” He said, quickly, his resolve crumbling. My colleague allowed Kaian and Riss to take the subjects and put them back in their cages. I expected him to fight back, but the guy seemed weirdly fine with us taking the rabbits back, stumbling away from them like they were contagious.
With all subjects accounted for, we headed back to the dorms and ate dinner—and I remember running my hands through Jem’s hair, a little bit drunk on cocktails, and promising him that once Professor Quincy was finished with his research, he would let the rabbits go. I wasn’t completely sure of this myself, and it was just a friendly lie to make him feel better, considering he’d been acting weird all night. I had been lazily sipping water to sober myself up when the thought hit me.
It didn’t really make an impact, more of a passing thought. Did subject Fifteen have any influence over Jem’s mind?
Fifteen had already proved it could type a single sentence on a keyboard and tap on a tablet screen to identify certain fruits.
Was it possible that it had developed the ability to influence the brain? I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to that. Anyway, we all headed to bed, and I made Jem promise he wouldn’t do something like that again. I still remember the way he’d looked at me, slightly confused, mouth open, like he had no idea what I was talking about. I figured he was just tipsy, and after frowning at me for way longer than necessary, Jem saluted me with a “Yeah, course I promise.”
Yeah, that promise lasted maybe six fucking hours.
I was spooning dry cereal in my mouth the next morning, trying to ignore the news bulletin on the TV, when we got the first call. Jem had broken into the lab two hours ago, and let the subjects run free. By the time I’d thrown myself into the lab, barely dressed, the others were already getting screamed at—and I mean SCREAMED at by Quincy. I glimpsed my colleagues through the glass window as I threw myself into a run towards the lab. It looked like they had been dragged out of bed.
Riss was in her robe, Kaian and Jem half dressed. The three were sitting in the communal area looking like they wanted to sink into the earth, while Quincy’s voice reverberated back down the hallway.
When I stepped through automatic doors, our professor turned to me, his expression thunderous. “Wren!” He passive aggressively gestured to the others. “Why don’t you take a seat, hm?” His British accent was easy to tolerate usually, but that morning he sounded like a fucking Bond villain. I nodded and practically dived next to Riss, who looked like she was ten seconds from wrapping her hands around Jem’s neck. Kaian was glaring at his lap, ignoring the professor’s ASL, and Jem looked—well, he looked kind of confused.
“You’re late.” Quincy turned his piercing gaze to me.
“I’m five minutes early, Professor Quincy.” I said, glancing at the clock to make sure I was right.
The man didn’t respond, turning back to Jem. “As I was saying, I was just letting your colleague know that he has thrown quite a wrench in our plans. But no matter, we can fix this.” He cleared his throat. “Mr Saeueng.” Professor Quincy nodded to Kaian. “There are several research subjects in storage that I have been saving for these kinds of emergencies, “ He said. “Please retrieve them so we can continue working on this project. And hurry up."
Kaian paled. For a moment I thought he was going to barf. “Professor Quincy,” he started to sign, before pausing, “You ordered me to dispose of them two weeks ago,” He shot me a look, and I remembered the two of us loading a cage full of rats into a truck. “We don’t have them.”
The professor’s expression contorted, and he smiled. He… smiled. Like he thought it was funny. “Right.” He said in a breath. “You’re telling me,” He lifted his arm like he was going to strike each of us. And I sensed the four of us collectively wince. “You’re all telling me—all four of you, that our current research subjects are nowhere to be seen, our backup subjects have been disposed of, and I am supposed to be doing a presentation next week?"
His voice cracked. “Next week!” He repeated, beginning to pace, and I was starting to regret choosing my curiosity over my wellbeing. Sure, psychokinetic abilities are cool, right? Cracking open the human brain and discovering something magical, something out of this world, was a dream come true. We were witnessing history being made. What could fundamentally change the world.
But I was sitting inside a lab with a man who was clearly unhinged, thousands of miles from home, and no guarantee I would ever return home. A shiver slid down my spine when our professor stopped pacing up and down, and something seemed to light up in his eyes.
I saw it. Something in his brain… snapped. It was like seeing a real-life light bulb moment. “We’re okay.” He said, after a moment of silence. Quincy seemed to gather himself. “You’re dismissed. I will.. I will get my hands on new research subjects, do not worry about that.” His smile was far too big, and I nodded, relieved, and jumped to my feet, eager to make a quick getaway.
Jem stood up, grabbing his bag. “Will we have time?” He asked. “I mean… the presentation is next week, and we need to start over.”
“That’s right,” Riss was frowning. “Professor, where exactly are you going to get new subjects? Didn’t the college stop funding the project?”
“Hm? Oh, I have subjects,” he chuckled. “I have always had subjects, don’t worry. They have always been my last resort.”
I nodded. “So, do you have spare rats?”
“Makes sense.” Kaian signed. “I bet he has a secret batch somewhere.”
“Precisely, Kaian.” Professor Quincy nodded, a wide smile splitting his lips apart.
“So, rats?” I pressed. He still was yet to answer my question and I was growing anxious of what these subjects were.
It must have been rabbits, surely. Rabbits were our best shot at getting results. Rats worked well, I guessed. But not as good as rabbits.
He caught my eye, and something cold slipped down my spine when the man’s grin didn’t waver. “You could say they’re rats.” He seemed to be drinking me in, his gaze flicking up and down, from my head to my toes. “And don’t worry. They will be ready for the presentation. I will make sure."
“Well, that’s great.” Jem’s expression brightened. “So, we didn’t have to use rabbits after all, huh? Who would have thought.”
To my surprise, the professor was in unusually high spirits. After a lecture repeating his insistence that we had to supress our humanity for the sake of science (which was mostly aimed at Jem) He flocked to his desk, sorting through paperwork, and leaving the room several times to take part in phone calls. He must have really been pushing to get new living materials. I noticed his hands were quivering. Was it fear?
Excitement?
Without a word, Quincy left the lab with an armful of paperwork. When Riss asked what we were supposed to do, he told us to stay exactly where we were, while he retrieved new research materials. Great.
With the professor gone, it didn’t take long before Riss was trying to strangle Jem, acting like it was playful, but the look in her eyes definitely had a more nefarious intent.
Kaian, being the smartass of our group, was already sorting through our day’s work, as if we hadn’t just lost our subjects. The lab was pretty much our playground (The professor’s words, not mine) but there was a specific room which was out of bounds. Quincy called it the FAIL room, where all of his failed experiments were. Living or dead, or preserved in some weird solution, the exact reason I was convinced he was unhinged, was in that room. I didn’t realise it was unlocked, until a crashing sound sent me jumping up from my chair, my heart catapulting into my throat.
Jem and Riss looked up from their work, and I noticed Kaian’s seat was empty.
“That sounded ominous.” Jem shot me a look. “Did he…”
“He didn’t.” I muttered, my gaze flicking to the other side of the room, where, to my surprise, the room which had always been out of bounds, was in fact open. Before I could hesitate or think of the consequences, I hurried to the door, coming to a grinding halt on the threshold.
I was aware of my colleague’s shadow several feet away from me. I was aware of the petrified look of fright carved into his face, and his eyes, wide, like he was staring into oblivion. Like the darkness had already taken him.
Instead of finding Kaian, I was seeing what I can only describe as several lumps piled on top of each other. When I got closer, forcing my feet into submission, those lumps bled into very human-like figures wrapped in see-through plastic. For a disorienting second, while my head spun around and around, a slithery paste crawling up my throat, I saw them as nothing but lumps of naked flesh bulging through plastic.
But then I was recognising faces, faces I knew--faces which had been mutilated, stained a startling scarlet like they had been dipped in the reddest paint available. I knew the first lump. Sara. She went home two weeks earlier due to illness. The following fleshy lump with its face ripped off, which I could no longer call human, was Thomas. He too went home for a family emergency and never came back.
Quincy said they had both requested to leave. He said they would miss us, but it was too much. Seeing what we were doing was too much for them. They couldn’t suppress their emotions. Sara and Thomas had never left. They never went home—they were right in front of me, reduced to chunks of flesh and bodily organs.
There was a white strip of paper attached to both of them, a single word written in bold lettering.
FAIL.
That word sent my stomach heaving, my feet stumbling back, and my body erupting into fight or flight.
Kaian twisted around, his face illuminated in dim light flickering from a bulb above.
“Out.” He signed, and it was the desperation in his eyes, the heaving breaths struggling from his lips, which got me moving. I was pressing my hand over my mouth, muffling a sharp scream ripping from my throat, when Kaian grabbed my arm and dragged me back. I was barely conscious of getting out of that room before the alarms started, sending me to my knees.
“What the hell is that?” Riss was next to me, her voice shrill.
Jem had one hand planted over his ear, his arm wrapped around a hysterical Kaian. “Wren, what is it? What’s in there?”
I couldn’t reply. Instead of trying to speak or explain, I grabbed Riss and dragged her to the door. Kaian and Jem were already on the hallway, and I was barely slipping back through the automatic doors, before they slammed shut, and a familiar voice crackled over the speakers. “Stay where you are.” Professor Quincy said. “We will be returning to work very soon. By the grace of god, I have found subjects.”
Us.
My blood ran ice-cold in my veins.
He was talking about us.
"What the fuck?!" Jem yelled. "What are you talking about?"
I didn’t think. I just ran. And sprinting down that hallway, which was familiar, which had always felt like a second home to me, I had no idea it would become my prison.
It would become the very hallway I would wish to die on.
The hallway I would be dragged down, day after day, while my mind was picked apart.
Ahead of us, the doors were shutting, red lights bathing our faces. I remember how scared they were. Jem, who reached the exit doors, slamming his fists into the glass. Riss, trying to override the mechanical lock. Kaian, who had given up, dropped onto his knees, and pulled them to his chest. When gas filled the air, I was still trying to get through the door. Riss had forced Kaian to his feet, and Jem was trying to find any weapon in his vicinity.
But there were no weapons. There was just the four of us against a gas which was quickly disorienting us. When black spots started to dance across my vision, and Jem’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, his body dropping to the floor, I was thinking about Subject Fifteen. I was thinking about its beady eyes when I bit my lip and drilled into its tiny skull under my professor’s gaze. Riss dropped next.
Then Kaian.
I was quickly losing consciousness, my clammy head pressed against glass, clawing at the lock, when the thought hit me.
We deserved it.
For what we had done to those rabbits, playing god, and trying to turn them into something they weren’t—we deserved it.
Whatever my professor was planning to do to us, I had an inkling it would be far worse than what the rabbits had endured. We were going to suffer, I thought dizzily.
For science.
And I can tell you, three years later, as I currently share a hotel room with three murderers, my past self was fucking right.

I used to like making found footage horror films, as a hobby back when I was a kid, me and my friends from high school.
It was pretty amateur stuff. We’d put them up on youtube and our friends and family would watch them, but that’s about it. Biggest one, all these years later, only has a few thousand hits and plenty of complaints in the comments. I guess what matters is we had fun doing it.
I was the tech guy and knew my way around a video camera pretty well. Audio. Special effects, which of course were as amateurish as they could get.
Andy was our writer. I remember at the time he always seemed grouchy about the whole process like he wasn’t having fun. Looking back now, I think he was probably taking the most out of his experience. He was just frustrated, I think now, because he was dissatisfied with our limitations. He wanted to write real stories, good ones, but his hands were pretty tied. Our productions were never big enough to do what he’d have liked. The stories would be how teenagers, us, were out camping in the woods, and some mysterious force would start spooking us, and then we’d tried to escape, and there’d be in-fighting because we lost the map, or whatever, then each of us would get picked off one by one until the camera ends laying on the forest floor as the last person is killed off-screen.
I guess it says something that the same basic outline is like 90% of found footage movies, and those are written by adults with million-dollar budgets. Andy just wanted more is all. He wanted our movies to be better. I respect him for that.
Mike, he was our lead actor. The most handsome of us, and the most popular at school, and he was sort of a natural. Very comfortable in front of a camera. At least he was comfortable for an amateur. When we watch our old stuff we laugh at him because of how hammy he was, not that we were any better. Ah, I can’t hold it against him. Also, his family was rich. That sort of by default made him our producer. I kinda feel bad about it now. I’d tell him what camera we’d need, and he’d tell his parents he really wanted it, and they’d spoil him, and get it with no questions asked. They must have spent thousands of bucks on him, and us by extension. We’re talking fairly early digital video cameras, all long obsolete now. I could probably shoot better on a phone. It all must be in a box in his parent’s attic, I bet.
We all went to separate colleges. We actually stayed in pretty good touch, much to our own surprise. I don’t think that would have happened if we hadn’t enjoyed the same online video games and fantasy football. That’s something we never outgrew. Even after we graduated and moved even further afield.
I’m still in videography, dabbling in graphic design. Everybody wants to be big on social media, and many of them are willing to pay for the technical stuff. Andy majored in English and now pays the bills with technical writing. Complicated stuff for the insurance industry, I’m kinda surprised he didn’t end up being a lawyer. It all sounds like legal jargon to me. He’s always written fiction as a hobby though. Mike was a business major and moved back east to upstate New York after school. He’s in finance, the same as his old man. I guess he had a lot of connections.
They both surprised me a few weeks back. They wanted to do a new movie. Andy had approached Mike and sold him on it, and now they were coming to me, still the tech guy. I’ll be honest, I was pretty skeptical at first. I had my own life, and I still liked playing games with them for a couple of hours on the weekend, making a dumb new movie like we were kids again just wasn’t on my radar.
They just asked me to read the script that Andy had written. Man, it was a real banger. Yeah, I was hooked before I even finished.
The genius of it was in its simplicity. Andy had remembered all those old limitations from when we were teens, and this time considered what sort of limitations we’d still have, and wrote his story within those limits, but still making it a good story. With every resource we had in our grasp, he found a way to use it to maximum effect. I was in.
When Andy originally started writing the script he wanted to call it “Dashcam.” There were a couple of movies with the same title that came out since, so he dropped that. For now, we’re just calling it “The Road Trip Project,” and we’ll come up with a real title later. I think that gives a lot of info on what the movie is actually going to be.
It’s going to be a road trip movie shot entirely from the dash cam of a car, cars actually, driving across the country. All of the visuals will be from dash cams. This was Andy’s solution for the common found footage problem of people always asking “why are they filming this anyway?” I always thought the ones that gave good answers to those questions were usually better. There are other advantages too. With all of the dialogue spoken out of frame, we can just record it at our leisure and I can ADR it in exactly how we want it.
As for the dialogue, it’s really good. The story’s solid, and it could have been just recorded as an audio play, like a podcast, and it still would have been a killer story. When we add it to the footage we’re going to capture with our dashcams, I think it’s going to be really something else.
As for the story, I don’t want to give too much away, and we might still revise it later. Anyway, the plot starts in Washington state with a woman, Melissa, picking up her friend Amy in her car. Now they haven’t seen each other in a while, but they used to be super good friends. We learn that Amy’s been in a very serious personal crisis, and she wants to go back to her family in upstate New York. Melissa, who’s super concerned, has been willing to help her, and drive her across the country. If not the full way, she’ll help Amy get there. They have other friends along the way they plan to visit, and maybe they can help too. The mountain passes are experiencing a snowstorm, so they drive south through California before heading East. It ends up being a pretty meandering route, especially when things start getting weird.
So the personal crisis is that Amy’s fallen in with a cult. She was always suspicious but now she’s learned they are dangerous and is trying to escape. Her parents back east have agreed to take her back, and she’s happy about it because it’s far away from the cult.
She doesn’t expect the cult is actually after her until some creepy experiences in act I. There’s a car that keeps passing them, then slowing down, forcing them to pass, and so on. Harassing them until they can get away. After that, both characters get really paranoid.
It wasn’t just a weirdo sex cult either. They were into the occult and slowly but surely things start getting paranormal. Like at different times they try to find channels on the radio, and they keep coming across one of those creepy radio preachers, ranting about the end of the world. And no matter how far they drive, they keep finding the same preacher’s voice, which shouldn’t be possible because it should get out of range.
In Act 2, there’s a scene where they get lost in a modern American suburb, looking for an address they’re supposed to find. You know, big lawns, McMansions, picket fences. But then they realize there’s something wrong and it’s become this labyrinth that they literally can’t escape. Like the roads themselves are changing as they’re driving. I think I know how to do it too. There’s a technique the big studios use when they want to stitch together multiple jump cuts to make the audience think it’s all one long take. It will probably be the trickiest shot of the film, but if I can pull it off we’re gold.
It was Mike who landed us the big finale set piece. Again, I don’t want to give away all of it. So the protagonists, and they’ve picked up a couple of friends along the way at this point, are finally in upstate New York and they’re taking the road they think leads to their final destination. Except instead of the family home, it’s this old abandoned trailer park. You know, lots of little roads, cul-de-sacs, etc. Then all of a sudden these freaky cultists come pouring out of the trailers and charge at the car.
Mike has a business partner who owns some property, including a trailer park. It’s been abandoned and run down for a few years as some lawsuits got settled, and it’s scheduled to be demolished next year. So we’ve got time and permission to film there. Also between his pickleball league and his wife’s church group, there’s a bunch of volunteers happy to play as extras for one night of shooting. I took a look at the property’s layout, and I’ve managed to work out a sequence where the characters in the car get stuck in a dead-end, peel out, have to do a three-point turn, all while people are rushing at them from all different directions. I can make a couple of dozen extras look like hundreds. And I can do the whole thing in one crazy single take, no cuts.
So Andy, with help from Mike, has made a great story. I really want to pull my weight and deliver on the visuals. I think a cross-country road trip will be great for that. We’ll have coastal highways, redwoods, L.A. sprawl, sweeping desert landscapes, mountain vistas, Midwest cornfields, Louisiana bayous, Appalachia ridges, downtown Manhattan. It’s not going to all just be famous things we’ve all seen before, but really pretty stuff that’s never been on film before.
I can do all the location scouting from my own home with street view on Google Earth. Between the three of us, we know people all over the country, so we don’t even have to film in these places ourselves. We can just send our friends a dashcam, a couple hundred bucks for the effort, listing in the credits, and they can just go for drives in their own areas and send us the footage when we’re done. That will save the budget a fortune.
We’re going to have scenes where the characters grab the camera and switch cars. Or split up and ride in different cars with different cameras, some of which don’t have mics. Not being able to hear during these sequences will add to the tension. There’s a scene where the characters call the cops, and we get a brief scene from the dashcam of a cop car. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll add a red and blue strobe effect to the footage, but I’m sure I can figure it out. It’s not like we need an actual cop car. The best part for the budget is we won’t even need to get any filming licenses. Public roads, private cars, the whole thing guerilla footage.
Now here’s the thing, I’m quite certain it is going to make good horror too. Because there are few things creepier than dashcam footage filmed at night, when all you can see are two weak pools of lights from your car, on a little dirt road, tall grass by the side, and there could be anything lurking just out of range, down that road. “No Through Road,” “You Are On Your Fastest Available Route,” “With a Friend Like Harry,” other horror films have done it before and to really great effect. Yet none of them have really showcased it the way we intend to. I hope you appreciate why I’m so excited about the project
So The Road Trip Project is still in pre-production. We’re writing contracts, casting our voice actors, that kind of thing. We’re coordinating a few weeks' vacation and I’m going to fly out to New York for the few things we really do need to be together on. All in all, it’s coming together pretty well. I’m really hyped about it though, so I thought I could bide my time by shooting some B-roll.
You’re familiar with B-roll, right? Some people dismiss it as filler, but it has an important role. After big intense suspense or action scenes, you need a chance to catch your breath and calm down. Alternatively, you need it before those big action scenes to lull you into a false sense of security, or even hype the tension because you know something is going to happen. It doesn’t have to be boring, you just want to have ups and downs.
I currently make my home in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. If you’ve ever been there, you probably passed through on the Interstate. I can’t fault you if you don’t remember it, it’s got to be the single most boring drive on the entire west coast. Flat, straight, little to see besides farmers’ fields, like a section of the Midwest was picked up and set down here. Now that in and of itself is a good thing. Some of it is so generic that any B-roll I shoot here can substitute for just about any state in the Road Trip Project, barring something like desert landscapes.
There’s something else too, I’ve known it since I moved here, but I didn’t really appreciate it until I installed my dashcam and started driving everywhere. Parts of the Willamette Valley are drop-dead gorgeous. They must have run the interstate through the most boring part. Now the freeway bisects the valley straight up the middle. Yet there are a couple of really big, and several small rivers meandering through the valley, and there are only so many bridges. This means there are surprisingly large sections that are only seldom visited. Nothing’s very far as the crow flies, but to get there in a car requires taking the right exit, the right bridge, and the right winding country road. So the only people that might live all the way out in these sections are maybe a few farmers and recluses. There’d be countless places I could explore, and no end to the footage I could get.
My plan was straightforward. Get home from work, have dinner, then head out about an hour before sunset. Golden hour. Then I’d head back home after dark, to get some of that spooky nighttime driving footage. I thought that would all look the same, but I had surprises there too.
I have to say, even just for B-roll, the footage I was getting was fantastic. Beautifully rolling gentle hills. Forest-covered buttes that stuck up out of the farmer’s pastures like islands out of the ocean. Giant spindly oak trees reach out over the road. Decrepit old abandoned barns. More old-timey covered bridges than you’d think still existed. Hazelnut orchards.
Have you ever seen hazelnut orchards? They use a dwarf variety, I guess that makes them easier to harvest, growing to about twenty feet high. But they grow them in tight rows, real thick, and even on the sunniest summer day the shade beneath the trees is so dark it may as well be night. When the light hits them just right at the end of the day, they’re just about the creepiest patches of trees you can imagine.
The light I was capturing was really fantastic too. Sometimes the whole sky would be lit in reds and pinks. I caught several towering thunderheads, purple-black against a sky turning blue to gold. There would be birch windbreaks that seemed to glow the second before the sun disappeared in the west. There are patches of fields that would range from dark brown to an almost fluorescent green. On cold clear nights, patches of fog would start pouring out above every little creek and stream bed, filling up the fields. It almost looked like a Halloween cliche. You could picture Dracula’s carriage coming out of that fog being pulled by black horses. Only the fog was very real, and I was capturing it on my dashcam.
One night, on my way home after full dark, I passed through a large wetland preserve. The roads were narrow and poorly maintained. Swamp grass grew right up to the edge of the road, thick shrubbery in the dark behind. I don’t know what kind of trees they were, but I could make out these gray thin twisted branches coming down from above, reaching into the pools of light coming from my headlamps. Large white moth fluttering about over the road. It was the second creepiest bit of B-roll I got for the project.
The creepiest wasn’t in the valley, but in the mountains to either side of it. There are thousands of miles of old unpaved logging roads cutting through the forests. I didn’t spend a lot of time there, but after dark, it’s just cinematic gold. There isn’t any scene in the script where they’re on an unpaved logging road, but I’m sure the second Andy sees it he’s going to write in a new scene. It would be a terrible waste not to.
That’s the footage I shot for the Project. I’m not going to show anybody the last video I filmed. Part of me wants to just destroy it. Maybe that’s just selfish of me. I just know I don’t want to be part of it anymore.
Reddit has a 40k character limit, so I'll have to split this in two. I'll post the link so you can finish reading momentarily.
Part 2 at nosleep

Omnivoracious Listeners New Music Newsletter (Week of March 25th):
New LPs:
🇺🇸 Acid King - 'Beyond Vision' (Genre: Doom, Stoner Metal)
🇮🇹 Afraid of Destiny - 'Contra Omnes' (Genre: DSBM)
🇮🇹 Alex Nunziati - 'Black Space Void' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇯🇵 ALICETOPIA - 'In Dreams' (Genre: Power Metal)
🇺🇸 Angerot - 'The Profound Recreant' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇮🇹 Aphotic - 'Abyssgazer' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇫🇷 Arhios - 'Miscible' (Genre: Post-Rock)
🇫🇷 Asylum Pyre - 'Call Me Inhuman (The Sun - The Fight - Part 5)' (Genre: Power Metal)
🇺🇸 August Burns Red - 'Death Below' (Genre: Melodic Metalcore)
🇺🇸 Autumn Tears - 'Guardians of the Pale' (Genre: Darkwave)
🇫🇮 Azaghal - 'Omega' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇯🇵 Babymetal - 'The Other One' (Genre: Alt Metal, Kawaii Metal)
🇺🇸 Bad Naps - 'I A M A W O L F' (Genre: Pop Punk, Emo)
🇸🇪 Bai Bang - 'Sha Na Na Na' (Genre: Glam Rock)
🇦🇺 Basil's Kite - 'Shooting Tsars' (Genre: Math Rock)
🇺🇸 Bass Drum of Death - 'Say I Won't' (Genre: Garage Punk)
🇺🇸 Bed Signs - 'Silver Lining Breakdown' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇳🇱 Benny Sings - 'Young Hearts' (Genre: Indie Pop Rock)
🇩🇪 Black Hawk - 'Soulkeeper' (Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock)
🇳🇱 Black Rabbit - 'Hypnosomnia' (Genre: Thrash, Death)
🇺🇸 Caroline Rose - 'The Art of Forgetting' (Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Rock)
🇫🇷 Catacomb - 'When the Stars Are Right' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇩🇪 Catch as Catch Can - 'Rational Anthems' (Genre: Garage Rock)
🇨🇦 Category VI - 'Firecry' (Genre: Melodic Metal)
🇺🇸 CoDefendants - 'This Is Crime Wave' (Genre: Punk, Hip Hop)
🇺🇸 Control the Devastator - 'Dark Rift' (Genre: Tech Death, Black Metal)
🇮🇪 Cruachan - 'The Living and the Dead' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇬🇧 Danama - 'Did You Know?' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇬🇧 Dawn Ray’d - 'To Know the Light' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇮🇹 Deluded by Lesbians - 'Umami' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇬🇧 Depeche Mode - 'Memento Mori' (Genre: Synthpop)
🇺🇸 Dick Stusso - 'S.P.' (Genre: Indie Rock, Singer-Songwriter)
🇩🇪 Discreation - 'Iron Times' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇯🇵 Dohatsuten - 'More-Aa-Janaica' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 Doppler Radar and the Local News - 'Broadcasting' (Genre: Alt Punk)
🇩🇪 Eden Weint Im Grab - 'Apokalypse Galore' (Genre: Gothic Metal)
🇩🇪 Eisenkult - 'Vulgäre, Deutsche Hassmusik' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇫🇷 Elefant Talk - 'Elefant Talk' (Genre: Stoner Rock)
🇺🇸 Endless, Nameless - 'Living Without' (Genre: Blackgaze)
🇫🇮 Excalion - 'Once Upon a Time' (Genre: Melodic Power Metal)
🇺🇸 Fall Out Boy - 'So Much for Stardust' (Genre: Pop Rock, Pop Punk)
🇸🇪 Fatal Embrace - 'Manifestum Infernalis' (Genre: Melodic Death Metal)
🇩🇪 Firmament - 'We Don't Rise, We Just Fall' (Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock)
🇳🇱 Floor Jansen - 'Paragon' (Genre: Melodic Metal, Symphonic Metal)
🇳🇴 Forcefed Horsehead - 'Monoceros' (Genre: Death Metal, Grindcore)
🇬🇧 Freddie & the Scenarios - 'Answer Machine' (Genre: Alt Rock, Latin Rock)
🇨🇦 Gatekeeper - 'From Western Shores' (Genre: Epic Heavy Metal)
🇸🇪 Grande Royale - 'Welcome to Grime Town' (Genre: Garage Rock)
🇺🇸 Great American Racer - 'Great American Racer' (Genre: Folk Rock, Heartland Rock)
🇸🇪 Grisly - 'Tomb King' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇫🇮 Guts - 'Decay' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇯🇵 Haint - 'At the End' (Genre: Metalcore)
🇫🇮 Hanging Garden - 'The Garden' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇩🇰 HateSphere - 'Hatred Reborn' (Genre: Thrash, Death)
🇬🇧 Heartworms - 'A Comforting Notion' (Genre: Post-Punk)
🇮🇹 Hellcrash - 'Demonic Assassination' (Genre: Black, Speed Metal)
🇩🇪 Hypnodrone Ensemble - 'The Signal in the Signal' (Genre: Space Rock, Krautrock)
🇺🇸 Ill Omen - 'March of Decay' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇺🇸 Illuminated Void - 'Veriditas' (Genre: Blackgaze)
🇸🇪 Imperishable - 'Come, Sweet Death' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇩🇪 Iron Walrus - 'Tales Never Told' (Genre: Doom, Sludge)
🇺🇸 Jeff Goldblum - 'Plays With Others' (Genre: Jazz)
🇺🇸 JPEGMAFIA - 'Scaring the Hoes Vol. 1' (Genre: Hip Hop)
🇯🇵 Jurassic Jade - 'Nyx Filia' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇫🇮 Kalmah - 'Kalmah' (Genre: Melodic Death Metal, Power Metal)
🇩🇪 Kärbholz - 'Kapitel 11: Barrikaden' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇬🇧 Kate Davis - 'Fish Bowl' (Genre: Indie Rock, Art Rock)
🇳🇴 Keep of Kalessin - 'Katharsis' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇬🇧 Kele - 'The Flames Pt. 2' (Genre: Post-Punk, Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 Kella Sin - '[email protected] [email protected]' (Genre: Nu Metalcore)
🇺🇸 Killing Chaos - 'I Wanted to Name This Album Something Clever or Deep but I Am Neither Clever Nor Deep' (Genre: Indie Rock, Acoustic Rock, Server Member)
🇫🇮 Kuoleman Galleria - 'Pedon Synty' (Genre: Black 'N' Roll)
🇺🇸 Lana Del Ray - 'Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean BLVD' (Genre: Soft Rock, Pop)
🇩🇪 Lankester Merrin - 'Dark Mother Rises' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇮🇪 Lankum - 'False Lankum' (Genre: Folk Punk)
🇦🇺 Last Days of Kali - 'Fragments' (Genre: Post-Rock)
🇵🇱 Las Trumien - 'Głód Zabijania' (Genre: Sludge Doom)
🇮🇹 Latte+ - 'World of Retarded' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 Ledfoot & Ronni Le Tekrø - 'Limited Edition Lava Lamp' (Genre: AOR)
🇺🇸 Liturgy - '93696' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇩🇰 Lotan - 'Lotan' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇯🇵 Lovebites - 'Judgement Day' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇸🇪 Mace 'N' Chain - 'Among Ancient Pillars' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇯🇵 Majustice - 'Ancestral Recall' (Genre: Power Metal)
🇫🇮 Marianas Rest - 'Auer' (Genre: Melodic Doom, Death Metal)
🇦🇺 Matt Corby - 'Everything's Fine' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 Matt Geary - 'Ghost in the Western Trap' (Genre: Prog Post-Hardcore)
🇮🇹 Maze of Sothoth - 'Extirpated Light' (Genre: Tech Death)
🇸🇪 MDXX - 'MDXX' (Genre: Epic Doom)
🇺🇸 Mean Green - 'Mean Green' (Genre: Stoner Doom)
🇺🇸 Meg Myers - 'TZIA' (Genre: Alternative Pop Rock)
🇩🇪 METASPHÆRA - 'Self Titled' (Genre: Prog Metal)
🇳🇿 Mice on Stilts - 'I Am Proud of You' (Genre: Prog Rock)
🇬🇧 Morass of Molasses - 'End All We Know' (Genre: Stoner Metal)
🇳🇱 Morgendust - 'Morgendust' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇳🇴 Mork - 'Dypet' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇮🇹 Nemesis Inferi - 'The Mowing Devil' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇫🇷 Nihilism - 'Codex Nihilistic Exhumed' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇨🇦 N Nao - 'L’eau Et Les RÊVES' (Genre: Dreampop, Ethereal Wave)
🇦🇺 Ne Obliviscaris - 'Exul' (Genre: Progressive Death Metal)
🇨🇦 Noble Rot - 'Heavenly Bodies, Repetition Control' (Genre: Post-Punk)
🇦🇺 Oceans - 'Dreamers in Dark Cities' (Genre: Shoegaze)
🇮🇱 Oceans on Orion - 'Start From Nothing' (Genre: Metalcore)
🇺🇸 Oh, Raven Girl - 'I Am Still Mentally in Last Fall' (Genre: Slowcore)
🇺🇸 Ottto - 'Life Is a Game' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇺🇸 Ov Sulfur - 'The Burden Ov Faith' (Genre: Deathcore)
🇺🇸 Owl City - 'Coco Moon' (Genre: Indietronica, Electropop)
🇫🇮 Pennies by the Pound - 'Nothingside' (Genre: Prog Rock)
🇩🇪 Primetime Failure - 'Oxygen' (Genre: Punk Rock, Skate Punk)
🇺🇸 Project 86 - 'Omni Part 1' (Genre: Alt Metal)
🇺🇸 Purling Hiss - 'Drag on Girard' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇨🇦 Purveyor of Chaos - 'Purveyor of Chaos' (Genre: Power Metal)
🇮🇹 Rainbow Bridge - 'Drive' (Genre: Stoner Rock)
🇬🇧 Roo Panes - 'The Summer Isles' (Genre: Chamber Folk, Indie Folk Rock)
🇯🇵 Rorschach.inc - 'Villain' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇬🇧 Saxon - 'More Inspirations' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇺🇸 Scorched Moon - 'Obsidia' (Genre: Prog Metal)
🇺🇸 Semaphore - 'I Need a Reason to Stay' (Genre: Post-Shoegaze)
🇨🇦 Serpentine Cerberus - 'At the End of an Age' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇳🇴 Shakma - 'On Tenebrous Wings' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇮🇹 Shores of Null - 'The Loss of Beauty' (Genre: Melo Black, Doom)
🇺🇸 Spaceship - 'Ruins' (Genre: Shoegaze, Alt Rock)
🇺🇸 Star Funeral - 'In the Dark' (Genre: Emo)
🇩🇪 Subway to Sally - 'Himmelfahrt' (Genre: Metal)
🇯🇵 Syrup16g - 'HELL-SEE' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇺🇸 Temptress - 'See' (Genre: Doom Metal, Sludge Metal)
🇩🇪 The Black Cat's Eye - 'The Empty Space Between a Seamount and Shock-Headed Julia' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇺🇸 The Bouncing Souls - 'Ten Stories High' (Genre: Punk Rock, Pop Punk)
🇬🇧 The Declining Winter - 'Really Early, Really Late' (Genre: Post-Rock, Slowcore)
🇬🇧 The Flood - 'Hear Us Out' (Genre: AOR, Hard Rock)
🇺🇸 The Natural Lines - 'The Natural Lines' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 The Reds, Pinks & Purples - 'The Town That Cursed Your Name' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇬🇧 The Rhubarb - 'Symptom of Failure' (Genre: Stoner Doom)
🇦🇺 The Silversound - 'The Silversound' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇦🇺 The Sprouts - 'Eat Your Greens' (Genre: Power Pop)
🇯🇵 THE STREET SLIDERS - 'On the Street Again -Tribute & Origin-' (Genre: Blues Rock)
🇮🇹 The Turin Horse - 'Unsavory Impurities' (Genre: Noise Rock)
🇮🇹 Timelapse Aurora - 'In Deafeat, I See the Future' (Genre: Post-Rock)
🇨🇱 Todverhexen - 'Verbotene Hexerei' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇩🇪 Tragedian - 'Master of Illusions' (Genre: Power Metal, Speed Metal)
🇨🇦 Trailight - 'Mirrors' (Genre: Prog Rock, Prog Metal)
🇧🇪 Welcome to Holyland - 'Ominous' (Genre: Stoner Doom)
🇺🇸 Whore of Bethlehem - 'Ritual of Homicide' (Genre: Brutal Death Metal)
🇬🇧 Willie J Healy - 'Bunny' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇧🇾 Woe Unto Me - 'Along the Meandering Ordeals, Reshape the Pivot of Harmony' (Genre: Funeral Doom)
🇨🇱 Xalpen - 'The Curse of Kwanyep' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇫🇮 Xysma - 'No Place Like Alone' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇵🇱 ZØRORMR - 'The Monolith' (Genre: Black Metal)
New EPs:
🇺🇸 Catsclaw - 'Human Fission' (Genre: Djent, Metalcore)
🇳🇱 Countess - 'Live by the Sword' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇪🇸 Dawn of Extinction - 'From Tears to Vengeance' (Genre: Metalcore, Thrash Metal)
🇸🇪 Emetropia - 'An Acoustic Endeavo'' (Genre: Symphonic Metal, Acoustic)
🇬🇧 Exploring Birdsong - 'Dancing in the Face of Danger' (Genre: Prog Rock)
🇺🇸 Forty Feet Tall - 'Tunnel Vision' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇬🇧 Hell's Ditch - 'Take Cover' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇳🇴 Ihsahn - 'Fascination Street Sessions' (Genre: Ihsahn)
🇬🇧 Infernal Symphony - 'The Lesser Key of Solomon' (Genre: Avant Garde Metal)
🇫🇮 Judith Alice - 'Resolute' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇯🇵 Knosis - 'The Shattering' (Genre: Metalcore)
🇳🇴 Lille Venn - 'Whatever, Together' (Genre: Pop Rock)
🇰🇷 LØREN - 'Put Up a Fight' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇬🇧 Lost Asylum - 'Inmate 13' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇺🇸 Modern Monsters - 'Malice' (Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock)
🇫🇮 Mustan Kuun Lapset - 'Suruaika' (Genre: Melo Black, Gothic Metal)
🇮🇩 Patras - 'No Need to Serenade When You Look at Me' (Genre: Garage Rock, Server Member)
🇳🇴 Qadmon - 'Ghosted' (Genre: Gothic Doom)
🇸🇪 Saiva - 'Inlandsvinter' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇺🇸 Savage Oath - 'Savage Oath' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇨🇦 Softcult - 'See You in the Dark' (Genre: Dreampop, Alt Rock)
🇮🇹 Solaris - 'Abbiamo Una Legge E Per Questa Legge Deve Morire' (Genre: Noise Rock)
🇨🇦 Sophist - 'Avenger...Liberator' (Genre: Black Metal, Grindcore)
🇬🇷 Spectral Lore - '11 Days' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇺🇸 Stand and Wave - 'Shamble Into Frame' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇨🇦 Sunless - 'MMXXIII' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇫🇮 The Last Prophecy - 'Hate Is My Mentor' (Genre: Melodic Death, Thrash)
🇺🇸 The Scarlet Opera - 'Comedy' (Genre: Glam Rock)
🇮🇹 Throne of Flesh - 'Dust' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇺🇸 Todd Morse - 'Time Stopper' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown - 'Dirty Work' (Genre: Blues Rock)
🇮🇹 Tytus - 'Roaming in Despair' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇬🇧 Void of Light - 'Enshroud' (Genre: Post-Metal)
🇫🇮 Wakener - 'Bodies' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇺🇸 WHALES•TALK - 'Eternal Sunshine' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇨🇦 WinterheartH - 'Rape of Eden' (Genre: Black, Thrash)
New Splits:
🇺🇸 Fatso Jetson/ Dali's Llama - 'Legends of the Desert Vol. 3' (Genre: Desert Rock, Stoner Rock)
Diverse week and I think the most European dominate week so far since I took lead on this project. Hope you find something new! Check out the 2 member releases! https://discord.gg/V5fZ38KSCY
Happy Listening!

I'm always adding more items as I go through my storage so please check back.

Added in Guitar Hero 5 and World Tour (Wii), Transformers Fall of Cybertron & Triple Pack (360), Draglade (DS), PS3 60gb BC system

Holds: Items can only be held for 24 hours max and it's first come first served.
Payment: Paypal preferred.
Shipping: Shipping will be done through USPS or UPS.
Other Notes: If you're local to the San Diego area, I accept pick up and cash as an option.
Glossary:

• EU: European version
• G&B: Game and Box
• GH: Greatest Hits
• JP: Japanese version
• NFR: Not for Resale version
• Plat or PH: Platinum Hits

Game Lists:
NOTE: Games are complete unless noted next to the game. Games that have a strikethrough have been sold.
PS1:

• Alien Trilogy (gh, crack in case) $22
• Arc the Lad 2 (jp, damage to manual) $6
• Arc the Lad 3 (jp, broken case) $10
• Athena Awakening from the ordinary life (jp) $30
• Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix (jp) $10
• Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix (jp, g&b) $15
• Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix (jp) $25
• Dance Dance Revolution Extra Mix (jp) $20
• Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX (crack in case) $6
• Forever With You (jp, broken case) $13
• Forever With You (jp) $15
• Gakkou o tsukurou!! Koushou sensei monogatari (SLPS 02998) (jp) $4
• Grandia (jp) $15
• Gran Turismo 2 $10
• Monopoly (gh, sticker on case) $5
• Oddworld Abe's Exoddus (crack in case) $12
• Pac-Man World (gh) $9
• Pro-Logic Mah-John Hai-Sin (jp) $15
• Ridge Racer Evolution (jp) $6
• Samurai Shodown 3 (jp) $8
• Super Bubble Pop $4
• Tomb Raider (gh, cracked case) $9
• Tomb Raider 3 $9
• Tomb Raider the Last Revelation $9
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater (broken case) $8
• World Neverland (jp, g&b) $7
• Yu-gi-oh The Duelists of the Roses $12
• Yu-gi-oh Shin Duel Monsters (jp) $10

PS2:

• 007 Agent Under Fire $4
• 007 Nightfire $8
• Atari Anthology (minor case damage) $7
• ATV Off Road Fury (gh) $4
• ATV Off Road Fury 2 (damage to spine) $3
• Bee Movie Game (writing on disc) $5
• Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood (sticker on case) $4
• Champions of Norrath (gh) $28
• D1 Profession Drive Gran Prix Series (sticker on case) $13
• Final Fantasy X-2 (gh, new with minor tearing to outer plastic) $12
• Flushed Away (g&b) $5
• Gauntlet Dark Legacy $18
• Grandia Xtreme (dog ear manual) $70
• Guitar Hero 3 $7
• Ice Age 2 $5
• Madagascar (gh, minor case damage) $7
• Madagascar 2 $8
• Medal of Honor: European Assault $5
• Medal of Honor: European Assault $5
• Medal of Honor: Frontline $3
• Medal of Honor: Frontline $3
• Medal of Honor: Rising Sun $4
• Meet the Robinsons $5
• Midnight Club 2 (gh) $9
• Mission Impossible Operation Surma $4
• Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks $21
• Moto GP 2 $3
• NBA Live 2005 $6
• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 (gh) $7
• Onimusha Warlords (gh) $4
• Onimusha 2 (minor case damage) $8
• Onimusha 3 (g&b) $14
• Over the Hedge $7
• Over the Hedge (gh, g&b) $6
• Peter Jackson's King Kong (g&b, minor label damage) $5
• Q-Ball Billiards Master $4
• Rise to Honor (gh) $5
• Shrek 2 $7
• Simpson’s Hit and Run (GH) $42
• Sly 3 (g&b) $10
• Smuggler's Run (gh, not official case) $3
• Splinter Cell $5
• Spongebob Squarepants Battle for Bikini Bottom (g&b) $9
• Star Ocean Til the End of Time (gh) $8
• Star Wars Super Bombad Racing (minor case damage) $11
• The Sims (GH, minor case and label damage) $5
• Thrillville (gh, minor case and label damage) $4
• Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 $14
• Top Gun Combat Zones $4
• Top Gun Combat Zones (sticker on case) $4
• True Crime Streets of LA $8
• Up $6

PS3:

• Army of Two (g&b) $5
• Army of Two The Devil’s Cartel $10
• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood $3
• Batman Arkham City $5
• Battlefield 4 $3
• Borderlands 2 $4
• Brink $3
• Cabela’s Hunting Expeditions $10
• Call of Duty 4 $5
• Call of Duty 4 $5
• Call of Duty Black Ops 2 $8
• Call of Duty Ghosts $4
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 $5
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (minor manual damage) $4
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (minor manual damage) $4
• Call of Duty World at War $10
• Champion Jockey G1 Jockey & Gallop Racer $15
• Dead Island $4
• Dead Island GOTY $4
• Destiny (g&b) $3
• Dishonored $4
• Dragon Age Origins $4
• Dragon Age Origins $4
• Ducktales Remastered (new) $35
• Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires (g&b) $9
• Eyepet $3
• Fallout New Vegas $5
• FIFA 08 $4
• Fight Night Champion $10
• Fight Night Round 3 $8
• Final Fantasy 13 (GH) $6
• God of War Ascension $22
• God of War 3 $8
• God of War Collection (gh) $18
• God of War Saga (g&b) $20
• Guitar Hero Aerosmith $9
• Hitman HD Trilogy $24
• Hot Shots Golf Out of Bounds $10
• Injustice Ultimate Edition $6
• Kane and Lynch Dead Men (minor manual damage) $7
• Lego Indiana Jones the Original Adventures (minor damage to manual) $9
• Lego Jurassic World (g&b) $8
• Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust $16
• Madden 13 $4
• Metal Gear Solid 4 $7
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (g&b) $6
• Minecraft (g&b) $10
• ModNation Racers $7
• Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm (g&b) $8
• Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution $11
• NCAA Football 08 $5
• NCAA Football 2009 $4
• NHL 09 $2
• Painkiller Hell & Damnation (complete, very minor damage to spine artwork) $260
• Prince of Persia Trilogy (EU Version) $15
• Prototype 2 $5
• Rayman Origins $7
• Red Dead Redemption $8
• Resistance Fall of Man (gh) $5
• Rock Band $5
• Skate 3 $10
• Splinter Cell Trilogy $28
• Sports Champions $3
• SSX $7
• Tekken Hybrid $25
• The Evil Within $6
• The Godfather 2 $14
• The Last of Us $9
• The Last of Us $9
• The Saboteur $17
• The Show 16 $15
• The Show 16 $15
• The Show 16 $15
• The Show 16 $15
• The Show 2010 $3
• The Show 2012 $3
• Tiger Woods 08 $3
• Tiger Woods 11 $5
• Tiger Woods 11 $5
• Tiger Woods 14 $12
• Tiger Woods 2009 (g&b) $2
• UFC undisputed 3 (g&b, label wear) $9
• UFC undisputed 2010 $6
• Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 $15
• Uncharted 2 $4
• Uncharted 2 $4
• Wolfenstein $11
• WWE 2012 $9
• WWE 2013 $9
• WWE 2014 $12
• WWE All Stars (g&b) $13
• WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2011 $12
  
• PS3 60gb Fat BC system. Tested working and BC with PS2 games, comes with system, power cable and HDMI cable, no controller. A bit noisy and a bit scuffed, works fine. $180
  

PS4:

• Attack on Titan $32
• Attack on Titan $32
• Dead Rising 4 Frank’s Big Package $13
• Heavy Rain & Beyond Two Souls (EU) $15
• Sundered Eldritch Edition $45
• Two Point Hospital $13

PSP:

• Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 (clear disc case) $15
• Final Fantasy Tactics (g&b) $15

Xbox:

• Big Mutha Truckers $6
• Conflict Desert Storm (plat) $3
• Dead or Alive 3 (g&b, minor case damage) $6
• Drake of the 99 Dragons $7
• ESPN NFL 2k5 $8
• Exhibition Volume 7 $42
• FIFA Soccer 2007 (g&b) $4
• Fight Night Round 2 $5
• Ford vs Chevy $4
• Halo (g&b) $9
• Halo 2 Limited Edition (wear to steel case) $13
• Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack $7
• Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack $7
• Knockout Kings 2002 (g&b) $4
• Links 2004 $3
• Madden 2006 $3
• Madden 2007 $3
• Madden 2008 $5
• Major League Baseball 2007 $5
• Marvel Nemesis (g&b) $8
• Metal Slug 3 (g&b) $18
• Midway Arcade Treasures 3 $8
• Mortal Kombat Deception (g&b) $9
• NBA Inside Drive 2002 (g&b, case damage) $2
• NBA Live 2003 $3
• NBA Live 2006 $3
• NCAA College Hoops 2k7 (g&b) $7
• NCAA Football 2003 $3
• NCAA Football 2004 (g&b, minor case damage) $2
• NCAA Football 2005 $3
• NCAA Football 2005 & Top Spin $3
• NCAA Football 2007 (g&b) $5
• NCAA Football 2008 $8
• NCAA March Madness 2005 $4
• NCAA March Madness 2006 $5
• NFL Fever 2004 $4
• NFL Fever 2004 (g&b, large sticker on case) $2
• NHL 2006 $2
• NHL 2k3 $3
• Phantom Dust $50
• Rollercoaster Tycoon $13
• Rugby 2006 $5
• Silent Scope Complete (with Scope) $75
• Spider-man 2 $9
• Star Wars Battlefront (New, plat) $35
• Star Wars Clone Wars & Tetris Worlds (minor label damage) $3
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (ph) $8
• Test Drive (plat) $5
• The Sims Bustin Out $5
• Volvo Drive for Life $4
• World Racing 2 (case & label damage) $14
• World Series Baseball 2k3 $4

Xbox 360:

• Anarchy Reigns $5
• Angry Birds Star Wars (g&b) $5
• Apache Air Assault (damage to box) $11
• Assassin’s Creed 3 (Gamestop edition) $6
• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood $3
• Assassin’s Creed IV (g&b) $5
• Asura’s Wrath (minor label wear) $31
• Avatar (g&b) $9
• Batman Arkham City $5
• Battlefield 2 (g&b) $6
• Battlefield 3 (g&b) $3
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 $3
• Big Bumpin $3
• Borderlands $3
• Crackdown 2 $4
• Dance Central $2
• Dance Central 3 (new) $16
• Dead Rising 2 $6
• Dead Rising 2 Off the Record $8
• Def Jam Icon $17
• Disney Infinity 3.0 $5
• Disneyland Adventures (g&b) $4
• Fallout 3 GOTY (g&b) $6
• Farcry 3 $5
• Farcry 3 (g&b, cracked case) $4
• Fast & Furious Showdown $6
• FIFA 2014 (damage to box) $2
• FIFA 2015 $3
• FIFA 2016 (g&b) $4
• FIFA 2017 $10
• FIFA 2017 (g&b) $8
• FIFA 2018 $35
• FIFA Soccer 2007 (g&b) $3
• FIFA Soccer 2010 (g&b) $3
• Fight Night Round 3 $4
• Forza Horizon (g&b) $15
• Forza Horizon (g&b) $15
• Grand Theft Auto 5 $7
• Halo Reach $7
• Halo Reach $6 (minor dog ear manual)
• Jimmie Johnson’s Anything with an Engine $8
• Just Dance 2016 (new, damage to box) $10
• Kinect Adventures $2
• Kinect Adventures $2
• L.A. Noire the Complete Edition (NIB) $30
• Lego Batman 3 (g&b) $4
• Lego Marvel Super Heroes $4
• Lips Party Classics $11
• Madden 17 (g&b) $16
• Madden 2012 (g&b) $3
• Madden 2013 (g&b) $2
• Madden 2015 (g&b) $3
• Madden 2016 Deluxe Edition (g&b) $8
• Madden 25 (g&b) $4
• Major League Baseball 2k6 (g&b) $4
• Major League Baseball 2k11 $4
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance $8
• Mass Effect $8
• Mass Effect 2 (g&b) $4
• Moto GP 14 $15
• Nascar 2015 Victory Edition (g&b) $18
• NBA 2k10 (g&b) $5
• NBA 2k11 $6
• NBA 2k16 $5
• NCAA Football 12 (g&b) $16
• Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012 (plat, g&b) $8
• Need for Speed Pro Street (plat) $8
• NHL 2012 (g&b) $2
• Nail'd $6
• Open Season $6
• Pocketbike Racer $3
• Portal 2 $5
• Power Up Heroes $7
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 $6
• Rayman Origins (g&b) $6
• Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare (plat) $7
• Resident Evil 5 $5
• Rock Revolution (g&b) $3
• Saints Row the Third $4
• Skate $8
• Skate $8
• Skate 3 (g&b, Plat, case damage) $5
• Sniper Ghost Warrior (g&b) $4
• Sonic Free Riders $6
• Soul Calibur 5 $8
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 $11
• The Black Eyed Peas Experience $4
• Tiger Woods 2009 $5
• Tomb Raider $4
• Top Spin 4 $14
• Transformers Fall of Cybertron $40
• Triple Pack: Limbo, Trials HD, Splosion Man $10
• Turok $7
• UFC Undisputed 3 (g&b) $9
• WWE All Stars $14
• WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2008 (g&b) $14

GB/GBC/GBA:

• Crash Bandicoot Huge Adventure (loose, jp) $5
• Puyo Puyo Fever (Japan, loose) $10
• Ratatouille (loose) $2
• Super Mario Land (loose, jp, minor label damage) $7

DS/3DS:

• Draglade (loose) $20
• Mazes of Fate (loose) $17
• My Sims (loose) $5
• My Spanish Coach (loose) $3
• Mystery Dungeon Shiren the Wanderer (loose) $11
• Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword (loose) $10
• Nintendogs Chihuahua and Friends $8
• Nintendogs Dalmatian and Friends (loose) $6
• Nintendogs & Cats French Bulldog (loose) $13
• Planet Puzzle League (complete) $10
• Sonic Rush Adventure (loose) $16

Nintendo Entertainment System

• Maniac Mansion (loose) $20
  
• NES Classic Edition (CIB, minor wear to box edges) $95
  

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

• SNES Classic Edition with 2 controllers (Loose, minor sharpie mark on bottom of system) $90

Gamecube:

• Hot Wheels Velocity X $15
• Kirby Air Ride (g&b) $68
• Madagascar (g&b) $5
• Super Smash Bros Melee (g&b, PC) $60
• The Simpsons Hit and Run (g&b, PC) $55

Wii:

• Animal Crossing City Folk $14
• Balloon Pop $4
• Beatles Rock Band $6
• Ben 10 Alien Force (g&b) $4
• Blazing Angels (g&b) $3
• Blazing Angels $4
• Carnival Games $5
• Chuck E. Cheese’s Party Games $8
• Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party $6
• Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party $6
• Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 $9
• Deal or No Deal (new) $9
• Elebits $6
• FIFA Soccer 12 $4
• Game Party $5
• Game Party 2 $4
• Geometry Wars Galaxies $7
• Grease (new) $8
• Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock $13
• Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock $13
• Guitar Hero 5 $22
• Guitar Hero World Tour $16
• iCarly $4
• Indianapolis 500 Legends $4
• Lego Batman (wear to manual) $4
• Lego Indiana Jones $5
• Lego Rock Band $6
• Lego Star Wars 3 (g&b) $6
• Looney Tunes ACME Arsenal $4
• Mario Kart Wii $26
• Mario Strikers Charged (g&b, minor label damage) $14
• Mercury Meltdown Revolution (new, tears in plastic) $6
• Monopoly Collection $13
• Monster Jam Urban Assault $5
• MX vs ATV Untamed $6
• Need For Speed Carbon $6
• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit $8
• Nerf N-Strike (g&b) $5
• New Super Mario Bros Wii $21
• New Super Mario Bros Wii $21
• No More Heroes (g&b) $10
• Petz Dogz 2 $4
• Phineas and Ferb Across the 2nd Dimension $4
• Ratatouille $7
• Reader Rabbit 1st Grade $13
• Rock Band $10
• Rubik’s World $3
• Shaun White Skateboarding $3
• Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip $3
• Showtime Championship Boxing $4
• Summer Sports Paradise Island $4
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 $24
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash Up $9
• Tetris Party Deluxe $13
• The Smurfs Dance Party $3
• Thrillville off the rails $4
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 $18
• Tony Hawk Ride $11
• Trauma Center (game and manual) $7
• Trauma Center Second Opinion $7
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas $12
• Wheel of Fortune (new) $15
• Wii Fit (g&b) $3
• Wii Fit $4
• Wii Fit Plus (g&b) $5
• Wii Play (g&b) $3
• Wii Play $4
• Wii Play $4
• Wipeout the Game $4
• Wipeout the Game $4
• Wreck It Ralph (new) $12
• Yoga $7

Wii U:

• Lego Batman 3 $5
• Nintendo Land $7
• Splatoon (g&b) $9
• Super Mario Maker (g&b) $10

Switch:

• Go Vacation (loose) $20
• Just Dance 2019 (loose) $10
• Sports Party (loose) $5
  
• Bowser (Smash Bros) Amiibo (loose) $10
  
• Mario (Super Mario) Amiibo (loose) $12
  
• Mario (Super Mario) Amiibo (loose) $12
  
• Shulk Amiibo (loose) $20
  

Sega Master System:

• Afterburner (manual wear) $10
• Altered Beast (loose, minor label wear) $7
• Astro Warrior (g&b) $15
• California Games (manual wear) $18
• Gangster Town $14
• Ghostbusters (g&b) $17
• Ghost House (g&b) $26
• Great Football (loose, minor label wear) $2
• Great Golf (g&b) $5
• Monopoly (g&b) $10
• Montezuma’s Revenge (manual exists but in shambles, sticker on game, label peel) $80
• Paperboy (loose, sticker on cart) $23
• Parlor Games $9
• Penguin Land (g&b) $22
• Pro Wrestling $10
• Pro Wrestling $10
• Quartet (g&b, label wear and peel) $23
• Rocky (g&b) $12
• Rocky (g&b) $12
• Scramble Spirits (g&b, PAL) $28
• Shanghai (g&b) $9
• Vigilante (g&b, sticker on game label) $24
• Wonder Boy III (Label damage, sticker on cart, loose) $25
• Zaxxon 3-D (g&b, sticker on case) $13

Genesis/Mega Drive:

• Blockout (G-4059, JP) $10
• ESWAT (G-4029, JP) $28
• Sonic the Hedgehog (G-4049, JP) $30
• Streets of Rage 2 (g&b) $40
• Strider (G-4037, JP) $30
• The New Zealand Story (T-11013, JP) $70
• World of Illusion (G-4080, JP) $32
• Road Rash 2 (loose) $10
• Sonic 1 (loose, NFR) $10

32X:

• 36 Great Holes of Golf (loose) $7
• Star Wars Arcade (loose) $9

Saturn:

• Blue Seed (jp) $12
• Maho Gakuen Lunar (jp) $25
• Slayers Royal 2 (jp, broken case) $10
• Virtua Fighter 2 (jp) $8

Dreamcast:

• Caesar’s Palace 2000 $10
• Conflict Zone $10
• Cyber Troopers Virtual On Oratorio Tangram (JP) $15
• Fighting Force 2 (disc only) $5
• Midway’s Greatest Hits Vol 1 $10
• Nadesico the Mission (JP) $5
• NBA 2K1 $5
• NFL 2k $4
• NFL 2k1 $4
• Rainbow Six $7
• Sega Bass Fishing (All-Stars) $10
• Star Wars Demolition $15
• Web Browser $3
• Web Browser 2.0 $4

Atari 2600 Lot:
I have an Atari 2600 Light Sixer with hookups, adapter to coax, controller, paddle controllers and 76 games! Many games have label issues, they are described in the list below. Pricing has been reflected based on condition. All games are loose
Price: $350 + S&H Paypal for the whole lot
If you are local to San Diego, I can arrange a pickup instead.
Game List

• Adventure
• Adventure (minor label damage)
• Air Raiders
• Air Sea Battle (label wear)
• Asteroids
• Astroblast
• Basketball (standard label)
• Battlezone (label damage, no top label)
• Berzerk (minor label peel)
• Blackjack (label damage)
• Bowling (no top label)
• Boxing (label damage)
• BurgerTime
• Centipede
• Centipede
• Centipede (label damage)
• Championship Soccer (no top label)
• Chuck Norris and Artillery Duel (xonox, double ender)
• Circus Atari
• Combat
• Combat
• Combat (label damage)
• Congo Bongo (label wear)
• Defender
• Defender (label wear)
• Dodge ‘Em (label wear)
• E.T.
• E.T.
• E.T. (label wear)
• Football
• Frogger (label damage)
• Frogger (label damage)
• Frogs & Flies
• Ghostbusters (label damage)
• Haunted House
• Haunted House
• Home Run (no top label, plastic piece inside)
• Home Run (no top label)
• Jungle Hunt (top label peeling off)
• Kaboom (label damage)
• Krull
• Laser Blast (label damage)
• Math Gran Prix (label damage)
• Math Gran Prix (major label damage, no top label)
• Maze Craze
• Missile Command
• Moto Rodeo
• Night Driver
• Night Driver (label damage, missing top label)
• Night Driver (no top label)
• Pac-Man
• Pac-Man (label damage)
• Pac-Man (label wear)
• Pac-Man (no top label)
• Pitfall (label damage)
• Pitfall (label damage)
• QBert (label damage)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (label damage)
• Robin Hood (label damage, xonox)
• Solaris (label damage)
• Space Invaders (blue label)
• Space Invaders (blue label)
• Space Invaders (label damage)
• Space Invaders (red label)
• Space War (no top label)
• Star Raiders (label damage)
• Star Raiders (label damage)
• Star Voyager
• Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back (label damage)
• Superman (no top label)
• Survival Run
• Sword Quest Earth World (label damage to top label)
• Tron Deadly Discs (label damage)
• Up & Down (major label wear)
• Video Olympics
• Video Pinball
• Video Pinball (major label damage, no top label)
• Warlords
• Warlords (label wear)
• Yars’ Revenge (label wear)

Atari 5200: All are loose

• Centipede $4
• Joust $6
• Kangaroo $6
• Pole Position $5
• Qix $5
• Star Raiders $6

Or $25 for all.
Intellivision:

• Swords & Serpents (loose) $12

Colecovision:

• Carnival (label wear, loose) $4
• Donkey Kong (loose) $3

March

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Fri 24th @ Orpheum	BroJob, Tactosa, In Gloom, Sever the Memories, Endbringer
Fri 24th @ Crowbar	Weeping Wound, Downswing, Enox, Scatter Shot, Gas FL
Fri 24th @ Jannus	The Winery Dogs
Sun 26th @ Brass Mug	Temptress
Tue 28th @ Orpheum	Fit For An Autopsy, The Acacia Strain, Full of Hell, Primitive Man
Tue 28th @ Jannus	Polyphia
Wed 29th @ Orpheum	Eluveitie, Omnium Gatherum, Seven Spires
Wed 29th @ Crowbar	Unwritten Law, Authority Zero, Mercy Music
Fri 31st @ Orpheum	Suicide Commando, 00tz 00tz
Fri 31st @ Born Free	Spy, Pez, Colonial Wound, Horsewhip, Shining Wizard
Fri 31st @ Brass Mug	The DOOD, Cypher Machine, Get out of Nashville, Burn Forever, Crimson Shadow, MANNA

April

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Sat 1st @ Brass Mug	Svinfylking, Warrior's Chalice, Tunnels of Set, Slutwitch, Sacrilous, Othalan
Sat 1st @ Orpheum	Magnolia Park, Arrows In Action, Poptropicaslutz!, First and Forever
Sun 2nd @ Jannus	Nothing More, Crown the Empire, Thousand Below
Sun 2nd @ Orpheum	Free Throw, Can’t Swim, Heart to Gold, Early Humans
Wed 5th @ Jannus	Lorna Shore, Shadow of Intent, Bodysnatcher, Boundaries
Fri 7th @ Crowbar	Lightning Bolt, Special Guests TBA
Fri 7th @ Conduit*	Deicide, Three Knuckles Deep, Killing Addiction, Vacuous Depths
Sat 8th @ Orpheum	Carcass, Municipal Waste, Sacred Reich, Creeping Death
Sun 9th @ Orpheum	Escuela Grind, Bonginator, more TBA
Sun 9th @ Brass Mug	Eyehategod, Goatwhore, More TBA
Mon 10th @ Orpheum	Cold, Divide the Fall, Awake for Days, Sygnal to Noise
Tue 11th @ Crowbar	Gorod, Cognitive, Summoning The Lich, Flub
Wed 12th @ Crowbar	Speed, Kharma, Day by Day, Three Knee Deep
Wed 12th @ Jannus	Wage War, nothing,nowhere., Spite
Thu 13th @ Pegasus	Dead Reckoning, Ultimatum, Annabel Lee, Announce the Apocalypse, Trash Panda
Sat 15th @ Brass Mug	Ulcer, Promethean Horde, Druid Lord, Parasite Disciple, Sacrilous, Cum Soaked Corpses
Sat 15th @ Orpheum	Whitechapel, Archspire, Signs Of The Swarm, Entheos
Sun 16th @ Born Free	Rhythm of Fear, Living in Fear, Shades of War, Head High, Odium Rot
Sun 16th @ Orpheum	Slaughter To Prevail
Sun 16th @ Jannus	Queensrÿche, Trauma, Marty Friedman
Thu 20th @ Brass Mug	Catcher and the Rye, Sworn to Decay, Higher Ground, What We Seek, Gallows Down
Fri 21st @ Brass Mug	Green Jelly, Collapsor, Abortion Twins, Kindly Shut Up!, One Trip Little
Fri 21st @ Orpheum	Morbid Angel, Revocation, Vitriol, Crypta
Fri 21st @ Noise Box	Regions, Pure Bliss, Murkov, Days Spent, Gas FL
Wed 26th @ Crowbar	Mac Sabbath, Roxx Revolt & The Velvets
Thu 27th @ Crowbar	Dropout Kings, Fatal Frames, and more
Sat 29th @ Brass Mug	Diabolic, Piss on Christ, Voidrium, God Rot
Sun 30th @ The Ritz	The Black Dahlia Murder, Terror, Frozen Soul, Fuming Mouth, Phobophilic

May

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Tue 2nd @ Crowbar	Vampires Everywhere!, Saving Vice, more TBA
Thu 4th @ Brass Mug	Agent Orange, Suzi Moon, Blood Donor, Mobius Loop, Bad Future, The Hand of Reason
Fri 5th @ Born Free	Leeway, Damn Your Eyes, Fire Is Murder, Highest Crown, Yield to None
Sun 7th @ Jannus	Alestorm, Gloryhammer, Lutharo
Wed 10th @ Conduit*	Ingested, Devourment, Extermination Dismemberment, Organectomy, Implosive Disgorgence
Wed 10th @ Level 13*	Chelsea Grin, Carnifex, Left to Suffer, Ov Sulfur
Fri 12th @ Brass Mug	GrindFest IV 1st night - Lineup in link - Headliners: Kill Division
Sat 13th @ Brass Mug	GrindFest IV 2nd night - Lineup in link - Headliners: Coathanger Abortion
Sat 13th @ Crowbar	Woe Is Me, Prison, The Funeral Portrait, Spider Inside Her, Chasing Airplanes
Sun 14th @ Crowbar	Meg Myers, Weathers, Band of Silver
Tue 16th @ Jannus	Helloween, Hammerfall
Wed 17th @ Floridian	Voivod, Imperial Triumphant, more TBA
Fri 19th @ Orpheum	Dark Funeral, Cattle Decapitaton, 200 Stab Wounds, Blackbraid
Fri 19th @ Jannus	Avatar, Veil of Maya, Orbit Culture
Wed 24th @ Brass Mug	Possessed, The Black Moriah, Perdition Temple, More TBA

June

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Fri 2nd @ Orpheum	Currents, Like Moths to Flames, Foreign Hands
Sat 3rd @ Orpheum	Attack Attack!, Traitors, Belmont, Colorblind, Tactosa
Sat 3rd @ Pegasus	Not Promised Tomorrow, Get out of Nashville, Forged with Blood
Sun 4th @ Jannus	Ugly Kid Joe, Fozzy
Sat 10th @ Brass Mug	Metal and Tats w/ Rob Wolf, Halo Scars, Mind Virus, Cypher Machine and RE-BIRTH
Sat 10th @ Orpheum	Spotlights, Horsewhip, Gillian Carter
Wed 14th @ Crowbar	MyChildren MyBride, Extortionist, No Cure, Your Spirit Dies, Richard Cory, GasFL
Sat 24th @ MidFlorida	The Original Misfits, Megadeth, Fear

July

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Sat 1st @ Brass Mug	D.R.I., Metalriser
Fri 21st @ MidFlorida	Mudvayne, Coal Chamber, GWAR, Nonpoint, Butcher Babies

August

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Sat 5th @ MidFlorida	Disturbed
Sat 26th @ MidFlorida	Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper, Ministry, Filter

September

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Sat 30th @ Vinoy	NOFX Final Tour - Guests TBA

October

DAY/LINK	LINEUP
Tue 10th @ Orpheum	Ne Obliviscaris, Beyond Creation, Persefone

^{* This is an Orlando area venue, however due to the popularity of this show I have included it here.}

February 7th, NCR, Tahoe Town
6:30 am
Frank rang the street phone again. He needed to talk to Hector badly, he usually got to work at this time so he should be answering, he checked the street. It was pitch black he was safe for now, Wendy sat next to him keeping watch. As the phone rang one more time he sighed then took the phone from his ear about to set it back in the line.
"Hello?"
Hearing the voice Frank quickly brought the phone up to his mouth.
"Hector it's me."
"FRANK!..."
The phone went silent then Hector began again whispering.
"Where the hell are you!? And what the hell did you do?! There are rangers after you, they turned my shop upside down, they even took my pip-players."
"Look it doesn't matter, I'm on my way to New Canaan can you send my stuff to the drop box?"
"I'm not finished but I can when I'm done. Should get there in like a week or two."
"Alright thank you, just wash off the NCR stuff."
"Got it...so how's my rifle."
Frank went silent.
"Frank...."
"I lost the barrel and stock."
"God dammit you bastard, I let you borrow it and you can't even-"
"I was being shot at I'm sorry okay."
"I should lose your stuff."
"Hector..come on just send the shit."
"Fine.."
Frank hung up the phone and turned to Wendy.
"Okay let's go."
*March 11th, 2291 New Canaan *
Wendy woke up and looked around the room, empty. She got up with a sigh and changed. When she finished she go out of the room and made her way downstairs. Tina, James's wife was cooking breakfast.
"Oh, Wendy you're up. I was gonna send Micheal to get you."
"Yeah sorry I slept in a little bit...haven't been on a bed in a while, what time is it?
"Little over 8...James is getting your caravan ready."
"And Frank?"
"Oh, I didn't know he was here. I haven't seen him sorry."
"Oh....it's fine"
Wendy sat at the table as Tina set the plates down on by one for the kids. Isabel turned to Wendy and began talking.
"So where are you going?"
"Oklahoma. Your dad said he could help us out."
"James."
"What?"
"James is my stepdad. My dad died."
"Isabel!"
Mrs. Richter scolded her daughter.
"What it's true he's not my dad."
"Well, he's trying to be."
Mrs. Richter shook her head and then got back to the stove as they continued.
"What happened to your dad?"
"He died during an attack by super mutants about 7 years ago."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"It's alright...he was a hero, saved the city by holding them off. I still miss him but I know I'll see him again one day. So what about your dad?"
"Oh...I never met him...and my mom died when I was young."
"Oh...so what about Frank? You said he takes care of you right? So he's kinda like your dad right?"
"Well not really. I'm just cargo to him, just wants to get me from point A to point B."
"Oh, thats rud- MICHEAL STOP TOUCHING MY BOOKS!"
Wendy turned around to see a grubby little 6-year-old reading a book with greasy yolk-covered fingers.
"But I want to read!"
"READ YOUR BOOKS!"
Defiant the boy continued to read the book.
"I hate him so much...do you have siblings?"
"I do not...would be nice though."
"Trust me, you get tired of them fast."
The two girls talked and laughed their way through breakfast and it wasn't long before James returned.
"Hello, family..."
"Oh, you're back."
Tina approached her husband and gave him a smooch.
"Eggs are still hot if you want some."
"No can do."
James walked over to the fridge and took out a bottle of brahmin milk before turning to Wendy.
"You ready?"
"Oh...yeah just gotta grab my bag."
"Okay well make it quick time is of the essence."
Wendy got up and grabbed her bag as she said bye to the Richters she walked out the door as James walked behind her.
"So where to?"
"The office building, cargo is in the back."
James's demeanor changed as he dropped the honest working man act.
"Listen I'm sorry about Frank, he should've said good-"
"It's fine...just get me from point A to B."
"I mean it...you of all people shouldn't have."
"Look it's fine James."
"Yeah..."
"So what's it like having two names?"
"Not that hard honestly. Everyone knows me as James so I just respond to that, I hear Oliver occasionally and I instinctively respond but not often."
"I don't think I could do it honestly, I barely know my own I'd probably rat myself out like that."
"So how come you have a gun, thought you could shoot electricity from your hands like some sort of wizard?"
"I can but it's exhausting."
"How tiring can it be?"
"Have you ever fired electricity from your hands?"
"No."
"Exactly, use to knock me out all the time before Sarah found a way to help."
As the two talked they soon turned the corner and found the building.
"Alright head to the back...I'm just going to fill out some paperwork to authorize the traveling."
"You have to do the paperwork to travel?"
"Yep...wonders of society."
James opened the door and made his way to the lobby stairs as Wendy split off and walked towards the garage doors.
The secretary waved at her as pushed her way through the doors into the garage. She looked around, there were some cars but there seemed to be slepnier more than anything, the giant mutant horses looked at her and neighed as she approached them.
"Hello there...you guys are amazing. So big and strong...think James will let me keep one of you?"
Wendy laughed to herself as she looked around the room, as she did she noticed a shoe sticking out from behind a barrel. As she approached she saw a leg, then a pelvis. And finally, she realized what she saw. A man lay dismembered in a pool of his blood, she yelped and slipped falling to the floor. As she did she heard the doors open behind her.
"Alright I got the paperwork....what are you doing on the floor?"
"Body!"
"What?"
Wendy pointed towards the corpse in front of her.
James walked towards her and then began to sprint upon seeing the foot.
"No, no, no, no! Fuck!"
James walked over to the bloody corpse and examined it.
"They got Edward. Okay, listen we need to go now."
Wendy slowly got up and walked over to James who was tidying up the body.
"Looks like a guy with a machete cut him to pieces, he didn't see it coming."
Wendy peered over James' shoulder to examine the body. As the two looked a group of barrels knocked over behind them and the two jumped. James drew his 1911 pistol.
"Who is it?!"
"Boss it's me...God dammit."
"Ryan!"
James ran over to the man who clutched his side. James helped him to a chair and propped him up.
"What happened?"
"You need to get out of here they'll be back."
"Who?"
"Those bastards...from the church...they snuck in here, stabbed us in the back....literally....left me alive.....said they....want to chat..."
"Where are they?"
"They're on there...."
Ryan's eyes drooped and his body went limp.
"Ryan. Ryan! Where are they going?!"
James shook the limp body over and over yelling for an answer.
"I got to go."
"What?"
"Stay here."
"Where are you going?"
"I need to protect my family."
"How do you know they're heading to your house?"
"I don't but I need to protect them if they are."
"What about me?!"
"Just...stay here....you have your shotgun and so just use it if anyone comes."
James ran out the door the travel papers scattered across the floor.
Wendy unslung her shotgun and racked a shell. She stood in the room looking around heart racing, she was alone again. She was vulnerable and afraid. After what felt like an entirety she heard a noise coming from the lobby.
"Where is she?!"
"Where is who?"
BANG
"Find her and kill her!"
Wendy ran into an upper-side office and locked the door, she kept her head down as she looked through the small office window into the rest of the garage as armed men walked around holding rifles.
"Brother Ezekiel weren't we just here?"
"Yes. Dorkins believed she would come through here however so keep your eyes peeled."
Wendy kept her head down as the men continued to walk around. Eventually one made their way to where Ryan's limp body sat.
"Body!"
Two more men ran into the room.
"Shit there's more of them."
Wendy gritted her teeth as she watched.
"It's the one I stabbed. Someone moved him."
"Find them now!"
Wendy ducked down and held her shotgun tightly as she heard the footsteps grow closer.
"Keep your eyes peeled they could still be around here!"
"Think it's her?"
"Could be."
"Why isn't Dorkins with us?"
"What do you mean?"
"Couldn't he just persuade her to come with us?"
"She's far too powerful..."
"It'd do nothing?"
"Exactly. And also the other plan is in motion."
Wendy slung her shotgun over her shoulder and began to crawl by the desk. As she did her foot tangled around a wire and pulled a radio to the ground.
AND THIS IS NEW CANAAN RADIO BRINGING YOU YOUR FAVORITE SONGS! HERE'S HANK WILLIAMS WITH MOVE IT ON OVER!"
"Up there!"
Wendy untangled the wire from her foot and then unslung the shotgun, she stood up and fired at the first person she spotted. The gun recoiled as the shell plowed through the weak plane of glass sending sharp shards of it toward the first man along with pellets. The man fell dead as the room erupted into gunfire.
"Zachary!"
Wendy racked another shell and fired at another man, the man ducked behind a stable as the pellets smashed into the weak wood. The slepnier thrashed and screamed as bullets and debris filled their once quiet room.
Wendy ducked down as gunfire poured up into the small office. She racked another shell as the door to the office was slashed open by a man wielding a machete. She turned the gun quickly and fired at the man hitting him center mass through the door.
"John!"
Wendy racked another shell and then stood firing down in the general direction of her attackers.
Click
She ducked down and checked her pockets.
"Shit, shit, I'm out!"
"Push up!"
"She's out of ammo!"
Wendy took her backpack off and pulled out her 9mm, she took the safety off and aimed toward the door. A man peeked through the hole in the door and she fired three times, the man ducked down and fired a burst through the door.
"She's up here!"
The footsteps grew louder and louder as more and more boots thudded on the garage pavement and metal frame stairs as they made their way up towards her. Wendy's life flashed before her eyes as she fired round after round through the door. Some landed others missed but soon she was out.
"Fuck. The radio continued to play as men piled up the stairs. She pointed at the radio and a steak of electricity poured from her finger destroying it.
Wait that's it.
Wendy stood up and readied herself. The door was practically all gone and if she was right they were all bunched up. She could simply fry them all and, a grenade flew through the hole.
She dove back behind the metal desk as the grenade exploded.
"PUSH UP!"
Wendy looked back up as she saw the point of a barrel and then the attacker. Everything in life hit her at once as the rifle was pointed at her.
Tiink
The man was slammed against the stairs and pinned to the wall.
"BEHIND U-"
A sharp boom filled the air as did more gunfire. After a brief exchange the room went quiet, Wendy stood up and slowly walked towards the door. As she opened the now almost-gone door she spotted a cloaked figure beating one of the attackers.
She looked down the stairs past bodies with limbs blown clean off and some even pinned to the wall and stairs.
"Why are you after her?!"
"Go to hell!"
The figure punched the man again.
"I'll send you there first to set up the table! Now answer the question!"
"Fuck you!"
tiink
The figure stood up and looked up the stairs, a dark green helmet with crimson red eyes. Wendy took a step back and then sighed in relief as she recognized the person, the metal hand sticking out of the duster gave it away.
Wendy ran down the stairs throwing herself at Frank
"YOU BASTARD!"
She hugged the blood-soaked ranger who took off his helmet. Frank set the helmet on the floor as he knelt at her level.
"You okay?"
"I thought you left?!"
"I changed my mind."
She buried her face into the black duster as Frank hugged her back. He pushed her back and unclasped the metal gear around him.
"Put it on."
"What is it?"
"My armor...look I'm sorry for being a dick yesterday. But we can talk later we need to go now."
He fastened the armor before putting his helmet back on and standing
"What about James?"
Frank walked over to one of the stables and took a slepnier, he threw a saddle on it and turned to Wendy.
"I don't know. Now we got to go this city is a war zone."
"What happened?"
"I'm not sure but it's hell out there and we need to go."
Frank helped Wendy onto the mount and then took the reins. The mount buckled for a moment but Frank got it under control as he led it toward the big door at the end of the garage. Frank picked up a rifle from one of the dead men and handed it to Wendy along with ammo.
"In here!"
Frank turned and drew a revolver, he cocked the hammer and fired at the man who charged through the double doors. As the man fell Frank turned back around and threw the garage doors open, he mounted the horse and set it into motion starting with a slow trot. Another man ran through the doors and Frank fired at him as the trot became a full sprint down the cement street.
"We need to find James!"
"There's no time."
"It's the least we can do."
Frank sighed as he turned the mount to the left and tore through an alley, the 8-legged creature thundered through the city as gunfire rang out everywhere. As they approached the street an inferno raged, Frank slowed the mount down as they stood in front of the Richter's home.
"What happened?"
Frank dismounted from the mount and approached them, it was the Richters, James family dead. "Someone executed them, .45 ACP, had them on their knees."
"Why?"
"I don't know...but Oliver isn't here."
As Frank examined the bodies he heard a small sob and saw James, a now broken man with a gun in his hand by a barren tree.
"You!"
He stood up and walked towards Frank as he pointed the gun at Wendy.
"Whoa easy, Oliver...set the gun down."
"This is all your fault...this is all on you!"
"Easy now look this is on nobody...just put the gun down."
"No!"
"Then just...gun on me.. okay not her. Me."
Oliver turned the gun and aimed at Frank.
"They did this cause of her! They did all of this cause of her! You brought her here!"
"Oliver...come on...I wasn't trying to have this happen put the gun down, we can talk this through."
Wendy looked at Oliver his hands and shirt caked in blood
"Oliver..come on man. Look we can talk this through."
"He made me......I saw everything...."
"Who did?"
"He wanted her.....he wanted her dead....."
"Oliver...don't."
Oliver moved his arm and in that split second, Frank drew and fired his revolver into Oliver. Wendy let out a horrified groan as he fell back dead the pistol going off as it hit the ground.
"God dammit!"
Frank knelt by his old friends corpse and cleaned it up before picking him up and bringing him to rest with his family. As New Canaan burned Frank turned back towards Wendy and got back onto the horse.
"Let's go...."

I try to trade for games of equal steam value, but I'm open to negotiate. PayPal wise, just make an offer. I'm UK, so you can do F&F for EU, but otherwise you'll cover fees if reasonably low (just use a PayPal fee calculator). Not looking to buy myself
SGS Flair, IGS Rep & GameTrade Rep (I'm new on there)
Ignore asterisks (\) as they are just a reminder for me*
​
[Wants]
​
Recent Bundles:

• There is No Light, Jack Move, Love Esquire, Such Art, Impostor Factory, Tunguska, Cathedral, A Bird Story, ATONE, I See Red, Perfect Gold
• Biped, Behind The Frame, What Lies in The Multiverse, Tested on Humans, Aspire Inas Tale
• Dorfromantik, Darq, Gotham Knights, Soul Searching
• River City Girls, Arise A Simple Story, Hong Kong Massacre, Lair of the Clockwork God
• Martha Is Dead, Fallout 4, Road 96, Cat Cafe Manager
• Youngblood, Rage, Tears of Avia, Valthirian Arc, Underland & Underland The Climb
• Alchemist Simulator, OverLoop, Crumble, Tested On Humans

​
[Have]
​
House
DESOLATE**
​
Safe In Our World Leftovers:

• PlateUp
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
• Field of Glory II
• Chivalry Medieval Warfare (slight maybe)
• Rise of the Slime
• Steel Rats

​
Celebrating Black Creators/Characters Leftovers:

• Swimsanity
• Mafia III Definitive Edition

Sim-ple Life Leftovers:

• Volcanoids
• Townscaper
• Staxel

Steamy Sakura Leftovers:

• Sakura MMO
• Sakura Dungeon
• Sakura Swim Club

​
Eternal VR Leftovers:

• Karnage Chronicles (maybe)
• Time Lock VR 1
• Operation Armstrong (slight maybe)
• Trickster VR (slight maybe)
• Vengeful Rite

VR Voyagers Bundle Leftovers:

• The Wizards - Dark Times
• Until You Fall
• Shooty Fruity (maybe)
• Sairento VR
• CookOut (maybe)
• Car Mechanic Simulator VR (maybe)
• Acron Attack of the Squirrels

VR Discovery Bundle Leftovers:

• Synth Riders maybe - good offers only
• Blaston

​
Choice Leftovers:
January

• Doom Eternal
• Encased REGION LOCK
• Conan Chop Chop

December Region Locks

• Wasteland 3
• Greedfall
• First Class Trouble
• Blade Assault (maybe)

November Region Locks

• Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition REGION LOCK
• UnMetal (maybe)
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes

October Region Locks

• Epic Chef

September Region Locks

• Crusader Kings 3 (more looking for paypal but will think about offers)
• Descenders (maybe)

​
Anime Bounty Bundle Leftovers:

• This World Unknown
• Graze Counter (maybe)
• Tenta Shooter
• Project Nimbus Complete Edition

Build Your Own Anime Bundle 4 Leftovers:

• How To Fool A Liar King
• How To Take Off Your Mask
• East Tower - Akio (Vol 1)
• East Tower - Takashi (Vol 2)
• East Tower - Kuon (Vol 3)
• East Tower - Kurenai (Vol 4)

​
​
Random Humble Leftovers:

• Forager
• The Long Dark Survival Edition (Survival Mode Only, no story)
• DOOM VFR (maybe)
• Propagation VR - Coop
• Day Of The Tentacle Remastered
• The Amazing American Circus
• Crying Suns
• Lust For Darkness
• We Are Alright

​
Random Fanatical Leftovers:

• Stirring Abyss
• Dance Collider
• Scarlet Tower
• Darkwood
• Survive The Nights
• Main Assembly
• The Beast Inside
• Wounded The Beginning*
• Doorways: Prelude **
• Headbangers in Holiday Hell (maybe)

​
Free with trade**:**

• SWINE HD Remaster*
• Smoke and Sacrifice*
• Blazing Chrome*
• Outbuddies DX*
• Pixel Hero: Byte & Magic*
• X Rebirth
• The Walking Dead

​
Software:

• Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
• Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 x 2
• Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
• Intro to Game Development with Unity
• Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
• PDF-Suite

Wishlist

I try to trade for games of equal steam value, but I'm open to negotiate. PayPal wise, just make an offer. I'm UK, so you can do F&F for EU, but otherwise you'll cover fees if reasonably low (just use a PayPal fee calculator). Not looking to buy myself
SGS Flair, IGS Rep & GameTrade Rep (I'm new on there)
Ignore asterisks (\) as they are just a reminder for me*
​
[Wants]
​
Recent Bundles:

• There is No Light, Jack Move, Love Esquire, Such Art, Impostor Factory, Tunguska, Cathedral, A Bird Story, ATONE, I See Red, Perfect Gold
• Biped, Behind The Frame, What Lies in The Multiverse, Tested on Humans, Aspire Inas Tale
• Dorfromantik, Darq, Gotham Knights, Soul Searching
• River City Girls, Arise A Simple Story, Hong Kong Massacre, Lair of the Clockwork God
• Martha Is Dead, Fallout 4, Road 96, Cat Cafe Manager
• Youngblood, Rage, Tears of Avia, Valthirian Arc, Underland & Underland The Climb
• Alchemist Simulator, OverLoop, Crumble, Tested On Humans

​
[Have]
​
House
DESOLATE**
​
Safe In Our World Leftovers:

• PlateUp
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
• Field of Glory II
• Chivalry Medieval Warfare (slight maybe)
• Rise of the Slime
• Steel Rats

​
Celebrating Black Creators/Characters Leftovers:

• Swimsanity
• Mafia III Definitive Edition

Sim-ple Life Leftovers:

• Volcanoids
• Townscaper
• Staxel

Steamy Sakura Leftovers:

• Sakura MMO
• Sakura Dungeon
• Sakura Swim Club

​
Eternal VR Leftovers:

• Karnage Chronicles (maybe)
• Time Lock VR 1
• Operation Armstrong (slight maybe)
• Trickster VR (slight maybe)
• Vengeful Rite

VR Voyagers Bundle Leftovers:

• The Wizards - Dark Times
• Until You Fall
• Shooty Fruity (maybe)
• Sairento VR
• CookOut (maybe)
• Car Mechanic Simulator VR (maybe)
• Acron Attack of the Squirrels

VR Discovery Bundle Leftovers:

• Synth Riders maybe - good offers only
• Blaston

​
Choice Leftovers:
January

• Doom Eternal
• Encased REGION LOCK
• Conan Chop Chop

December Region Locks

• Wasteland 3
• Greedfall
• First Class Trouble
• Blade Assault (maybe)

November Region Locks

• Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition REGION LOCK
• UnMetal (maybe)
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes

October Region Locks

• Epic Chef

September Region Locks

• Crusader Kings 3 (more looking for paypal but will think about offers)
• Descenders (maybe)

​
Anime Bounty Bundle Leftovers:

• This World Unknown
• Graze Counter (maybe)
• Tenta Shooter
• Project Nimbus Complete Edition

Build Your Own Anime Bundle 4 Leftovers:

• How To Fool A Liar King
• How To Take Off Your Mask
• East Tower - Akio (Vol 1)
• East Tower - Takashi (Vol 2)
• East Tower - Kuon (Vol 3)
• East Tower - Kurenai (Vol 4)

​
​
Random Humble Leftovers:

• Forager
• The Long Dark Survival Edition (Survival Mode Only, no story)
• DOOM VFR (maybe)
• Propagation VR - Coop
• Day Of The Tentacle Remastered
• The Amazing American Circus
• Crying Suns
• Lust For Darkness
• We Are Alright

​
Random Fanatical Leftovers:

• Stirring Abyss
• Dance Collider
• Scarlet Tower
• Darkwood
• Survive The Nights
• Main Assembly
• The Beast Inside
• Wounded The Beginning*
• Doorways: Prelude **
• Headbangers in Holiday Hell (maybe)

​
Free with trade**:**

• SWINE HD Remaster*
• Smoke and Sacrifice*
• Blazing Chrome*
• Outbuddies DX*
• Pixel Hero: Byte & Magic*
• X Rebirth
• The Walking Dead

​
Software:

• Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
• Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 x 2
• Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
• Intro to Game Development with Unity
• Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
• PDF-Suite

Wishlist

I try to trade for games of equal steam value, but I'm open to negotiate. PayPal wise, just make an offer. I'm UK, so you can do F&F for EU, but otherwise you'll cover fees if reasonably low (just use a PayPal fee calculator). Not looking to buy myself
SGS Flair, IGS Rep & GameTrade Rep (I'm new on there)
Ignore asterisks (\) as they are just a reminder for me*
​
[Wants]
​
Recent Bundles:

• There is No Light, Jack Move, Love Esquire, Such Art, Impostor Factory, Tunguska, Cathedral, A Bird Story, ATONE, I See Red, Perfect Gold
• Biped, Behind The Frame, What Lies in The Multiverse, Tested on Humans, Aspire Inas Tale
• Dorfromantik, Darq, Gotham Knights, Soul Searching
• River City Girls, Arise A Simple Story, Hong Kong Massacre, Lair of the Clockwork God
• Martha Is Dead, Fallout 4, Road 96, Cat Cafe Manager
• Youngblood, Rage, Tears of Avia, Valthirian Arc, Underland & Underland The Climb
• Alchemist Simulator, OverLoop, Crumble, Tested On Humans

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[Have]
​
House
DESOLATE**
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Safe In Our World Leftovers:

• PlateUp
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
• Field of Glory II
• Chivalry Medieval Warfare (slight maybe)
• Rise of the Slime
• Steel Rats

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Celebrating Black Creators/Characters Leftovers:

• Swimsanity
• Mafia III Definitive Edition

Sim-ple Life Leftovers:

• Volcanoids
• Townscaper
• Staxel

Steamy Sakura Leftovers:

• Sakura MMO
• Sakura Dungeon
• Sakura Swim Club

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Eternal VR Leftovers:

• Karnage Chronicles (maybe)
• Time Lock VR 1
• Operation Armstrong (slight maybe)
• Trickster VR (slight maybe)
• Vengeful Rite

VR Voyagers Bundle Leftovers:

• The Wizards - Dark Times
• Until You Fall
• Shooty Fruity (maybe)
• Sairento VR
• CookOut (maybe)
• Car Mechanic Simulator VR (maybe)
• Acron Attack of the Squirrels

VR Discovery Bundle Leftovers:

• Synth Riders maybe - good offers only
• Blaston

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Choice Leftovers:
January

• Doom Eternal
• Encased REGION LOCK
• Conan Chop Chop

December Region Locks

• Wasteland 3
• Greedfall
• First Class Trouble
• Blade Assault (maybe)

November Region Locks

• Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition REGION LOCK
• UnMetal (maybe)
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes

October Region Locks

• Epic Chef

September Region Locks

• Crusader Kings 3 (more looking for paypal but will think about offers)
• Descenders (maybe)

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Anime Bounty Bundle Leftovers:

• This World Unknown
• Graze Counter (maybe)
• Tenta Shooter
• Project Nimbus Complete Edition

Build Your Own Anime Bundle 4 Leftovers:

• How To Fool A Liar King
• How To Take Off Your Mask
• East Tower - Akio (Vol 1)
• East Tower - Takashi (Vol 2)
• East Tower - Kuon (Vol 3)
• East Tower - Kurenai (Vol 4)

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Random Humble Leftovers:

• Forager
• The Long Dark Survival Edition (Survival Mode Only, no story)
• DOOM VFR (maybe)
• Propagation VR - Coop
• Day Of The Tentacle Remastered
• The Amazing American Circus
• Crying Suns
• Lust For Darkness
• We Are Alright

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Random Fanatical Leftovers:

• Stirring Abyss
• Dance Collider
• Scarlet Tower
• Darkwood
• Survive The Nights
• Main Assembly
• The Beast Inside
• Wounded The Beginning*
• Doorways: Prelude **
• Headbangers in Holiday Hell (maybe)

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Free with trade**:**

• SWINE HD Remaster*
• Smoke and Sacrifice*
• Blazing Chrome*
• Outbuddies DX*
• Pixel Hero: Byte & Magic*
• X Rebirth
• The Walking Dead

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Software:

• Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
• Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 x 2
• Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
• Intro to Game Development with Unity
• Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
• PDF-Suite

Wishlist

[WP] You are the commander of the International Space Station. Abruptly, all contact with Earth is lost and the station now appears to be in orbit around an alien planet. With supplies running low, you decide to take your crew down to the seemingly habitable alien world.

The station had more supplies than necessary for dealing with the obstruction of space traffic while the Space Elevator was being built. However, as the elevator was being locked into position when we teleported, we didn't have that many more supplies than usual.
Alarms blared when we lost radio connection. More alarms blared when not a single satellite could be found. Even more when visuals showed not Earth below us. I could only imagine how this would go down on Earth. At least I got to watch the first cargo car from Canada climb the Elevator.
But we were running out of food, and reluctantly I let everyone know that we were heading to the planet to get food.
A week and a half later, we crammed as many space capsules as possible full of supplies, loaded people in ignoring safety restrictions, and launched down for what appeared to be the best place to go.
Fifteen hours later we landed, while the empty station still orbited above us.
-----
"This just in, while the space elevator was being tested, the ISS has disappeared. Multiple nearby cameras reported seeing the station engulfed by light, and not a single piece of debris was left behind. While construction of the internals of the space elevator is going to continue, the first satellite release will be one to look for the ISS, and- hold on.
"This just in, a signal has been detected by space telescopes around the world in unencrypted morse code. It- please, tell me- yes, yes, I know someone called a code red, but do you think- OK, OK, I'll continue.
"The signal says 'HUMANS. WE HAVE TAKEN YOUR ASTRONAUTS TO A DEATHWORLD TO SEE HOW THEY SURVIVE, AS PER PROTOCOL. IF THEY DIE, YOU WILL BE INVADED. THIS MESSAGE AND THESE ACTIONS WERE PERFORMED BY AN AUTOMATED PROBE.'. More coming at six."
-----
The SpaceX Dragon shuttles spent extra fuel to touch down on land with our supplies, while the Russians simply took a heavy landing. Everyone was fine, and we immediately set up a camp. Axes cut wood and the Russians had the framework, flooring and walls for a log cabin that could house all of us within the day, while the rest of the crew made weapons. Spears, bows, that's mostly it, but someone had the good idea to go looking inside a cave. "Good."
They found many things, chief among them an angry now-food animal. We don't really have a choice about what to eat, so here goes to hoping the cooked local food isn't poisonous. The meat itself was already salty, and Calvin (biologist) suggested that it was to counter an infection.
Sunset was interesting. The blue sun here really color-shifts the landscape. Additionally, this planet doesn't have a moon, so the night was quite dark. Unlike in all the artwork, alien flora is not bioluminescent.
The next morning, the Russians continued the log cabin while the rest of us dug out an outhouse well and away from the sea. We also cleared out the cave from earlier; it had a waterfall, and became our shower area. That afternoon, the cabin using alien wood was complete and we started to move supplies from the shuttles to the cabin. Next stage is going to be securing camp and a food source.
-----
"So!" Kevin, designer of the Space Elevator, slammed his hands onto the table in frustration and opened the meeting. "We have a problem."
"You think?" The Canadian minister of defense snorted. "We're already pulling a big budget here that was supposed to pay itself off, but now the elevator needs constant use!"
"Not really," Kevin said. "The UN pays us the cost of operation and the cost of construction in return for unlimited anti-xeno military launches permanently. This project took around a billion dollars, we'll get that back in no time. We also get to scan and see every single component that comes through the elevator. It's a win for military R&D, a win for budgeting, and a win for preparations for the war."
"And? What defenses do we have that they can't defend against? None. We have no intel on this enemy. For all we know, they attacked because Humanity built their first space elevator!"
"We can't solve that. What we can do is load every laser array we can onto geostationary satellites, and then a couple nukes in case they decide to destroy them. No, no, back to point." Kevin sighed. "Our problem is the space elevator itself. It isn't designed to withstand an attack. Someone cuts the cord below geosynchronous level and we're screwed, though at least the counter-counterweight system gives us five cords from geosynchronous waypoint station to the space station. Now, the only way to do that is with a giant plasma sword, but if these guys have FTL..." Kevin let the point hang in the air. "Once the invasion starts, our orbitals are on their own."
People were silent for a while.
"Now, the question is... What is a deathworld, and how long can the ISS last? It's been two weeks and everyone has finally gotten their acts together, but the ISS is going to be almost out of food, even on rationing." Someone else asked. "And when are we going to talk about putting R&D on FTL?"
-----
Note: The space elevator is a single cord going from a space station far, far above geosynchronous orbit (so high up it has Earth gravity away from the planet!), through a space station in geostationary orbit. As people and supplies move up towards the upper station, to ensure pressure on the cord is equal, giant weights move towards the planet, lessening the centrifugal force the weights have, and by extension, the cord has to pull. This is called the counter-counterweight system, and four of these connect the geostationary unit to the space elevator's people-station.
The cord is used by semi-circle atmo-sealed cars moving up on one side and down on the other. The cord itself is two feet of carbon nanotubes covered in a centimeter of lead and then another foot of square stainless steel, so the nanotubes are safe from cosmic rays. The foot of stainless steel has cutouts so gears can latch onto them so the cars can pull themselves up, and the stainless steel is square to the cars stay oriented relative to each other. At the stations, cars are detached from the cord to be undocked, allowing others to pass through. The cars themselves have five latches that hug the cord and can be undone to pass another car or to dock at a station.
The gravatic station is far, far larger than the geostationary station, which is mostly supplies and some industry for in case the cord gets cut lower, though each station does have four weeks of food and water recyclers just in case.
-----
Kronfol turned to his boss. "These... Humans, they had survived unnaturally long. Most species can't even take the gravity of the planet, but looking at the data their probe has pulled, this isn't even full gravity for them. Look, the three from the subspecies that don't feel cold even built a shelter for the rest in just tacks! And the two from the ones that love slugthrowers are hunting! Not to mention they were smart enough to bring supplies down with them. They're enemies on their planet, they should have destroyed each other by now!"
Kraffool added. "Yes, but one from the polite subspecies are organizing them, and the ones from nations of conquest - which there are only three of - they are securing their landing site against the wildlife. They're succeeding!"
"True, true," The boss replied. "But I doubt they'll survive much longer. They've been sleeping for a mere third of a cycle for the past couple cycles, they're going to have to-"
"That's their full sleep cycle." Kronfol interrupted. "They can eat the local ecosystem, too, so they can replenish their supplies. They might be small, but they can still outrun us. And then there's stamina. The probe... I'm not sure it made the right choice."
"No matter," the boss continued. "That species just built their first surface-to-space structure, they won't be doing anything... radical."
-----
Day 3
Today, we scouted around a bit and re-enforced the camp against more wildlife. We found another cave, it looks like this place once flooded, dissolving veins of softer rock. Still, this one is rich with material, so we're going to use some wood, carve out a furnace into the rock, and smelt a pickaxe. Minecraft time, whoo!
On another note, we fully moved into the cabin. The SpaceX chairs make good enough beds, and the Russians have already turned the animal from last night into a rug. Speaking of the Russians, they found some wheat-like stuff and immediately made a vodka barrel. They say it'll be done in a week.
Still, the days are around twenty-three hours, and the gravity is eight-ish meters per second per second, and there's a fair bit of oxygen, so overall this is a pretty good planet to land on.
If only there were someone watching us, then they could pick up our distress beacon. This can't be a coincidence.
-----
Day 4
Totally forgot to do this yesterday, but yeah! I picked a sanity journal out of the emergency supplies and it's mine. MINE!!
In saner terms, we're making great progress. Furnace is in, low-quality iron pickaxe acquired. Americans were making gunpowder by running water over the... outhouse... to collect sodium nitrate to make bullets with. Vodka is untouched, if it were the Russians would have killed us all already.
I'm trying to direct people to collect silicon for advanced electronics. We have the information required to make a solar panel, and I plan to get back to the ISS sooner or later. We got metal and the Europeans are making swords and bows with steel. Still...
Anyway, I was going over the pictures from orbital and there looks to be more ruined space stations in orbit of unknown design. I figured we weren't the first, but this is still troubling. So we're going to go head to what looks like another landing site not too far from here sometime soon. Judging by the state of the other satellites, ours is the only autonomous functional one; the rest don't have solar panels and have appeared to have died.
So, we need to build and power a car. Winter is going to be a problem, this planet's axis isn't that bad but it still has seasons, and I don't want to figure out what'll happen to the crops the hard way.
Now, onto what productive stuff the Russians and Americans built, they got a farm running. I'm hoping for at least one yield before we go, and I'm not sure if everything they planted are even seeds, but I can't control that.
Day 5
Got a car today! Did it by building a motor by coiling copper in a loop and pulsing electricity through really fast, or so says the technician. I'm not going to complain, slap a solar panel and some batteries on top of a frame built out of the Russian shuttle and everyone's happy.
We packed the entire camp and moved out towards the other landing site. It looks somewhat fresh, so these aliens may have been aiming for our location as well. I can't wait to find them; we're bringing solar chargers and a linguistic AI that techie developed while trying to make a new language a couple years ago and saved to a local device.
Theodore rocks!
In other news, we're going to arrive tomorrow at midday, judging by our position relative to the ISS. We will make it back into space, back home, and then after that I'm never going higher than a commercial jet flight ever again.
Also, the Russians killed another animal. So we have that, too.
-----
"The Humans move directly towards the Renni. Should we be worried?" Kraffool asked.
"No," The boss replied. "They will fight and kill each other over supplies, I'm sure of it. That's how most get eliminated. Still, what you say is... concerning. How do they know that the Renni are there?"
"Their orbital habitat is still operational," Kraffool said. "Instead of feeding on ground-fed laser projections, their large communication prongs also hold sun-absorbant solar units. They left due to lack of supplies, not failing life support. As such, they have orbital communications, and though the station was found in low orbit it is functioning fine in geostationary orbit."
"Wouldn't the life support fail on the dark side of a planet?" the boss asked.
"No, sir. They charge batteries with the power during the day to be used at night. Additionally, they appear to have intentionally turned down - though not off - life support to conserve power." Kraffool replied. "I am concerned-"
"You have voiced that concern to me already," the boss cut Kraffool off. "You have no reason to be. Go."
Kraffool bowed on the way out.
-----
"Attention people of the world," The United Nations speaker began. "We are here today to bring to you the results of a week of unprecedented international cooperation in the face of one of the largest threats Humanity has ever known.
"The Canadian government has agreed to lend use of the Space Elevator to launch geostationary laser orbital defense arrays. There is no way to use the space elevator to launch them in Low Earth Orbit, and they must be laser arrays, as kinetic rounds are far too slow in space. The United Nations will pay the Canadian government for the one billion dollar cost of building the Space Elevator, as well as the cost of operating it for the Earth Defense Network. Of course, private businesses are free to use the services of the Space Elevator as well.
"Additionally, the design and construction of said laser arrays will be using a standardized design loaded with a single nuclear bomb, to detonate if the station is forced to resort to kamikaze tactics.
"These stations will be first spread out over populated zones, then over land masses, and hopefully over the entire planet. We are not sure what customs the aliens use, nor what a deathworld is or how long the ISS can survive in such an environment. If they were sent in orbit of Mars, there is a chance that the invasion would occur within the week."
The speaker let that sentence hang, before continuing. "The production of arrays has already started, and the first are expected to be launched by the end of tomorrow. Humanity will prevail!
"In other news, we have received a transmission from the alien probe, now in confirmed lunar orbit."
HUMANS, YOUR ASTRONAUTS SURVIVE, FOR NOW. THEY ARE HEADED FOR AN ENCOUNTER WITH ANOTHER COMPETITOR, WHERE THEY WILL MOST CERTAINLY DIE. YOU ARE LUCKY YOURS ARE EVEN ALIVE RIGHT NOW. WE WILL MEET SOON. PREPARE TO SURRENDER, OR DIE.
"To that we respond:" The speaker continued. "We will survive, or die trying."
-----
Day 6
So, today we met them! We left a solar-powered AI at their camp and are just going to sleep in car for now. Looking at satellite footage, we can see that our camp is fine.
This planet has a magnetic field, thank god; we're currently at around 40 degrees north and, well, we can't measure east-west without some kind of definitive line. Add that to we're the only satellite still there, as GPS satellites were left behind, so we can't get any precise info.
Still, that means that compasses work here, so that's good. The aliens' tech all seemed powered down.
Speaking of which, official first contact was - and this could just be me going insane - really funny. One of the Russians stumbled into a trap, and then they showed up while we cut him down and just stared at each other. We wandered into camp, gave them some water because they didn't land close to any and as a show of goodwill, left the translator AI, and then left.
Air pressure here does a slight pitch change to microphones, but whatever. They still work.
The aliens themselves are something to behold. Eleven-ish feet tall, quadrupedal with a torso attached to the top like a centaur, but instead they're part... some furry animal, I'm not a biologist and Calvin has no idea what they are. They're aliens, after all.
So far, our immune systems are holding up, but that's the next thing to worry about after winter.
Vodka: untouched, second barrel in the making. Guns and ammo: acquired, though the Americans won't make them for anyone else. New animal: tastes like ham. I don't know why, it looks nothing like a pig, but we can all agree it tastes like salty ham.
Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow to see how the AI did. First contact, baby!
-----
"They didn't kill each other." The boss said. "Why did they not kill each other! We've taken millions of planets like this, they didn't kill each other!"
"Well, the Humans demonstrated intelligence, strolled in, left them a gift of water and a metal box, then left." Kronfol said. "The Renni were too shocked to do anything, after being alone for ages. They spent ages talking to the metal box. Additionally, the Humans brought more 'solar panels' with them, so their electronics on the ground are also powered."
The boss sighed.
Kronfol continued. "Additionally, the Humans have been fortifying their homeworld. The first thing they did was blind our probe by shooting another at it which ate the probe, so we don't know much else other than they started putting radioactive satellites in orbit."
"And," Kraffool added, "The box the Humans left was an algorithm for a translator."
The boss choked on air.
-----
"Today, under the threat of an alien invasion, and a mere day after announcing our cooperation efforts for the Space Elevator, we have decided to take this threat even more seriously." The UN speaker said. "As such, today, after a unanimous vote from every country on the planet, following a plan laid out by citizens of the world and supported by millions overnight, Humanity unites!"
The cheering that filled the chamber made the speaker pause for a full minute. "That plan will be followed to the letter, as voted upon. This includes the merging of all militaries, and the election of an Electorate to lead Humanity. The election will follow the Universal Constitution laid out in the plan. As of noon, Eastern Standard Time, on the fifth of December, 2031, welcome to the Terra Firma System Union. Terra Firma or Terra Nova, we will prevail!"
The cheering that followed was deafening.
-----
Zaryos looked at the box.
It was a metal rectangle plugged into a series of black squares. It was inert, yet was left beside the water as a gift. She recognized electronics when she saw them, however, and decided to not pour water over it.
The gravity here was twice that on her homeworld and she could barely move. The other four Renni had been unable to do as much as make a shelter, and hers had collapsed multiple times as she was unused to dealing with such heavy materials.
The two-legged small ones had bounced through this gravity a bit uncertainly, and not quite naturally, but they obviously had a much better time in it than she did.
Still, without access to her worlds' Power Laser network, she was unable to do so much as send out a distress signal. She went to sleep still talking to the box, watching it, trying to figure out how it was supposed to help her. Or spy on her. She didn't know how it even survived this gravity, but it looked well-built.
The black boxes were arranged in the sun, and while not much research had gone into solar panels on Renqui, her homeworld, she knew that they powered the laptop. How did they get down here? she asked herself. Do they know where we are? I don't, but if they can help us...
She shuddered as another thought came to mind. What if they're working with the ones who put us here? But we have no other option other than to trust them... argh! Why is this so hard? Why do I both want to run and hug them? What part of me do I trust?
-----
Day 7
Week one on the surface. We're going to leave tomorrow in order to get back to the vodka in time.
But more importantly, the translator worked! It picked up on context and soon the entire language was translated. So we came back in, opened the laptop, and started talking.
Apparently, their electronics are fried, as they use a constantly-fed high-powered global laser array, instead of solar panels. Still, we're going to sleep in that honestly not bad cave we found, and then head back to our camp. We'll see if we meet back up again.
In other news, we gave them the solar charger and phone, so they can talk to us. No need to encrypt the channel, it's better if we don't anyway, so others can listen in and join the call.
-----
Zaryos watched the small ones come back in, open the box, look at the functioning screen for a bit, then say something. It took the box a moment, but it said it in a neutral tone in Raphuii. It had poor grammar, but it worked.
TESTING, TESTING. RESPOND "I UNDERSTAND" PLEASE YOU IF UNDERSTAND MESSAGE THIS.
Zaryos would respond, and then ask "Who are you?" And launched Second Contact for her people. But all that was overshadowed. They were going back to their own camp the next day, but left another device. It had a battery, and would charge using solar panels, which were the black boxes, so they could continue to talk.
The small ones didn't have a global laser network, but instead a global wired network. This meant that they didn't have the infrastructure to power their space station, so instead they added more solar panels and batteries to it. They said that the translator would slowly work out the kinks in each of their languages, and that they were surprised it worked so quickly.
Still, things were finally looking up.
-----
"What did we get from the remnants of the alien satellite?" A War Council member asked.
"Not much." Another replied. "It's still in transit back here, but the components are low-G only. So we're going to research it in the space elevator."
The room was silent for a moment.
"We got another message, this one from another probe in solar orbit," Someone said at last. "Let's give it a read over."
HUMANS, THEY LIVE. FOR NOW. WE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR MILLENNIA, THEY WILL DIE. IN OTHER NEWS, FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN YOU AND THE RENNI HAS BEEN PERFORMED. FEAR NOT, NOBODY SURVIVES LONGER THAN A WEEK, WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF USING THAT PLANET FOR OVER TWO MILLION SPECIES CONTESTS. THIS GALAXY IS OURS.
"Well," Kevin commented, walking into the room. "That's ominous."
"What are you here for?" Someone else groaned.
"Because," Kevin said, "We don't have FTL, but we just discovered Hard Light, and perpetual motion, all in one go."
-----
"What now?" The boss asked.
"Well," Kronfol started, "The Humans on Earth, they..."
Kronfol leapt at the Boss, pulling out a knife and leaving a fatal wound behind. "They taught me freedom."
-----
Lights flashed throughout the corridors as Kronfol and his sister Kraffool ran for the nearest escape pod. Already, the next message to the Humans was being sent out. The two siblings ran for the nearest pod and jettisoned. At this range, they'd only be able to reach the deathworld, but the two had already decided on their next course of action. It would be preferable to other outcomes.
As the entry burn commenced, Kronfol thought over what he had learned from the Humans. They valued freedom, and had made an entire society around it, and they had been the final catalyst for uniting. A united Humanity, with their new technology, would crush The Empire. And so, the two had decided to run. They couldn't take it anymore.
The pod automatically deployed parachutes. It was designed to be functional while EMPed, so it was all manual. As they descended towards the plant far, far away from the Humans, the siblings knew that their new life wouldn't be kind.
People didn't last long in that position anyway, it was only a matter of time. This new life would, they hoped, be kinder than the one that they had just left.
-----
Lights flashed on the screen as the ISS picked up a radio signal from the Renni. They were being attacked by animals. I immediately turned the 'car' around towards them. It was still recharging after the latest two-hour boot of use, but it would get us close enough.
We arrived and immediately set to work scaring the scaly things away. Giant komodo dragons, but beyond crushing people they had little to go in the way of natural weaponry. We let the car sit and recharge; we were close enough that we should be able to reach our camp anyway, though it'd be tight to do so before sunset.
And then, we saw something from the cameras on the ISS. Our camp.
-----
Lights flashed in the control room as the Humanity's first self-sustainable spaceship departed from the geostationary ring of the Space Elevator and ascended next to the cord towards the gravatic station at the end of the elevator.
Hard Light Perpetual Generators powered Hard Light Ion Engines, all of whom put out unholy amounts of power, forcing the ship to accelerate as though it were a roller coaster. As the ship began to decelerate using Hard Light Ion Retro Thrusters, people cheered.
Factories were already turning over to produce Hard Light goods. As Kevin continued to organize the creation of thousands of laser batteries, the world switched to green power nearly instantaneously. It was literally free, after all.
And a scientist in a corner of the globe, whose last name was Hildew, began to draw up plans for something much more important.
-----
Lights flashed in the room as the new Electorate, elected within the past two days, stood before the crowd. As per the TFSU's new systems, only the achievements, personalities, and a small speech from each candidate were supplied, and the people voted on that information alone.
"Another message has arrived. PREPARE. We are running out of time, but we will fight, fight for freedom, for our siblings on the ISS, and fight, fight for freedom! Terra Firma or Terra Nova, we will prevail! We will survive, or die trying! Humanity has decided, in a message to whoever is threatening our home, you will pay for it!"
-----
Day 8
Bringing the Renni to our camp, it's much safer. Our camp appears to have people loitering around - we're sure they're not animals. I'm writing this early because today was eventful.
So, the Renni were attacked by a pack of animals, and now these guys are in our camp. Still, it isn't all bad. I could imagine how many other ways First Contact could've gone sideways. Or official, at least. A prevalent theory is that more aliens are the ones who dropped us from the sky. But there is no motive; then again, these are aliens, after all.
Overall, it wasn't a bad day. We're low on food, but we're heading back to camp anyway. The Renni have much larger food issues due to some kind of limited diet, and are slowing us down so we'll only reach after sunset, but it'll probably be fine.
I feel like I'm missing some crucial piece to a puzzle. I don't like it at all; I want to get back to camp.
Day 9
Aliens at camp were defensive at first until we walked up and unlatched the SpaceX Dragon shuttles. Then they understood that this was ours.
Russians made several more batches of Vodka, and are preparing to drink the first one soon. Americans have finally been convinced to make more people guns. Russians are building a cabin for the Renni. Americans are helping the Europeans mine for resources to begin smelting higher-quality steel, and a proper forge. Europeans are building a wall. They almost completed it, too; the slightly lower gravity is doing wonders for stamina, and we're all still doing enough exercise to prevent atrophy, though I suspect it wouldn't be so bad in the first place.
New aliens are talking to the translator, at least with the Renni and us talking through it they get the idea. Plugged it into solar panels and we're all good to go. We tried talking, but it failed. We'll try again tomorrow.
-----
Kraffool was busy finding the materials necessary for making an ax to chop wood. She eventually found it, but not before they had to go back to sleep.
I wonder what it's like to be able to sleep for as little as the Humans.... she wondered as she fell asleep in the small shuttle.
The next day, she continued, and managed a not-too-shabby shelter. Then, they slept again. It was tiring work, but they were alive, and it was theirs.
-----
Zaryos had been walking for a quarter of a cycle. She needed sleep, yet these Humans were only acting tired, not exhausted.
At their new camp, more aliens were waiting; after being shown the translator, Zaryos and her group had to sleep on the ground for a bit, as the Humans' cabin was too small. Still, they made first contact with yet another group.
The next day, some of the Humans built a new cabin, others built a wall around the camp but not a farm they had created a bit further out. The even newer aliens simply talked to the translator; at some point, the small light on its side began to flash green and they opened first contact with this new group as well.
Zaryos and the other Renni, however, mostly just slept.
-----
The War Council watched the release of the first of many laser arrays to come. As it began to burn towards Asia, another popped out of the geosynchronous station to take its place.
Above, the space station was almost complete. People were still working and living up there, as it would be a great control center, having visuals of the fight and now just relying on probes and cameras. It was a risk, but people decided that it was worth it. It would be a volunteer mission only. Well, voluntold, but still technically able to back out.
They were getting ready. If they were ready fast enough was the question.
-----
Hildew looked at the results from her latest experiment. She checked them over one last time, then hit the call button on her phone.
We have it. All it took was Hard Light, and all that took was a slight extra scientific catalyst.
We have FTL.
-----
YOU HUMANS ARE CAUSING TOO MUCH TROUBLE. WITH THE AUTHORITY OF THE EMPEROR, THE DEATHWORLD TRAILS ARE NULLIFIED AND THE ASSIMILATION STARTS NOW!
-----
Day 18
It's been a while, and it's been busy.
So, the new aliens we got translated on day 12, and until then we just made them houses, expanded camp and farm, and other general maintenance.
Then, we started making concrete and the first thing we did with it was build foundations - and basements - for the houses. After that was done, we began to dig out a launch site. We're going to head back to the ISS, no matter what.
And then that takes us to today, where I finally remembered to fill out my journal.
Oh, also: We got high-quality steel, now we need to find a way to weld it together.
-----
The ship bounced around the Sol System as though it were a playground.
Gravitational Enhanced Propulsion (GEP) FTL, which had been dubbed the Hildew Drive, had been discovered. Ships were built outfitted with them and Hard Light engines, and of course Hard Light generators. Still, even with all that, Earth's defense fleet was still small, as the laser arrays took priority over the ships.
Then, deep space radars picked up the approaching fleet drop out of interstellar FTL just for a moment to engage system FTL. And things continued to move forwards.
The ships were launched. The last of the millions of laser arrays were launched. More ships were built even as they came out of FTL on the dark side of the moon.
Humanity wasn't ready, but if they bought themselves enough time, they would be.
-----
Laser targeting systems hoped online. Blast shutters closed over nonessential windows of the Space Elevator. Ships launched en masse, some being completed in transport. Missile silos readied themselves, deadmen's switches flipped, and nuclear bombers loaded their cargo bays. Across Earth, Humanity dug into the ground, and prepared to fight.
On the dark side of the moon, a scant few probes sent a signal regarding new contacts. As per protocol, Humanity's First Contact message played out to the fleet. When the probes were fired upon, the messages changed.
TFSU TO UNKNOWN FLEET: YOU ARE TRESPASSING UPON SOVEREIGN SPACE. YOU HAVE FIRED UPON TFSU-OWNED AND OPERATED INFRASTRUCTURE; LEAVE OR IDENTIFY YOURSELVES IMMEDIATELY.
The response was the fleet beginning to streak towards Earth.
EMPIRE ASSIMILATION FLEET ONE TO TFSU: SURRENDER OR DIE.
TFSU TO EMPIRE ASSIMILATION FLEET ONE: WE WILL SURVIVE OR DIE TRYING.
The fleet Freebird I Pulsed right in front of the incoming fleet. Shots were exchanged, and then Freebird I pulsed out before they could be targeted.
This pattern repeated itself twice more before Freebird II joined in, hailing fire from behind and disabling several ships before leaving. At random intervals, Freebird I and Freebird II attacked the Assimilation Fleet 1. As the assimilation fleet grew closer, the geostationary laser defense array fired. Multiple ships exploded.
Then, while being both randomly and systematically cut to pieces, the admiral began to finally fire back. Beams of light destroyed the entirety of Freebird II.
But that wasn't enough. Under constant laser-fire and being harassed from space, the Assimilation Fleet, who only ever saw surrenders, was demolished. With one last nuclear meltdown of an explosion, TFSU High Flyers MFC 000-00-014 destroyed the flagship of the Assimilation Fleet.
-----
Elsewhere, on a large planet with many de-powered space stations orbiting it, another ship appeared. But unlike the last, it chose to go here. Information from the demolished Empire probe had directed this ship to this planet.
Automated docking protocols with the ISS engaged. And far, far below, people cheered.
-----
Day 18-2
More people came. Humans. In an FTL ship. They docked with the ISS and we had a video chat. They're coming to rescue us. YES!
-----
The Boss was mad.
A Human FTL ship was rescuing the Humans. The Assimilation fleet had seen it's first total defeat since its inception, and the Emperor was breathing down his neck.
Maybe Kronfol had been right.
-----
Zaryos was in awe.
The Humans had invented FTL just to rescue nine people. She watch them engage in a video call with the ones who docked to the space station, and as they left for the planet's surface. She watched them streak down in a re-entry burn, heading right for them. The last month had seen Humanity do many things, and she was glad to have a new species as a friend.
They were being rescued.
-----
The War Council cheered.
"We saw the ultimate destruction of Freebird II, but Freebird I managed to pull through. We did it, people, we did it!"
And then, they got the news.
-----
The ISS was being pushed into FTL. As our rescue ship began the two-minute charge to Pulse, I looked around.
We scattered satellites all over the planet, and dropped even more supplies on the ground. We would be back for the survivors, but for now, we were needed back in Sol.
I watched through the window as a swirling mass of color with black and white lines chasing each other across it took over from the stars. A tear rolled down my cheek.
We had done it. We had survived. We had made first contact. We had made friends.
And we had made enemies. But I would deal with that another day. Because, most of all, we had finally made friends, with aliens, but also with ourselves.
-----
[34,864] characters excluding this last part.
Well, won’t you look at that, my longest writing project so far was posted in eleven parts to a writing prompt.
Anyway, I’m not sure whether to continue this further. It has potential, but my mind is being slushied by personal life (school isn’t really that bad for now).
Credit to u/RevenantThyamis for the prompt. Credit to u/gafser for getting me to write a part 2.
Special mention to u/LalaAnAbsolute for sticking with the story the entire time, and getting me to write parts 3 and above. Thank you to everyone!

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I preface this by saying I already know my relationship is abusive. But I’m really trying to figure out if this one particular instance is more my fault or not. So here goes.
This happened back in October. We had been going through legal troubles that were going better for me than for him and costing us thousands of dollars. This is a day in the life that I documented in my phone notebook. So it starts from when I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Context and clarification in parentheses.
Today Mike (name changed)
Threw something at the bathroom door when I told him to get his anger together when yelled at Josh (our 4yo at the time son) first thing just for coming out his door
Called me a whore and said Josh wasn’t his (I can’t remember the context here)
(I decided to go to bed at this point, I couldn’t function properly and I told him to leave me be.)
Made a loudly audible noise of disgust when I walked by (naked because we are a clothing optional household) to turn down the air
Mocked me when Leah (my 8yo daughter) asked why I went to bed so early (I was having a panic attack being in the same room) and said I was “butthurt that he wasn’t kissing my ass”
Threatened to call the police and have me removed for “endangering the children” because I don’t want to let him sleep in our bed due to all of the above. I still don’t know what lie he was gonna tell them. I told him directly I would consider it a threat if he came in the bedroom and asked if I needed to block the door with the dresser. He said no. I locked the door and went to sleep across the whole bed. I thought he had gone to the living room to sleep. It was about ten.
He came back home from god knows where at 4am and forced himself into the bed by lying on top of me and pushing me out of the way. I woke up and started pushing him out of the bed. I smacked him a couple times. We fought. He held me down by the throat by his elbow, punched me in the face, People’s elbowed me in the chest and hit me with his nightstand which I had knocked over trying to get him out of the bed. Put holes in ceiling and two walls. Insists I attacked him. He is unhurt except for a cut on his leg sustained by picking the nightstand up to hit me. He doesn’t believe it’s from the nightstand, and insists it is from my toenails while I was trying to push him out of the bed. I have a cut on my leg with major bruising(that matches the cut on his leg because the same piece of metal cut us both,) a large painful bruise on my right breast, a fat lip with a cut on the inside, and huge swelling to the right side of my head with a small cut by my ear. I’ve had headaches for two days and vomiting. I have pictures of all of these.
… End of note
All of that took place with me lying down on the bed. At one point I started screaming for help, and he slammed our bedroom window so hard it bent the frame.
And before anyone asks, no I didn’t call the cops because we were already a month behind on rent, more legal problems would’ve made us all homeless.
So here’s what I’m asking. His point of view is I had no right to keep him out of his bed because he paid for it (with covid money-it’s a really nice bed that I picked out)and that I attacked him when he came to use it, and everything that followed was self defense against me and 100% justified.
My point of view is that I had told him I would treat him like a threat if he came in. I was also asleep and woke up to him literally laying on me. The most amount of force I used was pushing him off the bed with my feet. His response was to pick up his nightstand and hit me with it, and then jump on top of me and put his arm across my throat. He punched me in the mouth once I started screaming. (He also screamed, “I hate you!” as he hit me.) I thought self defense was the amount of force needed to make the other person stop. I just wanted to sleep without worrying about him waking me up with insults if my gross body accidentally touched him.
So did I start it? Was it self defense? I need to know because it really honestly traumatized me. I’ve never been hit in the face before, and I don’t have anyone else to ask. Both he and my mom say I deserved it, and they’re the only people I talk to. My mom saw me with my face bloody and told me I needed to learn to watch my mouth. She didn’t even ask what happened. I’m not easy to live with so it’s all really confusing. Sorry to bother.
please don’t say “leave him before you die.” I know that already. I have no way out. It’s be homeless and lose my kids because I’m disabled and can’t work, or try to find some kind of truth in the shitty life I lead. Thanks.

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We shot downward, careening through space away from Mythellion III station before I had time to register what was happening. Emerald flashes splashed above us as bolts splattered against the launch barrier of the station.
The stark silhouette of a fighter screamed by, there one frame and gone the next.
I ignited the side engines, shooting us off course as a second rail of bolts slashed through spaces along our original path, fired from the fighter's rear cannons as it dashed away from the station.
"Shit. Shit. Shit. Mask on."
"Who is that?"
"Don't know. Masks on," I snapped, but I had a guess.
I snapped the mask in front of me over my mouse and nose, the telltale hiss of oxygen coming online as it clicked into place. I glanced at Victoria as she affixed her own, leaving her a second to adjust the straps. It wasn't like the last person in that seat was a Fotuan.
Once I was confident her mask was on, I started moving the power settings on the ship. Combat on smaller vessels was like conducting a symphony. The perpetual engines on the ships weren't big enough to run every system at once, so it was up to the pilots to find balance in the middle ground between surviving the fight and surviving in space.
It was a good thing Valet kept your ship warm for you.
The lights shut, oxygen stopped pumping into the cabin, the heater cooled, and the force dampeners deactivated everywhere but our seats; in their place, combat engines erupted, guns spun up, and critically our outer shield flickered to life.
The combat engines snapped our descent to a halt almost immediately as I fired them against us, stopping us from heading too close to one of the other moons that orbited Mythellion's parent planet. I scanned the station's lights to see if I could spot the enemy fighter, but we should have had time.
Every movement in space was a commitment. You could only pull a hairpin turn if you had the engine power to create the opposite force to your current speed. The faster you went, the longer it would take to 'brake.' Luckily our friend had been flying well above Solar paces, which meant I had a second to prepare for the second run.
"Where are they?" Victoria's voice was smothered by her mask but came over small speakers in my headrest.
"Don't wanna find out."
"Do you think that they're going to come back?"
We could try running from here, but we couldn't just shoot off in a straight line, predictive weapon systems would absolutely lace us the second the ship got back into firing range.
"Kingston?"
My scanners hadn't been able to read what kind of ship it was during its run, so I couldn't pick a fight. For all I knew, I had nothing on the Gunboat Diplomat that could crack its shields. Not for lack of money spent.
"Kingston."
I could put Mythellion behind me, but that wouldn't stop them for long; they'd just wait until they could open fire again.
"Kingston."
Maybe some of the Anteraxi Skitters came out to stop them from disturbing the peace, but that wouldn't matter much if we were scrap metal floating around Mythellion's first satellites.
"Knigston."
"Victoria, I need to think! Fucking-" I slammed the forward engines to a dogfighting pace, streaking away from Mythellion and toward the nearest sister moon. Even with the stabilizers in our seats, we were pinned against headrests as we tore through space. As we took off, I pulled the last power out of the heating systems and pumped it into the scanners, trying to find them before they found us.
The gravity of the moon, Zektah-Tiberon 7, grabbed us, yanking our heading to the surface. Engines flared all over the ship, righting it and setting it to slingshot around the moon once we were close enough to leverage the curvature of the orbit.
The scanner blipped and glowed in front of me, pinging the other civilian ships pulling away from the station, probably confused about what was shooting in semi-civilized space. The gravity of Zektah-Tiberon started to take control of our path.
"There!" Victoria called.
"What?"
"Fotuan Valikyria, on the scanner, it's on the- other side of the moon?"
"That doesn't make-" she was right; a fighter was taking the opposite orbit to us, matching our path to meet us as we locked into the slingshot. What kind of handling did those ships have if they could beat us to the fucking moon.
"Second one. Back by the station. A Class."
"Of course, there's two," I hissed.
"One on the other side is a D Class."
"What does that mean?"
"A Classes are the standardized fighter of the scout divisions of the Meri-"
"Victoria."
"D Class has big guns."
"Cool." We were either going to meet the one with big guns head-on, or we could try our luck in open space, but-
No, we were pincered; there was no avoiding that many shots; it didn't matter how robust the auto-avoidance systems were.
"Fuck it," I growled, pushing us closer to the moon's surface. Warnings popped up, letting me know that Zektah-Tiberon 7 had an atmosphere and reminding me about the speed limit for guaranteed hull integrity. Luckily I was pretty sure the human military undershot their numbers intentionally.
"Kingston."
"Mhm?"
"We're-"
"Yep."
The ship rocked under the pressure of entering the atmosphere, shaking around us as the outer cameras adjusted to the glow of superheated metal. We were almost 75 kilometres above the surface of the moon still, but dogfighting was not a planetside sport.
The video feed highlighted a dot of the horizon, part of the screen zooming in to show the Fotuan Valikyria adjusting to match our new heading, a glowing vapour cone erupting around as it dipped into the atmosphere and tore through every collective sound barrier.
"That's an Oniversa Therm-"
"Vic."
"Laser weapon."
"Got it."
I cut the power to the engines, watching our speed plummet as physics screamed against our momentum, and we cut lower and lower toward the moon's surface, but the sickly yellow clouds were still way below us. All that power went to the guns.
Just as we were about to come into each other's effective range, the Valikyria snapped off its current path, rolling to the side end over end. I opened fire just before I was supposed to.
There were 18 primary batteries and 84 auxiliary guns hidden within our hull. With full power, all of them that could fire forward turned the space between us into a flashing wall of death, a mix of hyper-accelerated metal shards and concentrated laser bolts.
The Fotuan ship fired a pair of concentrated beams off; I cut the guns and threw power back into the engines.
Sparks and light erupted as the Valikyria maintained its attack run, rushing almost headlong into our covering fire to keep the lasers on target as they cut toward us, scything from either direction to cut off our escape routes.
Our upper engines screamed to life, and I shot us straight down toward the moon's surface, putting precious distance between the Valikyria and us before the lasers ran into our shield. Two warnings flashed on my screen simultaneously: dropping shield integrity and altitude.
The lasers cut off as the Fotuan Valikyria screamed out of range, only adjusting its heading and correcting its spin once it was too far for laser fire to work. My scanners caught it just before it headed out of the range to get the ship's status. As far as the shields, we couldn't tell. Their hull was untouched.
Another ship was approaching the planet, the one that had taken the first shot at us. We couldn't win trading shots like that. They'd just wear me down and buy time for one another to recharge their shields when they kept me from doing the same.
I got the engines to slow our descent just outside of effective orbital exit range; though we were still moving forward at thousands of kilometres an hour, it felt like almost nothing compared to the scale of the moon; we'd had to drop too much speed to fly in-atmosphere.
"Fuck."
Silence reigned, it might have only been a couple of seconds, but it felt like hours.
"What are our chances?"
"Honestly? Not great, but I'm not out of-"
"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat, this is Huntress Pasoné of Valikyria Designation 24639. We believe you are harbouring a fugitive. Comply with a search, or our next shot will not be a warning."
They hadn't connected a video feed with the hail; instead, it was just her voice, speaking like she was reading an essay in the middle of a dog fight.
"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat. Reply."
"I think that's me you're talking about," I answered.
"This is not the time for games, PHMS Gunboat Diplomat."
"I am wanted on a lot of planets."
"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat-"
"Kali Registered Mercenary Kingston Diadona. You can call me Kingston."
"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat. Comply."
I kept the ship in combat power settings but spared a mote of firepower to bring up the internal lights. Vitoria was staring dead ahead, eyes wide, but the lights coming on woke her from her stupor, and she looked at me. I was nodding before she had time to offer a pleading look.
"I'll comply."
"Maintain heading and depower all combat systems. We will be alongside you shortly."
The feed didn't cut until I pulled power away from the weaponry, then there was a brief moment of static before Victoria, and I were alone in the cockpit.
"Kings-"
I cut Victoria off with a finger, then killed the lights. We would be naked for this, which meant I needed all the engine power we could spare. As the shadows set in, I saw my oxygen mask fogging as the cockpit's interior cooled.
The first Valikyria cut through the atmosphere to catch up to us, matching our flight path, pulling only a few hundred feet to the right of us. It was the one that had shot at us in the first place. Based on the guns on the bottom of the ship, the first shots at us as we'd left Mythellion III were warning shots.
I took a deep breath.
My scanner picked up the second ship, cutting through high orbit toward us.
It was time to test Fotuan reaction time.
I maxed out forward and bottom engines at the same time the panels on the exterior of our ship adjusted, guns folding away as it became, for a brief moment, invisible to scanners and systems.
We shot up toward the stars, the ship shaking from the ascent. We were on a straight shot to head out of the system on a path to Ovigaia. We just needed to get to the edge of the gravity well, and we'd be impossible to track over the black.
The A-Class we'd left behind hesitated, unprepared for our gambit. That was enough for us to almost be out of firing range.
Laser slammed into our shieldless hull.
The Gunboat Diplomat groaned and rocked off course as the firepower slammed into us as it cut blindly through the air where we were headed. Victoria screamed.
More shots chased us out of the atmosphere, falling short as we erupted into space, and I forced power into shields to cover the hull damage. The ship complained, and enough warning signs flashed in front of me that I couldn't tell if any were critical.
Free of gravity from anything other than the sun and without atmosphere in the way, the engines kicked up to interstellar settings.
With no idea of how damaged we were, I cracked us through the Veil and into the black.