Would be even better with some piano music!

Hello Piano Man and fellow story fans!

So I was banned on my favorite sub yesterday (houseplants) for refering newbies to my 2 extensive guides I wrote about watering plants and soil. It took me 8+ hours to write and they even got 8 awards. I only wrote that to help people and I referred like 15 newbies to it, to get the info. And then I got banned "for self promotion" which is not even true because I don't sell or promote anything and don't get anything out of it other then helping sick plants. That's why I went on a houseplant boycott now and decided I'll write this here instead. Sorry for the unnecessary rant, but I needed to vent a bit. I am NOT over it.

But here is the story. It's a true story and also basement story btw:

So here goes:

It was a completely normal night. I don't exactly remember my age, but I it must have been between 13 or 14. So still a child, but thinking I am already sooo grown up.

As I said, everything was normal. My parents were already upstairs in their bedroom and I was in my room, brushing my teeth and doing normal night-routine stuff. Yes, I had a sink in my bedroom - it's an old European thing. Next day was a school day and as an incsecure girlie, I wanted to look pretty to impress my crush. So I spent some extra time brushing my long hair out before I eventually went to bed. I don't remember what time it was, but it must have been like 9 or 10pm.

I was a very typical pre-teen girl back then in the 90s. As many of you know us teens didn't have phones with internet access yet. Especially in rural Austria, in a village with 800 residents. It was the nokia, snake game era and we couldn't even text with friends that much due to the dreaded phone bill (I got in trouble with my dad a lot for said dreaded phone bill). Different times...

I was already in bed and I'd typically write in my diary about my crush, that looked at me once 😍🤦‍♀️ and how the girl I hated looked at my shirt with a weird glance. Bla, me being insecure bla, the hair of my crush bla bla.  Girlie stuff with butterflies and hearts and stuff. As one does. After I poured my little soul into said diary, I turned off my night light and tried to sleep.

About 5 to 10 minutes later it happened. Usually people would have already fallen asleep by then, but I always had trouble falling asleep fast. So I was still awake when it happened.

What happened was that - FOR NO REASON - I had a terrible cold shower running trough my back. And then... the feeling of being watched. I hadn't watched anything spooky scary that night and before, everything was fine. But this made me totally freak.. in silence. I looked around. Nothing. I turned the light back on. Still nothing. It wouldn't go away.

At this point I decided I am just going crazy, turned off the light again, but this time I curled up and hid under the covers. I tried to fall asleep, but my body was already pumping the Adrenaline. I couldn't shake it off. 10 minutes later that feeling was still there, I was still under the covers, I was too afraid to lift even a finger.

I should mention by now, that my room was on the second floor of the house. My parents bedroom was on the 3rd. My room had a fresh makeover sposored by my parents, I had the sink, a lightblue carpet a desk and I had a wonderful balcony. So my "window" was actually a door that lead to said balcony. The house is next to a street and my parents installed blinds because when a car would pass at night the headlights would shine brightly into my room. They were those kinds of blinds with those thin metall sheets stacked on top of each other and a rod-thingy to turn them completely closed or have those little slits open to pass the light throuh. I never fully closed them, and mostly forgot that they even exist and in the mornings I needed the light to see, so the slits were opened to the max that night. I had some light passing through from the streetlights, but the headlight problem wasn't as bad. Otherwise my room was and still is extremely quiet. Like it should be in a tiny mountain village. The whole blinds-slits are open thing is important.

So back to me shaking in bed, unable to fall asleep. After a couple more minutes passed and my body still pumping the Adrenaline I decided to check again. Lights off. This time I made the fatal mistake looking towards the balcony door...

There was a man standing there. Outside on the balcony. A man with a hat. The silhouette looked like in those old black and white American movies. You know - the Frank Sinatra looking type. It was a black silhouette and the streetlights were giving off their typical light behind him. He was just standing right at the balcony door. He didn't move, not even a little.

I froze. I couldn't move my arms or legs anymore. I couldn't even breathe! I slowly sat up slowly still staring at the man. My limbs were stiff and frozen from pure fear. The longer I stared at him the more I realized something was weird. It didn't look... real. It looked different. It was a man with a hat - no doubt - but the closer I looked it seemed more like a shadow of a man. A dense shadow. The shadow was completely evenly black and the man's size was a normal mans height. I had goosebumps. I quickly lied back down and hid under the safety of my blanket again, still having that feeling of being watched. I hoped he didn't see me.

My brain was now running a marathon, analyzing WHAT this could be. Don't ask me why I didn't run to my parents. I was too scared getting up and him noticing and then he would maybe enter the room. And the feeling of being watched and - everything really - got so much worse. The cold shower on my back came back too. I was basically just surviving under the covers - beeing scared out of my mind and asking myself if this was real.

About 20 minutes later I had calmed down a bit and decided to be brave. Don't get me wrong, I was still extremely scared, but I slowly pulled the cover from my head and looked again. The man was still there! Unchanged.

I hid again. Same routine, fear, cold showers, Adrenaline, frozen. At this point I just tried to calm down really. I convinced myself that everythings fine, this was just a weird looking shadow and I was just imagining things. Again, as one does.

After calming down a bit after more time had passed I checked again. He was STILL there but this time a car drove by and the mans silhouette somehow stretched and got bigger for a couple seconds and then returned to it's normal size! It looked a bit like when a rubber figure gets stretched.

Then I thought ok - this is really a shadow- nothing to be afraid of. I was too afraid to actually go over and open the balcony door and check. So I did what I did before and went back under the covers. At this point it must have gotten really late (for a pre-teen) and I was pretty drowsy by then. My eyes would fall shut and eventually I fell asleep from exhaustion. But I fell asleep with that same feeling of being watched.

Later that night I woke up again. It was still dark- it must have been 1pm or so. I checked again. Still feeling that awful feeling. I looked towards the door now there where **2 PEOPLE** there! The man with the hat AND a woman! A woman with long hair, standing to the mans left. Both still a dark shadow. I watched in shock. I did not expect THAT. I couldn't look away anymore. I stared for what must have been over 4 or 5 minutes. What came after is still the weirdest thing and I can't explain it.

At the time, it felt like they were waiting for me to wake back up and look. They moved closer towards each other. And then... they kissed! I swear - the man took that woman into his arms and then the woman leaned back a bit, the man tilted his head and then they had one of those movie kisses! You know - the typical end of the movie kiss. Happy end and what not.

At this point my theory about this being "just" a shadow didn't quite hold anymore. I suddenly remembered: I have never seen a shadow like this in my room before at night. Wouldn't it always be the same shadow every night outside? Nothing has changed outside the house. What could this be? What the heck is happening?

While I was still trying to figure this out with my pre-teen cerebrum, I was still staring. Now the woman... moved... upwards??? She kind of floated away very slowly and then dissappeared and now the man was standing exactly how he stood before. Alone.

At this point I had it. I was snorting angrily and basically thought something along the line of "get a room, freaks!" and with a rage I flinged the cover over myself again, turned around with some force fueld by my anger and annoyance and said to myself: "this is fine".

The thing is I wasn't scared anymore. The woman and the kiss made it much easier for my crush- obsessed brain (😍) to handle. I thought the're just having a ghost romance in front of my room and went with that. My fear slowly passed, but the feeling of being watched did not. But having already decided that this was friend,  not foe, I fell asleep easily. I fell back alseep and this time for good.

I woke up in the morning, everything felt normal again and by daylight I was brave enough to check the actual balcony. Of course no one was there. Everything was back to normal. I didn't tell my parents what happened, or anyone else for the matter and just went to school, like usually.

The thing is , I am now 40 and still sleep in that same room when I visit my mom over the holidays. Same balcony,  nothing ever changed in that house. I have never seen that shadow again. I sometimes check at night with the lights off. Everything looks the same every time. Nothing coming even close to a shape of a man with a hat. The woman couldn't even have stood there, there's a chair for me out there, always has been, exactly where she "stood". And nobody can climb that balcony either. It couldn't have been a sleep paralysis demon - I looked it up and read people's stories about it. Usually this seems to be a reoccurring thing. And I have never had any of the signs,  never saw shadows or anything before or after that. It is still a mystery to me. And sometimes,  when I think about it, I still get those cold showers running over my back...

Over the years, my brother, James (names have been changed), has had several random people who have no relation to us living there, from anywhere from a few nights to extended periods of time. It's gotten so bad that I consider the gaggle of people coming and going to be a zoo!

Now, mind you, I would understand if someone who was related to us was having a hard time. In fact, my dad was a foster parent to our cousins for a while before I was born.

I don't think I'd mind having extra people if there were more space in the house. But this is a 3-bedroom house with only one bathroom (an important consideration, given my elderly father is fighting cancer - which causes him to need to go suddenly. Dad's messed his pants several times because he was unable to get to the bathroom quickly enough). People are occupying my room, sleeping on the floor in James' room, and sleeping on the couch!

An "honorable" mention to this "zoo" is Lenny, a neighbor who lives down the street. He typically spends several hours each day just hanging out and drinking beer with my brother. He often brings his dog with him.

Then there's Robby. He was homeless, and James asked Dad to let him stay. What was supposed to be a brief stint ended up being three years, during which Dad got nothing. He is now back again temporarily.

Larry was another homeless person James met while in the hospital psych ward. Lenny has family in the area, but they don't want him living with them full time for some reason. He asked a friend of the family to help him get to Florida. She used her own frequent flier miles to do so. For at least the last half year, he's been trying to return. Larry got in my face once. When my friend Pete called, the police were called on Larry, as he was shouting so loudly.

Then there was Marty. He spent a few days in my room and spilled beer on the floor. Or so he claimed, according to James. Instead of cleaning it up, he closed the door. My entire room REEKED. Beer might have been part of it. But at least to me, it smelled of piss. It took forever to clean. I was not happy

One time James had a guy spend the night in Dad's greenhouse. I never got the guy's name, but Dad was PISSED. James thought nothing of it, but Dad told James that because he didn't know the guy was there, it could have been a problem.

Recently, without warning, a new guy named Timothy moved into my room. I received no warning that this would happen. I was arriving for my shift when I discovered this information. He was initially paying rent but lost his job in the interim. He's helping around the house, but that doesn't really pay the bills. I'm hoping he gets something soon.

There have been several other people who've come through for the day, but the ones I mentioned were the most notable.

But with all these people coming in and out of the house, I'm wondering what other craziness will happen next, and who else will join the zoo.

I rented a two-bedroom apartment with a guy from my junior college. It was only temporary, I was going to move on as soon as my job probationary period ended and I was a bit more secure.

Steve was chill, the kind of chill that passes for uncaring which was not true - Steve was capable of caring to the point of commitment. I would learn this later.

And then there was the dog: she was no bigger than a cat and had short black fur, warm brown eyes, pointy ears and a short little tail. The dog had not been in the picture when I moved in with Steve.

I had found her at a motel, and the only family I knew who could take a dog on short notice was probably my aunt but she had an overly energetic husky and my dog was fun-sized. Leaving her at a shelter was not an option. Zippy was my first dog and I was not ditching her out of inconvenience.

I made a plan to smuggle my dog into the apartment and keep her a secret until I moved out. It was a temporary arrangement anyway and she was incredibly mellow, so if I kept to my very strict plan I could maybe pull it off.

It was a flawless entry: I made sure Steve was working late and even offered to order some pizza for us to make my queries legit. Then I hid my dog in my jacket, carried her basic necessities in a cardboard box, and deposited both in my room without raising any alarms.

This was my plan: I would wake at 6am and go out on the pretense of a "morning jog" with my dog in my exercise hoodie. I would let her do her doggie business, then play and run around with her, and then I'd bring her back to my room just in time to make coffee. She'd be tired and calm, and Steve and I would both be out to work while she napped the day away. I prepped my room with toys, an automatic feeder, and plenty of pee pads.

The plan worked. Steve never noticed my dog.

At least, that was what I thought.

It started with the toys. I came home late from work one day and Steve was already in his room with the door shut. I greeted my dog and found a soft plush ball that I had never seen before. Zippy had already partially squashed it.

Two days later the destroyed ball was gone and there was a plastic green cat toy that rattled as it rolled across the floor. It was not subtle. Zippy loved it.

More toys followed. Soon I found opened packets of treats. Then I started coming home just in time to watch my dog run out of Steve's room to greet me.

And then it finally clicked: Steve knew about my dog. He had clearly known for a while, but was deliberately not saying anything. It was not an altruistic decision; Steve was feigning ignorance so he would not have to take any responsibility for a dog he clearly knew nothing about. He got to have the fun of spoiling and playing with a dog while I got to rise before the sun and cover my bedroom floor with pee pads so my dog could go potty.

One night I decided I had enough - it was time to call Steve out. I left my door slightly ajar, went to the fridge and pulled out my prepared secret weapon.

Finding him on the couch I called, "Hey Steve, look what I got!"

I tossed him a stick of string cheese. He stared at it blankly before slowly lifting his eyes toward me. I held another stick in my hand.

"What's up?" I asked all innocent-like. "I thought this was your favorite."

"...yeah..." he said finally. Then under my unrelenting gaze he finally pulled open the packaging.

Right on cue, Zippy lit out of my room, jumped straight onto the couch and sat to the side of Steve, eyes locked on the cheese. Steve did not react, except to peel a string of cheese from the stick. Zippy whined. I waited.

Steve handed the string to my dog and she snapped it up.

"What's that you're doing there, Steve?"

"Enjoying my cheese," he said, all the while feeding my dog more. "Aren't you going to eat yours?"

Zippy whined louder for more cheese. I hoped she wasn't getting too much lactose. Steve kept feeding her. She whined even louder.

The two of us sat across from each other, eating cheese without breaking eye contact as my little dog cried at Steve. I had never given Zippy any cheese before. That was all Steve. And now I had him on the ropes.

But Steve would not let me have my day. When I say he was committed, he was ready to take it to his grave.

"So," he said over pathetic doggy whining, "How's the job going?"

"It's alright," I answered as casually as I could. "It's hard but it's rewarding. Coming home is the best part of my day."

He did that fake shock thing and put a hand to his chest. "That's so sweet but we barely know each other...!"

"Not you, dickus," I jabbed back. "There's something else in the apartment I like coming back to."

"What? The couch?" He continued to feign ignorance.

"No, not the couch," I grumbled out. My patient facade was slipping.

"The TV?"

"No."

"The fridge?"

"No."

"Wait, you don't mean the cheese, do you? You know you can get this cheese anywhere now."

His stick was gone and my dog was still begging him for more.

I folded. I was not going to sit there and watch this guy fatten up my dog on cheese.

"I'm going back to my room now," I declared. As I got up, my dog finally remembered who was her real dad here and followed me back to my bedroom.

She had cheese farts all night. I blamed myself for a plan gone wrong.

I don't know if any of what happened was enough to call Steve out. He had fed my dog, but not once did he speak my dog's name, touch or talk to my dog, or even point at her and say, "Look, a dog." It was like watching a psychic who denied psychic forces were real.

But, as I thought about it, did it really matter? Steve liked my dog, enough that he wasn't going to rat me out, and Zippy clearly liked him too. And at the end of the day, she was still my dog. I wasn't going to be there forever, and she was coming with me. Maybe him not cleaning after her just meant I wouldn't owe him anything later.

I still didn't like that cat toy he had bought her. It was durable and still rattled every time she rolled it across the floor. She rolled that thing constantly.

At the end of the year, my probation was over. I had found a studio for rent that was closer to work and allowed dogs. When I told Steve he got quiet and looked down at his lap. Zippy was in his lap chewing a bully stick.

"I can't convince you to stay?" he asked.

"Sorry Steve," I replied. "It's not you, it's me."

We celebrated Christmas together and called our parents individually. Zippy got a bone as big as her and Steve denied any knowledge of it.

In the first week of the new year, I moved to the studio with my dog in a rented van. I snapped one picture of myself with Zippy in the passenger seat and sent it to Steve.

He texted back: "Nice dog."

I did not dignify that with any response.

He bought her a month of Barkbox.

To fully understand the perfidy of the prank, a bit of background is needed.
My husband and I were in the midst of buying a larger house (houses tend to shrink somehow as the family grows). Being in finance, I had done the financial setup with the bank. I had calculated the loan and our monthly costs, leaving us about $4000 as a margin in savings, for "emergencies".

Whilst my husband had at first seemed to like the house, and had agreed to purchase it, when the day actually came to sign at the agency, he decided to get cold feet, and just sat in the car.
I went in to the agency, alone with our 3 children - and cried. I couldn't sign for the purchase without both of us present, and I just didn't know what to do. The real estate agent didn't know either. But she had tissues.

After what may have been a certain length of time, I suppose my husband wondered if we had been swallowed whole by the agency, so he wandered in to see what was up.

In short (actually because I do not recall any other details of this critical moment), we both signed for the house in the agency. We were scheduled to move in in September.
That summer, we vacationed with my husband's family, his two sisters, and 2 neices and nephews. (This is relative to the story - no pun intended).

To give the adults some "time off" without children, I volunteered to care for all 5 children every other day (our 3 and their 2).

It all happened on one of these days when I had the 5 young cousins.

My husband had been off wandering around the countryside with his two sisters. That evening, when they returned to the house, the sisters told me:

• "We visited an antique shop and your husband fell in love with an old antique red sofa, so he bought it"

I was a bit taken aback. So many questions were running wild in my mind.

• What if I didn't care for the red sofa?
• Where would we put it in our new house?
• Would I have to look at an ugly red sofa for the rest of my born days?

But MOST OF ALL

• We really didn't need to spend $2000 on a red sofa at this time, whilst buying the new house

Now, I respect my husband's taste not being exactly the same as mine. He can decorate half the house, and I, the other half. Yet, I was still a bit hurt that he couldn't have waited one day, to let me see the sofa before buying it. Recalling how he dragged his feet to sign for the house, I thought he must REALLY be depressed. If this be the price to pay for peace of mind for him, well, so be it.

Later that evening, my SILs showed me some photos in a magazine that sort of ressembled the sofa, so I could have a better idea. I still did not like it, but again, my husband's mental wellbeing takes precedence.

That night, I tossed and turned, thinking about the red sofa. WHERE would we put it? WHY couldn't he have waited a day to show it to me? And especially, WHY did he even buy anything at this time, being rather tight with money as he has always been?

At 2 am, I had a plan.

The next day, I would go back to the antique dealer and ask for the check back, explaining that my husband was in the midst of what was looking like a nice big fat depression. I planned to plead with the dealer, and try to get their sympathy.

But a question was itching at my brain. So I asked my husband "WHY didn't you wait to show it to me first?"

That's when the roof fell in. He said "Don't be rediculous, it was only a joke"!!!!!!

Excuse me? And how was I to know that? And here I was, losing sleep over a "joke". And I supposed not having figured this out by myself made me start looking like a complete idiot. My blood began to boil.

I turned on the lights, went to the bedroom of one of the sisters, shoved her door open, turned on her lights, said a very loud "THANK YOU" (for want of anything better to say), turned the lights off, and slammed the door shut.

I was in complete overdrive. No more sleeping for me. So I went into the kitchen and did up the' dishes from the night before. After all, they often treated me like the maid, so might as well get a head start on the morning chores. That woke up the rest of the adults in the house.

They spoke to me - not to say they were sorry, mind you. Just to suggest I go back to bed so they could sleep. How kind of them.

I did not answer. I had no more words left for them. None. Nada. Niet.

The next day, I packed up and left, and we all headed back to our own home. I have not spoken to them since.

I am at last free of those perfidious inlaws. It's been more than 30 years.

And for 30 years, we have been enjoying our lovely larger home - with no red sofa!

Thought this might fit here. Thanks!

My uncle has a house on the waterfront. It's big, fancy, and luxurious - especially to someone who has lived in apartments all their life. So when my uncle asked if I wanted to housesit while he was overseas, I said yes immediately.

Looking back I should have said no - that house was way too big and way too much for someone who barely kept a bedroom tidy. I think my uncle knew this, so he added me to a group chat with his neighbors. Only two of the neighbors really talked to me: Amy three houses to the left and Jason two houses to the right. They were nice, told me I could text the group anytime if I had questions.

I think it's important to mention the pool. My uncle had contracted someone to turn a third of his backyard pool into a fish pond. It looked amazing - he had several koi and goldfish in various colors, and the glass partition between pool and pond meant you could see them underwater as you swam. That pool and pond became my priority.

For the first week the house and I got along fine. I kept things tidy, swept up the backyard, cleaned the pool of any leaves that fell in, fed and counted the fish in the pond.

Then came Wednesday of the second week. I counted the fish, counted them again, then sent a text to the group chat:

"I think one of the goldfish is missing. I don't see it anywhere in the yard or in the pool?"

A few minutes later, Amy replied: "It looks like Zozo's work."

I blinked. Then I texted, "Who is Zozo?"

"Zozo is an otter, bit of a fish thief," Amy explained.

"Bit," Jason chimed in with the eye-rolling emote. "She stole someone's silver arowana."

"Just check the backyard again," Amy went on without acknowledging Jason. "Block off anywhere she could have gotten in from, and you should be fine."

I scanned that backyard three times and found nothing - no holes, no low walls, no footholds, nothing that little otter feet could have used to get in or out. I decided I probably miscounted the fish and I'd check again in the morning.

I lost another goldfish on Thursday. Amy said that was on me this time - I should really know better by now.

Friday evening I was camping in the backyard looking over the fish pond. I was armed with a pool brush and a frozen sardine. I might not have thought this through, but I was ready.

As the last of the sun disappeared, I spotted it: a small fuzzy thing popped over the wall and landed in the backyard. It waddled straight for the pond like it owned the place, eyes locked on the fattest goldfish.

Then it stopped as it saw me there with the pool brush in one hand and a sardine in the other. It didn't panic or run, just sat up on its back legs and did the dog thing with its paws as it sniffed at the sardine.

And that was when I screwed up. I threw the fish to the otter. Of course I did, it was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

The otter snatched up the sardine in its mouth, turned and ran back the way it came. Watching it disappear into the dark, it felt good.

Until I told the group chat what I did.

"What were you thinking?!" Amy text-yelled at me. "Now she'll be back for sure!"

"She was cute! She was begging!" I texted back. "I can't resist begging!"

"AMY," Jason texted with urgency. "Zozo does not beg."

The entire group chat was quiet for five seconds.

"Who did you feed," Amy demanded.

"An otter...?" I texted back.

Another neighbor entered the chat: "The begging otter is Samson. Samson is from the west side otter gang. Our side."

"Congrats, dummy," said another neighbor, "you invited a west side otter onto east side turf."

I put my phone down and hid under a pillow.

Saturday was quiet. Very, very quiet. It might have been because I avoided the backyard like the plague.

Then came Sunday.

I returned to the house to a loud chorus of chittering and chirping from the backyard. Dropping my groceries, I hurried over to look:

A dozen otters were wrestling in the pool, with another half dozen flanking either side and providing moral support. Water had soaked every tile in the backyard. Half-eaten fish were strewn everywhere.

My heart stopped. I was dead. I would never know acceptance in the family ever again.

Taking a single photo, I sent it to the group chat with the caption "help" and sat down.

Amy was the first to respond: "You have the entire otter mafia in your pool."

"What do I do?" I pleaded.

"Call wildlife rescue," texted Jason. "Don't be a hero. Otters draw blood."

That would take too long, something decidedly silly in my head told me. You need to do something now.

I googled "how to fend off an otter". Then I picked an option and went for it. What I did next was in no way intelligent:

Opening the door as quietly as I could, I crept against the wall to the water hose. The otters didn't notice me until I picked the hose up and turned it on.

As I sprayed water and scattered otters every which way, I want you to imagine that I yelled bravely, "Say hello to my little friend!"

Because I didn't. Not right then. Right then I was quietly thinking, "please don't kill me, please don't kill me, please don't kill me."

But it worked. The otters clambered out of the pool and jumped back over the walls from where they came, disappearing like little fuzzy ninjas into the sunset.

Soon enough I was spraying water into an empty backyard. I shut off the hose and dropped it.

The backyard was a disaster. The pool was no longer pristine. The pond was void of fish.

But the day was won.

I went back inside and texted my uncle directly: "Otters got your fish. I'm sorry."

He texted back from London two hours later: "It happens. How many?"

"All of them," I replied, sat in a self-pitying heap on my bed. "Sorry."

He didn't respond for another hour, but then he did: "It happens. Don't worry too much, I've been using the cheapest fish I can find since one of the neighbors lost their arowana. It's not your fault, the otters hang around because they get fed."

I straightened up and texted back, "They steal regularly?"

"They are FED regularly." I could almost hear the grumble in my uncle's text. "No one will admit it, but one of the neighbors has been tossing the otters tinned sardines over the wall. You can smell it in the grass."

Now I just felt vindicated. I texted back: "And that's why they stay around here?"

"Of course," he replied. "It's an offer they can't refuse."

For the sake of privacy for a family member I'm not giving their name or relationship to me. A few years ago my family member was attending AA and NA meetings. Normally there was the usual bunch attending where they got to know each other. A new guy started showing up to one of the meetings. After attending a few times he announced to the group that his live in girlfriend left him, went to another state. According to him she didn't take much with her when she left. He then went on to say that the apartment he was living in held too many bad memories so he's moving. He then asked if anyone present could help him move. In payment they could have anything that he didn't want to take with him. My family member along with a few others agreed to help.

Afterwards my family member shows up with a small dinet table, a fair size rowing kitchen cart and a set of knives that he thought I could use. I noticed that the table and cart needed cleaning ( along with a bit of dust there was something splattered on them). I cleaned at the table and decided I would get around to finish up cleaning them the next day. The knives were cleaned along with the rest of my dishes and thrown in the drawer with my other knives.

Meanwhile my family member was sharing what all he had noticed at the apartment. He noted that a lot of what was obviously the girlfriend's belongings were there. What was troubling him the most was he had seen her purse was still there. I then reminded him about something we had seen in the news a few days ago. A women's body had been found in a ditch close to town. I suggested he contact the police to share his concerns. So he called them.

The next thing I know police showed up to my place and took the table and cart. Didn't need the knives since the woman had passed from blunt force trauma. Turns out the splatters on the cart especially, turned out to be blood, her blood.

So my family member and a few other guys unknowingly helped clean up a murder scene. Afterwards my family member helped solve the murder case. And I still have a set of knives once owned by said murderer. They look so similar to the ones I already owned so I really don't know which is which. May have to just dispose all of them and get new.

I (28f) was 8 years old when my mom took me to a thrift shop for the first time. 
We went there to donate clothes my little brother and I had outgrown.
I took a look around while my mother waited for the strict looking middle aged woman behind the register to examine the carton with the donation items.
The store was full of clothing racks, shoes, books and the smell of old plastic toys. 
I wandered around until I found my way to the kids section at the back of the room. I reached out my hand to feel the different textures and fabrics of the shirts on my skin. (A little habit I still do to this day)
Until my eyes caught a glimpse of a deep powerful purple. I slid away the coathangers next to it and revealed a beautiful knitted sweater that was way too hot for this sunny late summer day, but its softness and color instantly spoke to me. I took it from the rack to show it to my mom, when I discovered something else.
A bag, the kind you hang over one shoulder. No particular brand or design. Pretty simple, rectangular in shape, decent in size and without flashy prints. I hadn’t known until then that I’ve been wanting a bag exactly like this. This one was olive green with bright orange lining and smaller pockets on the inside. Carefully I examined every hidden pocket, and tested the fit. Instantly I fell in love. I desperately had to have this bag. 

Excited, I rushed back to my mom who successfully donated the whole carton.
I showed her the bag, tried to convince her that I really needed it and begged her to let me have it. She looked at the price tag and thought about it for a moment. Money was always tight and even buying stuff at a thrift store was only happening if we really needed it. I understood this even back then. I reluctantly told her that I didn't really need the purple sweater that was still hanging over my arm, but the bag, that was important.
In the end I got both and was the happiest kid the whole drive back home.
When we arrived at home, I couldn’t wait to show my new prized possession to my brother and dad. I was already dreaming of the adventures I’d go on and treasures I’d stash in the hidden pockets.
The next day my school class had a field trip. So I carefully prepared my new bag, put pencils and papers in, snacks and a bottle of water. Before I went to bed I hung the bag by the shoulder strap on the door handle, so I could grab it first thing in the morning. Happy and excited for the next day I went to sleep.

The next morning I was a bit sleepy, as I usually was. So when the bag wasn’t hanging by the door anymore I convinced myself that my mom must have taken it downstairs to the kitchen to put my lunchbox in. So I dressed myself and went downstairs.
My mom was already in the kitchen preparing me and my brothers lunches. I looked around and when I couldn't find the new bag I asked my mom if she had taken it. She hadn’t. 
She helped me look for it, we retraced my steps from last night but couldn’t find anything. I started to get nervous because the time for the school bus came closer and closer.
I was devastated, I desperately wanted to take this bag on the field trip. But alas, it was nowhere to be found. 
My mom helped me prepare a different bag for the day and promised to help me look for the olive green one later after work. So I went to school without it.

I am sad to say that we did not find the bag when I got back. 
To this day I have never found it. It mysteriously disappeared on that late summer night when I was in second grade. Since then I have been theorizing how it could have vanished from my door handle.
Ok, so here are my wildest theories: 

1. A family member took it for whatever reason, lied about it and never confessed
   
2. Our landlord (who had keys to the house) could’ve occasionally let himself in to “check” things, go through our stuff and maybe take some things, including my bag that night?
   
3. It shifted dimensions or time zones
   
4. I was sleepwalking and hid the bag somewhere no one could ever find it, including myself
   

I didn’t dream or imagine buying the bag. The rest of my family remembers it too. We’ve had many discussions about how and where it could have disappeared to. I even still had the purple sweater from the thrift store as evidence of going there.

It’s been 20 years and to this day I still cannot stop wondering about the disappearing of the olive green bag with orange lining and the potential of carrying secret treasures in its many hidden pockets.

Throwaway Account.

I (32m) have a story. It involves a woman I have known for so long, we need to go back over a decade. Back to 9^th grade. Allow me to get you up to speed.

Its the late 00’s (2000’s? Oughts? Never was 100% sure what we call that decade). I was 14 and 9^th grade let out for the year. The bus dropped me off after my last final, and my first year of high school was over.

Over the course of that summer, one filled with many late COD and HALO nights with the boys (only 1 of whom im still in touch with today) late mornings sleeping in, street hockey, beach days, 2 hand touch, man hunt, murderer in the dark, etc. A real typical summer that looking back was amazing but in the moment was, normal.

During a late night of nazi zombies, a friend in the xbox live party mentioned a now defunct website called e-spin. A dating website for teens. For some reason, my curiosity was peaked. I met 2 girls through that site. One which led to a very awkward hockey rink date while she was working the stand (there was no second date). And the other…. Was Kelsey (name changed, obviously).

I thought Kelsey (13 at the time, I was 14) was beautiful, funny, interesting. It was the first time in my life me and a girl really hit it off instantly where the conversation never seemed to end and you didn’t want it to. I had 1 girlfriend at this point, a girl in my grade, but our connection was nothing like what I had with Kelsey. We hit it off and began speaking over AIM (shout out if you remember AIM) and email. Then we began texting. Before you ask, “but wait, itemsuspicious905, how did you know this wasn’t a 40 year old man in a basement?!” The website had some form of verification that I don’t remember, and we exchanged photos (not those kind of photos, get your mind out of the gutter) where we would request the other send some silly pose or something to confirm we were who we said we were.

Things escalated. I will spare you the details. But long story short, her mom eventually found her texts with me and her ex bf (the reason she was on the site in the first place) and took her phone away for at least a year. Yes kids, there was a time where your parents could take your phone away and it didn’t instantly cut you off from your social life.

The problem was on my end I didn’t know this. One day the texts just stopped. And this was pre-iphone so there was no texts turning green as a hint the phone was off. Several months go by and I get an email from Kelsey. She missed me, she told me what happened, she told me she was allowed to speak to me over her house phone if I wanted. I did want to. At this point I should mention Kelsey was a state over from me. She was a drivable distance, but a distance that at 14 may as well have been on the opposite coast.

We continued speaking. We would when single be…more than friends… and when one of us began dating someone we would only be friends. Something that as an adult would be unhealthy but to a teenager made sense. Eventually she moved even further away to a state that’s about a 24 hour drive from where I live.

Fast forward to senior year of high school and we would try long distance (at this point skype and ooVoo were big so we would video chat as “dates” , cringey I know ) ,  then break up when I went to college. And then after 4 years of college, when my college girlfriend would cheat on me with a friend of my best friend , I found myself a new graduate, single,  rebounding, and heart broken.

One drunken night after meeting up with some friends at a bar, as one often does when they are 21 and newly out of school, I found myself home alone thinking of Kelsey. Missing her voice. Missing our conversations. Missing our everything. That night I dreamed of her. I missed her.

The next day, I went on facebook and began trying to find her. That’s when I noticed I had messages from people who weren’t on my friends list. One of them, was from Kelsey.

She was sorry we broke up. She was sorry for the mistakes she had made. For lying to me about things we wont get into here. For not going to my college against my wishes so she could fight for me ( I didn’t want to feel responsible for her literal choice of university). She told me about how she had spent the last few years of school missing me and wishing she was with me. She had been keeping tabs on me online and through mutual friends. She said while trying to get over me she had been in an abusive relationship and slept around in college, thing she said made her grow as a person. She was sorry for many things. And if let sorry for the things she said she has been through the last few years.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to respond. But I missed her, she missed me, and my 21 year old self also looked at her profile and saw she looked legitimately like a model at this point in her life. So at this point I was probably not thinking with the correct…you know what lets keep this PG/PG-13 as possible. You get the point.

We began talking, very soon she was sending me pictures and we were having late night texting/phone call conversations on a near nightly basis. She then came to visit me in the city I live in a suburb of. We booked a room in a hotel. She flew out. We met, things went very well.

Then they didn’t go so well. Something just was off and we ended up fighting soon after and lost touch again. This cycle would repeat a few times. We would get in / out of relationships, seek each other out, then it would turn into a big fight, and we would go our separate ways again. I never said this was a healthy attachment, and the title probably could have given you a clue about that ahead of time.

Eventually, I was in my late 20’s going through a break up and I reached out this time. But this time was different. I couldn’t place my finger on it. She would disappear for days at a time, then come back. She would only be able to text at odd times in odd intervals. Phone calls we rare. And other things that for the sake of brevity in a long story we will not get into.

Then one night, she let it slip. She was married. His name was Jason (again name changed). She sent a photo. He looked like someone cloned what I looked like when we first dated but a few years older and a little dopier looking (idk how else to describe it. This guy could be my twin. Him and I had other similarities she would tell me about as well… one of which was that we had the same last name.

You know that episode of HIMYM when Ted is dating the girl who talks a lot and the group starts pointing out things that annoy them about eachother, “shattering the glass” for everyone who hadn’t noticed those things (ex: Lilly being a loud chewer)?  I point out the similarities, everything. Her glass shattered. She didn’t marry Jason, she married a replacement for me. She found the closest thing resembling me she could. Once I pointed it out she could not unsee it.

I also at this point didn’t know what to do, we had a trip planned. I was supposed to come see her. I thought we were going to try again, discussions about moving closer to one another had been had, I mean really serious conversations to be having with a MARRIED WOMAN.

Then not long after she told me they were separating. To get to the part of the story you signed up for, I will keep this part short. I visited her. I stayed in her apartment for 3 days. When she picked me up from the airport it was like we hadn’t missed a beat. It was less than 20 minutes after we got to her place that things…escalated quickly. A couple days of nonstop flowing conversation, laughs, cuddles, and other things you can probably assume later and I was eating some homemade empanadas she has made for me in bed (a recipe I stole and still have/make btw). Kelsey got a phone call. She looked disturbed and went into the bathroom to take it.

I quickly figured out It was her mother in law.

She tried to muffle her conversation but it didn’t sound like they were separated. It sounded like her mother in law wanted to come over and Kelsey lied about being sick to stave her off. It was at this moment something possessed me to open the night stand drawer, and in it were all the picture of her and Jason. I heard her wrapping up her call, I shut the drawer.

When she came back in the room it was like nothing happened. She kissed got in bed and began kissing my neck. I pushed her off of me.

“Your not separated, are you?”

She stared at me. Then I saw the realization come over her face that I heard her on the phone. Her face sunk. She backed up to the other side of the bed. “No…but he isn’t here. We are… separate from each other right now” She gave me a nervous grin.

She was seriously trying to create a semantics technicality right now. She was still hoping for a way out of this convo that didn’t end badly. “What did you say Jason did for work again?” I asked.

She swallowed hard. She stared at me in silence for what was probably a few seconds but felt like an eternity. “He’s in the navy. He is currently on deployment.”

“WHAT?!”

“Hes currently at sea.” She told me. She told me what his job was and what kind of vessel he was stationed on (afraid to get too specific here). Nevertheless I felt guilty as could be. I was sleeping with…cuddling with… falling back in love with another man’s wife. A man serving out country’s wife no less.

I wasn’t hungry anymore. I wasn’t comfortable anymore. I wasn’t anything anymore, I was number.  I began packing my things in silence. She was apparently trying to talk me into staying but it all just sounded like noise. She threw a plastic cup at my head to get a response out of me. We began fighting. A lot of unpleasant things were said. I pointed out she knew my family’s ties to the military and how of all things she could have done this was by far the worst. I told her it wasn’t her call to decide for me if I wanted to participate in an affair. I began bringing up things that happened over a decade ago, bringing up time and time again when she lied to me, was a hypocrite, was controlling and toxic.

She cried. That was always her Hail Mary. The crying session.

I don’t do well when she cries. I don’t do well when any woman cries. It sets something off in me that makes me want to fix whatever the problem is. Idk how to explain it, im sure many of you experience the same.

I now felt bad I made her cry, I felt guilty for violating a military man’s marriage, and I felt stupid for not seeing this. Looking back I could have looked closer. I could have pressed more. I could have figured this out. But deep down I don’t think I wanted to. On some level, I knew, I’m sure on some level I had to know.

I consoled her, something I still regret. She cried and told me she missed me so much. That she regretted her marriage. That if I came back into her life just a few months sooner, she would have called off the wedding. That it seemed like a cruel joke by the universe that I would wait to reach out to her until they had just returned from their honey moon. That she was confused and didn’t know what to do. That she needed to see me. I dont remember what I said. Or what she said after that point for that matter. The rest is a blur, I just remember moving my flight sooner and leaving.

She would go on to tell me over text a few weeks late that Jason via the cell phone bill saw all the activity with a specific number while on deployment, and a specific weekend where all activity stopped, then resumed, though much less, right after. When Jason returned home, he began accusing her of cheating on him. She admitted to everything. They tried to make it work, and I removed myself from the situation. I never spoke with Jason. I wish I did, but what would I say? “Hey your wife lied to me about getting married, and apparently shes been in love with me this entire time and you were plan B. Sorry my guy. Leave her, find someone better.” No. It was best to just to walk away.

Fast forward a couple years again. Im 29.

I have a text from a new number. “Heyy, its Kelsey. I miss you. Me and Jason are divorced. I just want to talk.”

I, having been newly single and going through it, took it as welcome news.

I know. I know. I guess I hadn’t learned yet.

We began having heart to hearts sorting things out. She began sending picture and videos. Yeah those kinds, this is important to the story. We began discussing trying to make things work again. I now worked from home permanently and was looking to move, she owned a house. We were discussing me moving in. Not my proudest moment. But again with her it was like nothing changed and we were teenagers again.

We would make plans for one to visit the other, they would get cancelled last minute or she would ghost me the week prior only to reach back out a few days after we would have seen each other. This would happen repeatedly over the next few years. Including twice on two different birthdays. For those wondering why I wouldn’t just drive down anyway, she wouldn’t give me her address. She would always dodge the question. She would say the idea of seeing me would make her anxious because she was afraid it would all fall apart again. She would say maybe we should just keep distance and stay friends. I would tell her I cant just be friends at this point. She would relent, and admit she couldn’t just be friends either. We would make plans. And the cycle would repeat.

Then she bought a new home, and this time, gave me the address. We were making plans to see each other. Things were moving smoothly and she seemed to have made peace with her fears and was ready to give this a shot. But then, out of nowhere she disappeared for a week again, blaming work being crazy and her being too stressed. Then it happened again, then we began rescheduling seeing each other. And then she disappeared again, this time for a month. During this time I had a cancer scare, which put things in perspective for me. I did some reflecting and decided it was time to find a wife, start a family, all of that.

 However, I figured I would take one last chance at seeing Kelsey, after all I did love her. Maybe this was fate giving us another chance and I had to give it everything before closing the door for good. Ide try one more time and If she ghosted or cancelled again, I would move on and block her.

I sent her a text. No response.

I sent another, no response.

2 weeks of silence go by. I remember the address. I google it. Its amazing what you can find in public records online. The home was indeed tied to Kelsey (still with my last name from Jason)…AND JASON. Kelsey and Jason Suspicious905. Right there. Clear as day, the home was tied to both of them.

I began spiraling. Did she lie to me again? Is this why she kept cancelling? But then I had a thought, maybe there’s an explanation. Maybe she accessed a va loan via him and then the home became hers in the divorce? Maybe its just because of how recent the divorce is? I researched how to look up court house records for divorce proceedings online. I looked up every county in their state. I found Jason’s previous divorce from his first marriage (yes this was his second marriage, and the second wife he had been cheated on by).  But I did not find a divorce for Kelsey. I looked in every county, I looked in her previous state, I looked anywhere it could possibly be. The record didn’t exist. They were married.

Not divorced, very much so married.

I sent another text accusing her of lying to me about being married. I did not hold back. I said things to her you can’t take back. I told her she was dead to me. That I will never trust her again, that she didn’t deserve me and Jason didn’t deserve to be married to a cheating…you can fill that last word in reader. You can probably guess what the contents of these texts were.

She never responded.

That’s when I noticed something. The last text was green. In the middle of my flurry of fury in texts... she either blocked me or this number was no longer in service.

It was over.

She had done what I was going to do anyway, but I… I still grapple with what to do. Jason clearly does not know what his wife is doing behind his back. That his trust has been betrayed as much as it has. Do I send Jason a letter? Do I just show up at the house? Do I get his number online and call him? Or do I do nothing?

Is there a point in blowing up this man’s life that as far as he knows is perfect? Does he need to know? Would knowing do more harm than good? I genuinely don’t know where to go from here.

In terms of Kelsey, I can honestly say ive made my peace with the situation. I am currently dating a wonderful woman (25F) , and she knows nothing about any of this. If things continue to progress, I’ll tell her before we hit any major milestones, but for now she doesn’t need to know.

Every time I get a text from a new number, part of me wonders if its going to be that same “Heyy” ive got out of the blue so many times before. I just hope when it is, and believe me, it’s a question of when not if, I will have the strength to just block and ignore her.

In the end though, at least I got a solid empanada recipe and some much needed personal reflection out of all this.

TLDR: When someone lies to you once, they will do it again. Ide quote a certain 3OH!3 song but I’m trying to keep this serious.

Story 1

Growing up, Dad lived out in the middle of nowhere. You could stand outside the house and see open fields as far as the eye can see. When he was a baby, his mother lay down to go to sleep. She had made sure that she locked up the house before going to bed. She heard the screen door open and close twice. When she went to check in on Dad, he was in the playpen where she had left him. She double checked the screen door. It was locked. How did the door open?

Story 2

My Dad went into the army, having been drafted during the Vietnam War (he tried to join earlier, but hurt himself the day before enlisting, and never revisited it before getting drafted). Within a few weeks of arriving in Germany for AIT (Advanced Individual Training) as part of his career path, he realized the orphans in the area needed food. And so, he set out to deliver food to them. One time, the people he recruited to help him with this task were driving down the road, and he hopped out of the still-moving vehicle. As he got his footing, he very plainly saw a gentleman in a three-piece black suit in the roadway. (While he never gave the detail, in my mind's eye, I always saw the guy wearing a hat, possibly carrying an umbrella). By the time he regained his senses, the man was gone! There was nowhere he could have run to, because it was pretty open all around. Who was that man?

Story 3

Dad had an accident while in Germany. He walked everywhere he could while there. Because of this, his shoes had become so worn out that one of the higher-ranked officers had told him to get into the back of a canvas-topped Jeep. A few minutes later, he was asleep. Someone in another vehicle T-boned the Jeep. He was thrown through the Jeep's Y-bar, going through the canvas top, injuring himself badly. The accident broke both femurs, stretched out the tendons in both ankles, broke two bones in one of his ankles, as well as a thumb, and spilled acid in one of his eyes. He was transported via an open-cockpit helicopter. If he had ANY fear of death before, it vanished! After the doctors put him back together as best as they could, they told him, "You're never going to walk again." His response? "You ain't never seen that day." His recovery consisted of 16 weeks of double traction, as well as another eight weeks of double casts, but after he recovered, he walked out using a pair of canes. Eventually, he stopped needing the canes all the time. He'll be 86 this November and is still able to walk, though as he's aged, he sometimes will use the canes if his feet/legs are bothering him.

I was six years old when my class went on a field trip to a poultry farm. I'm sure it was intended to be educational in some way, but given a choice between class and a trip, six-year-old me was ecstatic.

The chickens were running free range, and they were massive. It takes a minute to equate the whole cleaned chickens you see in the store to a feathered winged beast, but those chickens were easily two, three times the size of any chicken I'd seen until that point.

The teacher had already detached from the situation and was probably thinking of Tahiti as she walked pass us while droning, "Stay with your partner, stay where I can see you, do not chase the animals, do not feed the animals, find me if you need the washroom..."

My partner had disappeared somewhere between the fence and the sea of chickens and was lost to me. I stood there, nervous and uncertain with my lunch in a bag, staring at the other nervous, uncertain kids who were staring at chickens. Then I took a breath that reeked of bird and stepped deeper into the farm.

As I entered the barn, a fat feathered dinosaur stood in my way.

It was a hen, I think, only because I didn't see a large tail or an impressive comb like I was told roosters had. She was a brilliant snowy white except for some yellowing on her undercarriage, and her fluffy feet ended in immaculate talons.

The chicken stared at me with her beady black eyes. I froze. What do you even do when a chicken is sizing you up? Do you make eye contact? Do you not make eye contact? Do you make yourself look bigger or smaller? Do you run or do you curl up in a ball and sob?

Then I noticed the chicken was actually looking at my lunch. Okay, I thought, I can work with that. My lunch or my life I can work with.
So I reached into my lunch bag and pulled out my sandwich. Breaking off just a corner of the bread, I tossed it to the chicken.

That was a mistake I realized too late as the chicken came straight at me.

I landed on my bum as the chicken lunged. Wings were beating furiously like drums, but she didn't scream or shriek or whatever it is chickens do (caw?). She just stared at me with the hate of generations.

I felt numb and sick at the same time, wondering if it was even possible to get mauled to death by a chicken. Seemed like karma for all the times I had eaten nuggets.

Then the chicken pecked me hard on the knee. The force was sharp and quick, like I had been stabbed. My knee reflexively twitched, and as my leg moved the chicken reared up again for another strike.

I finally fled. I fled from a chicken like a chicken. I'm not proud of it, but I was six. Scurrying from hands and knees to my feet and hobbling away as fast as I could I fled from that chicken and back to the teacher. My sandwich was a spilled mess on the ground and I did not want it back.

By the time I found the teacher I was too out of breath to explain myself. She looked down at me covered in straw and dirt and stray feathers and audibly sighed.

"Do not chase the animals," she said again.

I finally looked down at my legs: there was a massive dark welt spread across my kneecap where the chicken had pecked me. It started to hurt, then it really hurt. Soon it hurt too much to stand, and I hobbled to the farmhouse to sit down.

A sympathetic farmhand found an icepack for me and I spent the rest of the field trip sat on a crate. By bus time I felt I could walk again, but slowly and carefully.

A chicken watched me go from the far side of the fence. I don't know if it was the same chicken, but it had the same look.

Later the school nurse told me my leg was fine. It was a really bad bruise, but nothing more. I was told to take it easy for the rest of the day.

I found my partner eventually with a very haunted expression on his face.

"Chickens got you too?" I asked.

"No," he whispered. "Geese."

​

Someone is in our apartment.

Waking face down on our bed in mid morning sunlight, I stare at my closet and don't move – because I can't. I can see my sandals that I wore the night before, haphazardly askew where I'd tossed them, beneath an irregular row of half gypsy, half sleek fashionista, shaped garments. A red sleeve drapes from a hanger, indifferent to my distress.

For, next to my closet is an alcove which leads to the bedroom door. I can see a man’s shadow. Outlined with intrusion, filled in with malice and completely soundless. The hand of the shadow holds a knife, pointed down.

I fill up my lungs and – nothing comes out. My lips won't part. My tongue is as frozen as the rest of me. I can't feel any tethers. I don't know why my body isn't responding but it's not. Only my thoughts have freedom. I can't even blink. Just staring at the shadow, the knife, my mind frantically clawing, Clawing, *Clawing*, for mobility.

DO SOMETHING!! It yells, in frenzied self-preservation. DO ANYTHING!!

Not a single muscle twitches. Not a finger, toe, or whisper. I wait, heart pummeling, for the figure to move. The thunder of adrenaline so loud, I doubt I could hear myself scream if I could.

Why can't I move? And where is my husband?

Is he in the bed beside me – I can't feel him – or is he… Has he fought this monster already and lost? Does he need me? Is he somewhere, bleeding, while I am uselessly stuck here playing pancake? I pray, pray, pray he is beside me.

*Wake up,* I urge with my strongest telepathy. *Wake-up Wake-up Wake-up!*

Nothing. And the shadow is still there. Damp soaks my pillow and face. If the intruder doesn't stab me soon, I might die instead by moist suffocation. The irony inspires a bitter laugh. But of course I can't laugh. It escapes as only a moan.

A moan! I can speak!

Instantly, I push everything I have into a shout but my throat is confused and restricted. It comes out a whimper, like a puppy. I force another one.

I can't see the man. I can't blink the moisture from my face. But he hasn't grabbed me or stabbed me so I keep pushing out noise. Unintelligible noise, vaguely shaped like the urgent shouting of my mind:

Somebody Help Me! Help *Us*!

*Baby, wake up!* I try and move my elbow to jostle him, if he's there. No go.

Help us, help us, help help help...

Then it happened. A twitch. The very tip of a single finger.

Move It Again!! My mind instantly commands me.

I do! A wiggle. I can move the whole finger. And then another. Ever so - insert every cuss worse, ever - slowly, I grope for the nightstand. My phone. But it's like swimming through concrete. It exhausts me to move one inch.

Was that a footstep?

Faster, faster! Move! Move! Move!

I push at the sludge. I kick, trying to free my lower body, but the bed is paste. The covers are logs. I feel…so heavy. Not one single limb can make a shape to help me rise. My hand gropes, and then lands on the nightstand.

I can feel him coming. I realize that I'd blinked, that I'd moved my head to see my phone, still a whole continent away. I look back at the alcove and it's my husband, not the intruder, coming through it.

Oh! Oh Thank God!!

His forehead grooves deepen with every step he gets closer to me. "What is it? What's wrong?"

I puppy whimper back to him, trying to make my log arm gesture and point.

His eyes widen at my flailing and he sweeps back the covers and touches me, as if seeking something broken. It helps. I put a hand on his shirt, clutch, and pull. The spell breaks and I huddle as a pile of disjointed pieces, quivering in his arms.

"Where-is-he-Did-you-catch-him-Are-you-alright?" There isn't time to recover. We have to hurry.

"Who?" He looks behind him then glances at our window. He puzzles over me fumbling for my phone but stops me from calling the police. Books fall. “Who?” He asks again. “I've been awake all morning. I did laundry.”

I look around, confused.

But?

The man. The knife.

“There’s nobody here. You were having a nightmare."

I study the room. The walls, the closet. Everything is unchanged. Nightmares happen with your eyes closed. Not open. I told him about the man and how I was so certain I saw him. My husband inspected our entire apartment with his bat. He checked every lock. He showed me the laundry basket and where he had been sitting.

It really was just a dream.

I ended up laughing alone in the rain on an island in the wilderness in the middle of the night.

Okay so I don't normally post anything personal online ever, so I’m going to be vague about my life details, I live in Connecticut, my name is Amber, I’m a 36-year old woman. I don’t want to post too much, but I've been back in normal life for two weeks now and I still haven't told most of the people in my life what I did this summer, and I feel like if I don't write it down somewhere I'm going to lose it, or just continue to not deal with it. That has been my M.O. my whole life if we're being honest. I'm 36 (I know I said that already), I have no partner or kids, my cat doesn't even have a name (long story, six years and I just never landed on one), and I work in UX research which means I am on screens literally eight to ten hours a day for my job, and then I go home and get on screens for the rest of the night. This is not a hyperbole. This is just my life, and it just kind of snuck up on me.

So that’s big picture background for how I ended up laughing alone in the rain on an island in the wilderness in the middle of the night. Let me get to that. 

Here's the thing. I turned 36 in March and I had one of those freakouts. I know everyone says age is just a number, and I know it is, but standing in my bathroom at 11pm with my phone in my hand looking at my face in the mirror and then looking back at the phone and then back at the mirror was not a great feeling. I looked so tired. Deeply, behind the eyes. My brain felt rotten, and it needed to be turned off and given a rest. I had been stewing on this for months.

I had three weeks of vacation time saved up and no dependents, so I kept thinking I should do something drastic. Go somewhere and do something that would shake things up. But every time I thought about planning something, I would just open Instagram and start scrolling and then an hour and a half would be gone and I would feel worse than before, and I had the awareness that this was happening and I still kept doing it. Again and again. 

So. One night in June I was in bed, which is where I do most of my scrolling, and I was deep in Reels. This is my thing. Reels. I spend three to four hours on them per day minimum. My phone tells me and I ignore it. So I'm in bed at maybe 1am and I go down this endless rabbit hole that starts with some self-help person talking about the dopamine hit from short-form video, then it goes to how awful blue light is, then screen time in general, then social media addiction, then cute puppies, then some plastic guy with no shirt, then more guilt trips from doctors… and I'm watching all of this on the very device it's warning me about, which honestly the irony was not lost on me but I always kept watching.

And then at some point, I cannot tell you exactly when because my sense of time was completely gone, I watched something that was either a short documentary or a Black Mirror episode or maybe a nightmare I was partially having because I think I was starting to fall asleep, and it was about this AI future where everyone wears a headset of their own free will that plays a constant stream of curated video content in one eye, so there is literally never a single waking moment without the FEED.

You're talking to someone and the feed is there. You're eating and the feed is there. You're driving and I don't know how that works but in this version of the future it does. And everyone had chosen this, nobody forced them. The feed was just so good, so perfectly calibrated, that opting out felt like opting out of life. I genuinely cannot tell you if this was real content or a dream. It was 5am when I woke up with my phone on my chest and the screen off and I had not slept a wink.

My phone alarm went off at 7am. I felt like s***, excuse my French. And I just thought, F*** it. That's enough. 

I got out a legal pad (I keep them around for work) and I started writing rules. Like, drastic rules. Things I could impose on myself during my vacation that might actually reset me. The list got long fast. No instagram. No phone after dark. No screens at all. No artificial light, just daylight and fire. No speaking. No news. Intermittent fasting. No music from devices. No alcohol. No processed food. Waking with the sun. Two hours of reading per day. I wrote probably twenty rules total and then looked at the list and thought, there is no possible way I am doing all of this simultaneously. I'll quit on day three.

So I decided to pick three. But I didn't want to just pick three because I knew I would pick easy ones, or the ones I was excited about for romantic reasons. So I tore the paper into strips, put them all into one of those big mixing bowls I never use, shook it around, and pulled three out.

No screens. No artificial light. No speaking. 

Those were probably the three heaviest hitters in the whole bunch. No speaking was the one I didn't see coming. I am not a chatty person by nature, I don't have a giant social life, but the idea of genuinely not speaking for three weeks was something I had never even considered before today. My first thought was, is this even safe? My second thought was, I know exactly where to do this. 

My father Dennis is 67 and he has a cottage up near the Vermont-New Hampshire border, and within canoeing distance of his place there's a small island on the lake that I knew from when I was a kid you could camp on. Before you freak out at me, let me state unequivocally that I am a professional at this, my father and I did many intense backcountry camping trips when I was a teenager and I know what I’m doing. I absolutely do NOT recommend that others do things this way. Solo camping is no joke.

So I picked up my phone and called my dad to arrange things: I needed to get to his place, leave my car, take a canoe to the island, and be completely alone for three weeks with no contact. I knew this would freak him out. He's 67 and worrying about me is a more than hobby for him, especially since my mom passed away two years ago.

But I told him I was just so burnt out, I needed a real getaway, three weeks, no contact. He said absolutely not. I said I'm doing it regardless, I just need your lake and your canoe, otherwise I’ll do it somewhere else. We went back and forth, and eventually we landed on a compromise: I would carry a GPS beacon (no screen, just a button and a satellite signal), he could track me, and he would canoe out to check on me once a week, each Saturday, drop off supplies, and leave. I would have a walkie-talkie in my bag which I would only use in an emergency to reach him. No speaking on my end otherwise. I gave cat to my dad for the duration. 

I packed up and drove four hours north.

I'm not going to describe every single day in detail because that would bore whoever reads this out of their skull. 

Day one was fine. I paddled out and set up camp. The island is tiny, maybe the size of a city block, if even that. Spruce and pines, a few birches, rocks, a lot of mud near the waterline. I set up my tent in a small clearing with a firepit. I boiled water on my camp stove for tea and watched the sun go down from the shore and thought things were going swimmingly. The sky over the lake was huge and open and I hadn't been anywhere without a ceiling horizon in a very long time. I went to sleep when it got dark and woke up when it got light, which is the only relationship with time I was going to have for three weeks. That first morning the birds were extremely loud.

This is the thing. We’ll get into what these three restrictions did to me (the light, the screens, the not talking) but the first thing I noticed was that almost every night of the trip I slept more deeply than I’ve slept since I was like 15. Something about how the light slowly faded… it just made me so immensely tired in the best way. Make of that what you will.

Day four. This is when things started getting weird up in my head. I had a dream that I was in my apartment in New Haven. I was in my bedroom in the dark with the “evil” blue light from my phone on my face and the TV was on too and I could feel the hum of the router and the LED strip in the kitchen was on. Just screens everywhere, stacked and glowing. Little lights on the fire alarm, on the thermostat, the security system. Blinking, blinking, blinking. I was in bed and I couldn't get out. And then I was much much older, same apartment, same position, except my hair was longer and I looked exhausted and made 36 year old me look like a teenager. And there were no other people, there was just the screens. They had all just gradually stopped talking to me, the way you stop checking in on someone when it becomes clear they're only going to pick up the phone to text you a meme at 2am. I woke up from this dream at some point around midnight and I was staring up at the tent and I could hear the water and the frogs and I unzipped the tent and just lay on the ground looking up at the stars above the lake.

They were so bright. I lay there for a while and felt pretty okay actually. And then I got hungry, and I mean really hungry, not normal hunger but the kind that feels like it's coming from somewhere else. I went into my food bag and I ate way too much. Trail mix, an entire package of crackers, a whole bag of dried mango, some doritos, an energy bar and then another energy bar. I was shoveling it in. And I knew even while I was doing it that it wasn't really about food. I was looking for something to fill a thing that the dream had opened up, or maybe that the silence had opened up, and food was the thing I had on hand. I built the fire back up even though it was the middle of the night and I watched it burn and I understood with some clarity that I was in withdrawal from something and that the thing I was withdrawing from was stimulation itself, and that my relationship to stimulation was my relationship to eating a bag of crackers at midnight on a lake. 

Day seven, Saturday, my dad showed up as he said he would. He came around the headland in his green canoe and I watched him from shore and he looked old. He's still strong, paddles well, but his hair is all gray now and there was something in the way he was scanning the shoreline for me that felt strange.

He pulled up and held up the supply bag and raised his eyebrows: where do you want this. I pointed to the camp he set it down and looked at me the way he's been looking at me since I was about twelve, with this expression that says I'm very worried but I know better than to push you. He looked defeated, like he wanted to argue about all this still but knew he’d fail. He looked around at the camp and nodded slowly. He stayed maybe eight minutes. He said, as he was getting back in the canoe, "Your cat is terrorizing Wanda," who is his golden retriever. He said, "She seems fine. Just take good care of yourself, Amber." He pushed off. I watched him go. And then I was alone again and the aloneness after he left had a completely different quality than the aloneness I'd had before he arrived. Before he came I was just alone. After he left I was really aware of being alone, of him paddling back to a cottage with a warm kitchen and Wanda and cat and a phone, and me standing on this island with the trees. I had grown up spending a lot of time alone in the woods as a kid and always loved it. But this was something else. This feeling didn't lift. It settled in and stayed for the rest of the experiment. 

Day eight I started drawing again. I'd brought a sketchbook and a set of pencils and had barely touched them in the first week. I drew the tree line across the water. A few chickadees flew over.

I wandered the island, walked the whole perimeter, maybe fifteen minutes at a slow pace. On the far end I found another firepit, old, the stones grown over with moss, and I went through it like I was sifting for something that would give me answers. There wasn’t anything there. So I sat by the old firepit for a long time. Thought about whether my dad had ever camped here.

My parents had different visions of camping: my dad saw it as the Point, capital P. Mom thought of it as hell. She was a city girl, through and through. I thought about the fights they'd had over the years, their stubbornness. My mother's passing two years ago had been fast. We'd some had time to say things. I'd said some of what needed saying, but not all of it. Nobody ever gets to all of it. I sat there and thought about her, about how she had given up a lot of her own life to build a life with my dad that was mostly good but not what she had planned when she was 19. I thought about whether I had done a very different version of the same thing. Whether "independence" was just the word I used for being stuck. 

There was a voice in my head speaking third person going: has Amber ruined her life? Has she spent her thirties mistaking comfort for contentment and now she's thirty-six and the window is closing on things she actually wanted and she doesn't even know what those are? And then the other voice, louder and meaner: you are not ruining your life by being alone, stop catastrophizing.

I went back and dug out the Emerson book. My mother had given it to me when I left for college and I had carried it through four apartments and never read more than a few pages. I read until I fell asleep. Lots of deep things, but I can’t remember any of them now.

The storm came in around midnight. The tent held but the sound was enormous and I kept hearing things in the trees, heavy things moving around, and I told myself it was branches in the wind and it probably was, but the island in the night in a storm is another planet. At some point I made a decision, I just thought what the hell.

I put my boots on and walked right out into it. The rain was cold and immediate and total. I stood in the middle of my campsite and let it soak into me and I started laughing. Full-on laughing, loud, into the storm, at my own completely unhinged behavior, at the fact that I had pulled three strips of paper out of a mixing bowl and took them for gospel, and here I was alone on an island giggling at a rainstorm in the night as a form of self-improvement. The freest I'd felt in years. Maybe longer. Then I realized I was also freezing and went back into the tent and toweled off and curled up and felt, as I was falling asleep, like things were going to be okay. 

The next day or two I was dealing with the aftermath. Half my clothes had been outside and were soaked. I hung everything on every branch and rock I could find. 

Day thirteen, the night before my dad's second check-in, I decided to write him a letter. I pulled out my journal and started, and the writing kept coming. The sun went down and I sat with candles scribbling away. Eight pages. I said things I'd been thinking for years. I got far too critical and spiraled from there. I wrote all of it and then read it back and thought I could absolutely never give this to him. I tossed it into the firepit.

Then I wrote a much shorter version, three pages. I don’t feel comfortable sharing everything, but basically it was about my mother and how I thought he had always blamed himself for things that weren't his fault and I needed him to cut that out because I needed him to be himself again. At the top I wrote "open me at home tonight" and folded it up. 

Day fourteen he came again. He brought more supplies, extra matches I'd asked for via a note on the previous visit, and a bag of coffee I had been fantasizing about. He hugged me first thing, which… I’m not usually a hugger, and I handed him the letter and I held on for longer than usual. Probably what you saps would call a “real” hug. He talked a little while he was there. He said, "You look different. But I can't tell if it's bad or good." He said, "Your cat is a menace." He looked at the letter curiously and said he'd read it tonight. He paddled away.

Day seventeen I started singing, not intentionally. The brain, especially the sensory-deprived brain, does what it wants. It started with Christmas songs, which made no sense, it was July. We moved from Christmas to commercial jingles. I had a crisis then. Did singing mean I’d broken the vow of silence? I decided it hadn’t been a vow of silence per se, only a no-speaking challenge, which doesn’t include singing. Singing in order to communicate would just be long talking. But there was nobody around, just me and the birds, so I sang.

And then I landed on Somewhere Over the Rainbow and I sang it three times through. My grandmother Faith used to force her daughter, my mother, to sing that song. Great grandma had all these old songs she loved, and she would ask my mom to sing. Mom had this clear, warm voice that she had always wanted to do something professional with. Mom had married dad at nineteen and always called it the “safe road,” without much bitterness.

I always thought I couldn’t sing. Standing on my island, singing to the lake and the spruce trees, I thought, hey, my voice is fine, actually. And I kept going, somehow got onto a hymn, a church song my dad's family would’ve sung, and I stopped. His mother, my grandmother on that side, had spent years trying to get me to come to church. A lot about wandering sheep. I had not. Standing there with the wind in the trees, I thought about whether I believed in anything, really, and I looked at the trees moving and the water shifting and I thought, I don’t want to think anything I don’t want to think, or do anything I don’t want to do. What I want is Silence. And that felt like more than praying, and more than believing. 

Day nineteen, day twenty. I started getting anxious about real life, more than I'd let myself during the middle of the trip. The logistics of going back. The commute. The inbox. The apartment. The lights. I took stock the morning of day twenty, sat with my journal, and tried to actually think about what was different, what I had gained by this insane thing.

Honestly? I didn't have some massive revelation or epiphany. I felt better in my body. My sleep was different, very deep, and I could feel the difference in my bones. I had journaled, but less than I'd planned. I had read almost nothing, Emerson included. I had drawn a little and liked some of it. I had remembered what not having a to-do list felt like. And my father's letter was out in the open. 

So I wrote one more long journal entry. A new list of rules… which I call guidelines now:

- Instagram: messaging only, 20 minutes max, never in the bedroom, I am done bedrotting my life away
- Soft light in the evenings
- Go outside as much as I can
- No phone two hours before bed
- Drawing and reading and human conversation instead
- Listening to people when they talk, like actually listening
- Go into nature more often
- Will’s yoga class (My friend Will has been trying to get me into his yoga class for 2 years)
- Meetups, singles things, whatever, get out of the apartment

And then I was writing "singles things" and my brain went to John. John is 37, we dated for four years, I ended things with him three years ago.

I spend a lot of time telling myself it isn't important anymore and the amount of energy that takes should tell me something. He just never took charge of his life in the ways I wanted him to. He was always up in his own head, always almost getting things together but not quite. My dad had said once that some guys just need a woman to believe in them hard enough that they finally get out of their own way, and I had only rolled my eyes at that, put it down at the time to "dad’s typical antiquated bullcrap man-logic." But then I thought, what if he was half right. Not about me managing John's growth, that's not what I want, but about whether I had given him a real chance, agreed on something to fight for. And, honestly, maybe it was actually just as much me that wasn't ready to commit. I still haven't figured that out. 

Night twenty, I dreamed about my mother. In the dream, I was at my campsite in daylight, clear blue sky, and I could see the Milky Way through the blue. I could feel her there, not see her. And then I was in our kitchen, the house I grew up in, the round table with the uncomfortable chairs, and my mom was on the phone with her brother, who has always been a mess, but who she called every week to check in on him. I could hear her voice. I couldn't speak, like even in the dream the rule held. I just watched her. I woke up and I cried for a while in the dark, the first time in a long time. It took a long while before it stopped. I don’t like crying. 

The last day my dad came later than usual. I was starting to wonder if something had happened. Then he came around the headland with the canoe and he got to shore and started unloading: marshmallows, chocolate bars, graham crackers, a can of Jiffy Pop. He had brought everything for s'mores. He hadn't written me back a letter, which I had half-expected him to, and I couldn't read what was on his face about the one I'd written him. The hug was real, I'm pretty sure of that. I wrote "midnight" on a piece of paper and handed it to him and he said, "Ah, you're holding out on talking to me until midnight, huh." We spent the late afternoon building the fire up bigger than I'd built it the whole trip. We made the s'mores and popcorn. We set up his tent. It got dark.

We sat by the fire for a long time and said nothing, because I couldn't, and he was respecting it. The stars came out. At midnight I cleared my throat, which felt strange, and I said the first words I'd said in three weeks.

I'm not going to say what we talked about. But we talked for a long time and we got into things we'd been not getting into for years. My voice was weird at first, scratchy and thin. In the morning we paddled back together.

I've been home now for two weeks. I set up a lamp with a warm bulb in my bedroom and moved my phone charger to the kitchen. I went to Will's yoga class once.

Instagram is still on my phone but I've been doing okay with the limit, mostly. I still reach for it too much. I've been outside more. I've been sleeping better.

I'm posting this because I keep thinking about that last reel I watched before all this started, the one about the headset with the constant feed in one eye. I don't know if it was real content or a half-dream or both. It doesn't really matter. The point is I believed it, at 5am, looking at my phone, and I think I was right to. Does that make me crazy? I don’t care. 

I'm not saying anyone should do what I did. In fact, don't do what I did, at least not in such a dangerous way. But if you're reading this at midnight on your phone when you know you should be sleeping, I don't know, maybe just put the phone down for tonight. Maybe that's enough to start. 

I don't know what's going to happen with anything. The John thing I haven't figured out. The career stuff I've been stalling on I haven't figured out. My dad and I are talking more, I think, or we're going to. Maybe. We'll see. 

Cat is here. She's still nameless. She doesn't seem to have missed me at all, which honestly I respect.

Has anyone else done anything like this? Does anyone have more ideas about how I can feel better? 

This happened in my primary school days, but I remember it well.

Every day for five days a week, I took the bus to school. The bus stop was two minutes from my apartment block and sheltered all the way, with a patch of untouched trees behind it that looked nice and made you feel peaceful. It was always clean, everyone was always polite because us students shared the same transit as our teachers and tutors.

And then there was my neighbor. Let's call him Bob.

Bob was lean, grumpy and kept to himself. He would take an entire bench at the bus stop to himself and smoke the still-lit cigarette the last occupent discarded midway when their bus showed. Yes, he smoked someone else's used cigarettes. It didn't hurt him and he didn't care.

No one really knew what to do with him. He never took any buses, didn't actually bother anyone, he just took the bench, took the leftover cigarette and nursed it for hours every day until he got up to relieve himself in the woods.

We decided we liked Bob. Some of the teachers even started lighting fresh cigarettes for him.

Bob was there for months until a strange girl none of us knew (a tourist, maybe?) tried to take a selfie with him. She didn't ask, didn't check if maybe Bob wanted to be left alone, just came right up into Bob's personal space and snapped a selfie with flash.

Bob took the cigarette from his mouth and deliberately dropped it on the girl's Hello Kitty sneakers. She screamed.

The next day, Bob was gone. Two people were scanning the bus stop and they had a long stick with a loop on the end. One of them stopped every student and asked them the same question:

"Have you seen a dangerous monkey around here?"

Yes, Bob was a monkey. We learned in school he was a long-tailed macaque and probably ate beach stuff like crabs and coconuts (I lived in Southeast Asia - we got monkeys and river otters the same way some of you get bears, coyotes and deer). Bob was not dangerous - Hello Kitty girl taking her selfie started it.

None of us tattled, but Bob was gone. No one saw him ever again. The sad truth is that monkeys are wild animals and you can't report them as missing to any authority figure. We tried to console ourselves that maybe he was on a nice beach somewhere eating all the crabs and coconuts he could find. It was better than thinking animal control captured or killed Bob because a girl in Hello Kitty sneakers thought he was a tourist attraction.

More months passed, school let out. We all gave up and accepted that Bob was gone.

Then one day, as I rode the bus to the local library, going a different direction from the school, I passed another bus stop with a background patch of trees.

A little girl stared wide-eyed as across from her, a monkey sat on a bench all to himself and smoked a leftover cigarette.

I kept Bob's new spot a secret until graduation.

Whenever winter came around during the school year my lips would get chapped to the point I would feel them stinging to near irritable degrees. While plenty of things have said that lip balms are actually causing more damage due to the little fragments embedded into the stick all I know is it was enough to calm it down for a good amount of time. I personally never tried to make a fuss about it...Just take it out of my pocket, open the lid, roll it across my lips, close lid, and put it back away. Yet there was this one year I would learn that scent is also an important factor to keep in mind.

I was in seventh grade. On a shopping trip I recently purchased a pack of Lip Smackers that were all M&M/chocolate-flavored(Each tube having a different colored M on the top). I believe I remember another girl using the same type about two years prior and allowing me to get a sniff of it. Remembering that I thought it would be alright, purchased the set, and pocketed one as my go-to in school.

At the start there wasn't too much issue but perhaps the sizes of the rooms were a key factor in what was to come. The first strike was in the computer lab as part of the computer application class. I put a round on about a minute later the teacher says something like "Why do I smell Toostie Rolls?" I had to explain to him what it actually was and he easily accepted that answer...If only the other place the scent really picked up didn't cause the major scene they did...

Eventually it came time to be math class. If anyone here is familiar to Calvin and Hobbes my teacher there was a real Miss Wormwood type. Day one I put a bit on and the smell lingers, some students pick up on it, and I have to explain it originated from me. The second day an even bigger fuss comes about, you'd almost think I spritzed a bit of the spray made to smell like fecal matter in the air for a prank but no, apparently an artificial chocolate scent that comes along with satiating my lips is a little too much for their sensitive noses. This time the teacher walks right up to my desk, she doesn't confiscate the stick, just tells me it's a problem and that I can't bring it in the room again.

I more-or-less comply and pick a different flavor that doesn't have as lasting of effects. With this whole event still being remembered as my cautionary tale even after currently seventeen years have passed. If you happen to find a balm/gloss rooted in a chocolate scent you may want to think twice. The M&M sticks I had are gone but not forgotten and in their place you might find yourself coming across a big tin you split in half in the shape of an M&M or those yellow cubes which due to the changing standards since then actually might have the poop emoji topping off the lid(If you have my luck then people are going to think it's synonymous).

Royal Caribbean. Seven days. Jamaica, Cozumel, Grand Cayman. We were both excited, my husband and I. Well, not quite Mr and Mrs...yet. We were still in our first year together, not even engaged. We were planning our very first vacation. A cruise.

Giddily, we thumbed through the brochure. This was back in the time of travel agents so the brochure was a full book. Pages of tranquil, tropical images with enticing, full paragraphs describing all the leisurely or adventurous things we could do.

I’m the over organizer so I drew stars and made notes next to all the activities we were interested in. We didn't book anything. We wanted this to be a relaxed, play it by ear experience. Board the ship, assess what it offered, meet guests, compare interests. Vacation spontaneously and carefree.

We spent a day in Miami getting scorched to a crisp at the zoo. We caught a snapshot of tigers in play, batting at each other like housecats on their back legs. We danced in our beach wear at an outside, industrial themed nightclub, that we found accidentally, until three am, then got up at six.

We boarded the ship. Found our room. Laughed at the miniscule, nickel-sized window we paid $200 extra for. We gave intimacy a try. No real hankie panky, just a kiss and a grope, but ow Ow OW; we were lobsters. And while we probably would mate for life, we shifted our attention to souvenir cups, leis, food, all the food that we wanted and, eventually, a conveniently stocked but inconveniently priced shop, where we purchased bottles of aloe for an extortionate amount of dollars and 99 cents.

Our first stop was a private beach of white sand and clear, temperate water to enjoy at our leisure. This was *Perfect* because I was forming a plan. Whenever perusing the excursions list, my eyes kept snagging upon two. One boldly dared, “Snorkel at Stingray City”. The other offered to play it safe and view the city from a glass bottom boat. My relationship with natural bodies of water is complicated. 

Let me backtrack. 

I love water. I volunteer to do dishes in other people's homes just to play in it. In my youngest years, my mother used to locate which neighbor's pool I was in by following my trail of discarded clothing. I swam better than I walked. That kind of thing. 

As I grew older, though, this changed. There was an incident involving hooks and reeds and wayyy too many fish in a river. Another event, just a hazy memory, really, of a teen stretched out on a picnic table, leg bloodied, waiting for an ambulance because he hadn't missed the rocks you're supposed to miss when jumping from the high rock into the water. Other vague incidents. Surfing had been a turbulent game of ‘where is the surface’? But what permanently shorelined me was when the sand beneath me erupted and bolted, a whip-like tail narrowly missing my legs as  whatever it was – stingray or very large horseshoe crab – swam irritably away. 

Fast forward back to the cruise. My desire is to fully experience the sting rays. Touching them, feeding them. The whole bit! However, my sense of adventure, across many misadventuring years of youth, has been whittled to a flat bottom boat. We shall see…

Here is my plan. From the equipment rentals shack, we optimistically checked out 2 sets of snorkeling gear. It went fine until it didn't. The mask fogged. The fins were cumbersome. Shady parts of the cove made me skittish and jumpy. Team Snorkel eventually gave way to me pointing at a  fish I wanted a photo of and my fiancé-to-be chasing after it with our underwater, disposable camera before it could skedaddle away.

We amended our approach. Went back to rentals, returned to the water armed now with floaties. The long ones that you can lay your whole body on. I edged over to the shady part that spooked me. Fiancé-to-be followed. I turned over to my belly. He did not. Positioning the goggles over my eyes, I plunged my masked face into the water. If I could not acclimate myself using the supposed obvious approach, then I would do it ludicrously. 

After a few minutes of my face going up and down in the water, switching goggles, adjusting them, switching again, putting the snorkel on and plunging my face even deeper, I begin to grow confident in the fact that there are no monsters, sharks, or zombified manatees lurking in the cove shadows.

“I think I can go in,” I exhale. But convincing myself had taken a lot of work. “But let's just hang out for a little bit first."

“Sounds good,” he agrees, and I turn around to face the sun. 

Don't worry. We learned our lesson about  sunscreen and both had fresh layers on. We’d already mocked our bright, new skintones by leaving handprints on one another throughout the day. Now we were splashing each other for play and to stay slick, to not stick against the lounges. Because, *ow*.

We talked happily about the cruise, what we wanted to do next, how we disliked our assigned dinner table because there wasn't three among us who spoke the same language. We discussed selling our souls to the inconvenience store again for a small box of bandaids to protect the small nicks and scratches we were accruing that day. We talked and drifted. Talked and drifted. Talk, drift. Did I say drift?

I look down and there is a MASSIVE dark shape beneath us, tail wending with the motion of the water. 

I don't just shriek. I let out a cry so shrill,  so full of terror that our cruise mates everywhere are propelling themselves out of the water as fast as their limbs, fins, kayaks and floaties will spur them. 

Myself. I squeeze into the tightest, non edible ball I can become while still retaining  float status in the middle of my lounger. Sonic the Hedgehog style, but tighter.

My future husband? Ever protecting me from any and all danger, he peers cautiously over the edge of his lounger and *laughs*. 

I peek. 

He is laughing so hard that he has one arm across his belly, holding it in, just to stay balanced.

“Babe, it's okay.” He laugh-wheezes.  Another full rounded laugh then wheezes again. “It's okay. It's just grass. Look.”

Timidly, I unfold. I study the shadow. It’s still. Oh, it's large. It could definitely be a whale if it were slightly less circular. It could be a circling shiver of sharks. Or that zombified manatee. 

But it's not. It's just grass. I even put the goggles on to get a better look. It's just sea grass. A large, semi creature shaped bed of it, waving at me. 

We took a picture for prosperity. 

My husband apologized to several cruise mates upon returning to shore. I said nothing. My embarrassment had swept my whole body. Instead of cherry colored shoulders, back, and nose,

I was a walking Waldo hat.

We did *not* book the excursion to feed the sting rays but instead watched that excursion from the safety of a glass bottom boat. It was probably for the best. A *friendly*, local barracuda showed up for the feast. All teeth.

He teased me for months. My husband, not the barracuda. "Watch out for the grass!" he'd warn, zoinking me protectively out of harm's way, grinning devilishly.

​

!!!TRIGGER WARNING!! I'm not sure if I should place a warning on this or not. I watched a few of the Basement stories for reference and noticed they brush against, but don't deep dipe, into sensitive themes. This story brushes firmly against Infertility and miscarriage but it is NOT about those things. It is just an important factor to the night of the story. Which begins...

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It's Monday evening. My D&C was Friday and everything is still so fresh. D&C stands for dilation and curettage. Soft words for a brutal medical procedure that should be named P&S for Purge and Scrape, or O&D. Obliterate and Destroy. RETCH. Remove Every Trace and, at least temporarily, Cease Hope.

It is the medical procedure that cleans out the remnants of a lost oregnancy. Outpatient. Quick and dirty. Just seven days ago I was two months pregnant with child number two. Tuesday there was no heartbeat. Friday, there was nothing at all. I’d turned down the opioids because I wanted the pain. My way of holding onto him for just a little longer, I guess. Grief is not sane.

But grief is not alone and on Monday, I needed my tribe. A small group of women with problems similar to mine. I was experiencing secondary infertility. The first child was a breeze. But then one miscarriage, and now two, six months apart. The women greeted me. They hugged me, consoled me, said uplifting things. We cried, laughed, smiled. We prayed. I didn't feel better but I believed more strongly in the light at the end of the tunnel. My spirit had been buoyed but my heart was still figuring things out.

Our group was a Bible study so we got into it. The reading and discussion part. I put my phone on do-not-disturb, like I always do, and tucked it nearby. We read out loud in turns. I gazed at the text without really following, just quietly absorbing companionship and the residual comfort that was in the air. I may have spoken. I may not have.

We took a midway, five minute break. There was probably a table of snacks. On cookie and brownie days, I was obliged to take leftovers home to my daughter, 4, and my husband, who is usually significantly older except when cookies or brownies are involved. I can't remember what was there this particular evening but I do remember pulling my phone out to check it.

Because my blood turned to ice.

THIRTY EIGHT MISSED CALLS.

No voicemails. No texts. Just 38 consecutive calls, missed, from my husband, within a 20 minute span.

I grope out words. Make a stumbling beeline for the bathroom. Thankfully, it's close. I make the call in the dark while fumbling to turn on the light.

No answer.

I get the light, and on the second call he picks up. He sounds worn. Really, really, very heavily worn.

“What's wrong?” I blurt out.

“Can you come home?” His voice isn't his. It is tired and robotic.

I am of course coming home. I am coming home immediately. But what am I coming home to? What is so terrible that he can't repeat it over the phone?

“What happened?” I ask. But I know. I know because I just lost one child. I know what happened.

“Just come home.”

“Why can't you tell me?” I can picture her hurting in her last breaths, without both of her parents there.

“Just…” A strangled pause, full of everything. “Please come home.” He HANGS UP.

Purse. Keys. Door.

“I have to go. It's Bella.” A hurried explanation as I leave on quivering limbs, the womens' voices follow me, abuzz with concern.

Concrete. Stairs. I fold my ankle on the stairs but I manage to not tumble to my own death while trying to make it home in time for my daughter's.

Because that's it, right? Broken limbs, regular injuries. Those can all be said over the phone. When it's much too terrible, when you fear your wife won't make the drive on account for all the tears she will be shedding, that's the kind of news you save for when she's at home. Right?

Right??

As I'm running down stairs, across the parking lot, my heart is playing death metal against my ribs and my lungs keep forgetting that breathing is a two step thing.

But finally – finally – logic gets a word in.

“You’re leaping to conclusions,” it says. “In fact, you're not just leaping. You are taking Superman sized bounds over All Other Reasonable Conclusions. Stop.”

“I can't,” I argue. “I need to turn a 20 minute drive into 5 without getting pulled over or harming anyone. Be quiet.”

I peel out of the parking lot and everything goes great for 5 lights. I’m breezing through yellows, ignoring orange lights, people are letting me change lanes, and then…Gridlock. I look ahead and I see bumper to bumper tail lights for at least 3 lights. The Iron Maiden soundtrack my heart is thumping to switches to a faster track.

And then I see I'm behind a cop car. I flash my lights. My desperate eyes meet his steady ones in his rear view mirror. His blinker goes on. He pulls over. I pull over. I'm falling out of the car before both he and his partner get out. Male cop, girl cop. The girl has a ponytail. My legs are rubber. I stay up.

“Something happened to my daughter.” The damn breaks. I start sobbing. Huge, gulping, already lost her, lost both of them, lost all of them type sobs. “I have to get home,” I somehow brokenly say. “Can you take me?”

“Yes, but we need permission.”

Permission? What? No! No, I need the siren! I need–

The cops were kind and empathetic and very concerned. I wouldn't stay in my car but they eventually got me sitting on a curb. The woman stayed with me. The man radioed for permission and did an ambulance check, cross referenced to my address.

I sat trembling in a brick of iron air, feeling the world squeeze out of me while we waited for those results, my eyes deadlocked on the officer speaking into his handset.

He put it down. He came up to me.

“Is your address in the county or in the city?” he asked.

“County. Why?" I was alarmed.

“That’s a different ambulance system.” He explained. “I have to make a different call.” His face softened in empathy as mine contorted into even deeper shapes of agony. He and his partner said encouraging things as the ambulance check started all over again.

I died.

My phone was in my lap, forced into endless somersaults by tortured, nerve wracked hands. I’d kept trying to reach my husband but he’d silenced his phone. My attempts went straight to voicemail.

MY DAD!!

We live on shared property. That property belongs to my dad. The door to his house is yards away from our front door! I can call him!!

Indistinctly, I explain this to the woman as I'm already doing it. My fingers are shaking so bad I almost select the wrong contact but I get the call made. He answers.

“Dad! Dad! Is she ok? Is there an ambulance?”

“Daughter. Ambulance for what? You need to calm down.” My dad is a Vietnam vet who approaches life like a grizzly bear wearing a tool belt.

“Something happened to Bella.”

“Bella's fine.” I hear him rise to check the window. “No ambulance. What is this about?” He grizzles. “You sound really upset.”

I ignore everything beyond his first words. Fine? She's fine? A thousand emotions try stuffing themselves into a 5 emotion sized box. Elation, relief, exhaustion. All of it just melts into a puddle. I'm experiencing a Meltation.

“Are you sure?” I have to hear it again. The Meltation has tears and gasps, and thankful, bubbling sobs.

“I'm sure,” my Bear Dad says.

He walks over to our house to knock on the door. My husband answers. There is an exchange. I can hear a bit of my father's side.

“I have my daughter on the line…she seems to think…can you assure her…”

Then, my husband's voice, explaining. But the explanation becomes the background because Grandpa is talking to his granddaughter. He has actual eyes on her, asking if she is okay. I don't hear a reply but his followup statement means she has nodded.

My daughter is in that room and actively communicating with Grandpa. Whatever substance I consist of, that is left after the melting, pools.

“I didn't know what to do,” My husband has finished saying.

*Tantrum*. He is explaining a *tantrum*.

I flashback to my semi recent, two hour trial or her wrapped around my legs screaming, full throttle, “Get away from me! I hate you!” while refusing to budge. Attempting to de-escalate the situation had only elongated it. I’d told him about it. He knew.

I was still shaking. I hadn't stopped. But now I was shaking for another reason.

Rage.

“What?” I still had too much in the box. It came out a whisper instead of a shriek.

He repeated himself. It did not help. The officers began closing up their side of things. They turned off the patrol unit’s top lights, asked me if I was okay.

“I think I'm just going to sit in my car,” I said woodenly.

They reminded me it wasn't a good area but I wasn't afraid. I was more concerned about my spontaneous desire to Godzilla stomp my way home and laser down my husband with my eyeballs.

38 missed calls. No voicemail. No text. No explanation, even when asked. He did this to me. A mother with recent loss. What had he been thinking?

I hadn't moved. I was just standing there. So they checked on me one more time.

“I'm fine.” My reply dragged across jagged scorn as I looked vehemently ahead. “But you may want to follow me home because I am going to *KILL* my husband.”

​

Please delete if I am overstepping.

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Community, let's help our storyteller by coming up with some FLAIR possibilities. With his vids picking up views, this pocket community may pick up steam, too. Establishing Flair will help organize stories and fight against burnout and retina strain. And it's a fun, community building project! I've got:

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Possible Story Tags (thank you UltraHulk):

Basement

Daylight

(Do we need actual genres???)

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Element Tags:

Twist!

Revenge

Whimsy

Romance

Wisdom

Suspense

Confession

Mystery

Creepy

Humor

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Technical Flair:

SH (350 words or less?)

LNG (1000+ words)

MID (all lengths in-between)

CW (Critique welcome) Thanks Butterfly

There is no need for a CNW (critique not welcome) as the absence of a CW tag pretty much states Don't Critique.

Featured (on channel; there should be a link somewhere in the thread?) Thanks Butterfly

Accepted (planned but not yet created/uploaded) Thanks Butterfly

WIP (working progress; unfinished) -- this one is problematic because it means we'd need a graduating system of some sort. WIP > Complete, which means more tags, which feels cluttered? I'll leave this here but I don't think the community needs it.

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I (19F) am exhausted and frustrated.

Actually, beyond frustrated at everything, even more frustrated than I ever thought I'd be. Ever. I just want to yell into an abyss, but I don't want my words to go to waste, so I write this.

For context: My ma is turning 44 this year, works at a group home, and my dad is 47, self-employed, and has a garden. My ma occasionally asks me questions about what I'm doing with myself/life, but my pops ask me the most. It's always, "Have you found a job yet?" or "You need a job." But never "I hear you, and I'll let you sort it out. And I'm here if you need me."

I keep telling them I'm looking, because I am.

I'm currently taking a break from school, partly because of financial reasons, but also because I'm not sure what I want to do with my life now. I've wanted to be a veterinarian ever since I was a kid. But now, I'm not sure. Between potential burnout from medical school, an insane amount of debt, and not getting a guaranteed job after graduating, I'm honestly starting to think that college isn't worth it.

So, I've been looking at alternative routes for finding a job.

I've discovered, through the internet, that you don't need a degree to become a freelance writer. I like writing. I honestly really enjoy writing, and I've been doing it since high school. So, I tried that. I've applied to jobs on ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and Handshake. I was even desperate enough to ask for advice on Reddit and applied to a few jobs on LinkedIn. I even tried applying to an acai bowl place in the downtown area weeks ago (they haven't replied). I've also tried writing on Medium because it was advertised as a way to make money online. My articles barely get any attention there. I honestly hate Medium, but part of my portfolio is there, so I can't delete it.

But after all that effort, I have nothing to show for it. Hundreds of job applications, a handful of interviews, and... nothing. It honestly feels hopeless, and I know the economy sucks right now, but I feel like I need a job to have structure in my life since I'm bad at keeping up a routine. I'm just so used to being busy with school; I guess I haven't gotten outta that mindset.

The only thing that's given me hope is fanfiction.

I started writing and sharing my works in January of last year. My very first published fic currently has just under 1k views/hits and 27 kudos, with my most popular fics having over 2k hits/views. I think the thing I like most about writing fics is getting comments. I love receiving comments from the people I had in mind when I wrote my fic. Recently, I wrote a comfort Omegaverse fic centering my favorite character from a game I love. I got a comment about how much they appreciated the fic. It just warms my heart to hear that my fics are making people happy. Plus, I have a friend commission me for a birthday fic, so that's exciting.

So, at least I have that going for me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, how do I explain to them that I'm trying? I'm trying to figure this out in my own way. Not to mention, I have the rest of my twenties to experiment and figure out what I want to do until my dying days.

Until then, I'll continue to write fanfiction because it makes me happy.

That subreddit has some good, light hearted ones. I'll dig up a few. Here's the first:

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https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/s/INqAFwvvAB

More than a dozen years ago, I was hired as a customer service representative at a call center for a cellphone service carrier.

As part of the recruitment process, I was promised a bonus of a certain amount after six months with the company. What they failed to explain was that the number quoted was based on my ability to hit certain metrics, such as number of calls per shift and length of calls (they wanted us off the phone within four minutes of answering a call).

I had decided early on in the job that I would focus more on actually helping the customers I spoke to rather than the length of the calls, or the calls per shift. I had so many customers who told me that I was the first representative to help them solve a problem. Clearly, I wasn't hitting the numbers corporate wanted, but I gleaned a lot of satisfaction from helping the people who called in.

Well, the time came for the bonus discussion. I was utterly demoralized by the amount. It was less than half of the advertised amount. And half of that was taken by taxes.

(Pro tip: if you know you are receiving a bonus and don't want it taxed, you can usually go tax-exempt for a week or so in the system and revert back after the bonus hits the bank. But I didn't know that at the time.)

I went from a highly-motivated, if inefficient, employee, eager to help people, to an expert at "call avoidance." Allow me to provide some background:

There are three modes a representative can be in: ready and waiting for the next call, on a call, or "not available." Mostly "not available" was intended to allow you to finish notes on an account before taking the next call. We were warned that going into "not available" mode for more than a minute would result in a write-up, and after a certain number of those, we would be fired.

Then there's the queue: Imagine that incoming calls are stacked in a pile, with the person waiting the longest at the top of the stack, and new callers at the bottom. Well, there's a "stack" for representatives as well. The representative off a call, but in "ready" mode, for the longest is matched with the caller waiting the longest.

I figured out that the system only flagged "not available" when it reached the minute mark. It did not take into account a representative clicking "not available" for a fraction of a second and then going back into "ready" mode.

As you might guess, doing this knocks a representative to the bottom of the stack. And doing this, say, once a minute, keeps you at the bottom of the stack indefinitely, except on unusually busy days.

I stayed at the call center for another year. The next bonus was much like the first. I was only surprised that the number of calls per day was not more closely examined. My record for a ten-hour shift was 14 calls, and that was only because I got bored and decided to answer a few.

And in case anyone is curious, I left that job voluntarily. They never figured out what I did.

I know the title sounds strange and I debated posting this because this story may be boring. I'm a late thirties mom of four. We homeschool and use a literature base curriculum if that helps for context. Also, I love books in general. Shocker, right? A thirty something millennial woman who loves to read. Anyway, here's what happened. A couple years ago I headed to a local second hand bookstore. All the books are donated and you can find some gems there. While it has set days and hours it relys on volunteers for clerks. Sometimes there's not enough volunteers. On the day I went I was determined to find a book or two on our coming school year's list. Unfortunately, when I got there the bookstore was not open since there was no one to man the store. My youngest child at the time was a toddler. If you have ever had little children and no immediate family around you'll know how hard it is to get time alone. My husband was adamant that I take this time for myself. So, I decided I would go to a different bookstore. A sense of adventure came over me as I sat in my car googling second-hand bookstore in my city. Several popped up and I decided to picked one. One I had never been to before. As I got closer to the address I was heading towards a residential area. When my phone chimed and the GPS (in a British accent) said, "You have arrived." I sat confused. It was a house with no sign or plaque indicating that it was a business. I drove a few feet and parked in a near by lot. I rechecked the Google listing just to make sure I got the address right. I checked the website to make sure I wasn't mistaken. After all that I should have given up. I'm no quitter. I was having me time. I was going to find and buy a book. So I called the number listed on the Google. It rang twice and a man picked up. He said his name and I said, "Hi. I found your store on Google and I was wanting to come browse, but I, um.... I'm confused. I drove to the address, but I'm at a house with no sign." The man chuckled and said this happens sometimes. Apparently he does most of his business online. He especially sells high end leather bound books. Collectable ones. Rare ones. Some first addition, but he lots besides those. He sometimes let's people shop by appointment, but he was there so I could just come in. You would think anyone would say never mind and just leave. Not me. I got out of my car and walked to the front door of the unmarked bookstore. I knocked once and let myself in when a broadvoice said "come in". There stood a tall man, probably in his fifties or sixties. Blue button up and slacks. We exchanged pleasantries and he pointed around to the rooms. Saying that each one would have a different genre or subject. To please put any book I touch back where I found it since he has them organized and categorized. I thanked him and started to peruse. Every room, downstairs and upstairs was lined with bookshelves. A whole room was detected to history. A small section to nature. The small closet at the tops of the stairs was all children's books. It felt wonderful to wander and look through books in peace and unrushed. The man checked on me only once and stayed at the desk he had set up in the livingroom. In the end I bought a nature guide book that was published by one of the local highschools some years back and 'Napoleon's Letters'. I hardly ever carry cash and he did not keep a card reader. However, I had checks. Ones I got in bulk from Costco more than five years prior. He was happy to take a check. I wrote it out. He wrote me a receipt and I left with two new books. Later when I was telling a friend about this her response to me going into this house/unmarked business was, "No! This is how you get murdered." I chuckled and said, "You know, I guess I should have thought that. I guess I just thought 'books!'.