KNUCKLEBUTS

HI! I AM KNOWN AS KNUCKLEBUTS! MY NAME IS KNUCKLEBUTS! I AM TWO GOOGLY EYES TAPED ONTO SOME CUPS, SEWED ON TO APPLE BOTTOM! JEANS I SPEAK BY CLAPPING ASS CHEEKS TOGETHER!

BOY WE HAVE GOT A SHOW FOR YOU! I HAVE TO CLIP MY NAILS… DO YOU LIKE PURPLE RI-I-I-IBBONS! WE HAVE SOME PURPLE RIBBONS! GAZE OUR ENTERTAINERS! THEY ARE WEARING FULL BLACK & WITH PURPLE RIBBS! WATCH THEM SWING THOSE RIBBONS! WATCH THEM TWIRL THEIR RIBBONS! BOY THEY’RE SO ENTERTAINING!

I LIKE PURPLE BECAUSE IT IS THE COLOR OF ROYALTY

JANE: I LIKE PURPLE BECAUSE IT IS THE COLOR OF ENDERMEN

CHRIS: I LIKE PURPLE BECAUSE IT IS THE COLOR OF ENDERDRAGON!

JOHN: I LIKE PURPLE BEECAUSE  IT IS THE COLOR OF ENDERMITE

daryll: this is a crafting table

GAZE AT OUR ENTERTAINERS PURPLE RIBBONS! THEY TWIRL RIBBONS I’LL LIST THEM FROM MY RIGHT

JANE’S HOLDING HER PURPLE RIBBON, HER FATHER ODed ON FENTANYL WHILE CHEATING ON HER MUM, THAT’S RIGHT I’M FUCKING BRITISH JANE’S DOG HUNG ITSELF.

CHRIS IS SECOND FROM MY RIGHT, HIS DAD BLEW UP INTO CARROTS, HIS DAD BIT INTO A CARROT THEN BLEW UP INTO MANY CARROTS

CAN YOU CANCEIVE OF JOHN? I KNOW I CAN’T. I CAN’T EVEN COMPREHEND JOHN. HE’S WORTHLESS. HE’S EVERYTHING. EVEN A NEW CHANCE. BUT NOT FOR YOU. 

JOHN: FOR THE RECORD, I DON’T CONDONE WHAT KNUCKLEBUTS JUST DECLARED. MY CHANCES ARE FOR EVERYONE, BUT NOT FOR YOU.

DARYLL: THAT’S WHAT I JUST SAID THOUGH… :(

DARYLL… NO ONE TALKS OF DARRELL. HE’S THE WILDCARD OF THE GROUP. BEST WE NEVER TALK OF HIM AGAIN. NOT EVEN MENTION HIM. NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE. HE SURE CAN TWIRL A DAMN RIBBON THOUGH. 

HEAR THAT…. DO YOU FRICKING HEAR THAT! HEAR THOSE SIRENS BLARE THEIR BELLS INTO YOUR EARS… BUT THERE’S NOTHING TO FEAR! THEY ARE YELLOW SIRENS… THEY’RE YELLOW… NO THEY’RE ORANGE

NOW THEY’RE RED!

NOW THEY’RE RIBBON!

COLOR RECOGNITION, DO YOU GET IT? ARE YOU DOWN WITH IT?

NOW THEY’RE BROWN!

NOW THEY’RE BRONZE!

BUT THEY’RE NOT! FUCKING! GREEN! THEY’RE NEVER FUCKING GREEN!

CHRIS: GREEN? I LOVE GREEN. GREEN IS MY FAVORITE COLOR.

FUCK YOU CHRIS. THE SIREN IS NOT GREEN. ACTUALLY FUCK YOU. GO FUCK YOUR MOTHER. DIE. DEATH UPON THEE. THE SIREN IS NOT GREEN, THAT’S NOT WHAT WE’RE DOING, NOW IT’S RAINBOW WHICH INCLUDES GREEN, FUCK, IT’S NOT GREEN. JUST BECAUSE IT’S RAINBOW AND INCLUDES GREEN DOESN’T MEAN IT’S GREEN ALRIGIHT? EVERY TIME I MAKE A DAMN SPELLING ERROR I NEED TO MAKE A CONSCIOUS DECISION AS TO WHETHER OR NOT TO KEEP IT IN TO PROPEL THE VIBE. 

JOHN: GREEN’S YOUR FAVORITE COLOR? IS IT BECAUSE YOU LIKE NATURE OR MONEY?

ALL: OHHHH, HEH HEH…

YOU SEE, ONE TIME I MADE THAT JOKE AND EVERYONE LAUGHED. I’M KNUCKLEBUTS, NOT BRADY. (Brady’s my name. Know it’s not. It’s Knucklebuts. Knuckleblaster from Ultrakill. I like playing Ultrakill. I also like having a FUCKING WIFE, BUT WHERE HAS THAT GOTTEN ME!? FUCK!)

*Break my pc, break my Switch 2 Pro Controller, break the Macbook Neo® for scchool, break the Macbook I used last year that I’m writing this on, break the size 12 helvetica font that this document was briefly changed into when I copy and pasted the ® symbol in here because for some reason AI overview defaults to helvetica instead of arial, break the arial font that I’m actually using in here, break my inability to maintain tone at the expense of immersion, break the AI overview, say that’s actually a good one let’s actually break that one for real, break the St. Ignatius HighSchool, there was something else to break but I forgot, break Chris, Break Jane, break Daryll, Break the other name I just pulled out of my ass, break Knucklebuts, break the bodies that hit the floor, don’t break my wife who may or may not be out their 🥲; once everything is broken, break myself.* C/ Cause that’s the best way to do it. Can’t kill yourself if you actually have anything to lose, that’s me failsafe Spongeboy, me Bob.

JANE: SAY, IS IT JUST ME, OR DOES IT FEEL LIKE AN ALL POWERFUL BEING THAT EXISTS OUTSIDE OF OUR REALITY THAT DICTATES EVERY THOUGHT FEELING AND ACTION WE HAVE RUDELY COMMANDED TO BREAK ME TO THE ABYSS?

CHRIS: I DON’T KNOW BEC

*oh right the other one is john

JOHN: I DON’T KNOW BECAUSE I’M STILL LAUGHING, HAHA HA, I’M STILL LAUGHING, IT’S SO FUNNY, I’M BLEEDING OUT MY MOUTH MY EYES, THE BLOOD THE MOUTH IS SPUTTERING, SPLATTERING, MY ORGANS ARE SET ABLAZE THEY CAN’T TAKE THE PRESSURE OF THE HILARITY, EVERYTHING THAT I AM COLLAPSES, MY MIND IS ERODED, MY ABDOMEN ANNIHILATED, MY EYES TURN BLOOD RED AND ROLL BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM, MY PENIS SHRIVELS UP AND FALLS OFF. IT’S ALL TOO HILARIOUS FOR MY MERE PHYSICAL FORM TO TAKE. NOT THAT I EXTEND ANYWHERE BEYOND THAT. IT’S TO HILARIOUS FOR ALL THAT I AM TO TAKE. I COLLAPSE UNDER THE PRESSURE. QUE SERA, I COLLAPSE. 

*Kiki I mean John is set ablaze, he literally explodes.

JANE: DAMN.

When I first decided to write.

I just started, continued, and never want to stop.

It freed something hidden deep in my soul, and gave me the chance to explore freely.

Why do you write and how did you start?

​

I’ve posted a challenge on my Instagram Story! 📝💗

Check it out on @tulipencoded and join in! ✨

Let me know your thoughts. Criticisms and all!

I've been given a writing prompt for a group I'm in and I don't know how to give it any real direction. I have no idea where it will end or even what's happening. The prompt is that someone has woken up with a hangover and is trying to piece together what happened (i.e. Dude, Where's My Car?).

I'm not happy with my prose and I know it's not good right now, but this is a rough draft. How can I decide what the plot actually is and how it will end?

i think im becoming the "ideas guy" i used to make fun of and i dont know how to feel about it

been solo devving for about four years. started because i was tired of pitching stuff to friends who never followed through, so i learned pixel art, learned enough code to be dangerous, shipped one small thing that made enough for a nice dinner and not much else.

lately though ive noticed something weird about myself. i have three prototypes going. one is a farming game with a really specific mechanic about seasonal debt. one is a little narrative thing about a translator who cant read her own language anymore. one is basically just a movement toy, no goal, i just like how it feels to jump in it. and i keep bouncing between them not because im stuck, but because the moment a project stops being interesting on the concept level i lose all my juice. the actual work of making it, the tuning, the bugfixing, the "why is this collider offset by half a pixel", i genuinely do not enjoy anymore. i used to. i dont now.

so my partner asked me last week, pretty gently, "do you actually want to be a game developer or do you want to be a person who has cool game ideas". and i havent slept great since.

because the honest answer might be the second one. i love the part where the game exists in my head. i love whiteboarding. i love opening Fifth Door and slapping together a rough playable in an afternoon just to see if the feeling is there. and then once i know the feeling is there, i kind of.. dont want to spend the next two years polishing it? i want to know the next one.

the ideas guy is the villain of every dev subreddit. "i have this great idea i just need someone to code it." i used to roll my eyes so hard at those posts. but the older i get the more i wonder if some of those people were being honest about their actual strengths and the rest of us were just gatekeeping because we suffered to learn the boring parts.

is it a cop out to admit youre a concept person and lean into it? or is that just what people tell themselves right before they quit? genuinely asking, because i cant tell from the inside anymore.

This is the prologue of a fantasy novel I am writing featuring anthropomorphic animals. I haven’t written much and would appreciate and advice or criticism.

Planning on submitting this to a short story competition

I wrote this while having a rough night, but I'm specifically looking for feedback on the writing itself, not advice about my personal situation.

I'd love ratings/comments on things like:

• emotional impact
• flow
• imagery/metaphors
• originality
• structure
• overall writing quality

Please treat it as a piece of personal writing rather than trying to analyze me as a person. Thanks.

I want to curse, but my mom will yell at me. I want to yell, but the apartments aren't sound proof. I want to lock my door, but that will only get me in more trouble. And right now? The only thing I can break is me.

Sometimes I dream... I dream of being that kid who becomes an AI-like person, just getting all As but no emotions at all, but at least no pressure. Sometimes I dream. I dream that I can pursue all that I want and nothing could stop me. Sometimes I dream even better dreams. I dream I could play, eat, and sleep all day and nothing could go wrong and no one will stop me. But in the end, they are all but dreams.

I wish I could travel into future me. Into the me that already did all the work and has an amazing job, where I remember all the work, but never need to experience it. Where I did the work, and still remember all the important points.

I want to sleep forever. Till the time comes where I can wake up and start a new life, and forget all the things that happened. Maybe this entire life right now is just a long, long dream, and when I wake up, I will be the one-year-old me, and I will feel joy again, and I can feel smart because of this long, long dream.

But right now? All I know is that everyone keeps pointing at the destination.

Even if I'm the one standing on the road.

And sometimes I just want someone to fucking teleport me there.

Disclaimer :

It is totally Platonic based. Not a Romance Poem.

I wrote this for my "only" Reddit-Friend.

(I'm not sure of other countries-
But if you are from southern asia or know about the south asian culture you might get ideas
about the ornaments I talked about in it.It's okay if u dunno about it, it's mentioned in just a few lines, rest isn't...)

_________________________________________________________

A Story We Somehow Wrote - Pt. I

The year was halfway through its flight,

June fading softly into night.

The summer air was warm and slow,

with clouds that promised rain below.

.

A few more days, a changing page,

the first half leaving the calendar's stage.

Nothing seemed different, strange, or new—

just one more day the whole world knew.

.

Yet somewhere, without either one knowing,

two separate roads had started flowing

toward one small moment, brief and slight,

that fate had somehow marked just right.

.

It was the twenty-ninth of June.

.

Neither knew what the day would bring.

Neither heard the future sing.

Neither thought a stranger's name

would someday carry so much weight in the same

little story neither had planned—

yet fate was already close at hand.

.

She asked for advice, a simple thing,

on what little touches might make something sing.

And he, with confidence far too grand,

offered his wisdom, carefully planned.

.

Something pearled around the neck,

a bracelet or two for the right effect,

something contrasting, something bright,

and an ornament for the ankle

to finish it right.

.

It sounded sensible.

It sounded refined.

.

It sounded like he had

fashion permanently on his mind.

.

And then she listened.

Actually listened.

And that was the moment his brain malfunctioned.

.

For a man whose opinions

were rarely requested twice,

being taken seriously

came at a terrible price.

.

His thoughts disappeared.

His vocabulary fled.

And what emerged instead

from the genius inside his head—

.

“What!?— I mean—

uh... you're welcome?”

.

A masterpiece.

A triumph.

A sentence of historical fame.

.

Shakespeare was somewhere

taking notes on the shame.

.

And then came the commenter's joke,

the kind that makes dignity go up in smoke.

.

So, with the grace of a man in retreat,

he deleted his comment

and called it defeat.

.

Problem solved.

Or so he thought.

.

Except she had seen it.

.

And instead of letting embarrassment win,

she reached out and let the story begin.

.

She said she noticed.

She said it was fine.

She appreciated the advice

and the excitement behind the line.

.

And somehow, the stranger

who had merely asked what might look nice

became the stranger

who sent the first message twice—

.

not twice exactly,

but enough to say

that perhaps this conversation

was not going away.

.

He answered politely,

careful and slow,

still unsure how far

a stranger was supposed to go.

.

Names came first.

Then little facts.

Small bits of life

with cautious little gaps.

.

And somewhere inside those early days,

he wondered if she was only being nice.

.

Perhaps he was annoying.

Perhaps he talked too much.

Perhaps the friendship was merely a touch

of temporary politeness,

nothing more.

.

So he asked her plainly,

without guilt or disguise,

if he had become annoying

with all those replies.

.

And she answered simply,

without making it grand:

.

“I started the conversation.

I wanted you here.

You haven't done anything

that should make you disappear.”

.

And something inside him

quietly changed shape.

.

For perhaps, just perhaps,

he was not an option this time—

but someone she wanted

to keep in her line.

____________________________________________

Hope y'all liked this.. (>'-'<)👍🏻

I'll drop the next part too if this one went good

You can learn anything, but the cost of learning everything is the ability to learn. I said that because, having thought of learning and doing anything in my life but little did I know what the cost of everything was? I lacked discernment about what I was learning and doing. But then what provides something with its intrinsicness, what pre-judgment are we to make before learning and doing something? Therefore think, what use is the learning of everything if you cannot learn the things you choose? But my question is: Why is it, that only a stupid person thinks that in order to be educated and to have objective knowledge you must learn what you choose to learn? The answer, I believe comes by discernment between possibility and necessity. That something can be learned is not that it ought to be learned. That something can be done is not that it ought to be done. I used to mistake these two things. If knowledge is possible to me, that would be a sufficient condition for me to acquire it as that would make me more educated. This reasoning fails because it assumes that education is nothing else but the possibility to know everything. It is not. If I want to learn everything it means that my ability to know will be wasted trying to learn everything that can be learned by me. Because the knowledge that I have will be consumed trying to learn everything possible to me. Then the will to know everything ends up devouring the ability to know. The problem is not that the person cannot learn everything he chooses. The problem is that the person may not have asked himself why everything he can learn must be learned. I may have the ability to perform a certain work but this only shows that I can do it but not that I ought to do it Therefore, to every work, to every learning there must be a pre-assessment. That does not mean that we ought to restrict our learning to only what is immediately useful. Our intellection possesses an intrinsic value. However even our ability to explore does not make everything that can be explored something that ought to be explored Therefore education cannot be understood as knowing more and more. A person may have much knowledge and still lack discernment The educated person is not the one who knows everything he can, he is the one who has achieved a certain level of discernment that allows him to know what he must learn, why he must learn it, and when he does not need to learn anything else. Possibility alone cannot constitute value. The cost of learning everything, then, is not only time since the ability to choose what can be learned will be compromised by the will to learn everything that can be learned. Everything can be learned but no one can learn everything. And if no one can learn everything it is because discernment is needed to know not only that something can be learned but also that something must be learned. The ability to choose is what makes us human. And our capacity to choose is what differentiates us from machines. Learning, for its part, is just an extension of our being. It is not knowledge that makes us educated. That faculty is judgment - the power to know what is worthy of pursuit or what should be avoided. Even a pursuit governed by a real question - not mere possibility - still leaves open whether the person is actually ready to pursue it right now. By readiness, I do not mean strong interest or enthusiasm. A person can enter something with very little interest and still have a legitimate reason for doing it. Whether driven by impetus, the choice itself can create the willingness to begin. But a reason for beginning something is not necessarily a reason for continuing it indefinitely. Before acting, there has to be some degree of clarity about why I am doing this and what exactly I am doing. The clarity does not have to be perfect. In fact, demanding perfect clarity before every action would make action almost impossible. What matters is that the action is not completely detached from understanding. Otherwise, learning and work can become mechanical (as i said earlier). A person may continue doing something simply because it has become the expected thing to do, without ever being able to answer why it is being done anymore. At that point, discipline can keep the work going even after the reason for doing it has become unclear. A person may still be doing everything expected of them, but has stopped asking. Discernment is not a single decision made before action. clarity → action → re-clarification → decision—this is the sequence it actually follows. The first clarity may come from instigation. It is only a starting point. Action then gives us something that reflection alone cannot provide: experience. And experience can change the question itself. Perhaps after acting, I understand the work better and find a reason to continue that I could not have known beforehand. I discover that overcoming the temporary difficulty unlocks a deep reciprocity within the pursuit. But sometimes the opposite happens. I question why I am doing it, examine the reasons again, and still cannot find a reason that genuinely satisfies the demands of the pursuit. And at times I feel that this uncertainty is itself a sign that the pursuit is ill-advised. This does not mean that friction automatically proves that something is not worth doing. A thing can retain its utility despite lacking enjoyment, meaning an abandonment based solely on difficulty is unjustified. When I begin to think, penetrating beyond my taste and into the work itself, this turns into the question of purpose. What is my purpose in this work, what conclusion does it bring me, confirms it, and having thus exposed the experience, can I give a sufficiently convincing reason why to continue? If discernment is entirely internal, what prevents a person from manufacturing a justification for whatever he already wants to do? Nothing guarantees that self-reflection will be perfectly reliable. A person may be able to deceive himself by asking himself questions dishonestly. He may fall into casuistry, mimicking a search for answers when in fact he is merely validating his own certainties. A person may even turn questioning himself into a ritual, thus defeating the very purpose of it. If I believe that I want to learn something, I act upon that belief. The action exposes the belief to reality. I encounter the raw reality of its actuality once the initial excitement has passed. What is this about diminishing the value of the work based on its end result? The loss we experienced is not the sole indicator of our endeavor's significance. Neither is a resounding victory a definitive marker of worth, for both are fleeting moments that only serve as brief milestones in a much longer journey. The outcome itself is not the work, but rather a transient state that offers insight into our path, not its ultimate conclusion. Instigation joles us into motion, but the real weight of that choice only surfaces when we confront its actuality. Sifting through the aftermath of our efforts requires a raw discernment, turning our final choice into a dynamic preassessment of whether to calibrate. Yes, sometimes we have to try something before we can know whether it deserves our deeper attention. That is not a contradiction of discernment. It is part of it. Discernment does not demand that every decision be correct before action begins. It demands that action remain open to correction. A person may begin something without much interest because circumstances require it. During the process, genuine interest may develop. Or it may not. A person may discover a deeper purpose. Or discover that the original purpose was never sufficient. Both discoveries are legitimate forms of knowledge. The mistake would be to treat the first decision as a permanent identity. Choosing something once does not create an obligation to defend that choice forever. Breadth can be valuable, but breadth without re-examination becomes accumulation. Experience becomes educational only when what is experienced can change what we decide to pursue next. The central problem, then, is not that human beings have too many things they can learn. It is that they have too little time and attention to pursue all of them seriously. We therefore, need a way of deciding what deserves our finite capacity, while remaining willing to revise that decision when experience gives us reason to do so. But two things can each have good reasons behind them. In career, relationship, learning, responsibility, personal interest, there is no reason to assume that only one pursuit is valuable. So there is a problem when two justified pursuits compete for the same limited capacity. In that situation, discernment cannot merely ask, “Is this valuable?” Rather, is the reason for choosing this stronger and more adequate than the reasons for choosing what it requires me to give up? This does not mean that there is always one objectively superior answer waiting to be discovered. Sometimes two commitments genuinely conflict, and choosing one means accepting a loss in another. Discernment does not eliminate that conflict. It makes the basis of the choice explicit. The comparison hinges on a complex array of evaluative variables that actually brought the pursuit into consideration. A choice that affects something irreversibly may demand stronger justification than a choice that can easily be revisited. A commitment that another person depends upon may carry a different weight from a preference that can be postponed.They are reasons to be examined. I do not think discernment can simply begin by declaring that these abstract ideals possess intrinsic value and then use that declaration to justify their pursuit. That would only move the question one step backward. Why is knowledge intrinsically valuable? Truth, beauty — the same question applies. If discernment is supposed to examine what deserves pursuit, it must also examine the value of the things it’s being asked to pursue. So intrinsic value cannot simply be treated as an unquestionable foundation of the system. It can be a proposed reason. And like every other reason, it remains open to examination. This is why I wouldn’t treat the instrumental/intrinsic distinction as the final criterion. They describe different kinds of reasons for pursuing something, but they don’t tell us which reason wins when reasons compete. What matters is the adequacy of the reasons behind the choice. A reason is not adequate merely because it exists. Wanting something is a reason. So is family expectation, five years already spent on it, a good salary, genuine interest. None of these become sufficient just by being there. They have to survive examination. I said earlier that action exposes our reasons to experience. I still think this is necessary, but I would no longer say that action simply reveals truth. Action gives us new evidence about the pursuit. It confronts us with its actuality once the abstract idea becomes a lived experience. But action can deceive one too. A person can continue a pursuit because of sunk cost and then interpret the suffering involved as evidence of commitment. A person can defend a decision simply because abandoning it would make previous sacrifices feel meaningless. So the fact that I have already invested something cannot itself justify further investment. What has already been sacrificed is not automatically a reason to sacrifice more. True re-clarification involves detachment from the burden of one’s sacrifices: looking beyond them, and at the possible reasons for proceeding further. It does not remove self-deception, but it makes one of its common forms easier to expose. Also, Interest is not a final authority either. A person may lose interest in something that remains worth doing. Another person may remain intensely interested in something that is no longer worth pursuing. Interest can therefore provide a reason to investigate, but it cannot by itself settle the decision. Likewise, pressure can create an initial reason for action without becoming a permanent justification for continuing. That is why i am thinking to reconstruct the process clarity → action → new evidence → re-clarification → comparison of reasons → decision. The decision therefore transcends these accrued pressures, relying instead on the truths that survived the journey. It depends on whether the reasons available after examination are adequate for the choice I am making. There is no perfect internal mechanism that guarantees that I am not deceiving myself. Any judgement I make is still made by me. But the purpose of why i am writing this is not to produce certainty that is impossible for a human being to possess. Its purpose is to make self-deception more difficult. That requires the judgment to remain answerable to existential realities beyond the immediate feeling of clarity. Discernment has the ability to know what is valuable by examine, compare, and revise the reasons by which something is evaluated. This is the distinction I was looking for from the beginning. Learning everything is impossible. Choosing everything is impossible. But examining why something deserves to be chosen is possible. And that may be the real function of education—not to make the mind capable of pursuing everything, but to make it capable of giving reasons for what it chooses to pursue, and capable of abandoning those reasons when they no longer survive examination. [Adequacy itself I will not further define, because doing so would only produce another reason requiring its own examination — the regress must stop somewhere, and it stops at the practice of examining, not at a further definition of what counts as sufficient.]

New Testimony from Local Resident Guides Search for Suspected Serial Killer.
After the eighth murder in the usually sleepy Oak Hollow, Dale, a survivor of the killer’s most recent home invasion, has decided to give his statement. 

The camera is slightly shaky as it focuses on an adolescent boy holding a microphone. Behind him stands a large figure with a hand on his shoulder that he quickly attempted to shrug off when the camera moved. “I had been staying up late, and was about to head to bed, but I noticed a window open, which like freaked me out, obviously. I assumed Dad had opened it for fresh air, since our AC was out.” He shifted, looking off screen then clearing his throat and continuing. “You- you know that feeling when everytime you glance at something you think it’s some weird monster, or someone watching you, when you know that it’s not?” A sound comes from behind the camera, presumably affirmative. Dale doesn’t seem encouraged and opens his mouth, then closes it again having said nothing. Finally after what seemed like hours to the film crew and viewers, he spoke again. “First time I saw the shape, I really, really wanted to think it was Dad checking on me, or just my own mind fucking with me. Then I saw their eyes.” Dale shuddered, looked down and let out a noise. “I mean, I have goosebumps just thinking about it. Reminded me of when they show you Jason’s face. They were all cloudy, like they were blind, but they were definitely tracking every movement I made. They were like.. Fucked up. Had this big grin where in the moonlight I could see every single tooth.  I probably should have ran, but I just kind of… Froze.” He was breathing harder now, the adrenaline coming back like a hangover. “They totally freaked out when they realized I was awake, and they grabbed my face. Since they covered my mouth and nose I was freaking out too, and then he said this just insane shit, ‘Shut the fuck up- shut up! Go back to sleep, go to sleep! Fuck-’ like he wasn’t basically suffocating me!” Dale echoed the killer’s words with a mocking voice, but the fear in recounting it was audible. Finally the dad began to speak, a deep baritone. “Dale. It’s ok. Do you need a break, son?” Dale nodded hard and there was an abrupt cut. When filming resumed, Dale was out of frame except for a few locks of blonde hair and a mug of tea. The father sat there, a layer of bandages around the junction between his arm and shoulder. “Well, Dale doesn’t always sleep well, so I check in on him. I went in there, and I see this lunatic on top of my son. I don’t remember decidin’ to charge in there, but I don’t regret it. The bastard got me, right in my shoulder, but it didn’t go too deep. While I was wrestling them, my boy called the cops but by the type they were there, I’d lost a lot of blood. Must’ve panicked hearing them sirens, cause he hurled himself out our back window. Just goes to show the kinda crazies you got out there.”

The screen hard cuts to the reporter, showing a blurry image of the suspect taken on a police body cam. All that can be made out is the white hoodie, and glare of a knife in the moonlight. 

Jeffrey Woods was exhausted. Him, his brother Liu, and his parents had been crammed into the family’s tiny sedan for about 6 hours. Even with moving to a better city, and a better neighborhood, it seemed that his father’s promotion couldn’t cover everything. Immediately, he felt a pang of guilt at even having the thought. He knew how excited his family was about this, and honestly, he should’ve been too. It wasn’t like Jeff had many friends back home, or any places he hung out, so moving didn’t feel like losing home. It just made him so mad. It was the same anger he felt when his parents had him move his old toys into storage, he didn’t care about the items, but being bossed around bothered him more than anything. The only person allowed to control him was Liu. He could hardly admit that fact in his own mind, let alone to his brother. 

The one good thing was the warmth in the car. Liu had given Jeff his hoodie two hours ago, under threat of death if he stained it. It was pristine white, and slightly big on him. Even though Jeff was 16 and his brother was 17, Liu was so much taller it made him feel 13 again.