#nobody asked go home shut up open reddit and stay away from me

[jewishcissiekj]

WHY WOULD YOU SHIT ON THE YJ (2019) ART (specifically post Gleason leaving stuff) THAT WAS LITERALLY THE ONE GOOD THING ABOUT THAT BOOK

[mxvirani]

hate me, | self para

tw: depressing as hell, addiction, overdose, suicidal ideation

This is your mother, and it's 2:33 on Monday afternoon I was just calling to see how you were doing You sounded really uptight last night It made me a little nervous, and a l... and... well... it made me nervous, it sounded like you were nervous, too I just wanted to make sure you were really OK And wanted to see if you were checking in on your medication

the answering machine beeped off in the distance as he stared at the ceiling, his fingers intertwined in a ball of elastic bands. he remembered them bounce across the ground at george’s feet when they were still preteens, that was the day that they had first locked eyes. all of the memories in darkwood were interlaced, cropped together and turned into a never ending reel. it was never the story of his life, it was always the story of george’s, the story of nina’s. mx had never been a main character and now in the shadows where he lay, he wished he could erase himself from the reel altogether. 

his mothers voice was not enough to pull him from the darkness that engulfed him, it had been one year since the fire and as he sat up, he stared at the pictures he splayed like posters across the walls. there they were, laughing. they were always laughing. mx didn’t laugh anymore, somewhere deep inside there was a pain that was tearing him apart and the only light he had ever known had been torn right out of the world.

barefooted he walked to the wall and he tore down a picture, a lighter from his pocket aflame as he watched george’s face burn out from the surroundings. they weren’t laughing anymore, now there he was, just him alone and next to him a burned void where someone used to be. that was all it was, him and his void. together forever, unchanged and alone. that was all he wanted it to be.

I have to block out thoughts of you so I don't lose my head They crawl in like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed Dropping little reels of tape to remind me that I'm alone

a night out with dean but dean never really saw the end; he saw the legendary parts, the laughs and the excitement. he saw the mx that had once been so bright as a burned out star and god, mx laughed and it shook every part of his insides. it racked his ribcage until it felt it would fall apart. he laughed so hard with dean that he thought one day his head would spin off and the world would finally go dark (or maybe that was what he wished for).

when the door slammed shoot to his studio apartment, his ribs cracked open and his body sunk to the floor. when he knew nobody could hear him he would scream in the middle of his kitchen until he fell to the floor like a scene from a horror movie. he would feel that pain in his ribcage and want to tear himself in two to make it stop. he would realise that all that laughter was never real and every part of him ached for a life that no longer lived. 

he would lay there until the next evening as if he was dead and when the phone rang about another night out he would answer and laugh. but dean didn’t know. dean didn’t know because nobody did.

An ounce of peace is all I want for you. Will you never call again? And will you never say that you loved me, just to put it in my face?

then there was that night. he stared in the mirror, opened and closed the cabinet. his anti-depressants stared back at him through his blurry gaze. they shimmied and moved and when he grabbed the bottle he poured six or seven or eight or twelve into an unsturdy hand. the walls were covered in newspaper conspiracies now, a long running joke that mx talked shit well known all around town. he never made sense. why would he? he was strung out to high hell one hundred percent of the time. 

“what are you doing?”

the voice shook him and pills spilled over the bathroom tiles, a strange clattering sound as he backed into the sink. at first he could barely figure out who was standing in front of him or perhaps he just couldn’t believe it, “nina?” he blurted, “nina? what the hell? what are you doing here? this ca-- you’re dead. you’re dead,” he’d finally done it, he’d finally blown the lid on his own delusions. he felt sick to the pit of his stomach.

“you’re acting kind of funky,” the girl replied.

when he blinked again she was gone and his head was spinning, his anti-depressants lay unswallowed on the ground and he wondered if he should take them at all. he had made two discoveries in that exact same moment, the first was that there was a sweet spot right between being high as hell and wanting to die where his brain released some kind of delusion to make him want to stay and the second was that maybe more than being addicted to being numb, he was addicted to the knowledge that he could find a place where he would see his friends again. where they were more than a burned out picture.

And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made And like a baby boy I never was a man

"leave me alone, please,” mx cried, backing into his kitchen cabinets, his knuckles white against the countertop as he backed into the corner. once he had thought that this was the way he wanted to live but now he was haunted in his waking hours by his own thoughts; people that weren’t really there. people he could not get rid of because they were a part of him more than they had even been while alive, “george, i can’t do this anymore. you have to go.”

“you’re the one who keeps bringing me here.”

it wasn’t a haunting, he knew that and yet he couldn’t make it stop. he couldn’t make his brain stop throwing out these images like clockwork. he didn’t want to get better. the drugs had been there to make him numb but now he was being daylight haunted, the flickers of a life that had never existed at all right before his eyes. 

“i can’t do this anymore, i can’t fucking do this,” he ranted, his eyes screwed shut, his hands over his ears. “go away, go away, go away.”

Until I saw your blue eyes cry and I held your face in my hand And then I fell down yelling, "Make it go away!"

when rachel came over she didn’t see what was happening to him, he never told her that when she sat at his kitchen countertop she had a dead friend on either stool. she didn’t tell him that sometimes he caught himself pouring an extra portion of cereal. he didn’t tell her that he hadn’t left the house in three weeks, that he had thrown his mobile phone out the window or that he hadn’t seen his mother in over a year. he didn’t tell her any of that because she didn’t ask. 

instead he told her about something he found on reddit with his words jumbled, he explained how his tv didn’t seem to be recording episodes (not that he’d forgotten what day, week month it was). 

he didn’t tell rachel a damn thing because when he looked at her and remembered how her eyes had been scorched out by flames, he thought, she must be a better person than me. he wanted her to stop coming. he wanted them all to. he wanted to stop seeing it again and again, hearing the voices. he wanted to be numb again and laugh with dean in a bar until his ribs cracked then cry himself to sleep but now he stared absently for hours at a television that was turned off and saw an entire show as george and nina passed popcorn over the top of him.

but the popcorn bowl was empty and there was never a move, there was never even a sofa, just a towel on the floor where he spent hours sweating off highs trying to get clean. he wanted to get rid of them so badly that it seemed like the only choice. he’d make them stop, he’d make it all stop. he’d find a way to get back out of this and get back to numb or something else. nobody had to know. nobody really wanted to; sometimes even he didn’t know if what he felt was real or fake but it crippled him all the same.

he locked everything that was left in a box and flushed the key down the toilet.

nina and george seemed pleased.

Hate me today Hate me tomorrow Hate me for all the things I didn't do for you

he never quite made it, for six days he sat inside his apartment going through a pain so crippling that he thought that his insides were going to shut off. yet, it was nothing compared to the pain he had dulled after the fire. all those memories flooded back like a sea and they took him whole, enveloping like an old home. he felt like he never slept but he was never awake, he was just in a living nightmare, not quite sure what was real or what wasn’t. a hazy descent into hell surrounded by two ghosts who promised they would see him through it; that was when he finally cracked. he realised that they were just ghosts, they were just him and he had never seen himself through a fucking thing. he had never fared a storm, he’d never been through it without breaking down. if there was one person that always let him down it was himself. 

he found the box and he tried to crack it open. he used a nail file but his hands were shaking, eventually he found a novelty mug and smashed it through the wood. later his mother would return the broken pieces of a mug with dean and mx’s faces on to dean in a signed for mailed box. 

the end of his story, it wasn’t sad, it wasn’t numbing, it wasn’t even glorious. it was just about a man who knew he’d never find a way out of his own self inflicted darkness. the ghosts were gone when he stuck the final needle into his veins. in those final moments he finally saw his studio apartment as it really was; EMPTY, CHAOTIC and LIFELESS. he didn’t feel his life flash before his eyes, he didn’t see a single scene, he just stared at a torn piece of newspaper he had taped to the wall and let out a gentle laugh as he finally passed over into the darkness for good.

he hoped when rachel found him that she realised that he had never been worth saving to begin with. he had never WANTED to be.

[deadlytales]

The Day I Didn’t Get on the Bus

(Credit to Jaksim, via Reddit)

I rode the bus to school from the time I was in kindergarten until I was 16 and started driving myself to school. The one exception to that was a month when I was nine years old in which my mother drove me instead. That month began on November 3rd, 2003. After November 3rd, the school didn’t have a bus to drive us to school in. More importantly, they didn’t have a driver.

Up until November 3rd, our school owned only one school bus – it was your traditional number-2-pencil-yellow bus that seated 36 screaming elementary school kids. The bus picked my older brother and me up every morning from our neighborhood bus stop, which was about a block away from our house. I could just barely see my house from where we would stand when we waited for the bus. Nobody got picked up at our bus stop except for my brother and I, but the bus came by anyway.

I don’t remember riding on the school bus very well, but I remember my elementary school bus driver. His name was Thomas Blackford. Nobody called him that though. Everybody called him “Mr. Tom”. Mr. Tom was a big, fat man with a great grey beard and a bald head. He had one of those comfortable smiles that you’d expect Santa Claus to have. He always played the radio stations that we liked and on the last day of school he gave everyone who rode the bus a bag of candy to take home. Everybody who rode the bus loved Mr. Tom.

I guess I should tell you now, Mr. Tom is dead. He died in 2003. He was murdered. I don’t know exactly when he was killed, but it was sometime in early November. This is the story of November 3rd – The day I didn’t get on the bus.

I was in second grade. Because the 3rd was a Monday, my brother and I hadn’t ridden on the bus since the Friday before. It started like any Monday morning. That is, it started with my mom banging on the door to the bedroom that my brother and I shared and yelling “If you don’t get out of bed in the next five minutes, you’re going to miss the bus! And there’s no way I’m driving you to school!”It gets pretty cold here in November, so my brother, Bryan, and I had no intention of trying to walk to school. I slipped out from between my covers, groaning as I went. I got dressed and brushed my teeth. It was cold that day. I remember shivering as I slipped my blue down coat on over my shoulders. I always hated waiting for the school bus when it was cold out. Especially if it had been snowing.

Unfortunately for me, not only had it been snowing all morning, it was still snowing. There was about 3 inches of wet, slushy snow covering the street in front of my house, and more on the way. The second I opened the door so Bryan and I could leave, I was struck by a gust of frigid wind that blew wet, stinging snow into my eyes. I was already shaking by the time I stepped outside. Like I said, you could see the bus stop from my house, it was only about a block away. But in that weather, that block felt like it could have been a mile.

Before I could suggest to my brother that we shouldn’t wait for the bus in such conditions, my mother yelled “Close that door, you’re letting the cold air in!”

I didn’t grow up in the kind of house where you argued with a comment like that. Bryan quickly shut the door behind him, pulled his hat down over his ears, and trudged past me, through the dirty snow that lined the sidewalk. I followed Bryan, who was grumbling quietly under his breath.

The school bus usually arrived sometime around 8:30. When Bryan and I got to the bus stop, it must have been a little before that, based on what I remember. Sometimes the bus got to our stop a minute or two late, so we weren’t surprised to have to wait a few extra minutes. Looking back now, everything would have been different if it wasn’t snowing. My brother and I shook in the freezing snow and waited for the bus to pull around the corner at the intersection to the south of us.

At around 8:35, I could feel my toes growing numb - my teeth were audibly chattering. I wondered if we had already missed the bus. I didn’t wear a watch then, I was too young, but Bryan had a cheap, old timex watch that mom had gotten him.

“Bryan did we get here late?”

“No. The bus is just running a little late.”

I frowned. Bryan was not a morning person.

“Are you sure? I don’t think Mr. Tom has been this late before.”

“Yes. I’m sure. Be quiet.”

My hands were beginning to lock up from the cold. I could feel the joints in my fingers turn stiff and tired. Despite my down coat, I was shaking all over my body.

That’s why I felt so relieved when I saw our school bus as it turned the corner at the bottom of our street, and slowed as it pulled towards us. I was finally going to be in the heated bus where my frozen body could thaw. I couldn’t wait for Mr. Tom to open the door and greet us with a hardy “Good Morning” and a warm grin.

But when the door opened, there was no warm grin. There was no Mr. Tom. When the door to our bus opened, I didn’t see the husky frame sitting behind the wheel of the bus that I expected. I saw a small, thin man sitting on the seat. He had the bus driver’s uniform on him, but it didn’t fit quite right. It looked too big, like he was completely engulfed by it. His hair was thinning and covered in grease and dirt, not shiny and smooth like Mr. Tom’s bare head.

The driver’s smile filled his whole face. His teeth were yellowed and his gums brown and black. The most striking thing I remember about his face, however, was his eyes. They were huge, and his pupils were dilated so large that they almost completely covered the irises of his eyes.

“Where’s Mr. Tom?” I asked hesitantly, as I climbed onto the first step leading up to the bus.

“He… called in sick today.” The man spoke softly and with a disconnected rhythm. It sounded like he was straining to produce the words. I looked past him, and saw that there were only a few children sitting in their seats on the bus. Only three or four. Usually the bus was almost full by the time it got to our stop.

“Where is everybody, mister?” I was getting nervous, but the bus was so warm that I was drawn towards it. Bryan, who was standing behind me on the sidewalk complained loudly.

“Will you just get on? It’s cold out here.”

“Well mister, where is everyone?”

“Not… sure. Guess they… must be… sick.” His smile slowly faded and his lips curled into a cartoonish frown. “Better get on… I… think we’re… a little late.”

I was still nervous, but I was only nine - young enough not to question something that an adult had told me. I put my foot on the second step of the bus and started to move forward. The bus driver’s dopey frown transformed into that sick smile almost instantly as I started to move forward. I was only a few feet from him when I felt a strong hand grab my shoulder from behind.

I was pulled back to the sidewalk by a tall woman in a bathrobe. Before I could protest or try to resist, I realized it was my mother. She had her arms wrapped around Bryan and I, and she was pulling us away from the bus.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Bryan asked, as she pulled him and me closer to her.

“Who are you?” She stammered at the driver.

The driver’s face quickly melted back into a frown and his giant eyes narrowed. He didn’t say anything to her.

“What do you think you’re doing? Who are you?” My mom insisted. Her voice was shrill and full of confusion.

The driver didn’t reply. Instead, the same horrible smile from before spread back over his face. He pulled the lever that closes the door, and stepped on the gas. The bus moved forward quickly, and made a sharp right turn at the end of our block. My brother, mother, and I stood in the snow, shivering, watching the bus slide slightly as it careened around the corner. Before we could ask any questions, my mother pulled my brother and I back to the house. She was frantic. Her skin looked pale, especially in her dark purple bathrobe. She looked nervous, almost scared. She just kept saying-

“Hurry up. Get inside.” She herded Bryan and I inside and sat us down at the dining room table. “Stay here” She warned.

Bryan and I were confused, and our mother’s visible fear had made me scared as well. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head – maybe grandpa had another heart attack, or maybe Bryan and I had gotten in trouble for something. Why else would Mom walk all the way out to the bus stop and stop us from getting on the bus?

Bryan and I listened as she called the school district from the kitchen. I could just barely make out what she was saying.

“The bus was definitely out there! No, it wasn’t the usual driver!” She listened intently to whoever was on the other side of the line. After a moment, she said “Okay I will”.

She hung up the phone and began to dial another number.

“What’s going on?” Bryan asked.

“Not now Bryan. I need to talk to the police.”

Our mom stayed on the line with the cops for almost 20 minutes. Bryan and I looked at each other in silence as our mom told the officer on the phone about the man we saw driving the bus.

I would learn several days later that while my mom was talking on the phone, the new bus driver picked up five more children. The bus, which had eight total children on it, all between the ages of seven and twelve, would abandon its normal route at 8:52, after its 12th scheduled stop, and drive onto local highway 78. The driver would accelerate to over 100 miles per hour, according to eyewitness reports. The bus would begin violently weaving in and out of its lane, coming close to hitting several different vehicles who would later call 911 to report its erratic behavior.

At approximately 9:17, despite the desperate pleas of the crying children aboard the bus, it would drive onto the only bridge in Gilliman County. It would cross about half of the bridge, according to the bridge’s caretaker, Kris Lopez. Mr. Lopez would later tell reporters that the bus made a violent right turn at the center of the bridge. He would explain that he could see the terrified face of a little girl screaming from one of the windows as the bus broke through a metal guard rail and fell into the icy river.

The official police report would state that all nine bodies were found. Dead. The bus had crashed through the ice at the top of the river and floated approximately a mile before it became stuck on a patch of rocks and a downed tree. All of the occupants of the bus had intense bruising, blood loss, and broken bones.

The police officer who went to the home of Thomas Blackford to ask him about the incident would find his door unlocked and the inside of his home completely trashed. When looking in his bedroom, they would find his corpse horribly mutilated. The Giliman County Coroner would tell reporters that Mr. Tom was most likely murdered by an intruder while he slept. The cops would find that his bus driver’s uniform and keys to the bus had been stolen.

This is all the information I’ve been able to find about the day that I almost got on that bus. There’s probably a lot more information out there about November 3rd, but I imagine a lot of it hasn’t been released to the public. I’ve read almost every newspaper story, eyewitness report, and police document that I could bring myself to. None of it has answered the question that I can’t seem to stop asking myself.

Why wasn’t I on that bus? I had been a step away from joining the kill count of the horrible little man who murdered Mr. Tom and those eight children. I was so close to dying in that crash. I still wake up in the middle of the night, imagining that little girl’s crying face as the fender struck the ice, going god knows how fast. I can’t stop imagining the driver’s disgusting smile as he drove the bus off that bridge. My survival haunts me. Why wasn’t I on the bus?

The closest thing I have to an answer to that question was what my mother told us when she got off the phone with the officer that morning, on November 3rd.

I asked her- “Mom, why’d you stop us from getting on the bus?”

Tears started filling her eyes as she told Bryan and me the truth.

“The school called. Today is a Snow Day. The bus shouldn’t have been running at all.”

[james-stark-the-writer-wips]

Of Witches And Demons - Excerpt

Here it is. After basically forever of waiting, it’s finally at a stage where I like it. I hope you do too! If you have any suggestions or critiques, there’s a gdocs link at the end open for comments! This is the beginning of the book, right after the opening prologue which you can find right here.

WC: 2500 words

Raphael turned in his bed. The soft, cold breeze flowing through the city enveloped his room from the half open window above his bed. He pulled the blanket closer and higher, trying to seal all entrances the air could enter from. But the blanket was simply too short.

If he pulled it up too high, his feet were exposed, sending waves of cold through his body making him shiver almost constantly. If he pulled it down to over his feet, other parts of his body were left exposed - particularly his shoulders and his face - causing them to go numb.

It was a constant battle between him and the blanket. Even the bed was being a bitch. Every time Raph moved, the bed seemed to get shorter and smaller. It had come to the point he had pulled his knees to his chest, trying to curl up like a ball just to fit on the bed and not having his feet dangling off the edge.

It wasn’t like he could blame his uncle though. Nobody really expected it, did they? He didn’t expect much when he moved here. But he at least expected a bed that he could fit in. At this point, even the couch seemed a better option.

But Uncle Jeremy had already occupied that. It seemed everyone he knew in this godforsaken town was having a rough month.

Raph shifted to the left slightly, pulling his knees closer to his chest. Turning sideways and leaning on his right arm, he pulled the blanket over. Voila. The blanket fit. Now all he had to do was stay in this position the entire night, not moving an inch. Easy.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Fuck me, he thought. Slowly reaching out a hand from his blanket, he grabbed his phone.

The blinding light made him squint and avert his eyes as he rushed to turn down the brightness. He groaned as his shut his eyes, letting them adjust to the darkness once again. I’ve got to remember to turn on the fucking auto brightness. God!

He checked his phone. Reddit, tumblr, twitter, discord and a new system update. Took you long enough.

The system update were supposed to be rolled out to users months ago. Guess they finally got the time to actually roll it out. Regardless, Raph didn’t have the internet to do that right now. The WiFi in the house was down, as Raph had learned when he had arrived, and wouldn’t be repaired for two days.

God, this sucks. Raph thought, putting his phone back on the nightstand. He readjusted himself in the bed, probably for the millionth time in the last hour, and closed his eyes.

Raph didn’t know how much time passed between him closing his eyes and falling asleep but it couldn’t have been long. Raphael woke up screaming. But his screams were muffled, for the most part, by the blender downstairs.

“Uncle Jer, could you please turn that infernal noise off?!” Raphael shouted from his bed.

“Sorry!” A third voice came from downstairs. “That was me!” Ah, Jeremy’s boyfriend. Daniel. The most basic, blandest of names. Raph certainly hoped the man was better than the name. “Hope I didn’t wake you!”

Jesus fucking christ. It’s like a fucking chainsaw. Raph thought, flinging aside the covers. He looked at the clock. 6:45.

He sighed, stepping out of bed, slumping to the door and groggily pulling it open. He pulled a hand over his mouth to cover a yawn as he stepped out into the hall. With his first foot into the hallway, a chill shot up his spine. Fucking freezing out here.

He considered going back in to get a shirt or something but decided it wasn’t worth it.

Uncle Jeremy’s house was certainly something.

Raph had arrived in the dead of night and hadn’t gotten to really see much of anything before he’d went to sleep. But now, with the light flooding in through the large stained glass window above the front door, and the set of artificial gas lamps outside every door on the floor, Raph certainly felt he’d been flung all the way back into the 1400s. Walking through there felt like travelling through a piece of history. He almost felt like he shouldn’t be walking down this hallway.

But he ignored it and soldiered on. It was probably because he hadn’t been here in forever. He honestly couldn’t even remember the last time he was here. Uncle Jeremy came to visit him and his parents once, back when they lived in [state]. Back home.

Yes, that was probably it. This place wasn’t home.

This wasn’t the comfortable hallway he was used to. There were no sounds of laughter from the kitchen as his dad cracked a stupid joke. There was no comforting voice waking him up.

This place wasn’t home.

But the grim reality Raph would have to face was that it had to be home. Because if it wasn’t, what was? His home was all but gone. Auntie Felicia’s? That was even stranger than this house. He was glad he only had to stay there for a few weeks. Another few days with her and he would be facing a murder charge.

Raph pulled his undershirt away from his chest. It had begun to stick to the skin in the humid atmosphere of this town. The floorboards squeaked beneath his feet as he made his way to the staircase.

“Are you up already?” Jer’s voice came from downstairs.

“Yeah!” Raph shouted back as he descended down the stairs.

Jeremy emerged from the living room and stopped in front of Raph. “Look, I’m sorry about Dan. You should go get some rest. You must be tired after the long drive.”

“No, no, I’ve rested enough.” Raph leaned against the front door, running a hand through his hair to make sure it wasn’t too ruffled. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Well, I was planning on taking you out for breakfast to Rose’s Diner over on Maple Street once you’d rested up but I suppose I’m game if you are.”

“Can’t we order in? I’m not in the mood to go out.”

“Oh, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” Raph asked innocently.

“I know this feels strange and new but avoiding things isn’t going to help. You can’t stay home all day. Besides, even if we wanted, Rose doesn’t deliver. So, go on. Get ready, okay?”

“Ugh, sure. Just give me like half an hour to shower and stuff?”

“Absolutely. You remember where everything is, yes?”

Raph nodded. Jeremy had insisted on giving him a tour of the house last night. Raph had presumed it was to avoid Daniel or something but he hadn’t said anything. Raph dragged his hand along the railing as he strode back upstairs, wondering what the town would be like.

As promised, thirty minutes later, Raph descended down the stairs, dressed in a plain white t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. He began to walk to the living room but stopped dead in his tracks.

“You always do this, Dan!” He heard Jeremy shout. “Always. This doesn’t concern you, don’t interfere with this.”

“It’s his right to know, Jeremy.” Daniel sighed.

“He’s not ready. And it’s not your decision. So shut the fuck up, Dan.”

“And it’s yours?” Daniel’s tone was accusatory.

“Yes, as his legal guardian, it is my decision, Daniel. Mine and his. So shut up!” Jeremy shouted.

Raph heard stomping footsteps approaching and quickly pulled out his phone, pretending to scroll through it.

“Oh!” He heard Jeremy’s voice and looked up from his phone. “You’re ready?”

“Yeah.” Raph said, pretending he hadn’t heard the loud fight. Hell, the neighbors had probably heard it.

“You sure you don’t wanna put a jacket on? It’s cold out.”

“I’ll be fine.” Raph said.

“Well, okay. Come on then. Garage is this way.” Jeremy said, motioning for Raphael to follow him. Raph quickly shoved his phone into his pocket and followed Jeremy through the house to the garage.

Jeremy’s silver Chevrolet stood in the center of the dark garage. Jeremy turned on a switch near the door and a bright yellow light in the center of the ceiling flickers to life.

“Get in.” Jeremy said, opening the garage door.

*

The car stopped in the parking lot, a few feet from the diner.

“Go on in,” Jeremy said. “Grab us a booth. I’m right behind you.”

Raph opened the door and stepped out. As the chilly winter air hit the exposed parts of his body, he immediately regretted not having taken a coat or a jacket with him. Regardless, he hurried to the door of the diner and walked in.

Inside the diner, things were much more homely than they looked from the outside.

The booths were scarcely populated right now but the stools were full of a row of cops, sipping on coffee and eating breakfast. Raph made his way past them and grabbed an empty booth towards the back of the diner.

He sat down, patiently waiting for Jeremy to walk in.

“You new around here?” Raph looked behind to see a waitress, carrying a pot of coffee.

“I guess you could say that.” Raph said.

She put a cup down on the table and looked at Raph before pouring him a cup. “Passing through or staying?” She asked, topping off his cup. Raph whispered a quick thanks.

“Staying, unfortunately.” He picked up his coffee. The door opened and Jeremy walked in. Raph waved him down.

“You know him?” She asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I’m staying with him.” Raph said.

“Heyyy, Brenda.” Jeremy said, almost flirtatiously.

“Jeremy Caldwell. Who in god’s name is this boy right here?”

“What? You don’t recognize him? That’s my nephew, Raphael. The resemblance is uncanny, no?” Jeremy touched his own face as he sat down in the booth.

Brenda gave a sarcastic ‘Mmhmm’ before pouring Jeremy a cup of coffee and taking their orders. Jeremy insisted on ordering for Raph who was so hungry he didn’t even try to resist.

Jeremy and Raph sat quietly for almost an entire minute before Jeremy couldn’t stand the awkward silence.

“So, you want a tour of the town later?”

“Maybe,” Raph mumbled, looking out through the window at the river, glistening under the strong sunlight.

“That’s good.” Jeremy said, before going silent again. Another thirty seconds passed. “Watcha lookin’ at?”

“Just… the river.”

“Looks beautiful, right? Yes, the Rendell is quite magnificent.”

The Rendell River sat quiet this morning. No loud waves, no splashing water. A strange, serene stillness. Raph had never seen anything quite like it.

He stared at it for longer than he realized as he heard the clanking of the glass plates on the table and looked to his right to notice Brenda putting their food on the table.

“Thanks, darling.” Jeremy said as she placed his plate of pancakes in front of him.

“Eat your food, surname. Keep your compliments for your man.” Brenda said, somehow managing to sound charming.

Raph grabbed his fork. He heard a cop’s radio buzz to life and quickly diverted his attention to see what was happening.

“Code 211A. Nearby units please respond.” A loud voice came from the radio and two cops groaned, rising from their seats. One of them grabbed a donut and put it in his mouth as he left the shop.

Raph diverted his attention back to his food.

It looked delicious. The syrup, slowly flowing off the edge of the stack of pancakes, making a small pool at the bottom, drenching the pancake in syrup. The small pools of blueberry, contrasting the perfect golden-brown-ness of the pancakes.

Raph shoved the fork into the soft pancakes and they broke down perfectly. He slathered the piece in the syrup before taking a huge bite.

“They’re good, right?” Jeremy asks, even before the fork has come back out of his mouth.

Raph chewed for a second before answering. They’re perfectly cooked and they just dissolve into gooey goodness in his mouth. “Holy fucking shit these are great.”

“Yeah, Rose - she’s the cook too - grows the blueberries in her own garden.”

“These are fantastic.” Raph takes another bite, a bigger one this time. More syrup, more blueberry.

“See? I told you it was worth it.” Jeremy said, taking a sip of his coffee.

They both proceeded to eat their pancakes in silence, letting the flavor and texture overwhelm them. As he finished the last of his pancakes, Raph felt a tap on his shoulder and checked to see who it was.

It was an older guy, maybe in his early 50s, dressed in a red flannel shirt and a greasy denim jumper. His greasy hair were mostly hidden by his backwards hat but the wrinkles on his face said he was not a man who laughed a lot.

“Mark?” The man asked.

“Uh, no? Are you looking for someone?” Raph asked.

“No. No, nevermind. You remind me of someone I used to know way back when. Mark Caldwell. Old friend. Used to go to college together.”

“I think you’re talking about my dad.” Raph took out his phone and unlocked it to show a picture of his dad and him to the stranger. “That’s, uh, my dad.” Raph said, his voice cracking a little. It had been almost six months since the accident but some wounds just didn’t heal. 

“That’s him.” The man said. “How’s he doing these days?”

“He’s uh…” Raph trailed off.

“What did you say your name was again?” Jeremy chimed in.

“Uh, Peter Denton.” The man outstretched a hand. Jeremy shook it. “And you are?”

“Oh, Jeremy Caldwell. Mark’s brother. Curious, he never mentioned you.”

“Yeah, we didn’t really part on the best terms so, I’m not really surprised.” Peter said in a lower tone. He was still clearly ashamed of whatever it was that happened. “Well, anyway, how is he?”

“He’s uh, he’s dead.” Raph said in a cold tone, trying to not think about it too much. Raph took a sip of his coffee to mask a sniffle.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Peter put a hand on Raph’s shoulder, perhaps in an effort to comfort him but honestly it was doing nothing for Raph.

“It’s okay. I’m fine.” Raph said.

“How did it happen, if you don’t mind me asking?” Peter asked.

“Uh, gas leak. A fire started somewhere and took the whole house and everyone in it.” Raph said, taking a sip of his coffee.

“I’m so sorry.” Peter said.

“It’s fine.” Raph said.

The door swung open and Peter’s attention jumped to it as a young girl, maybe fourteen, waves at him. “I’m sorry, I have to get going.” Peter blurts out. “But, I genuinely am sorry about your parents. Your father was a great man. I only wish I’d known him longer.”

“Yeah, me too.” Raph whispered.

“Well, I hope you have a good time here in Tenebris. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, sure.” Raph mumbled and Peter walked away.

Raph finished his coffee and like magic, Brenda appeared from behind. “You boys need anything else?”

“Uh, no I think I’m good. Raph?” Jeremy said.

“Uh, little more coffee. And where’s your restroom?”

“Gotcha. Let me just go brew up some. And the restroom is straight down and to the right. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” Raph rose from his seat and walked towards the restroom. He needed a minute to himself after that.

*

Link to GDOCS

[rydenstories]

My Worst Failure as a CPS Worker: The Hall Case

REDDIT

Working for CPS is a sad job, but it's normally not as bad as everyone thinks.

Sure, there are the obviously depressing parts. The whole reason we have to intervene is because something internally destructive is hurting the family dynamic. At the same time, we get to work with these families and do a lot of good. In fact, with the proper counseling, we remove far less children and see more families healed. It's not uncommon that a person is only a poor parent because it's all that they know. People learn.

There are situations that are out of our hands, though, that are the worst. Those ones where no matter how much you help, you just feel like something higher is at play. You find yourself feeling like you're just waiting to clean up the mess.

In our branch, management has always tried to even out cases as much as possible. They wanted to be sure nobody became overwhelmed. Still, there were certain social workers with us that were more pressed to get the job done than the others. "Case-closers." I used to be one of them until recently, with an unsolvable case that's nearly ruined my life.

For privacy reasons, we'll just call this the Hall Case.

It didn't start out abnormal. It was challenging, sure. 8 year old kid being pulled back and forth between a nasty divorce in process. Two whackjob parents, neither of which seemed fit to care for themselves, let alone their daughter. Still, that's not something at all uncommon with us. This particular case had just run for a very long time.

One misconception about CPS workers is that we make the final decisions regarding what happens in these cases. Really, we're just mediators. Here to gather the information in a direct setting, make observations, and report back to those in charge.

I wish it were how it is in films. Reading a file and report isn't the same as observing damage in real time. If I had the choice, I would've placed the little girl with a temporary foster within weeks. Instead, her parents guarded her like a prized gem and fought to near violence to keep her as long as they could. One parent would get their two weeks with the child and we'd have to threaten to intervene when she finally needed to go back to the other.

Things changed when the father, Mr. Hall, was arrested in an unrelated criminal drug case. This gave Mrs. Hall free reign to keep the child as long as she wanted. I guess was partially relieved, knowing at least one of them was away from the child. It also meant I could focus on monitoring just one parent.

However, this is where things begin to get strange.

Mrs. Hall calls me on the day of her scheduled counseling appointment with a question about possibly switching to an alternative counselor. I explained that they'd have to be approved by me and any non-CPS counseling has to be monitored by the case-worker (myself) for a month or so before they can go unattended. She seemed glad but... unconcerned? Like a very "sure, yeah, whatever" attitude.

However, when I tried to meet her at the address she gave for the next counseling session, she and the girl weren't there. The building on the property was a church called "Church of Milcom" that seemed recently occupied but was then empty. It didn't seem that strange to me, in the moment. Churches hold counseling sessions. Maybe we got our times mixed up, I worried. Still, I had to report that they missed the counseling session, which didn't look good for Mrs. Hall.

The next session came and went with no word. Two more days and my superiors sent me to check on the house. Empty, car gone. An elderly neighbor strolled across the lawn as I was leaving and explained that he hadn't seen either of them in a while, likely since the last I spoke to her.

With the evidence mounting, we finally got the local police involved and put out an alert. It seemed very likely that Mrs. Hall had run off with the child. I hated when it came to things like this, but at least it was certain that she would finally be arrested and the little girl would be placed somewhere safe.

Despite all of this seeming very clean cut, I couldn't shake that church out of my head, so I started to do some research. The building was owned by the city but wasn't supposed to be inhabited by anyone, let alone a seemingly fully established church just from a glance. Stranger still, there was no record of a "Church of Milcom" anywhere in the city, state, or country. I brought this up to my superiors, but for some reason, it was left out of the proceedings.

The most helpful tip came surprisingly from Mr. Hall, though not immediately and not directly.

Initially, it was a natural step in the process to go question him in jail, he was the first person we came and saw, but his estranged wife had seen to it that he wouldn't have a clue where they'd go. He said that she'd changed so much over the several months that they were separated, he couldn't fathom where she'd take their daughter. Meanwhile, it seemed like some time behind bars really woke him up, and he seemed more concerned for his daughter than ever before.

For weeks, things stayed the same. We got dozens of false tips and strange individuals trying to claim some involvement. Nothing came of any of it.

When a call came from the jailhouse that they'd possibly recorded a call between Mr and Mrs Hall, we rushed down to hear the recording.

The conversation starts our casual, him clearly not wanting to alarm her. He gently asks her where she's gone. Her air is light and unbothered as she explains that her new church had them on an important trip. She promised she would come back better than ever before. This clearly worried Mr. Hall, the statement lacking the mention of their daughter, which he brings up. There's a long pause on the other end before she gleefully replies that their daughter is going to help in the most wonderful way.

Mr. Hall can't hold his composure anymore and begins to sob, which isn't what Mrs. Hall wants to hear, causing her to hang up.

It was a very strange and very sad exchange. Apparently, after the call, they had to move Mr. Hall to a different area of the jail as he was inconsolable.

Meanwhile, I reported this back to my superiors who, unshockingly at this point, did very little with the information. Their report reflected the religious fanaticism but wouldn't acknowledge the Church of Milcom's involvement at all. Without this information, I knew somewhere inside that nobody would be able to find them.

I started to lose hope as the days went on. We got a call from the jail that Mr. Hall was having nightmares about his daughter. These nightmares made him entirely certain that she was already dead, causing him to lose hope. He was moved to a psychiatric facility to be kept on suicide watch.

This case unsettled me to no end. I couldn't give my other cases the proper attention. I couldn't focus in my personal life. Meanwhile, I was terrified to admit that I had begun to have nightmares as well. This poor little girl, screaming at me from within raging fire. It was almost too much to stand.

I still don't know how she got my personal number, but I was snapped out of one of these nightmares by the ringing of my cellphone. Without really bothering to check the caller ID, I answered to be greeted by Mrs. Hall. All of her certainty and cheerfulness from the jailhouse phone recording was gone, replaced by fear and confusion. She spat near nonsense at me through ugly, unstifled sobs. From the mess, I pulled the information that she was at home.

I put her on mute for a moment as I retrieved the landline from it's base, calling the police and then my superiors to get permission to go to the scene. Afterwards, I got dressed and rushed towards the house.

The police were only just arriving on the scene, awaiting my own arrival to accompany them inside the house. The front door was already partially open and Mrs. Hall sat in a disheveled mess on the couch, still weeping into her phone as if I were still on the other end. However, as she realized that we were inside the room, she jumped up with overwhelmed excitement, sobbing even louder as she threw herself into my arms.

Immediately, there was a lot that was very different about this woman. Although her face was seized up in fear, I could tell that her skin was much smoother and cleaner. Hair that was damaged from years of chemical processing was now silken and new. She even had a bright new set of teeth. Even though she seemed to have lost her mind, Mrs. Hall could've passed as 15 years younger.

It was difficult getting full words out of her, but she didn't need to tell us where the girl was. The police had already slipped past us to check out the rest of the house, and they were indicating toward a back bedroom door that was sealed shut with broken pieces of wooden furniture and nails. There was an awful smell coming from the other side, which put a pit in everyone's stomach but also pushed them to remove the boards quicker.

This is when Mrs. Hall lost it. She tore away from me and began barreling towards the officers in the hallway, screaming for them to stop. She was detained and removed as the final board was removed from the door. Before it could even be sat down, the bedroom door opened from inside.

A foul smelling 8 year old appeared in the doorway, asking if she was allowed to come out now.

There was something strange and casual in her tone that would have felt slightly off if we weren't all so shocked and relieved to see her. I led her out and it should have been the end of everything.

I wish it was.

Initially, both parents were in separate psychiatric facilities, and we really didn't have much to go on. Besides, the case seemed pretty cut and dry to anyone besides myself. There were things I still wondered and worried about, like the Church of Milcom. I wasn't able to get anyone to hear me out, even when the elderly neighbor I'd talked to earlier had gone out of his way to let the authorities know that a grey bus full of people dropped the mother and daughter off that day.

Meanwhile with nobody to care for the Hall girl, we had no choice but to place her with a foster family. The family asked us within two days to begin looking into other options for her and straight brought her back after four.

First and foremost, she smells terrible. The stench of rotten meat has continued to permeate from this girl. More-so, she's just... scary.

At first, she confronted me about the nightmares. It was so casual, I barely caught what she'd said. She had to repeat herself twice; "the nightmares are never going away." Afterward, she continued with the conversation like nothing but I was too shaken to finish speaking with her. It was true, the nightmares hadn't stopped. I still had horrible dreams about this little girl engulfed in flame. It always seemed like she was saying something, but I could never hear her over the roar of flames. Either way, she somehow knew.

It became more serious, to me, when I found her with burnt photographs, which she claimed she'd stolen from another CPS worker's cubicle. There were still cinders falling from the burnt edges, but I couldn't find any sign of matches or a lighter and she wouldn't have had enough time to hide them.

The idea of taking some time off sounded better and better with each passing day. I even started to talk with another caseworker about possibly transferring the Hall case over to him yesterday evening. As if the universe was intervening, my superiors called me into their office with an emergency. The Hall girl disappeared from her current foster home. Even worse, one of her foster brother's was badly injured.

I wasn't allowed to attend on this scene, though I wasn't given a reason why. I was luckily able to convince the coworker who had been there to show me some of the photos she'd taken. At first, I couldn't honestly tell what had happened. This poor kid's neck looked like cooked ham. Only upon closer inspection did I notice the finger impression. Adult finger impressions, literally burnt into this poor child's neck.

I'm not sure if my superiors found out about me seeing these photos, or if everything had just come down the point of blaming me for not preventing any of this, but I was put on indefinite leave this morning.

The boy is in a coma and can't explain what happened, and the Hall girl is still missing. They're treating it as a kidnapping, linking the burns to an unidentified assailant. Now, with everything coming together, I'm entirely sure that's not what happened. It doesn't matter what I think though, at least not at this minute.

I know that when I go to sleep tonight, the nightmares are going to continue. This case.... I don't want to give up on it, but I'm terrified. I'm also not entirely sure this little girl is done with me. I have lots more research to do, I just hope I can go back to helping people after this.

[automatismoateo]

On the fence regarding religion, I went to my Mom's "church" once. I was uncomfortable and tried to leave. A 5 person security team literally blocked the doors to force me to stay. via /r/atheism

Submitted April 06, 2020 at 07:28PM by votedog (Via reddit https://ift.tt/2XdX4oQ) On the fence regarding religion, I went to my Mom's "church" once. I was uncomfortable and tried to leave. A 5 person security team literally blocked the doors to force me to stay.

When I was younger I longed to embrace the idea of God and the possibility of things like Heaven and Hell. I found it appealing, the idea of knowing something so deeply, so firmly, that nothing will ever shake your belief in it. Unfortunately, too many unanswered questions kept me from planting my feet and joining the religious masses.

My Mother began calling herself "born again" when I was in my early 30s. She went from an open minded, friendly, caring person to a judgmental asshole in a matter of months. She began calling celebrities "whores" when they wore itty bitty outfits, which made me laugh because she dressed just like that when she was young. More than once I had to remind her that she had sex outside of marriage and had lived with men she was not married to.

Her new "Church" was a massive, mega conglomerate with thousands of parishioners, all just like her. They preached judgement, exclusion, hatred and fear. They ran in terror from change and fought for anachronistic laws that make no sense in our current world. However, at my mother's very persistent requests, I agreed to attend a sermon one Sunday. I was still waiting for my own spiritual awakening and was looking for that thing that would push me one way or the other. Maybe this would be it?

The place was packed. We had just found seats when 5 beefy men entered the building in a line. There were 5 sets of double doors in and out of the room, and one by one a large 'security' man stood in front of them and crossed his arms. They wore matching yellow shirts embroidered with the name of the Church and it very much felt like their job was to make sure nobody left the room.

The sermon began and two words flashed up on the screen at the front: Family Values. The man on stage began to speak, "Today we're going to talk about Family Values. How important they are and how so many are trying to strip them away and make a mockery of what marriage and family means"... I turned and glared at my Mother. She, in return, refused to look at me. She stared straight ahead as he belittled the LGBT community and their fight for marriage equality. When I heard him say "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" I'd had enough.

Now is probably a good time to tell you I'm a lesbian and have been out to my family for over a decade. My mother claims to love my partner but she didn't bat an eye as the man railed insults at gays and lesbians. I felt personally attacked at this point so I got up and started walking towards the exit doors.

The speaker (I refuse to call him a priest or reverend, because to me he is a man of hate not love) saw me get up and paused every so slightly, just enough for everyone to notice that he was distracted. I'm guessing nobody had ever done this before. This caused everyone to turn and look at what had caught his attention.

I got to the door and a yellow shirt security man stepped in front of me before I could walk out. I noticed the other 4 men in yellow shirts were now walking toward me and they were not smiling. The closest security guy put his hand on my arm and I yelled, "Don't touch me!" with a little more volume than I intended. I'm not sure if he meant to drag me back to my seat? He withdrew his hand but did not move. I loathed my Mother so much in that moment for putting me in this situation.

Yellow Shirt: Where are you going? The sermon just began.

I hissed angrily: Get out of my way. I'm leaving.

Yellow Shirt: You should return to your seat.

Me: No. I won't sit here and listen to this bullshit.

Another Yellow Shirt: Watch your language. Go back to your seat, maybe you'll learn something.

I snorted at him: Learn something? What, how to discriminate and preach hatred toward those who are different from you? Hell no, this place is toxic.

Yellow Shirt growled at me: You need to show some respect and let the lord into your heart or you're going to spend an eternity in hell.

Me: I just want to leave.

Even with all those witnesses watching us, I felt scared for my safety and very alone.

I lowered my voice and filled it with venom: Get the fuck out of my way now or I'm going to make a scene.

Another Yellow Shirt: That's not necessary. We haven't done anything to you. Just sit back down...

Me: You are standing between me and the door. I want to leave. Move.

One of them opened his mouth to argue with me and decided enough was enough.

Me, no longer caring about leaving quietly, shrieked: ARE YOU REFUSING TO LET ME LEAVE? DO I NEED TO CALL THE POLICE!?!?!

Everyone heard that for sure. Seeing that we'd become a distraction, they decided it was time for me to go. Four walked away and the one who stopped me originally opened the door. I ran past him in case they tried to stop me. Once I was out, they slammed the doors shut and I was left shaking and on the verge of tears.

The worst part? My Mom had driven and I had to sit and wait for her to go home. I was afraid they'd track me down after it ended so I found my Mothers car and sat near it, trying to hide. My anxiety was through the roof.

My mother, meanwhile, stayed for the whole thing. Over an hour later when she came out, she said nothing. If she saw that i had to been crying, she did not mention it. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to cry and ask why she'd allow all those people to treat me that way. I wanted to ask why that room full of hateful people were more important than her own daughter. Instead, I sat in silence and when we got to her house, I got in my car and left.

She's still a member of that "Church" today and we are no longer in contact. While the experience was traumatic for me, I'm actually glad it happened. It helped me comes to terms with the fact that I don't believe in god and that religion is a scam for money that preaches nothing but hatred and fear.

​

Edit: Words

[ecotone99]

[RF] Inhibitions make the man

Hey first time posting on Reddit, I wrote this story and just felt the need to share it. Feel free to leave any criticism positive or negative. Just thank you for reading

“Why are you sleeping, Tom?” were the last words I remember hearing before drifting off to a peaceful night sleep.

I begrudgingly woke up to intense screeching of my alarm clock, it sounded like when teachers used to scratch their witch like fingers down the chalkboard in order to get the attention of a class who was not prepared for the period as I was not prepared for another day in the machine. I went through the motions of my morning routine, gliding my feet along the floor in order to reach the next part of the day, to reach the next clog.

First put on the same clothes I’ve been wearing for weeks an off white t-shirt, blue jeans, and a belt I got from my father before he left me and my sisters. Next in the kitchen I drop two pieces of toast into the toaster knowing full well they will come out charred as a log in the fire just before it crumbles to ash. I pour my coffee into the mug, black as the black hole of a room I sleep my nights away in. My old beaten flip phone rings with my eldest sisters tone, ringing like an ear after gun has shot right next to it, without hesitation i send her to voicemail. I have no reason to listen to her ramble on about me seeing her and her kids. The toast shot out out of the toaster and falls on the floor the spring in the toaster shattering falling into the electronics burning out the circuit. I walk to pick up my toast from the floor to see a rat stealing one of the slices, with a sigh i pick up the remaining slice and put it one of my White Castle napkin ive been using as plates. Finally i'm ready to leave for my job as an accountant at the local bank.

I walk into work exactly on time as I do every day, but I hear a voice calling my name, I turn around to see nobody their and continue as I usually do. I once again hear my name in the distance like the echo of a dream you would have had months ago that you can't remember, but you know you had. I go to my desk and open my filing cabinet to get started to work only to find it filled with the ashes from the files, a loaded handgun, a rubber band filled with hundreds and a note saying “Had fun last night with my turn can't wait for the next one.” confused, and terrified I fall into my chair as if I had been frozen by ice and pushed backwards by a single finger. That’s when the voice I had heard outside returned, “I see you saw my note.” I do a full 360 spin in my chair to find who is their only to hear, “not going to see me out there, i'm in here” followed by quite snickering laugh.

“ Where are you!” I screamed as if I was speaking to someone on the other side of the building.

“You okay Tom?” asked a nearby coworker

“Don't let them think your crazy wouldn't want us to get stuck in an asylum would you?” whispered the voice.

“Fine, just tired.” I said in a hushed voice to the clog who pretended to care for me. He leaves walking down the same path in the office used by every person, walked down so often that there's clear footprints indented into the hardwood. “Who are you?” I cautiously asked not wanting to draw any more attention.

“ Don't you remember? You invited me out of the deepest cracks in your mind.” the voice spoke in a smug tone that clearly showed that although he did not control the body he was in control of the mind. “ im you, the you that's deep down i'm every dark impulse you have, every taboo you wish you could comite, I am the real you.”

“I don't want you here! What did you do?!? Where did you get the money and gun from?” I frantically asked wanting to know what the voice made me do the night before.

“Don't worry, the little old lady's family probably expected her to die soon anyway, besides now you can quite this job. I got you her money so no need to stay here and wallow in the collective sadness of this place.” the voice proclaimed with such vigor that my head began to throb.

The voice was right though the sadness in the workspace was like thick oil making everyone move efficiently but without hope for escape. In fear of submitting here and the voice doing whatever unspeakable things he wants i do as he says I walk to my bosses office unknowingly avoiding the footprints ive walked in so many times before. I tell my boss that I quite his hopeless job and left with a little birdy over my shoulder. Though I didn't want to admit it to the voice it felt good to leave on my own terms. I race to my office grab everything from my office that the voice left in fear of someone finding it and leave the building wondering what to do with my new found freedom, maybe i'll go and see my sister for the first time in years.

“Good idea” the voice boomed so loud in the back of my head that i collapsed.

I awoke over the fresh corpse of my beloved sister whom I'd tried to shut out of my like so many times. All she was ever trying to do was help me, comfort me maybe if I had let her in this never would have happened. The tears wouldn't stop flooding out my eyes like a damn that held back the entire Pacific ocean had broken all at once. I'd taken away my nieces mother, my father just left me and I never let my family back in but they just had their mother taken from them.

“Enjoying my handy work?” The voice sneered “Don't worry it wasn't brutal I just came in while she was making mac and cheese for when her kids get home in a while. She had just finished putting the water on the stove so i talked to her to by time for ot to boil then when it boiling was as rapid as the water pouring of niagara falls i shoved her face into the water until she drowned, all while her face burned and blistered. ”

Is this what I've become? I wanted to kill her just because she was reaching out, she hadn't done anything wrong ever she was the kindest soul I've ever met. It scared me that I would connect and she would just leave but that wasn't her plan she wanted to help me heal and now I killed her. I have to get rid of this voice before it takes over completely, but how do you get rid of something that only exist in your head? “Hey if I die you die to right? You live in my head so if I go so do you?” I said as I rush through tying a hangman's knot before I lose control

“But why would you want to do that?” The voice said but for the first time he sounded nervous “I do what you really want! You should love me!”

“Those impulses you claim I want to do aren't me, I never wanted my sister dead I just wanted to protect myself from her being gone! Now I don't need to protect myself because all I have is gone..” I slide rope over the steel beam exposed in her apartment securing it with a slip knot which I never thought I'd is when my dad taught it to me before he left, “...so you've shown me not to be scared and I'm not scared of you but I can't allow you to live even if it means I have to go with you.” I slide my head through the knot and the voice starts screaming.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do? You have a new chance at life without the ties of family, I've given you everything to make a new life won't you take it?” the voice asked as if he was trying to push me out the loop but it wouldn't work.

“I'm sorry sister, this is all my fault but I won't allow it to happen to anyone else…�� my words trail off into the ray of sun coming through her window. I look into the light seeing how every life has purpose and I may have failed at mine but I can stop the voice from accomplishing it's. I accept that I must do this to keep everyone safe.

“WAIT… this isn't what I wanted for us, we we were supposed to do so much! You were supposed to accept me!” The voice screams, but it's voice fades for a second but then whispers its final words, ”So, this is fear.”

I kick the chair out from beneath me sending me and this voice, who's shown me everything I hate and love about myself, that it's not the dark impulses that make the man, everyone has those what makes the man is what he isn't willing to do.

submitted by /u/therealgavingayle [link] [comments] via Blogger http://bit.ly/2Hlsktq

[rydenstories]

in the bathroom mirror

REDDIT

When I tell new acquaintances that I grew up around the paranormal community, they expect that I grew up in a specific environment; with eccentric but neglectful parents constantly scaring me about ghosts rattling chains and whispering threats. This was not the upbringing I experienced. I lived in a loving household with parents who, although were very upfront about what their hobby was, kept me in the dark about the scarier parts to make sure I grew up the same as my peers. I'd always felt that my parents, and their friends (investigators, mediums, etc.) were heroes and investigated to keep people safe. I didn't think on it much past that when I was little.

They did so well at keeping me sheltered from the darker truths of the paranormal, they assumed I was safe from those unexplainable forces by default. Unfortunately, I wasn't.

My parents investigated on week nights because they had a sitter (another investigator's daughter) and they knew they wouldn't return home until I was in bed. They could unwind and go over evidence without exposing me. That night, I shouldn't even have been awake but I needed to use the bathroom. I quietly shut my bedroom door as i entered the hall, hoping I wouldn't alert the sitter to my presence. I glanced into the living room, noticing that the sitter was absent from her normal spot on the couch. Shrugging this off, I crossed the hallway into the bathroom. After doing my business I flushed, washed my hands, and went to return to bed when I heard the front door crash open, slamming against the wall. I quickly shut the bathroom light off and cracked the door just enough that I could peek out into the living room without being seen.

Seven people, including my parents and the sitter, were panickedly shuffling through the front door with something rectangular covered in a large flannel jacket. Everyone was shouting in confusion between my parents telling everyone to quiet down. At some point the object was sat down on the floor and before anyone could really figure out what was going on, a loud crack silenced the room. I couldn't see who, but someone had stepped on the object and broke it quite seriously. Everyone froze and I suddenly felt something was wrong. Mom quietly questioned "what did you do?" to a silent room. Nobody answered her.

Something about the situation unleashed a horrible fear I'd never experienced. I backed away from the bathroom door, closing it as quietly as I possibly could while flicking the light on. Casually turning and glancing at my reflection in the mirror at that moment pushed terror to an incomprehensible level for my 9 year old brain. Nothing in the room was out of place, but my reflection had changed. The boy looking back at me didn't feel like me. He looked like me, but he peered into my own eyes with an entirely different expression on his face than the one I knew I currently wore on my own. It was a look of hate. I broke my gaze away and some of the fear subsided, but not all.

I stayed there frozen for a while, facing away from the mirror and listening to people shuffling around outside, waiting for my opportunity to leave the bathroom without being seen. I'd never been so scared, I just wanted to leave that room so badly and the minutes felt like hours. Still, somewhere between my personal naivety and my curiosity, I decided to turn just enough that I could see the mirror our of the corner of my eye. The boy hadn't moved as my reflection should have with me. He was looking straight forward, the sockets of his eyes now filled with a glowing light that somehow didn't reflect out into the room at all. His mouth was open at a small slit and I could almost sense whispers escaping it despite no sound echoing out into the silent bathroom. He didn't know I was seeing him and I didn't know what I was seeing either, so I quickly looked away again in fear. The sense of whispering disappeared as soon as I broke my gaze from him and I realized that the house was silent again. I quickly left the bathroom and darted across the hallway into my bedroom, knowing I'd averted being caught but not caring either way.

I woke up the next morning ill and unable to speak. My parents kept me home from school in hopes that tylenol and rest could be enough, but I only got sicker as time passed. Being so immersed in illness, I barely thought about what I'd seen in the mirror at all. The days went on and I became delirious to the point where I don't exactly remember much. Mom and Dad rushed me to the hospital and my fever only broke after three days. I started feeling better, but I was kept in the hospital for further testing for almost two weeks due to the fact that they couldn't figure out exactly what had caused such extreme illness despite all clean tests when I came in. They still really don't know.

After going back home, my parents were so worried about me that they totally dropped paranormal investigation to spend more time keeping an eye on my heath. As soon as my fever dropped in the hospital, I remembered the incident with the mirror and immediately made a connection between that and my illness. As you could imagine, I felt very threatened and unsafe in my own home, but I also felt a level of subconscious guilt. I wasn't supposed to be awake that night. I was supposed to be safe with all of these strong people around. It felt like my fault. Regardless, it was still in there. I didn't know if my parents felt it, but even being near the bathroom made me nauseous, sad, and terrified.

Despite all of the guilt I felt, and how afraid I was, I hid it from my parents for a short time. Our house had two bathrooms, and I felt fine in the other. Unfortunately, sleeping in my bedroom made it much harder to keep the secret. I hated it in there. It was right across the hall from the awful bathroom and I could feel ill intent just behind the door. I tried sleeping on the couch but my parents only thought it was cute the first few times before insisting I sleep in my bedroom.

My quality of life rapidly declined from there. I found it hard to sleep or eat. My grades declined. My parents were concerned it was the unknown illness I'd experienced but the doctors were giving absolutely no answers. They seemed so stressed and I felt so terrible, I tried my hardest to act normally despite the inner torment but it was clearly not working well.

Although my parents could stop doing paranormal investigation, they couldn't stop their friends in the paranormal community from eventually coming over. Madge, an old medium who was essentially a grandmother figure for me, stopped over unannounced and was finally the first person to experience the terrible feeling besides myself. I was on the couch watching TV when she came through the door, stopped cold in her tracks, and exclaimed "JESUS DO YOU PEOPLE NOT FEEL THAT?" This blunt question hit me so hard I couldn't breathe and found myself hyperventilating in seconds. For me, the jig was up. Madge stayed frozen at the door as my parents ran to me and desperately pleaded for an explanation. Emotion had washed over me so intensely that I found it impossible to do anything but cry. Cry out of desperation and out of fear, even relief that someone had broken through finally. I remember my mom kept asking me why I wasn't explaining myself when Madge answered for me "it probably has him too afraid to speak, dummy." So we left and I finally was able to tell them everything.

In the following weeks, I stayed with a relative while my parents investigated the house. At the time, I wasn't given a ton of information, I just knew they were trying to make things safe again. I would later come home on the day they decided to remove the mirror. I stood in the middle of the living room and watched as they carried it out of the bathroom and headed towards the front door. I still saw that boy in the mirror as it passed, the not-me. He still exuded hate and caused fear, but it almost felt like he was a vicious predator being carted off against his will to imprisonment.

The house didn't immediately feel better. Madge believed that houses are much like people, and they need to heal from trauma as well. My parents clearly were affected too, and the road to feeling safe again was difficult. Still, over time, we all greatly improved.

I didn't ask much about the situation afterwards as a child; I was content with the fact that my parents had worked so hard to make home safe again. However, as I got older, I grew more curious. Upon my request, she finally filled in the missing pieces several years ago.

Back to the initial incident. She, my father, and several other investigators were working on a non-typical job. A family had been experiencing entirely different symptoms than those I had faced. Their daughter was experiencing bouts of rage linked with objects moving and audible voices being heard. Mom admitted that they were nowhere near equip to deal with the presented situation; they went in cocky, fully expecting to debunk and diffuse the situation. However, they were presented with so much more. They were faced with an entity that they believed was using the girl's mirror as a conduit.

Not knowing how to deal with a conduit AT ALL, they decided to remove the mirror and relocate it somewhere safe, away from people. However, being around the mirror during the ride home made everyone uneasy and disoriented. By the time they got to the house, everyone was speaking over each other and trying to move the mirror in several directions before it was sat down and stepped on, something they were unaware that I witnessed. At that moment, they all snapped forward into sharp lucidity, realizing that they had no idea whether or not they'd just made a horrible mistake. Shocked, everyone snapped to cleaning up the mess and disposing of it outside. They afterward reasoned to themselves that breaking the mirror forced the entity back to where it came from.

They never originally made the connection between that incident and my illness because it never occurred to them that malevolence could inhabit the safety of their home without them catching it first. I think there's a part of me that kept quiet about it for so long because I couldn't accept that it could happen to us either. These both could be reasons why my parents couldn't sense it, even when they were staring directly into that mirror every single day. Maybe it was because it just didn't want them.

After everything came to the surface, my parents exhausted pretty much every connection they had in the paranormal community. For weeks, they tried to cleanse and exorcise the mirror to no avail. The entity wouldn't interact other than to react to photos and mention of me. It became clear to them that conduits could not be cured and destroying the conduit only gave the entity more power, but it could still be contained somewhere safe. Madge advised my parents to allow me to witness them removing the mirror to show the entity that it had lost. She took ownership so she could properly relocate it.

Currently, I'm the only person in my family that is not a paranormal investigator. I love my parents and I've still never been embarrassed about what they do, but I couldn't handle facing something that could even pale in comparison to what I experienced within my bathroom mirror. There's another part of it though. Two years ago, Madge passed. Mom and I were in charge of dividing up her possessions between those who loved her and those who could care for the objects we'd assumed she'd taken on. However, she was not in possession of the mirror.

I never want to chance seeing that mirror again because there's a part of me that knows he doesn't think he lost when they removed the mirror, and I never want to give him an opportunity to prove himself the victor.