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redditnosleep · 7 years ago

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O is for Olivia

by OnyxOctopus

It wasn’t even snowing when I left for work but by the time I was halfway there, the roads were coated in ice. People were sliding around like real-life bumper cars and there were accidents blocking every path to the office. With all roads blocked, I decided to just give up and turn for home.

I was being cautious, creeping along in my little Echo at about 15 miles per hour. Down the road a stretch, I spotted a Toyota truck coming towards me around a curve, fast. He had to be going at least 70 miles per hour. He seemed, at first, to be flying by on my left. Then, he was sliding sideways in a long, silver smear.

It’s true that time slows down when you are about to die. I saw the clock click from 7:25 to 7:26. I looked at my hands, noticing every vein, every line. Heard the words of the Imogen Heap song I was listening to, “Where are we? What the hell is going on?“ I thought, “I can get out of this.” Looked right: cement utility pole, ditch, looked left: silver pickup truck. I thought, “I really can’t get out of this.“ I saw particles of dust seeming to glow, suspended, in the air.

Then there was crunching and spinning and glass and spinning and pain and then - suddenly darkness.

I was alone in the darkness for a while, and then I wasn’t alone. Darkness, heavy but awake, consuming me. I somehow was the darkness, and yet I was still very much myself. Or, I should say, I recognized myself in the darkness. Then I heard a rush of whispers and long low whistles. As the sounds grew louder, waves became particles and two forms started to appear. Mine, and hers. A shifting, swirling woman was standing in front of me. Like blowing smoke into a sunbeam that’s coming through a gap in the curtains. Smoke all around, but only seen as it swirls through the sunbeam. She was like that. I could see that she had shoulder length brown hair, and she was wearing a light blue shirt and white pants. She appeared to be rather tall, but not as tall as me. I was watching her patterns shift and swirl when she spoke.

“Olivia?”

“I’m…I…yes, I… Who are you?” Not too eloquent, but that’s what I said.

“You can think of me as Mora.“ I could hear her, even though her mouth wasn’t making noise when she spoke.

“How…?” I gestured around us at the endless, swirling black.

“Everything is happening at once. All at once, right now. The leading edge is the same as the very end of the line,” she answered. The more she spoke, the more she seemed to be slowly unraveling.

“I don’t know what that means.“

“That’s ok.”

“But, I mean, what’s going on?“ I was getting dizzy trying to focus on her as she shifted in and out of form. It was making me impatient.

“The universe itself is afraid of its own end. Consciousness in form is the universe’s way of awakening to its own immortality. In the silence of the void, there is a voice. The voice listening to itself. The voice realizing it IS the void, and the void is alive. There is circle after circle of understanding. Do you understand?”

“No.“

“That’s ok.”

I waited for her to say something else, but she was silent. She was evaporating into a horizontal mist. Looking down I saw that I was starting to do the same.

“Why are you telling me these things?“ I asked, distracted again by the swirling particles.

“Because we need you. So I need you to wake up.”

As soon as she said, “wake up,” I felt myself being pulled like a yo-yo on a string. Snapping backwards in the darkness. I watched my own particles blowing away from me like dust. Leaving a mist trail in what appeared to be a long, dark tunnel. Then the darkness shifted to the familiar darkness that lives behind my eyes. I felt my body, my real solid body, and then I felt the pain. Next, I noticed I was suffocating. Warm, humid, air was breathing itself for me through a respirator. I must have started to flail around in my panic because I was given a shot and then I fell asleep.

When I woke up again, the doctor told me I lost consciousness after impact. I was rushed to surgery for internal injuries. Apparently I ‘died’ on the operating table. They “shocked me back” and put me on life support. The accident broke my sternum, three ribs, my right knee, and resulted in severe closed head trauma. Because of my internal injuries, they had to remove a nice chunk of bowel. I mimed, “I want to write", by using a finger to scribble over the opposite palm. The doctor pulled a pad and pen out of his pocket and handed it to me. His eyes were a dusty shade of blue, the color of cornflowers.

“When can I go back to work"? I wrote.

“That’s tricky", he said. “We’ve left you with essentially what we’d call short gut syndrome which can result in intermittent incontinence. Head injuries such as yours often result in severe migraines. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. You’re going to get stronger every day, I promise. Let’s get you off this respirator and take it one step a time. Sound good?” No. It did not sound good. With no family of my own, my job was my life. Still, I nodded. What else was there to do?

I was on the respirator for two more warm, wet, and suffocating days, then I was moved to the room that would be my home for the next seven weeks.

A few days after moving to the new room, I was lying on my bed, feeling loopy from the morphine drip and thinking about drinking orange juice. The cup was just out of reach on my bedside table. I remember feeling a wave of injustice and anger come over me. Not about the accident, or my injuries, or being stuck in a hospital unable to work, possibly forever. No. I was angry about not being able to reach the orange juice. I was fucking furious at the orange juice. I was glaring at it, with everything I had, and then- BOOM! It exploded. Orange juice flying absolutely everywhere.

That was the first time I used my mind to blow something up. Honestly, it was exhilarating. I spent the next seven weeks popping gauze pads, glycerin swabs, any little thing that wouldn’t make too much of a mess.

The first person I looked up after I got out of the hospital was the driver of the silver Toyota. He was picked up for felony reckless driving, but let go on a technicality. I did some digging. I was a paralegal before my injuries forced me to take long-term disability so I knew my way around court documents. It also didn’t hurt that I was good friends with a few of the clerks at court. It turns out I wasn’t the first person he’d seriously hurt. His connections just kept finding him loopholes to skip through.

I decided I should find him in person. Maybe this guy just looked bad on paper? Maybe he’d apologize? I was hoping for any redeeming quality. Nope. When I told him who I was he laughed and said, “were you this ugly before I hit you?” Then, he dropped to the floor, holding his head and screaming. He got what he deserved, a Subarachnoid Hemorrhage from an aneurysm exploding in his brain. Nasty things, those. So sad.

Three days later, I let myself into my apartment only to find a man sitting at my dining room table. He was wearing an expensive looking suit and smoking a cigarette. He had obviously been there a while because smoke was swirling around him in a thick haze. I suppose I should have been shocked or terrified. The truth is I was expecting it.

“Can I help you?”

He looked up from a mess of open folders and said, “Olivia, come here, I need you to take a look at this.”

I blinked, hard, and then I walked over to the table.

“Can I ask your name?”

“Mr. W. Olivia, take a look at these pictures.” I looked over his shoulder at four open folders with pictures splayed out in piles. I can’t, no, I won’t, tell you what I saw the people in those pictures doing. Imagine for a moment the worst abuse to the most innocent of victims, and you might have a pretty good idea.

“Olivia, What I have here is a four-way split video call. You’ll see that our agents have these four suspects in custody. Can you positively match the person on each screen to the pictures on the table in front of you?”

I looked from the pictures to the screens one at a time. Carefully. There were three men and one woman. Each of the agents was wearing the same blue shirt and white pants Mora had worn.

“Yes.”

I haven’t mentioned my childhood, and I won’t go into detail about it. What I will say is that the woman on the screen bore a striking resemblance to my mother’s best friend, Marie. Same red hair, freckles, green eyes. Marie hurt me, just like the woman on the screen had hurt the child in the pictures spread across her file. The child who bore a striking resemblance to me: blonde hair, brown eyes, freckles.

“Ok, Olivia. Please understand that these people have not been convicted of any crime. In fact, they aren’t being tried. These pictures were obtained illegally so they are not admissible in court. They are innocent until proven guilty. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I looked back at the monitor and watched as each of them fell like marionettes being cut from their strings. One after the other, until all four were lying on the floor clutching their heads, screaming.

Mr. W looked up at me, his eyes squinting in a genuine smile. “Welcome to Moirai, Olivia. We are so happy to have you.“

That was seven years ago. I’m 33 now, and I’m getting better every day. More precise. I’ve been practicing. Mr. W tells me that they will be needing me more than ever in the days to come. I’d ask you to wish me luck, but I don’t need it. I have been getting stronger every day.

I’m strong enough now.

#creepy #horror story #supernatural powers #author: OnyxOctopus #alphabet stew series

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vacationsoup · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://vacationsoup.com/owners-area/our-blog/the-bitter-truth-about-facebook-marketing-in-2019/

The Bitter Truth About Facebook Marketing In 2019

Three or four years ago, when vacation rental owners started to become unhappy with the major listing sites, many owners turned to Facebook to supplement their marketing and booking opportunities.

This worked… For a while

But the bad news is that since then Facebook have moved the goalposts and the platform is becoming less and less effective for the marketing of your property.

In this article I’m going to outline some of the reasons for this decline and show you a few tips that can get you back on track.

Before we get into the details I’d like to talk about pineapples…

Dunmore house can be rented through the Landmark Trust https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and-book/properties/pineapple-10726

I know, it’s a bit of a curve ball but bear with me.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover pineapples when he visited the island of Guadeloupe back in 1493.

However, pineapples proved difficult to transport and costly to cultivate. Even by the mid 17th century they were so expensive that only royalty and the aristocracy could afford to eat them.

They were viewed as a true delicacy. Whole dinner parties were built around them. The rich even started to include architectural references to them on buildings (see the above image of Dunmore House).

They cost the equivalent of a whopping 5,000 pounds each in todays money and if you got to taste a tiny sliver of one it would be a social highlight of the year.

Even those that could afford them often didn’t eat them. They left them on display as a sign of wealth and social standing (until they rotted).

I read about pineapples and their history in a book called ‘Why we hate cheap things https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Hate-Cheap-Things-ebook/dp/B07799S7D8

The interesting thing is that now pineapples cost a couple of pounds each, no one eats them.

Well maybe that’s a little unfair but certainly, no one is serving them at dinner parties or adding them to their roofline.

They are cheap and therefore have lost their value.

So, why am I harping on about pineapples?

Well, because, at the time, they were one of the main indicators of social standing and although times change we are all still swayed by signals of social standing.

Facebook is a prime example…

We are far more likely to follow a FB page that has 5,000 likes, than a page that has 2 likes.

Just like cheap pineapples, we don’t like ‘cheap’ pages with next to no followers or likes.

These social signals are often called social proof, that is, in this case, that 5,000 people can’t be wrong so the page must be worth following.

It’s very important to spend time building a following for this very reason.

Building social proof

The more followers that you get, the more followers you will get. There’s a snowball effect but you have to work hard in order to get the ball rolling.

The first 100 or so followers are the hardest of all, so start by asking friends and family to like your page (you probably already did this).

After that you may want to try some Facebook ‘like for like’ groups. People like your page and, in return, you like their page back. This can be quite effective for gaining one or two hundred page likes.

After that you are probably going to have to buy page likes via Facebook’s Business Ad Manager.

If set up properly, you can obtain likes for as little as $0.01 per like so this method can be an inexpensive way of getting that all important social proof.

There are lots of Youtube videos on how to gain FB likes and I recommend watching some of these, setting up some test ads and seeing which work and which don’t. Then kill the ads that cost too much per page like and those that don't convert.

Why Buy Likes?

Let’s not beat around the bush here.

Facebook has changed, As far as business pages are concerned, it is now a Pay to Play platform.

Facebook reach (the amount of your business followers that actually see your posts) is pitiful.

In the early years, if you had 100 Facebook business page followers and you posted to your page around 12% of your followers saw that post. Now for every 100 people that have liked your page, only around 2 of them see your content.

Yep, we are down to 2% reach.

So, if you buy likes, you extend your reach. Get to 1,000 likes and 20 people see your post. 10,000 likes and 200 people see your article… And so on.

What social signals excite the social platform?

Facebook grade various types of engagement in different ways.

They see comments on posts as one of the highest forms of interaction and if people comment on a post, that post will be shown to more people.

The same goes for shares. If someone shares your post then obviously they thought it was of value and Facebook see this and chalk it up as a post of merit so more people will see it.

Clicks also have a bearing. If you have two posts and one gets no clicks and the other gets 10 clicks then Facebook picks up on that engagement and will serve more impressions of the more popular post.

Bearing these three factors in mind it pays to encourage people to comment, share and click.

Don’t ask, don’t get.

Ask people for their opinions, ask them to share, encourage them to click.

Enter reachpocalypse

I’ve read articles that suggest that Facebook are going to introduce a zero reach’ policy where the only way to get your articles, posts, graphics, etc in front of people will be to pay. As it happens we’re pretty close to that already but absolute zero will be a real body blow to most of us.

What are your options?

Stop using the platform

Image from Twitter

At the end of the day if you are spending time creating and scheduling posts and no one is seeing them then what’s the point? Maybe we’re not there yet but we are very close to that scenario so keeping an eye on the situation is very prudent.

Feed the addiction and Pay to play

In my mind this is the only realistic option for any of us that want to continue to use Facebook as a marketing channel.

To be frank, they have us by the balls.

It’s genius in many ways. On the one hand we sit around telling ourselves that over two and a quarter billion people are using the platform (and a lot of those go on vacation) so we would be fools not to use it, on the other hand next to none of those people are seeing our business marketing efforts, no matter how compelling that material is.

From here on out you are going to have to pay for Facebook marketing to be remotely effective.

Get better at Facebook

I’ve outlined above a few methods for improving your chances of being seen by potential guests.

Pimp your page

I would also strongly recommend adding a video header to your page. That in itself sends a more professional message, is visually more appealing and can incorporate a positive call to action (like our page or visit our website for more information).

Here's one that I created for Vacation Soup

vimeo

You can see how to do this for free here (it only takes 15 minutes or so) https://community.vacationsoup.com/forums/topic/facebook-video-headers/

Ramp up your posting frequency

Another method is to post more often. Quite a bit more often in fact. It was alway suggested that posting more than twice a day was detrimental to your efforts but as reach is so low why not blast more posts onto your page?

You’ll still only be reaching a low single digit percentage of your followers but if you double your posting you’ll reach twice as many people.

If nothing else, at least repost past articles on a regular basis.

Change the messenger

Facebook isn’t the only social channel by a long shot. Some owners and managers are heavily invested into Instagram but as Instagram is owned by Facebook I can’t see that strategy ending well.

Pinterest is a great alternative (or at least a side by side option). Pins last for ever and if you have a business account (which is free) your posts will contain links back to your website.As with Facebook, you will need to spend time and effort on building a following in order to create that all important social proof but Pinterest does drive traffic - And that’s all that matters.

Conclusion...

I started out this article by saying that owners turned to Facebook because the listing sites that they had depended on started to fail them.

Facebook was seen as an alternative marketing channel but that too is now failing those same owners (unless you pay)

This is what happens when you rely on third party companies or platforms whose sole purpose is to make money.

My advice is to stop chasing other people's shiny things and start concentrating on building your own shiny thing. Your own website should be the heart of your marketing strategy. By all means, use third party platforms to enhance and promote your website but don't rely on anyone else.

History shows that to be a very bad idea.

If you came across this article on Facebook please drop back there and comment or share it with others. Thanks in advance.

What are your experiences with Facebook marketing?

Please share your experiences in the comment section below.