Eight o'clock coffee maple bourbon
UPDATE XLIV: A couple of items from our boring (thankfully) life now. Jane adopted a stray cat and I went on time-restricted-eating, or intermittent fasting program.
2023.03.25 05:33 throwawaysingle1959 UPDATE XLIV: A couple of items from our boring (thankfully) life now. Jane adopted a stray cat and I went on time-restricted-eating, or intermittent fasting program.
UPDATE XLIV: A couple of items from our boring (thankfully) life now. Jane adopted a stray cat and I went on time-restricted-eating, or intermittent fasting program.
Jane and I doing well and are still happy, like newlyweds. Jane's wrist is healing nicely and with no pain. She now has a removable hard shell device with elastic and Velcro instead of the cast she had originally. Much more comfortable and can be removed for showers or while watching TV or using the keyboard. Dr. says it's good for her to flex it around as much as possible. Also a stray cat started hanging around and Jane's first reaction was to put out some food and water. I warned her that was a mistake but, of course, it stayed around and eventually allowed Jane to pet it. Jane took it to the vet and it's female and had already been fixed. Well, it's now a house cat with shots and a chip and being spoiled. Jane wants to mother everything and cuddles it all the time. Even Jerry (our Lab) has taken to the cat and they are buddies. Jerry got his nose scratched a few times at first but they've worked it all out now. He sits by while the cat eats. Jane says he's guarding her while she eats. Nope, I think he's just hoping for some stray morsels like when he sits by our dinner table.
As for my fasting, since Jane and I got back together I've been gaining some weight. I'm spoiled, eating more frequently, less intense workouts, less demanding physical activities, and my age. Jane never had that issue due to her genetics and never eating very much. Her mom was like that too. I did lots of research and decided that rather than go on a diet and count calories I would try intermittent fasting. I started with a 16-8 schedule where I fast for 16 hours and eat only during an 8 hour window. This eating window includes all my alcohol too, and I will continue to be conscience of carbs and sugars. During the fasting period nothing except water or plain coffee or tea. I will do this schedule for a few months then move to an 18-6 schedule if necessary. Restricting food for 16 hours is pretty easy, eight of it is while I'm sleeping, but stopping the wine or Scotch after 8pm takes some real discipline. I will try delaying my first meal of the day until 2:00pm so I can have wine until 9:00 or 10:00pm. I'll experiment and see what works for me. This is something I think I can live with for the long haul. There are several other benefits from fasting beyond weight loss. Nice thing is that I can shift the eating window timeframe when needed and have occasional "feasting" days where I eat and drink all day during special events like family get-togethers. Jane is supporting me on this.
I know this is not relationship drama, but a few have requested an update. Daughter is due in May. We will be attending the OM's daughter and her fiancé wedding in April. They have become good friends with our son and his wife also. All is well and glad Spring is here and we can't wait for summer. The older I get the more I dislike winter.
submitted by throwawaysingle1959 to u/throwawaysingle1959 [link] [comments]
Jane and I doing well and are still happy, like newlyweds. Jane's wrist is healing nicely and with no pain. She now has a removable hard shell device with elastic and Velcro instead of the cast she had originally. Much more comfortable and can be removed for showers or while watching TV or using the keyboard. Dr. says it's good for her to flex it around as much as possible. Also a stray cat started hanging around and Jane's first reaction was to put out some food and water. I warned her that was a mistake but, of course, it stayed around and eventually allowed Jane to pet it. Jane took it to the vet and it's female and had already been fixed. Well, it's now a house cat with shots and a chip and being spoiled. Jane wants to mother everything and cuddles it all the time. Even Jerry (our Lab) has taken to the cat and they are buddies. Jerry got his nose scratched a few times at first but they've worked it all out now. He sits by while the cat eats. Jane says he's guarding her while she eats. Nope, I think he's just hoping for some stray morsels like when he sits by our dinner table.
As for my fasting, since Jane and I got back together I've been gaining some weight. I'm spoiled, eating more frequently, less intense workouts, less demanding physical activities, and my age. Jane never had that issue due to her genetics and never eating very much. Her mom was like that too. I did lots of research and decided that rather than go on a diet and count calories I would try intermittent fasting. I started with a 16-8 schedule where I fast for 16 hours and eat only during an 8 hour window. This eating window includes all my alcohol too, and I will continue to be conscience of carbs and sugars. During the fasting period nothing except water or plain coffee or tea. I will do this schedule for a few months then move to an 18-6 schedule if necessary. Restricting food for 16 hours is pretty easy, eight of it is while I'm sleeping, but stopping the wine or Scotch after 8pm takes some real discipline. I will try delaying my first meal of the day until 2:00pm so I can have wine until 9:00 or 10:00pm. I'll experiment and see what works for me. This is something I think I can live with for the long haul. There are several other benefits from fasting beyond weight loss. Nice thing is that I can shift the eating window timeframe when needed and have occasional "feasting" days where I eat and drink all day during special events like family get-togethers. Jane is supporting me on this.
I know this is not relationship drama, but a few have requested an update. Daughter is due in May. We will be attending the OM's daughter and her fiancé wedding in April. They have become good friends with our son and his wife also. All is well and glad Spring is here and we can't wait for summer. The older I get the more I dislike winter.
2023.03.25 05:30 naji_66 Today is the first day of the rest of my life
Today I have gone all in.
I have been in quasi recovery for almost a year now with a minor relapse over the past 3 or so weeks and it has become too much. I’ve lost my family’s trust, I’ve lost friendships. I’m so fucking tired.
I woke up this morning and decided enough was enough. I decided to flip my day on it’s head. Not do my ‘allowed’ exercise. Have breakfast as soon as I got up instead of delaying for as long as possible.
I didn’t put my Apple Watch on today. I have broken a 540 day streak of ‘closing my rings’.
For breakfast I made cinnamon pancakes from scratch with yoghurt, blueberries, strawberries, banana, maple syrup, and Reese’s peanut butter chips that mum bought me ages ago but I have been too scared to open.
Then I was still hungry so I had a slice of a fruit loaf mum had made and I toasted it and put banana on top with maple syrup and more peanut butter chips lol
Then I was craving a milo so I had fat fucking milo (it’s a malt chocolate powder here in Australia that you mix with milk), this is the first time I’ve had milk in like a year.
By 8:15am I think I had eaten more calories than I have in a full day in YEARS!
I have also been craving an almond croissant. So by 10am I asked mum if we could go get coffee and croissants. It was so yum.
I just made lunch and I had an omelette with eggs, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, ham, spring onion, and rocket and had it with a toasted English muffin with pizza sauce!
I feel so full. I feel sick. Both from food and from anxiety. I feel so anxious right now. I’m spiralling a bit.
But also I feel proud. This morning when I walked downstairs I told my mum this is what I was going to do today. Nothing else is working, may as well just try it for a day. She burst into tears.
I owe it to those around me to stick at this. I owe it to myself.
submitted by naji_66 to AnorexiaRecovery [link] [comments]
I have been in quasi recovery for almost a year now with a minor relapse over the past 3 or so weeks and it has become too much. I’ve lost my family’s trust, I’ve lost friendships. I’m so fucking tired.
I woke up this morning and decided enough was enough. I decided to flip my day on it’s head. Not do my ‘allowed’ exercise. Have breakfast as soon as I got up instead of delaying for as long as possible.
I didn’t put my Apple Watch on today. I have broken a 540 day streak of ‘closing my rings’.
For breakfast I made cinnamon pancakes from scratch with yoghurt, blueberries, strawberries, banana, maple syrup, and Reese’s peanut butter chips that mum bought me ages ago but I have been too scared to open.
Then I was still hungry so I had a slice of a fruit loaf mum had made and I toasted it and put banana on top with maple syrup and more peanut butter chips lol
Then I was craving a milo so I had fat fucking milo (it’s a malt chocolate powder here in Australia that you mix with milk), this is the first time I’ve had milk in like a year.
By 8:15am I think I had eaten more calories than I have in a full day in YEARS!
I have also been craving an almond croissant. So by 10am I asked mum if we could go get coffee and croissants. It was so yum.
I just made lunch and I had an omelette with eggs, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, ham, spring onion, and rocket and had it with a toasted English muffin with pizza sauce!
I feel so full. I feel sick. Both from food and from anxiety. I feel so anxious right now. I’m spiralling a bit.
But also I feel proud. This morning when I walked downstairs I told my mum this is what I was going to do today. Nothing else is working, may as well just try it for a day. She burst into tears.
I owe it to those around me to stick at this. I owe it to myself.
2023.03.25 05:30 naji_66 Today is the first day of the rest of my life
Today I have gone all in.
I have been in quasi recovery for almost a year now with a minor relapse over the past 3 or so weeks and it has become too much. I’ve lost my family’s trust, I’ve lost friendships. I’m so fucking tired.
I woke up this morning and decided enough was enough. I decided to flip my day on it’s head. Not do my ‘allowed’ exercise. Have breakfast as soon as I got up instead of delaying for as long as possible.
I didn’t put my Apple Watch on today. I have broken a 540 day streak of ‘closing my rings’.
For breakfast I made cinnamon pancakes from scratch with yoghurt, blueberries, strawberries, banana, maple syrup, and Reese’s peanut butter chips that mum bought me ages ago but I have been too scared to open.
Then I was still hungry so I had a slice of a fruit loaf mum had made and I toasted it and put banana on top with maple syrup and more peanut butter chips lol
Then I was craving a milo so I had fat fucking milo (it’s a malt chocolate powder here in Australia that you mix with milk), this is the first time I’ve had milk in like a year.
By 8:15am I think I had eaten more calories than I have in a full day in YEARS!
I have also been craving an almond croissant. So by 10am I asked mum if we could go get coffee and croissants. It was so yum.
I just made lunch and I had an omelette with eggs, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, ham, spring onion, and rocket and had it with a toasted English muffin with pizza sauce!
I feel so full. I feel sick. Both from food and from anxiety. I feel so anxious right now. I’m spiralling a bit.
But also I feel proud. This morning when I walked downstairs I told my mum this is what I was going to do today. Nothing else is working, may as well just try it for a day. She burst into tears.
I owe it to those around me to stick at this. I owe it to myself.
submitted by naji_66 to fuckeatingdisorders [link] [comments]
I have been in quasi recovery for almost a year now with a minor relapse over the past 3 or so weeks and it has become too much. I’ve lost my family’s trust, I’ve lost friendships. I’m so fucking tired.
I woke up this morning and decided enough was enough. I decided to flip my day on it’s head. Not do my ‘allowed’ exercise. Have breakfast as soon as I got up instead of delaying for as long as possible.
I didn’t put my Apple Watch on today. I have broken a 540 day streak of ‘closing my rings’.
For breakfast I made cinnamon pancakes from scratch with yoghurt, blueberries, strawberries, banana, maple syrup, and Reese’s peanut butter chips that mum bought me ages ago but I have been too scared to open.
Then I was still hungry so I had a slice of a fruit loaf mum had made and I toasted it and put banana on top with maple syrup and more peanut butter chips lol
Then I was craving a milo so I had fat fucking milo (it’s a malt chocolate powder here in Australia that you mix with milk), this is the first time I’ve had milk in like a year.
By 8:15am I think I had eaten more calories than I have in a full day in YEARS!
I have also been craving an almond croissant. So by 10am I asked mum if we could go get coffee and croissants. It was so yum.
I just made lunch and I had an omelette with eggs, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, ham, spring onion, and rocket and had it with a toasted English muffin with pizza sauce!
I feel so full. I feel sick. Both from food and from anxiety. I feel so anxious right now. I’m spiralling a bit.
But also I feel proud. This morning when I walked downstairs I told my mum this is what I was going to do today. Nothing else is working, may as well just try it for a day. She burst into tears.
I owe it to those around me to stick at this. I owe it to myself.
2023.03.25 01:00 CharlesRiverMutant [pourover] SW Roasting Malawi Mpanga and Guatemala La Garita
Mpanga: grind size 6, 5-pour V60, 1:15 (8:120), water purified by reverse osmosis, roasted 2/27, brewed 3/24.
La Garita: grind size 6, 5-pour V60, 1:16 (8:130), water purified by reverse osmosis, roasted 2/27, brewed 3/24.
I'm continuing to explore the effects of using water purified by reverse osmosis, and I'd also be curious as to the flavor of coffee made with distilled water. I normally don't make brews so small with a V60, but I do want to explore all brew methods with this water, and besides, I like the Mpanga much better as a pourover than as an immersion.
Again, these brews just heighten my conviction that the water makes more of a difference than the brew method. The Mpanga tasted mostly light, fruity, and refreshing. I'm not quite sure what sorts of fruits I'd use to describe it--apples? white grape? apple cider?--but it's all very clean and sweet, without a hint of the banana or mango flavors that I hate. There was a bit more heft than a very light cup like the Colombia Pink Bourbon, enough that I think about apple cider rather than apple juice, but it's nothing like a Kenyan.
As for the brown sugar--yes, this brew was very sweet, and I guess it did taste like brown sugar. But it was very, very smooth, so it reminded me of a brown sugar syrup, or brown sugar mixed into milk tea. I didn't taste much that reminded me of milk chocolate or malt.
And let's talk about that. Although I didn't make a V60 this small with filtered tap water, when I brewed a larger pourover before, I tasted a definite roughness around the edges. Like licking brown sugar off my fingers after packing it into the measuring cup. Like the way that the chestnut topping of a Mont Blanc is never going to be perfectly smooth. Like the way that Hershey's is rougher than Cadbury, or the way a malted chocolate shake is rougher than a plain chocolate one.
It's this roughness that I didn't taste at all. It was smooth and clear-tasting and sweet without a hint of roughness.
This is actually consistent with the other coffees which I brewed both with regular water and purified water: the purified water coffee is always very silky smooth. In the case of the Kenya, I didn't mind the roughness and depth I got with regular water--in fact, I think my regular water brings a really great molasses flavor to the last Kenyas I brewed. In the last of the Cattleya Excelso, my regular water brought a chalky roughness as well as a heightened bitterness that made the florality taste like soap or cardboard, whereas when brewed with purified water, it was silky smooth and tasted like good semisweet chocolate and violets. And with this Mpanga, with tap water, I get a malty milk-chocolate flavor which plays alongside all the fruit, whereas with purified water, the fruit dominates, with only a hint of brown sugar.
In short, with this Mpanga, I really like the flavor that I get when brewing with tap water. Even if it isn't as silky smooth, the combination of the alkalinity and the TDS bring out a quality I quite enjoy with the Mpanga. It's almost embarrassing--like going to an expensive restaurant and finding that the sauce that I particularly enjoyed came from a bottle!
I almost wonder if I shouldn't make any of my reviews public, since this here is an example of brewing with water which the roaster doesn't recommend to bring out aspects of the flavor that he doesn't like. At this point, I can't blame the coffee at all if I brew something that isn't good.
Anyway, the difference with the La Garita was even more shocking. I would not have recognized it as the same coffee at all. I struggled to find a brew method before, but here, just using a fairly random setting, I got coffee that was quite delicious: medium thick, dark like semisweet chocolate and a hint of molasses, toasted almonds, a little fruity apple brightness, even a little bit of baking spices. There wasn't any trace of the awkwardness or harshness that I normally get--perhaps a tiny bit of a smoky flavor, but overall, this was a smooth, rich, and completely pleasant cup, and I would be happy to serve this to anyone as an example of Guatemalan coffee.
Again, I'm not sure if I would describe it as having apricot and rose flavor, but I can see why someone might come up with those words: it's sweet and mellow and rich like apricots.
I guess the moral of the story here is that the kind of water you use really is just as important as the type of coffee you use. And I might just get the Mpanga again and happily brew it with tap water.
submitted by CharlesRiverMutant to coffeelog [link] [comments]
La Garita: grind size 6, 5-pour V60, 1:16 (8:130), water purified by reverse osmosis, roasted 2/27, brewed 3/24.
I'm continuing to explore the effects of using water purified by reverse osmosis, and I'd also be curious as to the flavor of coffee made with distilled water. I normally don't make brews so small with a V60, but I do want to explore all brew methods with this water, and besides, I like the Mpanga much better as a pourover than as an immersion.
Again, these brews just heighten my conviction that the water makes more of a difference than the brew method. The Mpanga tasted mostly light, fruity, and refreshing. I'm not quite sure what sorts of fruits I'd use to describe it--apples? white grape? apple cider?--but it's all very clean and sweet, without a hint of the banana or mango flavors that I hate. There was a bit more heft than a very light cup like the Colombia Pink Bourbon, enough that I think about apple cider rather than apple juice, but it's nothing like a Kenyan.
As for the brown sugar--yes, this brew was very sweet, and I guess it did taste like brown sugar. But it was very, very smooth, so it reminded me of a brown sugar syrup, or brown sugar mixed into milk tea. I didn't taste much that reminded me of milk chocolate or malt.
And let's talk about that. Although I didn't make a V60 this small with filtered tap water, when I brewed a larger pourover before, I tasted a definite roughness around the edges. Like licking brown sugar off my fingers after packing it into the measuring cup. Like the way that the chestnut topping of a Mont Blanc is never going to be perfectly smooth. Like the way that Hershey's is rougher than Cadbury, or the way a malted chocolate shake is rougher than a plain chocolate one.
It's this roughness that I didn't taste at all. It was smooth and clear-tasting and sweet without a hint of roughness.
This is actually consistent with the other coffees which I brewed both with regular water and purified water: the purified water coffee is always very silky smooth. In the case of the Kenya, I didn't mind the roughness and depth I got with regular water--in fact, I think my regular water brings a really great molasses flavor to the last Kenyas I brewed. In the last of the Cattleya Excelso, my regular water brought a chalky roughness as well as a heightened bitterness that made the florality taste like soap or cardboard, whereas when brewed with purified water, it was silky smooth and tasted like good semisweet chocolate and violets. And with this Mpanga, with tap water, I get a malty milk-chocolate flavor which plays alongside all the fruit, whereas with purified water, the fruit dominates, with only a hint of brown sugar.
In short, with this Mpanga, I really like the flavor that I get when brewing with tap water. Even if it isn't as silky smooth, the combination of the alkalinity and the TDS bring out a quality I quite enjoy with the Mpanga. It's almost embarrassing--like going to an expensive restaurant and finding that the sauce that I particularly enjoyed came from a bottle!
I almost wonder if I shouldn't make any of my reviews public, since this here is an example of brewing with water which the roaster doesn't recommend to bring out aspects of the flavor that he doesn't like. At this point, I can't blame the coffee at all if I brew something that isn't good.
Anyway, the difference with the La Garita was even more shocking. I would not have recognized it as the same coffee at all. I struggled to find a brew method before, but here, just using a fairly random setting, I got coffee that was quite delicious: medium thick, dark like semisweet chocolate and a hint of molasses, toasted almonds, a little fruity apple brightness, even a little bit of baking spices. There wasn't any trace of the awkwardness or harshness that I normally get--perhaps a tiny bit of a smoky flavor, but overall, this was a smooth, rich, and completely pleasant cup, and I would be happy to serve this to anyone as an example of Guatemalan coffee.
Again, I'm not sure if I would describe it as having apricot and rose flavor, but I can see why someone might come up with those words: it's sweet and mellow and rich like apricots.
I guess the moral of the story here is that the kind of water you use really is just as important as the type of coffee you use. And I might just get the Mpanga again and happily brew it with tap water.
2023.03.24 22:54 ID10-T Express Test
Getting Rid of Most of My Flavors, Part 39
PREVIOUS > Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32 - Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35 - Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38
Starting flavor count: 2,514 (down from 2,972)
TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.
No bad, mostly green tea, but pretty floral. If I had to name it, I’d say it tastes a bit like wildflowers, maybe the way dandelions smell, but the flower, not dandelion greens. It doesn’t quite taste just like jasmine which is a little more common of a floral to find in tea. So it tastes a little weird, but mostly ok. Floral increases with more concentration, but can be tamed a little with creams. I remember a time when this was the best green tea we could get, way better than TFA or FA green tea flavors. But then Flavorah came out with Eisai Tea. This Pure Green Tea recipe looks great if you really want to vape just straight-up green tea, but since I don’t want to do that, I don’t have a use for FE Green Tea. TRASH 1
Guava
Tropical red flavor. Tastes like the tropical version of the color red made into a flavor. Thick, heavy, very sticky sweet syrupy flavor. Maybe a guava candy or strawberry-watermelon-guava candy, but not a realistic type of guava. It’s a little tart and there’s a light funkiness to it, enough to lend it a tropical vibe, but still tastes pretty candied. Could be a sweet base for a tropical punch or an enhancer for strawberry, watermelon, or other red fruit hard candy. No throat hit but it does get a little dry at the end after vaping it for a bit. Enough to make me thirsty; tastes like it should be mixed with something juicier, like some Cactus or FA Pear.
I’m excited to try Crazy Town, a 3-ingredient recipe that uses FE Lychee (love) and FLV Cream (love) with FE Guava. TASK 1
Kiwi
Candish with a distinctly lemony tartness, very sweet, with even a hard candy type of sweet body, but also a little off. Like it’s trying to have a hairspray type of off note but it isn’t quite strong enough or clear enough to be hairspray just yet, it’s just a slight chemical weirdness. Could make a pretty great lemony kiwi candy if that off note is overflavoring at 2%, or it needs a steep, or that could be covered up. I have other kiwis I’d rather use, though. TRASH 2
Lemon
Probably the best lemon out there or certain uses. It’s a bit sweet and a bit more of a candy lemon standalone but it is a more natural lemon than most of them, and it does two things really well - it mixes well with bakeries - really seems to soak right into them - and IT DOES NOT FADE much or change with steeping. Not harsh. No off notes.
I use it in Viserion but really, with that little of it just to make the blueberries pop a bit more, just about any lemon would do. Also for Long Gone Lonesome Blues. I also need it for Manson & The Pebbles, for and Blog Day, which is an old favorite I haven’t had in a while. TASK 2
Several recipes I already plan to try use it, they are about to be joined by a bunch more. Just look at this stuff!
Sadboy Butter Cookie. Creamy lemon filling smashed between two Golden Oreo style cookies. Do Want. TASK 3
Lemon Tart Cheesecake. I love a good lemon bakery and this looks like a good one. TASK 4
So does MlNikon Lemonade Cookies, even though it’s just a simple 1-2-3 recipe. TASK 5
And this Lemon Cream Pie TASK 6
Backwoods Lemonade Forest fruit lemonade, looks like an oldie but a goodie, especially in summer. TASK 7
1-2-3 Forest Blueberry Mix is another simple recipe using both FE Lemon and FA Forest Fruit, this time with TFA Blueberry Wild. TASK 8
Blushing Lady another three-ingredient recipe with FE Lemon, the other two are INW Grapefruit and FA Pomegranate. That FA Pom can be tricky but I bet it’s great in this one. TASK 9
This Lemon-Lime Cactus looks like it might be a great refreshing summer vape, too, if the cactus isn’t too much. TASK 10
Simple Lemonade. It’s just VT FIzzy Sherbet, FE Lemon, and some CAP SS. But that sounds simply delightful to me. TASK 11
Dumbledore. Another one that uses both VT Fizzy Sherbet and FE Lemon, this one in a sweet-and-sour lemon candy. TASK 12
And other with those two flavors, plus sour apple. Sour apple lemonade. Pucker Butt Lemonade. TASK 13
And of course, another blue razz recipe. Razul - I’m really interested in how the CAP HIbiscus and CAP Sweet Candy work with this combo of blue razz flavors. TASK 14
Lemonade
Weirdly warm sweet lemon. Like that kind of weird warmth that makes you check to see if you’ve accidentally bumped your wattage up. Not sure what’s up with that. Also something like a vague, soft spice note to it. It’s not bad tasting to me, but it’s not what I want from lemonade, either. TRASH 3
Lychee
This is actually my favorite lychee. I’ve had a lychee hard candy from Taiwan that I’m certain was made out of this. The flavor was identical. Very subtle rosy floral upfront, sugary sweet flatter more artificial base with a subtle funky ripeness to that white grape plus grapefruit tartness that lychee does. Strong, punchy flavor. I’m not sure if there’s actually some hard candy body here or if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me because of how much this tastes like that lychee candy. But it’s even sweeter than more syrupy flavors. Drier floral at first, but overall mouthwatering. Very bold, full-flavored.
Love it. It’s in a couple of things I already plan to mix. Really excited to try this Lychee Candy recipe too, it looks fantastic. TASK 15
If the combination of CAP Sweet Lychee and FE Lychee isn’t a lychee overdose, I bet this Lychee Apple Hard Candy is great, too. TASK 16
Mango
Fades very badly. At first it’s funky, juicy, complex, and most of all very vibrant and pretty much perfect. Unfortunately after just a few days it starts changing from this super vibrant mango flavor to something duller and flatter, shedding all of those bright top notes and even some of the funkier ones and basically leaving behind a dull slightly tropical mediocre peach. I don’t know the science behind why this works, but I’ve had it stick around a bit more in a mix with creamy things than without, but it still loses much of what makes it so great at first and as such I can’t recommend using it, unless you’re after an amazing mango shake and vape and aren’t making more than you can vape in a couple of days; in which case, grab some of this and mix it up at 2.5%, it’s really good. No task or trash with this one, it’s not included in my original flavor count because I used it all up and decided not to replace it before starting this flavor-hoarding recovery process.
Melon
I don’t think I’ve tried this one yet. Will mix a 2% sample and see what it’s about. TASK 17
Meringue
Does not taste like meringue. Sugary sweet but has a butter flavor under it that tastes a kinda fakey, like butter mixed with a little movie theater popcorn butter. Thick, creamy mouthfeel, very smooth. Not dry, almost oily with the butter. Lingering sweetness. FE meringue tastes like it might make a better, less waxy replacement for CAP Butter Cream at a lower % than the 2.5% I tried it at. Say 1%.But I did not see a recipe that used it that way - or any way for that matter - and because of that fakey butter taste, I’m not sticking my neck out for it. TRASH 4
Migua (Honey Dew)
This one is interesting. Not interesting in a bad way, but more of an I’m not sure what to do with this way. Sweet candy honeydew flavor with no real sense of juiciness. Really top heavy flavor in a sense, with all the honeydew packed right up front, comes across as artificial but not in an offensive or unpleasant way, on top of a very sweet but bland sort of candy body. The sweetness is really interesting here. It’s heavy, dense, and sticky feeling like hard candy, different from cotton candy or sucralose sweetness. Somewhere between syrup and hard candy, really quite sugary without having the grit of raw sugar. Bit of a dry finish versus the juiciness you probably want from a honeydew, but more sticky dry than full on Sahara desert dry. Can’t find a good-looking recipe that uses it, I’m going to let it go. TRASH 5
Mile Seven
Tastes more like a recipe than a single flavor, very complex. Unlike many other nutty tobaccos that are mostly nut, this one has a fairly good balance of roasted peanut and mild, generic tobacco. But I also get hints of caramel, vanilla, and chocolate. Lots of flavor from top to bottom, very full-bodied. I could have a lot of fun with this, like by enhancing the tobacco and boosting one of those accents, could probably make a delicious three-flavor sweet tobacco recipe out of this. My first thought is FLV Red Burley to play on both the nuttiness and the chocolate while driving the tobacco home, but a caramel or vanilla tobacco or separate tobacco and vanilla or caramel flavors would play well too.
There is seriously not a single recipe on ATF using this super-interesting flavor? Ok. I’ll mix something simple and think about where to take it from there. In the meantime, people who like INW 555 Gold need to get on this.
Mile Seven Experiment V1 TASK 18
Milk Chocolate
Comes pretty close to milk chocolate. Lighter milk chocolate flavor, thick creamy feel. Very sweet, noticeably sweet above and beyond the sweetener put in my base for testing this. Some issues - it just isn’t super flavorful, and has a very slight chemical taste at 2%. Four percent brings out that chemical unbearably and makes that sweetness run a little fruity, 1% is just weak. 2% is too weak to pull off all the milk chocolate flavor of something like a candy bar, but maybe it could help move a darker chocolate flavor into more of a milk chocolate direction?
All five of the recipes currently on ATF that use it are by the same mixer, Sorteal. I’m going to try the three of them that look best to me.
3rd Wheel V2 I get a strong hazelnut taste from MB Glamour Chocolate but the Peanut Butter in there might swallow it up, and this one has a couple of shining reviews. TASK 19
Angelic Toffee this one not so much for anything I see in the recipe but for the food it’s based on - torn angel food cake mixed with whipped cream and crushed chocolate-covered toffee bars. Get in my belly! TASK 20
And Chocolate Overdose Custard V2 which looks like an improvement from V1 and appears to have been obsessed over to the point that it’s got to be good. TASK 21
Oak Milk
Y’all. This stuff is delicious. Maybe not “go to Flavor Jungle and buy it right this second” delicious, but if you’re already buying stuff at Flavor Jungle or some other place that sells it, definitely pick some up.
I’m not sure what “Oak Milk” is supposed to taste like, but FE Oak Milk mostly tastes like thick, rich, sweetened condensed milk, but it also has a fairly prominent soft caramel to it. Like you started making dulce de leche out of sweetened condensed milk and stopped halfway through. There might be something a little oaky hanging about in the background of that caramel top note, or that might be the power of suggestion from the name. The base is really clearly sweetened condensed milk, and then a softer caramel comes back in the finish and lingers. It’s thick and extremely rich and silky smooth, without any kind of butyric yuckiness.
I found FE Oak Milk to be a fairly complex concentrate that’s pretty satisfying even as a single flavor, but it seems like a lot of fun could be had with it. The caramel makes me want to do a creamy RY4 type of recipe. But it also seems like it would be good with any kind of fruit in a fruit and cream situation, or part of milkshake, or malt since that thing that might be wood tastes a little malty, or mix with nuts or chocolate. This plus VT Devon Cream and a little VT Chocolate Mousse would be amazing. I could also see putting some vanilla and bourbon flavors with this and using it to make something like a bourbon cream sauce. It’s just really, really delicious.
I already plan to mix The Baker’s Pipe. Happily adding Just Search Ass to the list. TASK 22
Oatmeal N Milk
This needs a steep. Even a week in, it’s alcoholic. It’s thick and rich but there’s more than a little alcohol in there that did not steep out over a week. Freshly mixed, it tasted like taking a shot half-vodka half-oatmeal with heavy cream and sugar. After a week, I still get a trace of alcohol. Other than that, it tastes sort of like oatmeal with lots of milk, more milk than oats really, and the oats are maybe a little overcooked and lacking texture beyond thickness. They’re also a little...the word that comes to mind is “gamey.” It tastes like it could be great in a cereal and milk recipe with the cereal flavor providing the texture (after a long steep). I wouldn’t use it as an oatmeal when there are other oat flavors as options. TRASH 6
Passion Fruit
Sweet passionate dryer sheets. Candy sweet but with a somewhat bitter floral top note. Fresh passion fruit should be a little floral, but this is a bit too much and also not quite right. Nectary sweetness, thinner than syrupy. A lot like sweetened and watered down passion fruit juice or thin passion fruit syrup mixed with some sweet guava nectar. Much less tartness than it should have. Instead, where more acidic tartness should be, there’s a bit of a perfumey floral that kind of reminds me of FA Summer Clouds (aka FA Dryer Sheets) but not so oppressive and blatantly dryer sheet-y as that and not something that would keep me from trying a recipe that uses it. Some mild throat hit, but nothing like FA Passion Fruit (aka FA Throat Razors). It’s not a bad flavor, but it’s definitely one I can live without. TRASH 7
Rainbow Sherbet
Tastes a bit like Rainbow sherbet, but mostly like tart and sweet raspberry-orange candy with a considerably floral top note and weird bitter sort of chemical or medicinal finish. There’s a bright, tart raspberry upfront that goes floral or perfumey as raspberries can do, at least at 2% after steeping for almost a week. After that it’s just citrus, mostly orange.
There’s supposed to be lemon in FE Rainbow Sherbet according to Flavor Jungle and I don’t really taste lemon, but the orange is more tart than it should be and I guess that’s a lemon? There’s not really a creaminess here. The orange is full-bodied right after that raspberry but the finish thins out and is a bit sweet and dry. And weird. It finishes weird, like with the bitterness of a floral perfume without that much of the actual perfume taste, more like medicine. It’s not fun.
Maybe you could fix it with some cream flavor, like maybe Vanilla Swirl will eat FE Rainbow Sherbet’s sin, but I don’t know, and I’m not going to stick around to find out. TRASH 8
RY4
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t RY4 supposed to be caramel-vanilla-tobacco? This one tastes much more like a caramel-nut-tobacco, but the caramel is a bit sharp and raw brown sugary, not especially rich or creamy. Vanilla is present but not creamy, more like a slight hint of darker vanilla bean. The tobacco is extremely nutty, like roasted toasted nuttiness, and that makes up more of the body of this flavor than the caramel. Overall I really like this flavor, it finishes quite drier than some of the others in the RY4 category, but I’m ok with that in a tobacco vape, and it still manages to be rather smooth. 4% seems to really be pushing some of the raw brown sugar here and I’m thinking it probably fares better at 2 or 3%. Anyway, it’s a pretty good flavor, but there are three recipes on ATF that use it, one has a flavor I don’t have in it. The other two both otherwise look good to me but contain a level of FLV Connecticut Shade I’m not comfortable with.
However, FE RY4 and the Super Concentrates (SC) RY4 that used to be sold by Bull City are the same thing, and this Coastal Wolf vanilla custard tobacco that calls for SC RY4 looks fantastic. TASK 23
RY4 Double
Tastes more like caramel coffee than caramel tobacco, and it’s a little green, like extra extra light roast coffee or maybe half coffee/half green tea. Sticky-sweet caramel and light vanilla is at least half of the equation, but that green coffee thing, while not terribly off-putting, is very odd. I’m so close to tossing this, but here’s a recipe harnessing that coffee aspect: PSL. I don’t expect it to be a “keeper” because it’s a “live mixing” thing and not a recipe meticulously crafted over time, but I really want to see how that worked out. TASK 24
Strawberry
Perfectly serviceable but fairly boring strawberry. Reminds me of FW Strawberry except more concentrated. Tastes fairly natural but again there’s that out of season or heat lamp strawberry that just doesn’t have that much flavor, with just a little artificial bump to it. Has a tartness to it -- also similar to FW Strawberry but a little sharper and less soft than FW’s - but similarly doesn’t have a lot of other complexity. It isn’t a very deep flavor but isn’t top heavy, it’s more just in the middle, without much of that brighter top note or ripe, juicy depth. TRASH 9
Sun Seeds
Overly sweet, under-roasted, and only almost salty, but otherwise tastes like sunflower seeds. The top note tastes like kind of green but not quite raw shelled sunflower seeds. Base is where it gets overly sweet and more of an indistinct, almost creamy nut flavor more than the distinctive seedy top note. Saltiness is there but light, more of an impression than actual saltiness, and more in the aftertaste than the vape.
There’s only one recipe with it that interests me, this chocolate peanut butter, but the problem with that one is that it’s 4 years old and I can’t remember if that means the old LB Lava Cake or the new one, and at 3%, I’m pretty sure that matters. Tempted to steal liberally from that recipe to make my own chocolate PB, and I still might eventually, when it comes to using it at an additive level like that, I don’t believe FE Sun Seeds can do anything that FLV Beer Nuts can’t do better. TRASH 10
Sweet Bread Crust
Mostly tastes like peeling the crusty outside off a baked Kings Hawaiian roll. Like those rolls are great just out of the bag, but this is the crust from one that’s been put in the oven until the outside is a little crisp. Essentially, the perfect top note for something like a bread pudding. Not yeasty, the only “off” note I’m getting is a light and pleasant but weirdly dark, chocolatey caramel in the finish, like a very watered down melted Rolo. I know from two recipes I tried that it can be covered up fairly easily, as neither of the recipes have any hint of chocolate, though I kinda wanna lean in to that and hit it with some VT Devon Cream and maybe another chocolate, WF Salted Caramel, and come buttery custard like FA Custard Premium and see if I can do like a chocolate bread pudding with salted caramel sauce. But, that sounds like a lot of work, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.
This Bread Puddn V3 recipe by Enyawreklaw is, believe it or not, awesome. I think I can make it even better, though. Going to swap the CAP Super Sweet out for FW Sweetener, same amount, and drop in 0.1% FLV Rich Cinnamon. TASK 25
Sweet Grape
There’s a crisp, slightly tart but very sweet white grape underneath there, but it initially and mostly tastes like I’d just been vaping hair gel. I can’t remember the brand, but back when I had hair I definitely used a hair gel that smelled exactly like 75% of this flavor. Mix it with some white grape juice and you have this. Graham (RIP) once said it was the worst flavor he’d ever tried and was more offensive than a Hitler action figure. I’m much more offended by barf flavor than weird chemical off notes so I’m not going to say it’s anywhere near the worst. But it ain’t good. TRASH 11
Sweet Orange
It’s a vibrant and juicy mandarin orange, I personally love this one. It also tastes like canned mandarin oranges more than it tastes like anything, but at the same time it does have some orange peel and zest in the top notes, though they’re understated. The body is very sweet, like canned mandarins in syrup, but still bright. It’s little thin at 4% but starts to get a little waxy to me at 5%. It’s smooth for a citrus. Tried working with it quite a bit and had trouble with it not showing up behind other ingredients as much as I want it to, and with it needing help in the thickness department to actually pass as juice, but it certainly tastes great compared to a lot of other mandarins, oranges, and tangerines.
Already planning to try 3 days 2 nights that uses it. I love the idea of a POG Milkshake but couldn’t possibly enjoy that because of the TFA VBIC pepper thing. Instead I’ll take a recipe a made a couple years back, Creamsquat that’s dead now due to no lemon mix, and see what happens if I replace the Kumquat 3.75% and INW Lemon Mix 0.25% with 4% FE Sweet Orange for a more traditional but still coconut-milk-based dairy free vanilla filling orange creamsicle. It if blends too much (Kumquat and Lemon Mix were great at separating from cream into a distinct layer) I’ll probably just have a tasty orange-coconut-vanilla mess on my hands, and that’s ok. Might go back and add some passionfruit and guava later. TASK 26
Sweet Rice
Freakishly authentic fragrant plain white rice, like jasmine rice, for a week or so, then devolves into much more of a bland starchy body like a stale flour tortilla. Before devolving, nice rice texture on top, finish is quite creamy but still rice-tasting. Very thick, full mouthfeel even while the flavor is more subtle, again accurate to rice.
Mixing with VT Rice Base helps with the fading issue considerably.
I need it for Clouds of Buddha. I also love the idea behind Broke Breakfast, because been there, ate that. Still miss it sometimes. But I think I can do it better than that. Also my family wasn’t quite as broke as Gachatay’s apparently, we got a little pat of butter on our hot rice before pouring milk over it.
My Broke Breakfast V1 TASK 27
Sweet Strawberry
Weird, darkly sweet strawberry with a strange funky sort of tropical flavor. Full flavored but almost overripe, while at the same time fairly simple without too much else going on, almost like a candy flavor in its simplicity. Not a clue what to do with this stuff unless mixing with a tropical flavor that isn’t funky enough. TRASH 12
Turkish
Very vague and very light spice notes, light to medium tobacco base, and just a touch of brown sugary sweetness. Woody, with some nutty tones. Peanut, specifically. Like tobacco mixed with peanut shells. Pretty solid amount of flavor at 2%. Pretty good depth, medium thickness. Can’t say I enjoyed it a whole lot by itself but I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to mix a tobacco recipe that uses it. Unfortunately, I did not see one. TRASH 13
Whipped Cream
Terrible. It tastes like whipped cream, but also tastes like it has lemon dish soap in it. If you’ve ever used Lemon Joy to hand wash dishes, it’s a pretty recognizable thing. Tastes like I wanted to make vanilla whipped cream with two tsps of vanilla but I only had one tsp of vanilla, so I subbed in Lemon Joy for one of the tsp because I was dropped on my head and fed lead-based paint chips as a child. I can’t understand how this gets manufactured and sold to people, it’s so bad. TRASH 14
Woody, dry tobacco, very light spice, like an autumn spice with the slightest hint of anise, not enough to be licorice-y. It’s not perfumy, but it’s kinda cologne-y in that wood and spice combination and hint of tobacco, kinda tastes like it could be a men’s cologne. The woodiness is similar to sandalwood but not exactly sandalwood. It’s definitely not pine or oak, though. Very distinctly brown sugar sweetness. That’s mostly what I get, wood and brown sugar, with spice. Not much tobacco really, just a leafy hint of it..
I need it for Chem Twista Lime. TASK 28
Almond
Definitely not trash. If you forced me to keep only one FA flavor, it would probably be this one. It’s a clear, clean, almond flavor. It mostly tastes like a raw almond. Slightly sweet and extracty, but dry, rich, and woody enough to come across as the actual nut in a mix, while being smooth enough to be the almond taste in almond milk. Medium body, not thin and top heavy. Rich and creamy but not too thick and basey either. It really is the quintessential and most essential almond flavor and it can be used in so many ways. If you don’t have FA Almond already, get it now.
I need it for a bunch of favorite recipes, such as Mango Blossom Macaron, Vanilla Almond Milk, Saturday Morning Macaron, Big Papa’s Macaron, Blog Day, Goddaron, Stoned Alone, Dummies, and Sandy Pineapple, not to mention a dozen or so new-to-me recipes I already plan to try.
Here’s a couple more that look too good to pass up:
High Society. Butter. Almond. Custard. Tobacco. Going to sub FW Sweetener for the PUR. TASK 29
Spandauer. Danish puff pastry. TASK 30
Amarula
I don’t know what Amarula is supposed to actually taste like, but this one can best be described in a word as “interesting.” It’s very rich and creamy, with a flavor that reminds me of Irish Cream with that slight mocha coffee-type note, but it also some really bright, citrusy grapefruit-esque thing going on, just thinly laid over the heavy cream. It tastes like something you couldn’t enjoy in real life because the acid would curdle the cream and make it nasty. It also tastes like FA Irish Cream and FA Grapefruit mixed together. It’s a little boozy, but not at all strongly so. No clue what the heck to do with it, but it’s interesting. There’s not a single recipe on ATF that uses it, so this seems like a good chance for me to go ahead and expunge something weird from my stash. TRASH 15
Anise
Brighter, spicier anise with some woody accents and a light but almost creamy base. No off notes. If I saw a recipe using this that I really wanted to try, I’d keep it, but seeing none, TRASH 16
Apple Pie
I really just get pie crust from it. No apple. Just the slightest bit of fruity sweetness. No spice, not really, maybe they like wave some cinnamon over the vat of the stuff at FA HQ but don’t actually drop it in. But it’s a really solid pie crust, probably the most solid. It’s strong and shows up in a mix and tastes like buttery if a bit doughy crust. Very full and dense crust, no off notes, just missing ones.
I need it for my 1-2-3 Butter Pecan Pie. TASK 31
But I will be mixing that and tasting it with the intention of trying to make it better, and this Butter Pecan Crumble looks like about where I would have wound up, so I’ll go ahead and try that and see if improving Butter Pecan Pie is something I still need to do or something that’s already been done for me. TASK 32
Also, here’s a recipe that specifically states that the mixer has already done that for me, so of course I have to try Butter Tarts - it looks amazing. TASK 33
I have already planned to mix other recipes that use this, too.
Apricot
Very nice, authentic apricot. It’s one that everyone should probably own. It tastes much more natural than candied and not overly sweet. Top notes are mild, subtle yellow peachy-type of flavor. Pushing it higher doesn’t really make it less weak, it’s just a gentle type of fresh fruit flavor. A little dry, or at least not especially juicy, but not too dry. Of note, I’m aware some people think it is aggressive and does stand out in a mix, but I’ve never had that issue using it with bold fruits. Not a dried or cooked type of flavor at all. I don’t get any sort of harshness from this, overall it’s just a smooth and gentle flavor. Its exhale starts and finishes weaker: it’s more of a middle-range flavor, with a nice full fleshy body like you’d expect from a fresh apricot. Hence why I like to use it to help fill out various other stone fruits - peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries - and it even works for some tropical fruits like mango and papaya. It’s not very aggressive or prone to standing out too much in mix with other fruits, in my experience, although I’ve had a tobacco recipe that used it at 1% and I didn’t think it would show up at all, but it definitely did. . So, mixed results. Works especially well with flavors that have their own aggressive top notes and you want to make it a fuller bodied fruit without pushing those flavors higher and getting more harshness or having them run floral on you, like peaches, or for filling out a cherry without letting it get too mediciny if you want a fresh natural cherry flavor.
I need it for Counter Punch TASK 34
Impropapiety (papaya sweet tea recipe I created) TASK 35
Apricaught Me Slippin (the aforementioned apricot 1% tobacco recipe) TASK 36
And a couple of other favorites that were added to the to-mix list too recently to repeat just yet.
I also want to try Cookie-On-Me,. A fruit-filled cookie recipe that has some of my favorite ingredients in it - with the exception of FA Cookie (I’ll just JF Cookie instead) and CAP Super Sweet (which I’ll replace with FW Sweetener because 0.5% CAP SS seems like a lot for a cookie recipe). TASK 37
Arctic Winter
It’s just menthol. The only reason I would keep it over any other just plain menthol is a recipe using it that I want to make, since I’m not exactly sure how much of a different menthol to sub in.
Unfortunately for my getting rid of flavors project, there is one such recipe: Spiral Out, an orange, papaya, menthol mix. TASK 38
Aurora
Heavy, realistic lime zest top end with some bitterness and a much softer but sweet, limeade-type body that almost feels effervescent. Perfect for the “twist of lime” in a cocktail because of that zesty lime and sweeter body.
I need this for something I’m working on. I also want to try Strawora Limealis, though I imagine that if I love it I’ll soon be trying it again with a rum flavor or two or FLV Tequila Agave added to it. TASK 39
And Peyote, which looks weird. But it might be amazing weird. TASK 40
Banana
Very typical FA Flavor. Realistic, sightly underripe banana, all thin, dry top notes with essentially no creamy base at all. 1 to 2%, beyond that, overly dry to the point of added throat hit,, also candyish, but not in a good way like LA or TFA Banana Cream, because that underipeness also ramps up and just gets weird. Also, at 3%, it tastes almost like there’s a bit of clove in here. Sounds like a negative review, but I actually used to love 1.25ish % of this on top of TFA Banana Cream because it creates a more realistic banana. The problem is that we have quite a few better bananas now. I think I’ll be ok without this one TRASH 17
Banana Candy
When WF came out with a banana candy, I really appreciated the embracing of the candy, since so many other bananas taste like banana runts or banana laffy taffy but don’t just come right out and admit it. But then Chef’s Super Concentrates (RIP) comes out with one that’s super potent and spot-on banana runts but the “at least they’re honest about it” novelty starts to wear off. Then FA’s comes out and by now, I’m not interested in candy banana. But there’s nothing wrong with this one. It tastes very much like those banana puffy candies, but with a little less punch of flavor than those have. If you’re really into those foamy banana candies you might want to pick this one up, but I don’t feel a need for it personally. TRASH 18
New Flavor Count: 2,496
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Starting flavor count: 2,514 (down from 2,972)
TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.
FLAVORS EXPRESS
Green TeaNo bad, mostly green tea, but pretty floral. If I had to name it, I’d say it tastes a bit like wildflowers, maybe the way dandelions smell, but the flower, not dandelion greens. It doesn’t quite taste just like jasmine which is a little more common of a floral to find in tea. So it tastes a little weird, but mostly ok. Floral increases with more concentration, but can be tamed a little with creams. I remember a time when this was the best green tea we could get, way better than TFA or FA green tea flavors. But then Flavorah came out with Eisai Tea. This Pure Green Tea recipe looks great if you really want to vape just straight-up green tea, but since I don’t want to do that, I don’t have a use for FE Green Tea. TRASH 1
Guava
Tropical red flavor. Tastes like the tropical version of the color red made into a flavor. Thick, heavy, very sticky sweet syrupy flavor. Maybe a guava candy or strawberry-watermelon-guava candy, but not a realistic type of guava. It’s a little tart and there’s a light funkiness to it, enough to lend it a tropical vibe, but still tastes pretty candied. Could be a sweet base for a tropical punch or an enhancer for strawberry, watermelon, or other red fruit hard candy. No throat hit but it does get a little dry at the end after vaping it for a bit. Enough to make me thirsty; tastes like it should be mixed with something juicier, like some Cactus or FA Pear.
I’m excited to try Crazy Town, a 3-ingredient recipe that uses FE Lychee (love) and FLV Cream (love) with FE Guava. TASK 1
Kiwi
Candish with a distinctly lemony tartness, very sweet, with even a hard candy type of sweet body, but also a little off. Like it’s trying to have a hairspray type of off note but it isn’t quite strong enough or clear enough to be hairspray just yet, it’s just a slight chemical weirdness. Could make a pretty great lemony kiwi candy if that off note is overflavoring at 2%, or it needs a steep, or that could be covered up. I have other kiwis I’d rather use, though. TRASH 2
Lemon
Probably the best lemon out there or certain uses. It’s a bit sweet and a bit more of a candy lemon standalone but it is a more natural lemon than most of them, and it does two things really well - it mixes well with bakeries - really seems to soak right into them - and IT DOES NOT FADE much or change with steeping. Not harsh. No off notes.
I use it in Viserion but really, with that little of it just to make the blueberries pop a bit more, just about any lemon would do. Also for Long Gone Lonesome Blues. I also need it for Manson & The Pebbles, for and Blog Day, which is an old favorite I haven’t had in a while. TASK 2
Several recipes I already plan to try use it, they are about to be joined by a bunch more. Just look at this stuff!
Sadboy Butter Cookie. Creamy lemon filling smashed between two Golden Oreo style cookies. Do Want. TASK 3
Lemon Tart Cheesecake. I love a good lemon bakery and this looks like a good one. TASK 4
So does MlNikon Lemonade Cookies, even though it’s just a simple 1-2-3 recipe. TASK 5
And this Lemon Cream Pie TASK 6
Backwoods Lemonade Forest fruit lemonade, looks like an oldie but a goodie, especially in summer. TASK 7
1-2-3 Forest Blueberry Mix is another simple recipe using both FE Lemon and FA Forest Fruit, this time with TFA Blueberry Wild. TASK 8
Blushing Lady another three-ingredient recipe with FE Lemon, the other two are INW Grapefruit and FA Pomegranate. That FA Pom can be tricky but I bet it’s great in this one. TASK 9
This Lemon-Lime Cactus looks like it might be a great refreshing summer vape, too, if the cactus isn’t too much. TASK 10
Simple Lemonade. It’s just VT FIzzy Sherbet, FE Lemon, and some CAP SS. But that sounds simply delightful to me. TASK 11
Dumbledore. Another one that uses both VT Fizzy Sherbet and FE Lemon, this one in a sweet-and-sour lemon candy. TASK 12
And other with those two flavors, plus sour apple. Sour apple lemonade. Pucker Butt Lemonade. TASK 13
And of course, another blue razz recipe. Razul - I’m really interested in how the CAP HIbiscus and CAP Sweet Candy work with this combo of blue razz flavors. TASK 14
Lemonade
Weirdly warm sweet lemon. Like that kind of weird warmth that makes you check to see if you’ve accidentally bumped your wattage up. Not sure what’s up with that. Also something like a vague, soft spice note to it. It’s not bad tasting to me, but it’s not what I want from lemonade, either. TRASH 3
Lychee
This is actually my favorite lychee. I’ve had a lychee hard candy from Taiwan that I’m certain was made out of this. The flavor was identical. Very subtle rosy floral upfront, sugary sweet flatter more artificial base with a subtle funky ripeness to that white grape plus grapefruit tartness that lychee does. Strong, punchy flavor. I’m not sure if there’s actually some hard candy body here or if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me because of how much this tastes like that lychee candy. But it’s even sweeter than more syrupy flavors. Drier floral at first, but overall mouthwatering. Very bold, full-flavored.
Love it. It’s in a couple of things I already plan to mix. Really excited to try this Lychee Candy recipe too, it looks fantastic. TASK 15
If the combination of CAP Sweet Lychee and FE Lychee isn’t a lychee overdose, I bet this Lychee Apple Hard Candy is great, too. TASK 16
Mango
Fades very badly. At first it’s funky, juicy, complex, and most of all very vibrant and pretty much perfect. Unfortunately after just a few days it starts changing from this super vibrant mango flavor to something duller and flatter, shedding all of those bright top notes and even some of the funkier ones and basically leaving behind a dull slightly tropical mediocre peach. I don’t know the science behind why this works, but I’ve had it stick around a bit more in a mix with creamy things than without, but it still loses much of what makes it so great at first and as such I can’t recommend using it, unless you’re after an amazing mango shake and vape and aren’t making more than you can vape in a couple of days; in which case, grab some of this and mix it up at 2.5%, it’s really good. No task or trash with this one, it’s not included in my original flavor count because I used it all up and decided not to replace it before starting this flavor-hoarding recovery process.
Melon
I don’t think I’ve tried this one yet. Will mix a 2% sample and see what it’s about. TASK 17
Meringue
Does not taste like meringue. Sugary sweet but has a butter flavor under it that tastes a kinda fakey, like butter mixed with a little movie theater popcorn butter. Thick, creamy mouthfeel, very smooth. Not dry, almost oily with the butter. Lingering sweetness. FE meringue tastes like it might make a better, less waxy replacement for CAP Butter Cream at a lower % than the 2.5% I tried it at. Say 1%.But I did not see a recipe that used it that way - or any way for that matter - and because of that fakey butter taste, I’m not sticking my neck out for it. TRASH 4
Migua (Honey Dew)
This one is interesting. Not interesting in a bad way, but more of an I’m not sure what to do with this way. Sweet candy honeydew flavor with no real sense of juiciness. Really top heavy flavor in a sense, with all the honeydew packed right up front, comes across as artificial but not in an offensive or unpleasant way, on top of a very sweet but bland sort of candy body. The sweetness is really interesting here. It’s heavy, dense, and sticky feeling like hard candy, different from cotton candy or sucralose sweetness. Somewhere between syrup and hard candy, really quite sugary without having the grit of raw sugar. Bit of a dry finish versus the juiciness you probably want from a honeydew, but more sticky dry than full on Sahara desert dry. Can’t find a good-looking recipe that uses it, I’m going to let it go. TRASH 5
Mile Seven
Tastes more like a recipe than a single flavor, very complex. Unlike many other nutty tobaccos that are mostly nut, this one has a fairly good balance of roasted peanut and mild, generic tobacco. But I also get hints of caramel, vanilla, and chocolate. Lots of flavor from top to bottom, very full-bodied. I could have a lot of fun with this, like by enhancing the tobacco and boosting one of those accents, could probably make a delicious three-flavor sweet tobacco recipe out of this. My first thought is FLV Red Burley to play on both the nuttiness and the chocolate while driving the tobacco home, but a caramel or vanilla tobacco or separate tobacco and vanilla or caramel flavors would play well too.
There is seriously not a single recipe on ATF using this super-interesting flavor? Ok. I’ll mix something simple and think about where to take it from there. In the meantime, people who like INW 555 Gold need to get on this.
Mile Seven Experiment V1 TASK 18
| Co. | Flavor | % |
|---|---|---|
| FLV | Red Burley | 1.75 |
| FE | Mile Seven | 2 |
Comes pretty close to milk chocolate. Lighter milk chocolate flavor, thick creamy feel. Very sweet, noticeably sweet above and beyond the sweetener put in my base for testing this. Some issues - it just isn’t super flavorful, and has a very slight chemical taste at 2%. Four percent brings out that chemical unbearably and makes that sweetness run a little fruity, 1% is just weak. 2% is too weak to pull off all the milk chocolate flavor of something like a candy bar, but maybe it could help move a darker chocolate flavor into more of a milk chocolate direction?
All five of the recipes currently on ATF that use it are by the same mixer, Sorteal. I’m going to try the three of them that look best to me.
3rd Wheel V2 I get a strong hazelnut taste from MB Glamour Chocolate but the Peanut Butter in there might swallow it up, and this one has a couple of shining reviews. TASK 19
Angelic Toffee this one not so much for anything I see in the recipe but for the food it’s based on - torn angel food cake mixed with whipped cream and crushed chocolate-covered toffee bars. Get in my belly! TASK 20
And Chocolate Overdose Custard V2 which looks like an improvement from V1 and appears to have been obsessed over to the point that it’s got to be good. TASK 21
Oak Milk
Y’all. This stuff is delicious. Maybe not “go to Flavor Jungle and buy it right this second” delicious, but if you’re already buying stuff at Flavor Jungle or some other place that sells it, definitely pick some up.
I’m not sure what “Oak Milk” is supposed to taste like, but FE Oak Milk mostly tastes like thick, rich, sweetened condensed milk, but it also has a fairly prominent soft caramel to it. Like you started making dulce de leche out of sweetened condensed milk and stopped halfway through. There might be something a little oaky hanging about in the background of that caramel top note, or that might be the power of suggestion from the name. The base is really clearly sweetened condensed milk, and then a softer caramel comes back in the finish and lingers. It’s thick and extremely rich and silky smooth, without any kind of butyric yuckiness.
I found FE Oak Milk to be a fairly complex concentrate that’s pretty satisfying even as a single flavor, but it seems like a lot of fun could be had with it. The caramel makes me want to do a creamy RY4 type of recipe. But it also seems like it would be good with any kind of fruit in a fruit and cream situation, or part of milkshake, or malt since that thing that might be wood tastes a little malty, or mix with nuts or chocolate. This plus VT Devon Cream and a little VT Chocolate Mousse would be amazing. I could also see putting some vanilla and bourbon flavors with this and using it to make something like a bourbon cream sauce. It’s just really, really delicious.
I already plan to mix The Baker’s Pipe. Happily adding Just Search Ass to the list. TASK 22
Oatmeal N Milk
This needs a steep. Even a week in, it’s alcoholic. It’s thick and rich but there’s more than a little alcohol in there that did not steep out over a week. Freshly mixed, it tasted like taking a shot half-vodka half-oatmeal with heavy cream and sugar. After a week, I still get a trace of alcohol. Other than that, it tastes sort of like oatmeal with lots of milk, more milk than oats really, and the oats are maybe a little overcooked and lacking texture beyond thickness. They’re also a little...the word that comes to mind is “gamey.” It tastes like it could be great in a cereal and milk recipe with the cereal flavor providing the texture (after a long steep). I wouldn’t use it as an oatmeal when there are other oat flavors as options. TRASH 6
Passion Fruit
Sweet passionate dryer sheets. Candy sweet but with a somewhat bitter floral top note. Fresh passion fruit should be a little floral, but this is a bit too much and also not quite right. Nectary sweetness, thinner than syrupy. A lot like sweetened and watered down passion fruit juice or thin passion fruit syrup mixed with some sweet guava nectar. Much less tartness than it should have. Instead, where more acidic tartness should be, there’s a bit of a perfumey floral that kind of reminds me of FA Summer Clouds (aka FA Dryer Sheets) but not so oppressive and blatantly dryer sheet-y as that and not something that would keep me from trying a recipe that uses it. Some mild throat hit, but nothing like FA Passion Fruit (aka FA Throat Razors). It’s not a bad flavor, but it’s definitely one I can live without. TRASH 7
Rainbow Sherbet
Tastes a bit like Rainbow sherbet, but mostly like tart and sweet raspberry-orange candy with a considerably floral top note and weird bitter sort of chemical or medicinal finish. There’s a bright, tart raspberry upfront that goes floral or perfumey as raspberries can do, at least at 2% after steeping for almost a week. After that it’s just citrus, mostly orange.
There’s supposed to be lemon in FE Rainbow Sherbet according to Flavor Jungle and I don’t really taste lemon, but the orange is more tart than it should be and I guess that’s a lemon? There’s not really a creaminess here. The orange is full-bodied right after that raspberry but the finish thins out and is a bit sweet and dry. And weird. It finishes weird, like with the bitterness of a floral perfume without that much of the actual perfume taste, more like medicine. It’s not fun.
Maybe you could fix it with some cream flavor, like maybe Vanilla Swirl will eat FE Rainbow Sherbet’s sin, but I don’t know, and I’m not going to stick around to find out. TRASH 8
RY4
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t RY4 supposed to be caramel-vanilla-tobacco? This one tastes much more like a caramel-nut-tobacco, but the caramel is a bit sharp and raw brown sugary, not especially rich or creamy. Vanilla is present but not creamy, more like a slight hint of darker vanilla bean. The tobacco is extremely nutty, like roasted toasted nuttiness, and that makes up more of the body of this flavor than the caramel. Overall I really like this flavor, it finishes quite drier than some of the others in the RY4 category, but I’m ok with that in a tobacco vape, and it still manages to be rather smooth. 4% seems to really be pushing some of the raw brown sugar here and I’m thinking it probably fares better at 2 or 3%. Anyway, it’s a pretty good flavor, but there are three recipes on ATF that use it, one has a flavor I don’t have in it. The other two both otherwise look good to me but contain a level of FLV Connecticut Shade I’m not comfortable with.
However, FE RY4 and the Super Concentrates (SC) RY4 that used to be sold by Bull City are the same thing, and this Coastal Wolf vanilla custard tobacco that calls for SC RY4 looks fantastic. TASK 23
RY4 Double
Tastes more like caramel coffee than caramel tobacco, and it’s a little green, like extra extra light roast coffee or maybe half coffee/half green tea. Sticky-sweet caramel and light vanilla is at least half of the equation, but that green coffee thing, while not terribly off-putting, is very odd. I’m so close to tossing this, but here’s a recipe harnessing that coffee aspect: PSL. I don’t expect it to be a “keeper” because it’s a “live mixing” thing and not a recipe meticulously crafted over time, but I really want to see how that worked out. TASK 24
Strawberry
Perfectly serviceable but fairly boring strawberry. Reminds me of FW Strawberry except more concentrated. Tastes fairly natural but again there’s that out of season or heat lamp strawberry that just doesn’t have that much flavor, with just a little artificial bump to it. Has a tartness to it -- also similar to FW Strawberry but a little sharper and less soft than FW’s - but similarly doesn’t have a lot of other complexity. It isn’t a very deep flavor but isn’t top heavy, it’s more just in the middle, without much of that brighter top note or ripe, juicy depth. TRASH 9
Sun Seeds
Overly sweet, under-roasted, and only almost salty, but otherwise tastes like sunflower seeds. The top note tastes like kind of green but not quite raw shelled sunflower seeds. Base is where it gets overly sweet and more of an indistinct, almost creamy nut flavor more than the distinctive seedy top note. Saltiness is there but light, more of an impression than actual saltiness, and more in the aftertaste than the vape.
There’s only one recipe with it that interests me, this chocolate peanut butter, but the problem with that one is that it’s 4 years old and I can’t remember if that means the old LB Lava Cake or the new one, and at 3%, I’m pretty sure that matters. Tempted to steal liberally from that recipe to make my own chocolate PB, and I still might eventually, when it comes to using it at an additive level like that, I don’t believe FE Sun Seeds can do anything that FLV Beer Nuts can’t do better. TRASH 10
Sweet Bread Crust
Mostly tastes like peeling the crusty outside off a baked Kings Hawaiian roll. Like those rolls are great just out of the bag, but this is the crust from one that’s been put in the oven until the outside is a little crisp. Essentially, the perfect top note for something like a bread pudding. Not yeasty, the only “off” note I’m getting is a light and pleasant but weirdly dark, chocolatey caramel in the finish, like a very watered down melted Rolo. I know from two recipes I tried that it can be covered up fairly easily, as neither of the recipes have any hint of chocolate, though I kinda wanna lean in to that and hit it with some VT Devon Cream and maybe another chocolate, WF Salted Caramel, and come buttery custard like FA Custard Premium and see if I can do like a chocolate bread pudding with salted caramel sauce. But, that sounds like a lot of work, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.
This Bread Puddn V3 recipe by Enyawreklaw is, believe it or not, awesome. I think I can make it even better, though. Going to swap the CAP Super Sweet out for FW Sweetener, same amount, and drop in 0.1% FLV Rich Cinnamon. TASK 25
Sweet Grape
There’s a crisp, slightly tart but very sweet white grape underneath there, but it initially and mostly tastes like I’d just been vaping hair gel. I can’t remember the brand, but back when I had hair I definitely used a hair gel that smelled exactly like 75% of this flavor. Mix it with some white grape juice and you have this. Graham (RIP) once said it was the worst flavor he’d ever tried and was more offensive than a Hitler action figure. I’m much more offended by barf flavor than weird chemical off notes so I’m not going to say it’s anywhere near the worst. But it ain’t good. TRASH 11
Sweet Orange
It’s a vibrant and juicy mandarin orange, I personally love this one. It also tastes like canned mandarin oranges more than it tastes like anything, but at the same time it does have some orange peel and zest in the top notes, though they’re understated. The body is very sweet, like canned mandarins in syrup, but still bright. It’s little thin at 4% but starts to get a little waxy to me at 5%. It’s smooth for a citrus. Tried working with it quite a bit and had trouble with it not showing up behind other ingredients as much as I want it to, and with it needing help in the thickness department to actually pass as juice, but it certainly tastes great compared to a lot of other mandarins, oranges, and tangerines.
Already planning to try 3 days 2 nights that uses it. I love the idea of a POG Milkshake but couldn’t possibly enjoy that because of the TFA VBIC pepper thing. Instead I’ll take a recipe a made a couple years back, Creamsquat that’s dead now due to no lemon mix, and see what happens if I replace the Kumquat 3.75% and INW Lemon Mix 0.25% with 4% FE Sweet Orange for a more traditional but still coconut-milk-based dairy free vanilla filling orange creamsicle. It if blends too much (Kumquat and Lemon Mix were great at separating from cream into a distinct layer) I’ll probably just have a tasty orange-coconut-vanilla mess on my hands, and that’s ok. Might go back and add some passionfruit and guava later. TASK 26
Sweet Rice
Freakishly authentic fragrant plain white rice, like jasmine rice, for a week or so, then devolves into much more of a bland starchy body like a stale flour tortilla. Before devolving, nice rice texture on top, finish is quite creamy but still rice-tasting. Very thick, full mouthfeel even while the flavor is more subtle, again accurate to rice.
Mixing with VT Rice Base helps with the fading issue considerably.
I need it for Clouds of Buddha. I also love the idea behind Broke Breakfast, because been there, ate that. Still miss it sometimes. But I think I can do it better than that. Also my family wasn’t quite as broke as Gachatay’s apparently, we got a little pat of butter on our hot rice before pouring milk over it.
My Broke Breakfast V1 TASK 27
| Co. | Flavor | % |
|---|---|---|
| FE | Sweet Rice | 4.5 |
| VT | Rice Base | 1.25 |
| FA | Meringue | 0.75 |
| FA | Milk | 1.25 |
| FA | Cream Fresh | 1 |
| VT | Butter Base | 0.75 |
| FLV | Rich Cinnamon | 0.13 |
| FW | Sweetener | 0.5 |
Weird, darkly sweet strawberry with a strange funky sort of tropical flavor. Full flavored but almost overripe, while at the same time fairly simple without too much else going on, almost like a candy flavor in its simplicity. Not a clue what to do with this stuff unless mixing with a tropical flavor that isn’t funky enough. TRASH 12
Turkish
Very vague and very light spice notes, light to medium tobacco base, and just a touch of brown sugary sweetness. Woody, with some nutty tones. Peanut, specifically. Like tobacco mixed with peanut shells. Pretty solid amount of flavor at 2%. Pretty good depth, medium thickness. Can’t say I enjoyed it a whole lot by itself but I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to mix a tobacco recipe that uses it. Unfortunately, I did not see one. TRASH 13
Whipped Cream
Terrible. It tastes like whipped cream, but also tastes like it has lemon dish soap in it. If you’ve ever used Lemon Joy to hand wash dishes, it’s a pretty recognizable thing. Tastes like I wanted to make vanilla whipped cream with two tsps of vanilla but I only had one tsp of vanilla, so I subbed in Lemon Joy for one of the tsp because I was dropped on my head and fed lead-based paint chips as a child. I can’t understand how this gets manufactured and sold to people, it’s so bad. TRASH 14
FLAVOUR ART
7 Leaves UltimateWoody, dry tobacco, very light spice, like an autumn spice with the slightest hint of anise, not enough to be licorice-y. It’s not perfumy, but it’s kinda cologne-y in that wood and spice combination and hint of tobacco, kinda tastes like it could be a men’s cologne. The woodiness is similar to sandalwood but not exactly sandalwood. It’s definitely not pine or oak, though. Very distinctly brown sugar sweetness. That’s mostly what I get, wood and brown sugar, with spice. Not much tobacco really, just a leafy hint of it..
I need it for Chem Twista Lime. TASK 28
Almond
Definitely not trash. If you forced me to keep only one FA flavor, it would probably be this one. It’s a clear, clean, almond flavor. It mostly tastes like a raw almond. Slightly sweet and extracty, but dry, rich, and woody enough to come across as the actual nut in a mix, while being smooth enough to be the almond taste in almond milk. Medium body, not thin and top heavy. Rich and creamy but not too thick and basey either. It really is the quintessential and most essential almond flavor and it can be used in so many ways. If you don’t have FA Almond already, get it now.
I need it for a bunch of favorite recipes, such as Mango Blossom Macaron, Vanilla Almond Milk, Saturday Morning Macaron, Big Papa’s Macaron, Blog Day, Goddaron, Stoned Alone, Dummies, and Sandy Pineapple, not to mention a dozen or so new-to-me recipes I already plan to try.
Here’s a couple more that look too good to pass up:
High Society. Butter. Almond. Custard. Tobacco. Going to sub FW Sweetener for the PUR. TASK 29
Spandauer. Danish puff pastry. TASK 30
Amarula
I don’t know what Amarula is supposed to actually taste like, but this one can best be described in a word as “interesting.” It’s very rich and creamy, with a flavor that reminds me of Irish Cream with that slight mocha coffee-type note, but it also some really bright, citrusy grapefruit-esque thing going on, just thinly laid over the heavy cream. It tastes like something you couldn’t enjoy in real life because the acid would curdle the cream and make it nasty. It also tastes like FA Irish Cream and FA Grapefruit mixed together. It’s a little boozy, but not at all strongly so. No clue what the heck to do with it, but it’s interesting. There’s not a single recipe on ATF that uses it, so this seems like a good chance for me to go ahead and expunge something weird from my stash. TRASH 15
Anise
Brighter, spicier anise with some woody accents and a light but almost creamy base. No off notes. If I saw a recipe using this that I really wanted to try, I’d keep it, but seeing none, TRASH 16
Apple Pie
I really just get pie crust from it. No apple. Just the slightest bit of fruity sweetness. No spice, not really, maybe they like wave some cinnamon over the vat of the stuff at FA HQ but don’t actually drop it in. But it’s a really solid pie crust, probably the most solid. It’s strong and shows up in a mix and tastes like buttery if a bit doughy crust. Very full and dense crust, no off notes, just missing ones.
I need it for my 1-2-3 Butter Pecan Pie. TASK 31
But I will be mixing that and tasting it with the intention of trying to make it better, and this Butter Pecan Crumble looks like about where I would have wound up, so I’ll go ahead and try that and see if improving Butter Pecan Pie is something I still need to do or something that’s already been done for me. TASK 32
Also, here’s a recipe that specifically states that the mixer has already done that for me, so of course I have to try Butter Tarts - it looks amazing. TASK 33
I have already planned to mix other recipes that use this, too.
Apricot
Very nice, authentic apricot. It’s one that everyone should probably own. It tastes much more natural than candied and not overly sweet. Top notes are mild, subtle yellow peachy-type of flavor. Pushing it higher doesn’t really make it less weak, it’s just a gentle type of fresh fruit flavor. A little dry, or at least not especially juicy, but not too dry. Of note, I’m aware some people think it is aggressive and does stand out in a mix, but I’ve never had that issue using it with bold fruits. Not a dried or cooked type of flavor at all. I don’t get any sort of harshness from this, overall it’s just a smooth and gentle flavor. Its exhale starts and finishes weaker: it’s more of a middle-range flavor, with a nice full fleshy body like you’d expect from a fresh apricot. Hence why I like to use it to help fill out various other stone fruits - peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries - and it even works for some tropical fruits like mango and papaya. It’s not very aggressive or prone to standing out too much in mix with other fruits, in my experience, although I’ve had a tobacco recipe that used it at 1% and I didn’t think it would show up at all, but it definitely did. . So, mixed results. Works especially well with flavors that have their own aggressive top notes and you want to make it a fuller bodied fruit without pushing those flavors higher and getting more harshness or having them run floral on you, like peaches, or for filling out a cherry without letting it get too mediciny if you want a fresh natural cherry flavor.
I need it for Counter Punch TASK 34
Impropapiety (papaya sweet tea recipe I created) TASK 35
Apricaught Me Slippin (the aforementioned apricot 1% tobacco recipe) TASK 36
And a couple of other favorites that were added to the to-mix list too recently to repeat just yet.
I also want to try Cookie-On-Me,. A fruit-filled cookie recipe that has some of my favorite ingredients in it - with the exception of FA Cookie (I’ll just JF Cookie instead) and CAP Super Sweet (which I’ll replace with FW Sweetener because 0.5% CAP SS seems like a lot for a cookie recipe). TASK 37
Arctic Winter
It’s just menthol. The only reason I would keep it over any other just plain menthol is a recipe using it that I want to make, since I’m not exactly sure how much of a different menthol to sub in.
Unfortunately for my getting rid of flavors project, there is one such recipe: Spiral Out, an orange, papaya, menthol mix. TASK 38
Aurora
Heavy, realistic lime zest top end with some bitterness and a much softer but sweet, limeade-type body that almost feels effervescent. Perfect for the “twist of lime” in a cocktail because of that zesty lime and sweeter body.
I need this for something I’m working on. I also want to try Strawora Limealis, though I imagine that if I love it I’ll soon be trying it again with a rum flavor or two or FLV Tequila Agave added to it. TASK 39
And Peyote, which looks weird. But it might be amazing weird. TASK 40
Banana
Very typical FA Flavor. Realistic, sightly underripe banana, all thin, dry top notes with essentially no creamy base at all. 1 to 2%, beyond that, overly dry to the point of added throat hit,, also candyish, but not in a good way like LA or TFA Banana Cream, because that underipeness also ramps up and just gets weird. Also, at 3%, it tastes almost like there’s a bit of clove in here. Sounds like a negative review, but I actually used to love 1.25ish % of this on top of TFA Banana Cream because it creates a more realistic banana. The problem is that we have quite a few better bananas now. I think I’ll be ok without this one TRASH 17
Banana Candy
When WF came out with a banana candy, I really appreciated the embracing of the candy, since so many other bananas taste like banana runts or banana laffy taffy but don’t just come right out and admit it. But then Chef’s Super Concentrates (RIP) comes out with one that’s super potent and spot-on banana runts but the “at least they’re honest about it” novelty starts to wear off. Then FA’s comes out and by now, I’m not interested in candy banana. But there’s nothing wrong with this one. It tastes very much like those banana puffy candies, but with a little less punch of flavor than those have. If you’re really into those foamy banana candies you might want to pick this one up, but I don’t feel a need for it personally. TRASH 18
New Flavor Count: 2,496
2023.03.24 22:47 xtremexavier15 TSA 23
Chapter 23: 2008: A Shawn Odyssey
Boys: Shawn
Girls: Courtney, Heather, Shawn
Episode 23: 2008: A Shawn Odyssey
"Last time on Total Drama Action," Chris said over a shot of the film lot. "In a world they didn't create," the four teens were shown waking up in the forest, "two honorable warriors," Shawn and Lindsay's fight was shown, "and two foes battled it out for Kung-fu supremacy," Courtney and Heather were shown fiddling with their joysticks.
"No mountain was too high," Heather and Shawn were shown climbing. "No aquatic creature too viscous," Courtney was shown fighting a jellyfish.
"In the end, Shawn won the reward," the theorist was shown fighting the Sasquatch, "but lost his alliance with Courtney," he and Courtney were shown ending their partnership.
"But it's gonna take more than puny alliances to survive this week," Chris told the camera as it flashed to his close-up, "on Total! Drama! Action!"
XXXXX
The episode opened on a shot of the full moon. A rat walked on-screen in front of the camera as a grandiose tune started to play. The rat sniffed the air then scurried along what was revealed to be the top of a large speaker. The music reached its climax, and the speaker shook so much the rat fell off behind it.
The shot pulled out to show the cast trailers, both flanked by speakers as tall as they were. Further to the left was a tall blueish-green monolith-like set piece. The lights inside the trailers flicked on and the complaints of the castmates echoed out of them. The doors opened, showing the girls filing out; Courtney, then a hunched over Heather, then Lindsay at the end, all three in their pajamas. The camera cut over to the guys' trailer as Shawn exited similarly. The survivalist paused briefly to yawn and stretch his arms, and the camera moved back to the girls.
"What is wrong with those mattresses?" Lindsay asked. "It's like they were full of rocks."
Confessional: Shawn
"I slept on Noah’s bed, so I don’t have the same back problems that the girls do," Shawn said. "The layers on it are super soft."
Confessional Ends
The remaining four met up as a group. Heather looked over to see the lone male scratching his butt and armpit at the same time.
"Can you believe this guy?" Heather commented.
"What a neanderthal," Courtney said.
They looked over at Lindsay, who noticed the monolith off to the side, and pointed at it with a few animalistic grunts.
The shot cut to the top of it, the moon still visible behind it. The camera panned down to its base where Chef sat in a leopard-print loincloth banging on an upside-down soup pot with a couple bones as though it were a drum. Both the castmates and Chris, also wearing a leopard-print loincloth and with his hair unkempt, approached the monolith at the same time.
"Good morning, cast!" Chris greeted as Chef stopped playing. "Or should I say, good middle of the night? Hope you're all well-rested and ready to boldly go where very few men and even fewer ladies have gone before!"
"Wait," Shawn spoke up. "Didn't we already do the caveman movie?"
"We did, Shawn," Chris answered, "but we had to reuse the costumes since my astronomical salary accounts for oh, roughly ninety-seven percent of the show's budget."
"Chris," Heather said, "it is the middle of the night. Can't we do the challenge in the morning?"
"No can do Heather," Chris replied. "While today's movie genre may start at the dawn of time, it quickly moves up, up, and away!" The camera panned up to the night sky as a shooting star flew in front of the moon.
"So we're doing space movies today?" Lindsay asked as if she already knew the answer.
"What was your first clue, Linds-iot?" Heather told her.
Confessional: Lindsay
"I've been called a lot of things, such as moron, dimwit, idiot, and much more," Lindsay said. "I've been trying to prove myself, and no way am I letting Heather drag me down."
Confessional Ends
"Awesome!" Shawn cheered. "I love sci-fi movies."
"Don't you get enough science fiction from those movies you binge watch?" Courtney half-insulted, half-asked the boy.
"Don't you get enough pleasure from looking down and nagging on us?" Shawn retorted.
"Listen up, space cases," Chris interrupted. "You'll soon be facing some out-of-this-world challenges, but first..." He quickly ducked away, and the camera cut to him pushing away the monolith to reveal four small boxes set on a table behind it. "I have a very special surprise for you," he told the cast. "Each of you has received one special item sent to you from the outside world. Which by now," he picked up one of the packages and tossed it to Lindsay, who caught it before Heather was tossed her own gift, "must feel like a distant planet."
He tossed another one like a football and it was caught by Courtney, with Shawn also shown to have received his gift.
Shawn opened his, and looked at a silver tinfoil hat shaped like his beanie with excitement. "My tinfoil hat!" he cheered. "Nice!"
"You have a tinfoil hat?" Lindsay asked.
"Yup," Shawn answered. "It keeps the aliens from reading my brains and what I think."
Confessional: Shawn
"I used to wear this thing all the time," Shawn told the audience. "Unfortunately, my dad confiscated it since it made me look weird and unusual to others. Afterwards, I decided to get the beanie I’m wearing right now."
Confessional Ends
The shot cut to Lindsay as she opened hers and smiled. "My pom poms!" she exclaimed. "My cheer team didn't forget about them!"
The camera cut to Courtney and Heather, both having opened their boxes. The former took out a picture frame and let out a choked sob.
"What's wrong?" Heather asked. "Did you get a photo of a bad hair day?"
"Just… I need a minute," Courtney claimed.
Confessional: Courtney
Courtney had her picture with her. "When I was head of the school debating team, my partner walked out on me during the biggest debate of the year because she felt I wasn't being a "team player". I went on to win it without her! Take that, Brittany Reed!" She revealed her picture, which was her in the middle of a speech. "This photo is a reminder. If you want something done right, you do it yourself!"
Confessional Ends
Heather finally managed to open her box and pulled out a green jawbreaker. "A jawbreaker? How is this a prize?" She asked in frustration.
"I don't know, but sweet things usually go to sweet people," Courtney insulted.
"Damien must have delivered this to me!" Heather growled.
"Who the heck is Damien?" Courtney questioned.
"He's my little brother," Heather answered. "That twerp likes to pull pranks on me every chance he gets. He's almost like Sadie."
"What else were you expecting?" Courtney wondered.
"He could've given me my trophy for the annual ballet contest I participated in when I was eight," Heather grumbled.
Confessional: Heather
"I'm still going to keep this jawbreaker," Heather said as she held it. "Damien may have sent it as a joke, but I won't let him have the last laugh."
Confessional Ends
"Alright gang," Chris addressed the cast, "time to blast off to the great unknown. Everyone knows a good outer space movie has three things in common. One, the zero gravity is always a trip. Two, the G-forces are killer! And three, everything is recycled in space. Including number one, and number two."
"Gross," Courtney winced.
"Eww," Heather said in disgust.
"Which brings us to our first challenge," Chris continued. "I'll meet you at the thrill ride set in ten minutes."
The cast looked at each other in confusion. "Did he say thrill ride?" Lindsay asked.
\
The scene briefly flashed to the full moon behind the water tower for a moment before flashing away again to a close-up of the host, back in his normal clothes.
"The way to achieve zero gravity," Chris explained to the contestants, all of whom have also gotten dressed, "is to fly a jet on a parabolic course. With large vertical climbs, and even larger vertical drops." The camera panned across the faces of the cast, all of which looked freaked. "But with the price of jet fuel today," the scene flashed to a makeshift space shuttle tied to what looked like a roller coaster cart at a boarding platform, "we're gonna simulate the effect on this makeshift space shuttle!"
The shot flashed away again, the camera now panning up a spaceship-themed roller coaster set among several other theme park attractions. "Which will hit the optimum speed needed to keep you all in a perpetual state of zero gravity," the host explained before the shot cut back to him and the cast.
"Are we going to get killed?" Lindsay asked. "I won't go in if it will."
"Is that thing even up to code?" Courtney wondered.
"Your first outer space challenge will be to spend the rest of the night on the shuttle sleeping in zero gravity conditions," Chris told the cast.
"That doesn't sound so difficult," Shawn said with a pleased expression.
\
The footage flashed ahead to a close-up of an intercom speaker as the host's voice came in over it. "Y'all might wanna hold on to something bolted down," Chris told the cast as the camera pulled back to show them holding pillows in their hands, "'cause we're almost ready to launch!"
"Yes!" Lindsay cheered.
"He said launch," Heather told her, "not lunch."
"I know," Lindsay explained. "I just can't wait to be flying inside a spaceship."
The shot cut back to the intercom as an engine was heard starting up over it. "In five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The camera cut outside as the space shuttle strapped to the roller coaster cart shuddered to life. "Blast off!" At Chris' ecstatic signal, the shuttle's engines flared on and the contraption took off along the track. It quickly reached the main peak as the castmates screamed in terror, and the scene cut back inside.
"If I'm gonna die, at least make my death look cool!" Shawn yelled as he clenched his eyes shut. The camera began to pull back from his close-up as he slowly opened his eyes, looked around, and smiled. He and the other three were now floating inside the shuttle's cabin. "How about that? We're floating in mid-air!"
"Alright astronauts," Chris told them, the camera cutting from a close-up of the intercom to the host lounging in his chair at the monitor room watching the cast on the monitors, "it's gonna be a long night. Better get some sleep!" He pressed a button on the keyboard and added "If you can!" The monitor screens switched from Heather and Shawn to Courtney and Lindsay, and the host accepted a cup of coffee from Chef with a laugh.
\
"Can I borrow any of your pillows?" Courtney asked as she floated around. "I lost mine."
"That's your own fault then," Shawn relaxed on his pillow. "You lose it, you deal with it."
"Fine," Courtney looked away from his former ally. "We are floating in mid-air, so I won't complain… much."
Confessional: Lindsay
"Courtney and Shawn are at each other's throats just like me and Amy," Lindsay said. "There's only one person who could've made them split, which is obviously Heather."
Confessional Ends
The scene returned to a shot of a jawbreaker floating in the air, then panned out to show that Heather was chasing after it. "If that jawbreaker wasn't so big, I would be able to stash it into my pocket!" She said as she floated past Lindsay who was looking at her pom poms.
"At least what you got is tasty," Lindsay said. "I can't eat or lick my pom poms."
"Good thing you're smart enough to know what's edible," Heather snootily responded.
"If they were taffy, I'd likely eat them," Lindsay responded.
Confessional: Heather
Heather was focused on filing her nails. "I assume I'm the favorite to win. I mean, look who's left. A control freak, a smelly nut, and a dumb blonde. And the only thing Lindsay has going for her is that she hasn't made any enemies. Whoop-de-doo! We're not here to make friends. We're here to win." As she talked, she snapped her nail filer in half. "And that is exactly what I plan on doing."
Confessional Ends
The scene cut forward to the castmates as they slept peacefully with their pillows. This only lasted for a couple seconds before an alarm started to sound off loudly, and the lights in the cabin flashed red as the four teens woke up. "This is Houston," Chris said over the loudspeaker, "and you have a problem. You've been hit by an asteroid, and your guidance system is toast!"
"What do we do?!" Lindsay asked in a panic.
"I've watched Race to Save Space 3 before I came to this show," Shawn said. "We have to override the navigation controls."
"Quick!" Heather cried. "Someone grab the joystick thingy!"
Courtney sprung off a nearby wall and darted towards the shuttle's main computer. She grabbed onto a central joystick as she floated by, then planted her feet on the desk and pulled. The camera zoomed in on it and after a few moments of effort the stick moved to the side, shutting off the alarms and returning the lights to normal.
"Way to go Courtney!" Lindsay cheered.
"Nice job," Shawn said.
The camera zoomed in on Heather's jawbreaker as it drifted closer to a small window. It hit the window, cracking it slightly. The camera pulled back again to show it pushing back forward, but the force of its push-off caused the glass to shatter soon after it floated away. The air immediately began to be sucked out of the cabin, and the lights flashed red once more as Heather looked at the broken window with a shocked look.
Confessional: Heather
"At the very least, I can say that I'm not to blame for the window breaking," Heather claimed.
Confessional Ends
Heather, Courtney, Lindsay, and Shawn were shown floating in front of the shuttle controls. "Uh-oh!'" Chris announced jovially over the intercom. "Looks like you have a hole in your fuselage!" He laughed, and the camera panned across a closer shot of the four teens' faces. "You have exactly t-minus-ten minutes to plug the hole, or you'll run out of precious oxygen."
"We have to plug the hole!" Heather yelled.
"We just need something big and form-fitting!" Courtney replied.
They all turned to Lindsay. "Why are you looking at me?"
"We can use your pom poms to fill the hole," Heather said. "It's either that, or death."
Lindsay gave them a brief look and sighed. "They are valuable, but I can get new ones after the show ends."
The scene flashed back outside, the sun already up and the shuttle-coaster still flying along its track. The camera cut to the boarding platform as it finally came to a stop, and Chris was standing in wait as the shuttle door burst open with a puff of steam. One by one, the castmates fell out of it. Lindsay was first, then Courtney, then Shawn; all landed on top of one another in a heap. Heather was the last, and was the only one who maintained her balance.
"Will somebody help me down, or will I have to do it myself?" Heather huffed.
"Go with the second option," Lindsay replied. "There's a ladder in front of you."
Heather rolled her eyes, but climbed down the ladder.
The camera cut to Chef standing outside of the broken window, Lindsay's pom poms sticking out of it. "That was smart, sealing the breach with those pom poms," he said while pulling them out.
"It was my idea," Courtney claimed. "No sweat to it."
"You just love to pat yourself on the back," Shawn rolled his eyes.
Confessional: Shawn
"I really hope that I can get Courtney and Heather out," Shawn confessed. "Lindsay's the only one I'd like to face in the finale."
Confessional Ends
"Nice going Lindsay," Chris told her. "It was your pom poms that saved the group."
"Yes!" Lindsay jumped in Victory with her pom poms on."
"What?" Heather gaped. "I was the one who suggested we fill that hole!"
"Lindsay was the one who actually plugged in the hole," Chris said. "As a reward, she'll get to decide the order of who goes first to last at the next challenge!"
"I got it," Lindsay exclaimed. "The order is me, Courtney, Shawn, and Heather."
Confessional: Lindsay
"I don't know what the next part of the challenge is," Lindsay confessed, "but making sure Heather participates last was just too good to pass up."
Confessional Ends
\
(Commercial break)
\
The footage cut forward to a shot of the sun over a few of the film lot's fake buildings near one of the studios. The wind was shown blowing a few pieces of paper along the road between the studios, then the shot cut to and upward pan of the fake hill. The camera cut back to the front of a studio as its garage-like door began to open.
A few feet were briefly shown behind the door before the camera moved inside, showing the silhouettes of the four castmates against the light flooding in from outside. The feet were shown again in an angled profile as they began to walk outside, and the shot moved up to show the four staring forward. Lindsay was first, then Shawn, then Courtney, then Heather.
The camera switched to a face-on shot, panning right across the castmates and stopping at Lindsay. A record scratch was heard as Chris ran across the shot with a scowl on his face, the teens following him with their eyes.
"Enough messing around," Chris said before the scene changed to the usual side-view as he addressed the contestants. "Alright gang, if you thought spending the night in zero G's was a stomach-churning experience, then you're gonna love this next challenge! Who can last the longest on the G-force Trainer?" The castmates were shown watching cautiously. "Or as I like to call it," Chris said before the shot quick-panned further to the right, "The Vomit Comet!" The machine he was referring to looked like a bulbous, oversized, and legless space suit attached by a hefty arm to a smaller wheeled cart.
"If you thought you were under pressure before," the host said giddily as the camera panned up a close-up of the suit, "wait 'til you feel the effects of four times Earth's gravitational force!"
"We just ate chili for lunch," Heather said. "This won't be good."
"That was a bad call," Lindsay agreed.
The shot quick-panned over to Chef Hatchet who was standing by a bubbling pot on a small table. "Plenty more where that came from," he told the camera while tapping the side of the pot with a ladle. The camera zoomed in for a close-up, showing a foul-looking vomit-green stew filled with a variety of bones, old socks, and octopus tentacles.
The focus moved back to Chris. "Remember crew, Lindsay's already picked the order, so she's up first."
"Wonderful," Lindsay said with a smile as she approached the machine. "I didn't know we were gonna barf inside this thing, but now that I know the order and I'm going first, I don't have to worry about getting covered in other people's barf."
Courtney quickly grew uncomfortable. "Uh, what's the order she picked for us."
Chris donned a villainous sneer. "You're not going to like this. After Lindsay goes Courtney, Shawn, and last but not least, Heather."
"WHAT!!??" Heather screeched. "Can I trade places with someone?"
"Too late," Chris said. "The order is set."
Heather shot daggers at Lindsay, who smiled innocently and shrugged in response.
Confessional: Lindsay
Lindsay was shown laughing to herself for a couple of seconds. "It's going to take a long time for her to wash the puke off!" She resumed her laughter.
Confessional: Heather
"When this is over, I'm going to kill Lindsay…" Heather shot the camera a deadly glare, "...right after I take a long shower!"
Confessionals End
The scene skipped to Lindsay as she was about to climb the G-force training suit. She looked over and said "This will almost be like the Hurlinator back at the carnival."
"But unlike that heap of junk, you’ll actually hurl inside that suit if you’re unlucky," Chris taunted.
Lindsay dropped into the suit and closed the helmet shut. "Have a nice spin, Lindsay!" Chris said with a wave before pressing the buttons on his stopwatch and remote control simultaneously.
The machine immediately started to move, and Lindsay began cheering out of fun and enjoyment. A bird's-eye view showed the arms rotating rapidly about the wheeled cart it was attached to. The camera cut to a close-up of the viewing window on the helmet, where the blonde's face could clearly be seen. Her happy expression changed to struggling to contain her vomit. She forced it down and exclaimed "Let me out!"
Chris obliged by pressing both buttons again, and the machine slowed to a stop. The helmet swung open and Lindsay pulled herself out. She was frazzled, but she didn’t throw up on herself.
"15.4 seconds!" Chris read off from his stopwatch with a grin. "Pretty impressive for a first run, and despite my theory, you did not hurl!"
"I did not want to smell bad," Lindsay groaned and fell over.
Confessional: Lindsay
"So I have this friend who ate twenty corn dogs as a dare," Lindsay confessed. "When we were inside the car, she started to throw up, and some of it got on us. I'm never eating a corn dog again."
Confessional Ends
"Alright Courtney, you're next," Chris told the control freak who approached him and the training suit. "Lindsay managed to keep her lunch down, so at least you'll have a dry run."
\
The scene flashed forward to Courtney in the suit, already looking nervous. "Let's get this over with," she said before the helmet swung down over her head.
Chris smiled and pressed the button on the remote control, and the camera switched over to the bird's-eye-view of the machine. The rotating arm rapidly built up speed, and unlike Lindsay before her, Courtney immediately screamed in terror. Another viewpoint change showed the panicking type-a through the helmet's viewing window, then back to the bird's-eye-view. The sound of vomiting was heard and the shot cut back to the host.
"27 seconds on the dot!" Chris announced.
"Am I in the lead?" a messy Courtney wondered after climbing out the suit.
"No," Chris answered. "I'm deducting ten seconds for puking."
"That was totally disgusting!" Courtney muttered. "I hope you can handle it, Shawn."
"I've dived through garbage and covered myself in fish guts once," Shawn shrugged her off. "This is nothing I can handle."
"I don't want to say it, but your determination is admirable," Courtney said.
"It's down to you two," Chris told Shawn and Heather. "Shawn, your slightly soiled chariot awaits."
\
"Ready or not, here I come," Shawn got in the suit.
"He's got high confidence," Chris told the camera. "Confidence that's going to disappear." The helmet closed, the buttons were pressed, and the machine began to spin.
The camera cut to the window of the helmet, showing Shawn screaming in panic. Sooner or later, ominous rumbling came from inside the suit and his cheeks bulged.
The scene cut back to Chris just as the sound of puke was heard, and the host stopped both watch and machine. "Whether Shawn will shower or not is up to him," Chris commented as the conspiracy nut exited the suit covered with vomit. "But he will definitely smell like his own lunch now. After the ten second deduction, he comes in at a grand total of 20 seconds."
"Thanks for choosing me to go last, Lindsay," Heather spat at her. "Two people threw up, and I have to be surrounded by their puke."
"Heather, you're the last one," Chris slyly said. "Unless you want to lose out on winning invincibility, I say you get inside the suit now."
Heather looked at the others and narrowed her eyes. "I'm not forfeiting."
Confessional: Heather
"The things I do to keep myself in the game," Heather rolled her eyes.
Confessional Ends
"This is so gross," Heather said in disgust as she got in the vomit-covered suit. "Start it already!" Heather yelled before slamming the helmet shut.
Chris pressed his two buttons. As with the others the camera switched first to a bird's-eye view of the machine as it began to move, then to a close-up of Heather's face through the helmet. Though she was wincing from the bits of vomit dripping down her face, she kept her determination still and wasn't about to quit.
The shot cut outside to the host and the other three castmates as they watched. Chris was focused on the stopwatch in his hands, Shawn was uninterested, Lindsay was nervous, and Courtney was scared.
"She's going longer than I thought she would," Chris said.
"Just barf already!" Courtney shouted.
The sound of vomiting was heard. The camera zoomed in on Chris again as a smile formed and he clicked his buttons, and the machine came to a stop. "That's time!" he called.
"Did I win?" Heather asked after swinging open the helmet and flopping over the side, vomit all over her head, chest, and mouth. "I know that was more than 27 seconds."
"35 and a half seconds! A new Vomit Comet record!" Chris told her.
"I know what this means," Heather grinned in victory.
"Since she lasted the longest inside that machine, I declare Heather the winner of today's challenge!" Chris announced.
"In your face, everyone!" Heather taunted the other three contestants.
"Can you mock us from far away?" Lindsay held her nose.
"We would like to be away from you," Courtney said.
"Never thought I'd say this, but I agree," Shawn stepped back. "You stink really bad, and I have horrible hygiene."
"That's just the smell of victory," Heather said.
A sudden whistle caught the group's attention, and they looked over to see Chef standing on a stepladder calmly slicing a carrot over the open suit. "Hope y'all like gumbo!" he told them before resuming his work.
The camera panned across the castmates and host as all wretched in sheerest disgust.
\
The scene flashed to Lindsay in the girls’ trailer alone. She had a pencil and paper and was seen writing on the paper but what it said was unknown.
"This should be about it," Lindsay said once she was finished.
She folded the paper hamburger style and left her trailer.
Confessional: Lindsay
"You're probably wondering what I'm doing," Lindsay said. "Courtney and Shawn can't stay mad at each other forever. They are a great duo, even if they're total opposites. This may cost me my spot in the game, but if it means repairing a friendship, I'll take that risk because friendship is magic and more important than money."
Confessional Ends
It was soon night time, and after focusing on the moon, the camera panned down to reveal that Shawn was standing near the tree he slept in.
"Lindsay said to meet here," Shawn said. "I don't know why, but I ain't gonna question her."
Soon Lindsay and Courtney both walked to the scene together and Lindsay smiled. "Good to have you both here."
Shawn was stunned to see Courtney. "Why is she here?"
"Why is he here?" Courtney asked in a startled tone.
"I brought you both here so you two could talk," Lindsay smiled brightly.
"I don't want to talk to a deadbeat survivor who can't act normal for more than a minute!" Courtney complained.
"I refuse to be with an uptight politician that thinks only about herself!" Shawn shot back.
"At least I have public decency!" Courtney shouted.
"At least I don't complain when things don't go my way!" Shawn yelled.
"SHUT UP!" Lindsay cried out furiously, earning her shocked looks from both Shawn and Courtney. "You two are clearly crushed and hurt over something really upsetting because if you were not, you wouldn’t be fighting! I’ve seen how close you both are, and I know that a small argument couldn’t be the reason you broke up." Courtney and Shawn's anger diminished as she spoke. "Something big happened but if I were to guess, Heather had something to do with it. Now please just tell each other what happened without screaming at each other!"
Shawn took a few deep breaths before speaking. "Last challenge, Heather told me about Courtney using me in order to make it to the finale."
"Why did you listen to her?" Courtney asked.
"She had a recording of you talking about it with your own voice," Shawn said.
"What exactly did the recording say?" Courtney demanded.
"Don't act so confused," Shawn said. "You said that working with me and Noah was practically torture for you and that you’ll be glad to ditch me once you claim the million!" he brought up angrily.
"If that's what you heard, then you're way wrong," Courtney glared. "I have a vivid memory, and I don't recall saying those things."
"But I heard your voice in the recording," Shawn raised an eyebrow, starting to rethink what he heard.
"I'm starting to think that someone impersonated Courtney's voice just to make her look bad," Lindsay chimed in.
"Shawn's a boy, and no way can you match my octaves, so that means Heather set me up!" Courtney grit her teeth.
Shawn then widened his eyes before groaning. "Your voices are pretty similar."
"See I told you. Heather caused a rift between you guys just like she did to me and Amy," Lindsay said.
"And I fell for her lie," Shawn admitted. "How stupid could I have been?"
Courtney’s gaze softened a bit before saying, "Well… you’re not the only one who’s fallen for it before."
"We've let her come this far," Lindsay continued. "And now that she has invincibility, we can't kick her out today. I just want you two to make up and vote together again."
Shawn and Courtney both turned to Lindsay and Shawn piped up, "But that means you’ll be on the chopping block."
"Friendship is worth more than a briefcase filled with dollars," Lindsay said. "Courtney, you can be really bossy. And Shawn, you can be really messy. But you've come this far. Don't break up your partnership just because of a mean girl."
Shawn looked at Courtney. "I shouldn't have let myself be tricked like that."
"I don't blame you," Courtney said. "I have been acting crazy the last few days. I just wanted to win."
"If I’ll be honest, I missed working with you. It’s not as fun working alone as it used to be once I started putting my faith in others," Shawn admitted.
"You want to patch up our alliance again?" Courtney held out her hand.
"Absolutely," Shawn shook her hand. "I won't let anything break us up again."
Lindsay watched the scene with happiness. "It's nice to see you two comfortable around each other. Jo and Brick are really lucky to be dating you two, if you're actually dating."
Confessional: Courtney
"That was really cool of Lindsay to patch up my friendship with Shawn," Courtney admitted. "I've been taking her for granted up until this point, and I won't think ill of her again."
Confessional Ends
[A grand theme played as the camera zoomed in on the amphitheatre. Several film strips of the host's highlights from the previous season flew past the screen, then the camera panned out from a solid gold screen to show a Gilded Chris.]
\
The camera flashed into a shot of the night sky. "And four," Chris said as the camera panned down to the amphitheater, "shall soon become three, as we bid farewell to another cast member. Everyone, cast your votes."
The shot cut to the cast members in the bleachers. Courtney and Shawn were on the top row and Heather and Lindsay on the bottom.
Courtney sighed before casting her vote.
Lindsay thought for a second before she made her vote.
Shawn shrugged and casted his vote.
Heather smirked deviously and then made her vote.
The scene flashed to a close-up of the three gilded statuettes on a tray held by Chef, who was wearing his formal pink gown once again.
"And the Gilded Chris goes to...," Chris began to read from his envelope, "Heather and Shawn," the two were shown catching their awards. Courtney and Lindsay were shown in a split screen and they both braced themselves.
"And the last statue goes to…" Chris said slowly as the music reached its peak, "No one yet!"
"What's going on?" Lindsay wondered.
"It seems we have a situation similar to episode fifteen," Chris told them. "Courtney and Lindsay got the most votes at two per contestant."
"Not again!" Courtney moaned.
"Is there going to be a tiebreaker?" Lindsay asked.
"You bet your boots there is," Chris said and turned to Chef. “Got any gumbo left?”
“Two pots full of it!” Chef cackled. “What do you want with it?”
“In order to stay in the game, Lindsay and Courtney have to eat a pot filled with Chef’s very own gumbo!” Chris declared to them.
“You do know that Chef made it with our own vomit!” Lindsay proclaimed.
“I know. That’s what makes it fun. For me!” Chris laughed.
“If I have to do this, then bring out the barf-bo,” Courtney shivered.
\
The scene switched to Courtney and Lindsay on the stage of the amphitheater. They were sitting on chairs while holding pots of gumbo and large spoons.
“Now remember,” Chris walked over to the two. “If you don’t finish your pot, you’re not going into the final two. Got it?”
“I did come this far,” Lindsay said.
“I’ll accept the challenge. I won’t give up when I’m this close to the finale,” Courtney said.
Heather and Shawn were watching from far away. “I’m rooting for you, Courtney!” the latter cheered.
“Whoever loses or wins, I don’t care,” Heather said.
"And… go!" Chris started the tiebreaker.
As soon as he said those words, Courtney and Lindsay began putting gumbo into their mouths. Courtney was rapidly scooping the meal while Lindsay was sipping on it. Both girls were repulsed, but they still wanted to be in the game.
Lindsay saw that Courtney was halfway done with her pot, so she started to follow her path and scoop up the gumbo in hopes of catching up to her.
Just when it seemed like Courtney was about to finish, her stomach started to grumble from what she'd eaten. She tried to fight it, but eventually, she puked inside of her pot.
Seeing that she had an opportunity to win, Lindsay opened her mouth widely and poured the gumbo in. Afterwards, she placed her pot down.
"I'm finished!" she declared, only to feel nauseous and barf into her pot.
"Man, you girls are sick!" Chris teased them. "Regardless, Lindsay's still in the game, and Courtney just went from 22nd to 4th place in two seasons!"
"Drats!" Shawn complained.
Both girls have finished throwing up. "Looks like you have to go," Lindsay told Courtney.
"I know," Courtney moped. "I almost got to the million dollars, and I've never been in 4th place before."
"At least you did much better than before, and you're not wearing a chicken hat this time," Shawn said.
Courtney smiled in response. "I wanted to win the season, but I did learn to value friendship and cooperation, and like Lindsay said, those are more worthy than cash."
"I'm just glad you're not being mean to me for once," Lindsay said.
"We'll take down Heather and be the final two," Shawn said. "We promised Noah, and we're also promising you as well."
"Not sorry to interrupt," Chris got between them, "but Courtney should be getting going right about now."
"Shove it, McLean!" Courtney shoved Chris to the floor with one hand. "I'm saying goodbye to my friends, but I will enter the Lame-osine soon."
\
The footage skipped ahead to Courtney standing near the limo. She saw Lindsay and Shawn waving goodbye to her. After returning the gesture, she entered the limo with a smile on her face. The limo's tires revved up and sped off into the night, leaving behind two trails of fire.
Just as Shawn and Lindsay were about to go to their trailer, they were stopped by a snobby voice.
"Love to stick around, but it's been a long day and I'm gonna hit the showers," Heather bragged and got off the stage. "Great work, everybody."
While Lindsay rolled her eyes and left, Shawn stayed back, but had a face filled with anger and vengeance.
\
The scene cut to a shot of the washroom. Inside, Heather was bathing herself and humming a tune.
Unbeknownst to her, Shawn snuck to the side of the bathroom. He had a barrel filled with gumbo with him. After placing it down, he hooked the shower pipe to the barrel, wrapped it with tape, and turned the wheel to let the gumbo flow through.
Heather was heard screaming once the gumbo rained on her. "What the... Ew! Ugh, oh! Is this sewage?! Stop it! Stop! Oh! No!"
Seeing that his job was done, Shawn laughed to himself and turned in for the night as Heather continued to scream in anguish.
Chris popped up into the camera's view. "And you'll see how our remaining contestants suffer next time on Total Drama Action!"
(Roll the Credits)
\
(Bonus Clip)
"I want Shawn to win Season 2, but I won't mind if Lindsay does the job for him," Courtney said inside the limo. "She's pretty capable of handling herself, and I did hear about her plan to become the Queen of France, which I kinda want to see come to fruition." The C.I.T. laughed for a few seconds. "I know my parents want me to succeed and thrive for victory, but I'm certain that they'll see how far I've gotten in the competition and be proud of it. That's not to say I won't quit trying. I just have to never give up."
16th/15th: Harold
16th/15th: Dawn
14th: Lightning
13th: Sky
12th: Jo
11th: Beth
10th: Brick
9th: Duncan
8th: Mike
7th: Amy
6th: Rodney
5th: Noah
4th: Courtney
submitted by xtremexavier15 to u/xtremexavier15 [link] [comments]
Boys: Shawn
Girls: Courtney, Heather, Shawn
Episode 23: 2008: A Shawn Odyssey
"Last time on Total Drama Action," Chris said over a shot of the film lot. "In a world they didn't create," the four teens were shown waking up in the forest, "two honorable warriors," Shawn and Lindsay's fight was shown, "and two foes battled it out for Kung-fu supremacy," Courtney and Heather were shown fiddling with their joysticks.
"No mountain was too high," Heather and Shawn were shown climbing. "No aquatic creature too viscous," Courtney was shown fighting a jellyfish.
"In the end, Shawn won the reward," the theorist was shown fighting the Sasquatch, "but lost his alliance with Courtney," he and Courtney were shown ending their partnership.
"But it's gonna take more than puny alliances to survive this week," Chris told the camera as it flashed to his close-up, "on Total! Drama! Action!"
XXXXX
The episode opened on a shot of the full moon. A rat walked on-screen in front of the camera as a grandiose tune started to play. The rat sniffed the air then scurried along what was revealed to be the top of a large speaker. The music reached its climax, and the speaker shook so much the rat fell off behind it.
The shot pulled out to show the cast trailers, both flanked by speakers as tall as they were. Further to the left was a tall blueish-green monolith-like set piece. The lights inside the trailers flicked on and the complaints of the castmates echoed out of them. The doors opened, showing the girls filing out; Courtney, then a hunched over Heather, then Lindsay at the end, all three in their pajamas. The camera cut over to the guys' trailer as Shawn exited similarly. The survivalist paused briefly to yawn and stretch his arms, and the camera moved back to the girls.
"What is wrong with those mattresses?" Lindsay asked. "It's like they were full of rocks."
Confessional: Shawn
"I slept on Noah’s bed, so I don’t have the same back problems that the girls do," Shawn said. "The layers on it are super soft."
Confessional Ends
The remaining four met up as a group. Heather looked over to see the lone male scratching his butt and armpit at the same time.
"Can you believe this guy?" Heather commented.
"What a neanderthal," Courtney said.
They looked over at Lindsay, who noticed the monolith off to the side, and pointed at it with a few animalistic grunts.
The shot cut to the top of it, the moon still visible behind it. The camera panned down to its base where Chef sat in a leopard-print loincloth banging on an upside-down soup pot with a couple bones as though it were a drum. Both the castmates and Chris, also wearing a leopard-print loincloth and with his hair unkempt, approached the monolith at the same time.
"Good morning, cast!" Chris greeted as Chef stopped playing. "Or should I say, good middle of the night? Hope you're all well-rested and ready to boldly go where very few men and even fewer ladies have gone before!"
"Wait," Shawn spoke up. "Didn't we already do the caveman movie?"
"We did, Shawn," Chris answered, "but we had to reuse the costumes since my astronomical salary accounts for oh, roughly ninety-seven percent of the show's budget."
"Chris," Heather said, "it is the middle of the night. Can't we do the challenge in the morning?"
"No can do Heather," Chris replied. "While today's movie genre may start at the dawn of time, it quickly moves up, up, and away!" The camera panned up to the night sky as a shooting star flew in front of the moon.
"So we're doing space movies today?" Lindsay asked as if she already knew the answer.
"What was your first clue, Linds-iot?" Heather told her.
Confessional: Lindsay
"I've been called a lot of things, such as moron, dimwit, idiot, and much more," Lindsay said. "I've been trying to prove myself, and no way am I letting Heather drag me down."
Confessional Ends
"Awesome!" Shawn cheered. "I love sci-fi movies."
"Don't you get enough science fiction from those movies you binge watch?" Courtney half-insulted, half-asked the boy.
"Don't you get enough pleasure from looking down and nagging on us?" Shawn retorted.
"Listen up, space cases," Chris interrupted. "You'll soon be facing some out-of-this-world challenges, but first..." He quickly ducked away, and the camera cut to him pushing away the monolith to reveal four small boxes set on a table behind it. "I have a very special surprise for you," he told the cast. "Each of you has received one special item sent to you from the outside world. Which by now," he picked up one of the packages and tossed it to Lindsay, who caught it before Heather was tossed her own gift, "must feel like a distant planet."
He tossed another one like a football and it was caught by Courtney, with Shawn also shown to have received his gift.
Shawn opened his, and looked at a silver tinfoil hat shaped like his beanie with excitement. "My tinfoil hat!" he cheered. "Nice!"
"You have a tinfoil hat?" Lindsay asked.
"Yup," Shawn answered. "It keeps the aliens from reading my brains and what I think."
Confessional: Shawn
"I used to wear this thing all the time," Shawn told the audience. "Unfortunately, my dad confiscated it since it made me look weird and unusual to others. Afterwards, I decided to get the beanie I’m wearing right now."
Confessional Ends
The shot cut to Lindsay as she opened hers and smiled. "My pom poms!" she exclaimed. "My cheer team didn't forget about them!"
The camera cut to Courtney and Heather, both having opened their boxes. The former took out a picture frame and let out a choked sob.
"What's wrong?" Heather asked. "Did you get a photo of a bad hair day?"
"Just… I need a minute," Courtney claimed.
Confessional: Courtney
Courtney had her picture with her. "When I was head of the school debating team, my partner walked out on me during the biggest debate of the year because she felt I wasn't being a "team player". I went on to win it without her! Take that, Brittany Reed!" She revealed her picture, which was her in the middle of a speech. "This photo is a reminder. If you want something done right, you do it yourself!"
Confessional Ends
Heather finally managed to open her box and pulled out a green jawbreaker. "A jawbreaker? How is this a prize?" She asked in frustration.
"I don't know, but sweet things usually go to sweet people," Courtney insulted.
"Damien must have delivered this to me!" Heather growled.
"Who the heck is Damien?" Courtney questioned.
"He's my little brother," Heather answered. "That twerp likes to pull pranks on me every chance he gets. He's almost like Sadie."
"What else were you expecting?" Courtney wondered.
"He could've given me my trophy for the annual ballet contest I participated in when I was eight," Heather grumbled.
Confessional: Heather
"I'm still going to keep this jawbreaker," Heather said as she held it. "Damien may have sent it as a joke, but I won't let him have the last laugh."
Confessional Ends
"Alright gang," Chris addressed the cast, "time to blast off to the great unknown. Everyone knows a good outer space movie has three things in common. One, the zero gravity is always a trip. Two, the G-forces are killer! And three, everything is recycled in space. Including number one, and number two."
"Gross," Courtney winced.
"Eww," Heather said in disgust.
"Which brings us to our first challenge," Chris continued. "I'll meet you at the thrill ride set in ten minutes."
The cast looked at each other in confusion. "Did he say thrill ride?" Lindsay asked.
\
The scene briefly flashed to the full moon behind the water tower for a moment before flashing away again to a close-up of the host, back in his normal clothes.
"The way to achieve zero gravity," Chris explained to the contestants, all of whom have also gotten dressed, "is to fly a jet on a parabolic course. With large vertical climbs, and even larger vertical drops." The camera panned across the faces of the cast, all of which looked freaked. "But with the price of jet fuel today," the scene flashed to a makeshift space shuttle tied to what looked like a roller coaster cart at a boarding platform, "we're gonna simulate the effect on this makeshift space shuttle!"
The shot flashed away again, the camera now panning up a spaceship-themed roller coaster set among several other theme park attractions. "Which will hit the optimum speed needed to keep you all in a perpetual state of zero gravity," the host explained before the shot cut back to him and the cast.
"Are we going to get killed?" Lindsay asked. "I won't go in if it will."
"Is that thing even up to code?" Courtney wondered.
"Your first outer space challenge will be to spend the rest of the night on the shuttle sleeping in zero gravity conditions," Chris told the cast.
"That doesn't sound so difficult," Shawn said with a pleased expression.
\
The footage flashed ahead to a close-up of an intercom speaker as the host's voice came in over it. "Y'all might wanna hold on to something bolted down," Chris told the cast as the camera pulled back to show them holding pillows in their hands, "'cause we're almost ready to launch!"
"Yes!" Lindsay cheered.
"He said launch," Heather told her, "not lunch."
"I know," Lindsay explained. "I just can't wait to be flying inside a spaceship."
The shot cut back to the intercom as an engine was heard starting up over it. "In five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The camera cut outside as the space shuttle strapped to the roller coaster cart shuddered to life. "Blast off!" At Chris' ecstatic signal, the shuttle's engines flared on and the contraption took off along the track. It quickly reached the main peak as the castmates screamed in terror, and the scene cut back inside.
"If I'm gonna die, at least make my death look cool!" Shawn yelled as he clenched his eyes shut. The camera began to pull back from his close-up as he slowly opened his eyes, looked around, and smiled. He and the other three were now floating inside the shuttle's cabin. "How about that? We're floating in mid-air!"
"Alright astronauts," Chris told them, the camera cutting from a close-up of the intercom to the host lounging in his chair at the monitor room watching the cast on the monitors, "it's gonna be a long night. Better get some sleep!" He pressed a button on the keyboard and added "If you can!" The monitor screens switched from Heather and Shawn to Courtney and Lindsay, and the host accepted a cup of coffee from Chef with a laugh.
\
"Can I borrow any of your pillows?" Courtney asked as she floated around. "I lost mine."
"That's your own fault then," Shawn relaxed on his pillow. "You lose it, you deal with it."
"Fine," Courtney looked away from his former ally. "We are floating in mid-air, so I won't complain… much."
Confessional: Lindsay
"Courtney and Shawn are at each other's throats just like me and Amy," Lindsay said. "There's only one person who could've made them split, which is obviously Heather."
Confessional Ends
The scene returned to a shot of a jawbreaker floating in the air, then panned out to show that Heather was chasing after it. "If that jawbreaker wasn't so big, I would be able to stash it into my pocket!" She said as she floated past Lindsay who was looking at her pom poms.
"At least what you got is tasty," Lindsay said. "I can't eat or lick my pom poms."
"Good thing you're smart enough to know what's edible," Heather snootily responded.
"If they were taffy, I'd likely eat them," Lindsay responded.
Confessional: Heather
Heather was focused on filing her nails. "I assume I'm the favorite to win. I mean, look who's left. A control freak, a smelly nut, and a dumb blonde. And the only thing Lindsay has going for her is that she hasn't made any enemies. Whoop-de-doo! We're not here to make friends. We're here to win." As she talked, she snapped her nail filer in half. "And that is exactly what I plan on doing."
Confessional Ends
The scene cut forward to the castmates as they slept peacefully with their pillows. This only lasted for a couple seconds before an alarm started to sound off loudly, and the lights in the cabin flashed red as the four teens woke up. "This is Houston," Chris said over the loudspeaker, "and you have a problem. You've been hit by an asteroid, and your guidance system is toast!"
"What do we do?!" Lindsay asked in a panic.
"I've watched Race to Save Space 3 before I came to this show," Shawn said. "We have to override the navigation controls."
"Quick!" Heather cried. "Someone grab the joystick thingy!"
Courtney sprung off a nearby wall and darted towards the shuttle's main computer. She grabbed onto a central joystick as she floated by, then planted her feet on the desk and pulled. The camera zoomed in on it and after a few moments of effort the stick moved to the side, shutting off the alarms and returning the lights to normal.
"Way to go Courtney!" Lindsay cheered.
"Nice job," Shawn said.
The camera zoomed in on Heather's jawbreaker as it drifted closer to a small window. It hit the window, cracking it slightly. The camera pulled back again to show it pushing back forward, but the force of its push-off caused the glass to shatter soon after it floated away. The air immediately began to be sucked out of the cabin, and the lights flashed red once more as Heather looked at the broken window with a shocked look.
Confessional: Heather
"At the very least, I can say that I'm not to blame for the window breaking," Heather claimed.
Confessional Ends
Heather, Courtney, Lindsay, and Shawn were shown floating in front of the shuttle controls. "Uh-oh!'" Chris announced jovially over the intercom. "Looks like you have a hole in your fuselage!" He laughed, and the camera panned across a closer shot of the four teens' faces. "You have exactly t-minus-ten minutes to plug the hole, or you'll run out of precious oxygen."
"We have to plug the hole!" Heather yelled.
"We just need something big and form-fitting!" Courtney replied.
They all turned to Lindsay. "Why are you looking at me?"
"We can use your pom poms to fill the hole," Heather said. "It's either that, or death."
Lindsay gave them a brief look and sighed. "They are valuable, but I can get new ones after the show ends."
The scene flashed back outside, the sun already up and the shuttle-coaster still flying along its track. The camera cut to the boarding platform as it finally came to a stop, and Chris was standing in wait as the shuttle door burst open with a puff of steam. One by one, the castmates fell out of it. Lindsay was first, then Courtney, then Shawn; all landed on top of one another in a heap. Heather was the last, and was the only one who maintained her balance.
"Will somebody help me down, or will I have to do it myself?" Heather huffed.
"Go with the second option," Lindsay replied. "There's a ladder in front of you."
Heather rolled her eyes, but climbed down the ladder.
The camera cut to Chef standing outside of the broken window, Lindsay's pom poms sticking out of it. "That was smart, sealing the breach with those pom poms," he said while pulling them out.
"It was my idea," Courtney claimed. "No sweat to it."
"You just love to pat yourself on the back," Shawn rolled his eyes.
Confessional: Shawn
"I really hope that I can get Courtney and Heather out," Shawn confessed. "Lindsay's the only one I'd like to face in the finale."
Confessional Ends
"Nice going Lindsay," Chris told her. "It was your pom poms that saved the group."
"Yes!" Lindsay jumped in Victory with her pom poms on."
"What?" Heather gaped. "I was the one who suggested we fill that hole!"
"Lindsay was the one who actually plugged in the hole," Chris said. "As a reward, she'll get to decide the order of who goes first to last at the next challenge!"
"I got it," Lindsay exclaimed. "The order is me, Courtney, Shawn, and Heather."
Confessional: Lindsay
"I don't know what the next part of the challenge is," Lindsay confessed, "but making sure Heather participates last was just too good to pass up."
Confessional Ends
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(Commercial break)
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The footage cut forward to a shot of the sun over a few of the film lot's fake buildings near one of the studios. The wind was shown blowing a few pieces of paper along the road between the studios, then the shot cut to and upward pan of the fake hill. The camera cut back to the front of a studio as its garage-like door began to open.
A few feet were briefly shown behind the door before the camera moved inside, showing the silhouettes of the four castmates against the light flooding in from outside. The feet were shown again in an angled profile as they began to walk outside, and the shot moved up to show the four staring forward. Lindsay was first, then Shawn, then Courtney, then Heather.
The camera switched to a face-on shot, panning right across the castmates and stopping at Lindsay. A record scratch was heard as Chris ran across the shot with a scowl on his face, the teens following him with their eyes.
"Enough messing around," Chris said before the scene changed to the usual side-view as he addressed the contestants. "Alright gang, if you thought spending the night in zero G's was a stomach-churning experience, then you're gonna love this next challenge! Who can last the longest on the G-force Trainer?" The castmates were shown watching cautiously. "Or as I like to call it," Chris said before the shot quick-panned further to the right, "The Vomit Comet!" The machine he was referring to looked like a bulbous, oversized, and legless space suit attached by a hefty arm to a smaller wheeled cart.
"If you thought you were under pressure before," the host said giddily as the camera panned up a close-up of the suit, "wait 'til you feel the effects of four times Earth's gravitational force!"
"We just ate chili for lunch," Heather said. "This won't be good."
"That was a bad call," Lindsay agreed.
The shot quick-panned over to Chef Hatchet who was standing by a bubbling pot on a small table. "Plenty more where that came from," he told the camera while tapping the side of the pot with a ladle. The camera zoomed in for a close-up, showing a foul-looking vomit-green stew filled with a variety of bones, old socks, and octopus tentacles.
The focus moved back to Chris. "Remember crew, Lindsay's already picked the order, so she's up first."
"Wonderful," Lindsay said with a smile as she approached the machine. "I didn't know we were gonna barf inside this thing, but now that I know the order and I'm going first, I don't have to worry about getting covered in other people's barf."
Courtney quickly grew uncomfortable. "Uh, what's the order she picked for us."
Chris donned a villainous sneer. "You're not going to like this. After Lindsay goes Courtney, Shawn, and last but not least, Heather."
"WHAT!!??" Heather screeched. "Can I trade places with someone?"
"Too late," Chris said. "The order is set."
Heather shot daggers at Lindsay, who smiled innocently and shrugged in response.
Confessional: Lindsay
Lindsay was shown laughing to herself for a couple of seconds. "It's going to take a long time for her to wash the puke off!" She resumed her laughter.
Confessional: Heather
"When this is over, I'm going to kill Lindsay…" Heather shot the camera a deadly glare, "...right after I take a long shower!"
Confessionals End
The scene skipped to Lindsay as she was about to climb the G-force training suit. She looked over and said "This will almost be like the Hurlinator back at the carnival."
"But unlike that heap of junk, you’ll actually hurl inside that suit if you’re unlucky," Chris taunted.
Lindsay dropped into the suit and closed the helmet shut. "Have a nice spin, Lindsay!" Chris said with a wave before pressing the buttons on his stopwatch and remote control simultaneously.
The machine immediately started to move, and Lindsay began cheering out of fun and enjoyment. A bird's-eye view showed the arms rotating rapidly about the wheeled cart it was attached to. The camera cut to a close-up of the viewing window on the helmet, where the blonde's face could clearly be seen. Her happy expression changed to struggling to contain her vomit. She forced it down and exclaimed "Let me out!"
Chris obliged by pressing both buttons again, and the machine slowed to a stop. The helmet swung open and Lindsay pulled herself out. She was frazzled, but she didn’t throw up on herself.
"15.4 seconds!" Chris read off from his stopwatch with a grin. "Pretty impressive for a first run, and despite my theory, you did not hurl!"
"I did not want to smell bad," Lindsay groaned and fell over.
Confessional: Lindsay
"So I have this friend who ate twenty corn dogs as a dare," Lindsay confessed. "When we were inside the car, she started to throw up, and some of it got on us. I'm never eating a corn dog again."
Confessional Ends
"Alright Courtney, you're next," Chris told the control freak who approached him and the training suit. "Lindsay managed to keep her lunch down, so at least you'll have a dry run."
\
The scene flashed forward to Courtney in the suit, already looking nervous. "Let's get this over with," she said before the helmet swung down over her head.
Chris smiled and pressed the button on the remote control, and the camera switched over to the bird's-eye-view of the machine. The rotating arm rapidly built up speed, and unlike Lindsay before her, Courtney immediately screamed in terror. Another viewpoint change showed the panicking type-a through the helmet's viewing window, then back to the bird's-eye-view. The sound of vomiting was heard and the shot cut back to the host.
"27 seconds on the dot!" Chris announced.
"Am I in the lead?" a messy Courtney wondered after climbing out the suit.
"No," Chris answered. "I'm deducting ten seconds for puking."
"That was totally disgusting!" Courtney muttered. "I hope you can handle it, Shawn."
"I've dived through garbage and covered myself in fish guts once," Shawn shrugged her off. "This is nothing I can handle."
"I don't want to say it, but your determination is admirable," Courtney said.
"It's down to you two," Chris told Shawn and Heather. "Shawn, your slightly soiled chariot awaits."
\
"Ready or not, here I come," Shawn got in the suit.
"He's got high confidence," Chris told the camera. "Confidence that's going to disappear." The helmet closed, the buttons were pressed, and the machine began to spin.
The camera cut to the window of the helmet, showing Shawn screaming in panic. Sooner or later, ominous rumbling came from inside the suit and his cheeks bulged.
The scene cut back to Chris just as the sound of puke was heard, and the host stopped both watch and machine. "Whether Shawn will shower or not is up to him," Chris commented as the conspiracy nut exited the suit covered with vomit. "But he will definitely smell like his own lunch now. After the ten second deduction, he comes in at a grand total of 20 seconds."
"Thanks for choosing me to go last, Lindsay," Heather spat at her. "Two people threw up, and I have to be surrounded by their puke."
"Heather, you're the last one," Chris slyly said. "Unless you want to lose out on winning invincibility, I say you get inside the suit now."
Heather looked at the others and narrowed her eyes. "I'm not forfeiting."
Confessional: Heather
"The things I do to keep myself in the game," Heather rolled her eyes.
Confessional Ends
"This is so gross," Heather said in disgust as she got in the vomit-covered suit. "Start it already!" Heather yelled before slamming the helmet shut.
Chris pressed his two buttons. As with the others the camera switched first to a bird's-eye view of the machine as it began to move, then to a close-up of Heather's face through the helmet. Though she was wincing from the bits of vomit dripping down her face, she kept her determination still and wasn't about to quit.
The shot cut outside to the host and the other three castmates as they watched. Chris was focused on the stopwatch in his hands, Shawn was uninterested, Lindsay was nervous, and Courtney was scared.
"She's going longer than I thought she would," Chris said.
"Just barf already!" Courtney shouted.
The sound of vomiting was heard. The camera zoomed in on Chris again as a smile formed and he clicked his buttons, and the machine came to a stop. "That's time!" he called.
"Did I win?" Heather asked after swinging open the helmet and flopping over the side, vomit all over her head, chest, and mouth. "I know that was more than 27 seconds."
"35 and a half seconds! A new Vomit Comet record!" Chris told her.
"I know what this means," Heather grinned in victory.
"Since she lasted the longest inside that machine, I declare Heather the winner of today's challenge!" Chris announced.
"In your face, everyone!" Heather taunted the other three contestants.
"Can you mock us from far away?" Lindsay held her nose.
"We would like to be away from you," Courtney said.
"Never thought I'd say this, but I agree," Shawn stepped back. "You stink really bad, and I have horrible hygiene."
"That's just the smell of victory," Heather said.
A sudden whistle caught the group's attention, and they looked over to see Chef standing on a stepladder calmly slicing a carrot over the open suit. "Hope y'all like gumbo!" he told them before resuming his work.
The camera panned across the castmates and host as all wretched in sheerest disgust.
\
The scene flashed to Lindsay in the girls’ trailer alone. She had a pencil and paper and was seen writing on the paper but what it said was unknown.
"This should be about it," Lindsay said once she was finished.
She folded the paper hamburger style and left her trailer.
Confessional: Lindsay
"You're probably wondering what I'm doing," Lindsay said. "Courtney and Shawn can't stay mad at each other forever. They are a great duo, even if they're total opposites. This may cost me my spot in the game, but if it means repairing a friendship, I'll take that risk because friendship is magic and more important than money."
Confessional Ends
It was soon night time, and after focusing on the moon, the camera panned down to reveal that Shawn was standing near the tree he slept in.
"Lindsay said to meet here," Shawn said. "I don't know why, but I ain't gonna question her."
Soon Lindsay and Courtney both walked to the scene together and Lindsay smiled. "Good to have you both here."
Shawn was stunned to see Courtney. "Why is she here?"
"Why is he here?" Courtney asked in a startled tone.
"I brought you both here so you two could talk," Lindsay smiled brightly.
"I don't want to talk to a deadbeat survivor who can't act normal for more than a minute!" Courtney complained.
"I refuse to be with an uptight politician that thinks only about herself!" Shawn shot back.
"At least I have public decency!" Courtney shouted.
"At least I don't complain when things don't go my way!" Shawn yelled.
"SHUT UP!" Lindsay cried out furiously, earning her shocked looks from both Shawn and Courtney. "You two are clearly crushed and hurt over something really upsetting because if you were not, you wouldn’t be fighting! I’ve seen how close you both are, and I know that a small argument couldn’t be the reason you broke up." Courtney and Shawn's anger diminished as she spoke. "Something big happened but if I were to guess, Heather had something to do with it. Now please just tell each other what happened without screaming at each other!"
Shawn took a few deep breaths before speaking. "Last challenge, Heather told me about Courtney using me in order to make it to the finale."
"Why did you listen to her?" Courtney asked.
"She had a recording of you talking about it with your own voice," Shawn said.
"What exactly did the recording say?" Courtney demanded.
"Don't act so confused," Shawn said. "You said that working with me and Noah was practically torture for you and that you’ll be glad to ditch me once you claim the million!" he brought up angrily.
"If that's what you heard, then you're way wrong," Courtney glared. "I have a vivid memory, and I don't recall saying those things."
"But I heard your voice in the recording," Shawn raised an eyebrow, starting to rethink what he heard.
"I'm starting to think that someone impersonated Courtney's voice just to make her look bad," Lindsay chimed in.
"Shawn's a boy, and no way can you match my octaves, so that means Heather set me up!" Courtney grit her teeth.
Shawn then widened his eyes before groaning. "Your voices are pretty similar."
"See I told you. Heather caused a rift between you guys just like she did to me and Amy," Lindsay said.
"And I fell for her lie," Shawn admitted. "How stupid could I have been?"
Courtney’s gaze softened a bit before saying, "Well… you’re not the only one who’s fallen for it before."
"We've let her come this far," Lindsay continued. "And now that she has invincibility, we can't kick her out today. I just want you two to make up and vote together again."
Shawn and Courtney both turned to Lindsay and Shawn piped up, "But that means you’ll be on the chopping block."
"Friendship is worth more than a briefcase filled with dollars," Lindsay said. "Courtney, you can be really bossy. And Shawn, you can be really messy. But you've come this far. Don't break up your partnership just because of a mean girl."
Shawn looked at Courtney. "I shouldn't have let myself be tricked like that."
"I don't blame you," Courtney said. "I have been acting crazy the last few days. I just wanted to win."
"If I’ll be honest, I missed working with you. It’s not as fun working alone as it used to be once I started putting my faith in others," Shawn admitted.
"You want to patch up our alliance again?" Courtney held out her hand.
"Absolutely," Shawn shook her hand. "I won't let anything break us up again."
Lindsay watched the scene with happiness. "It's nice to see you two comfortable around each other. Jo and Brick are really lucky to be dating you two, if you're actually dating."
Confessional: Courtney
"That was really cool of Lindsay to patch up my friendship with Shawn," Courtney admitted. "I've been taking her for granted up until this point, and I won't think ill of her again."
Confessional Ends
[A grand theme played as the camera zoomed in on the amphitheatre. Several film strips of the host's highlights from the previous season flew past the screen, then the camera panned out from a solid gold screen to show a Gilded Chris.]
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The camera flashed into a shot of the night sky. "And four," Chris said as the camera panned down to the amphitheater, "shall soon become three, as we bid farewell to another cast member. Everyone, cast your votes."
The shot cut to the cast members in the bleachers. Courtney and Shawn were on the top row and Heather and Lindsay on the bottom.
Courtney sighed before casting her vote.
Lindsay thought for a second before she made her vote.
Shawn shrugged and casted his vote.
Heather smirked deviously and then made her vote.
The scene flashed to a close-up of the three gilded statuettes on a tray held by Chef, who was wearing his formal pink gown once again.
"And the Gilded Chris goes to...," Chris began to read from his envelope, "Heather and Shawn," the two were shown catching their awards. Courtney and Lindsay were shown in a split screen and they both braced themselves.
"And the last statue goes to…" Chris said slowly as the music reached its peak, "No one yet!"
"What's going on?" Lindsay wondered.
"It seems we have a situation similar to episode fifteen," Chris told them. "Courtney and Lindsay got the most votes at two per contestant."
"Not again!" Courtney moaned.
"Is there going to be a tiebreaker?" Lindsay asked.
"You bet your boots there is," Chris said and turned to Chef. “Got any gumbo left?”
“Two pots full of it!” Chef cackled. “What do you want with it?”
“In order to stay in the game, Lindsay and Courtney have to eat a pot filled with Chef’s very own gumbo!” Chris declared to them.
“You do know that Chef made it with our own vomit!” Lindsay proclaimed.
“I know. That’s what makes it fun. For me!” Chris laughed.
“If I have to do this, then bring out the barf-bo,” Courtney shivered.
\
The scene switched to Courtney and Lindsay on the stage of the amphitheater. They were sitting on chairs while holding pots of gumbo and large spoons.
“Now remember,” Chris walked over to the two. “If you don’t finish your pot, you’re not going into the final two. Got it?”
“I did come this far,” Lindsay said.
“I’ll accept the challenge. I won’t give up when I’m this close to the finale,” Courtney said.
Heather and Shawn were watching from far away. “I’m rooting for you, Courtney!” the latter cheered.
“Whoever loses or wins, I don’t care,” Heather said.
"And… go!" Chris started the tiebreaker.
As soon as he said those words, Courtney and Lindsay began putting gumbo into their mouths. Courtney was rapidly scooping the meal while Lindsay was sipping on it. Both girls were repulsed, but they still wanted to be in the game.
Lindsay saw that Courtney was halfway done with her pot, so she started to follow her path and scoop up the gumbo in hopes of catching up to her.
Just when it seemed like Courtney was about to finish, her stomach started to grumble from what she'd eaten. She tried to fight it, but eventually, she puked inside of her pot.
Seeing that she had an opportunity to win, Lindsay opened her mouth widely and poured the gumbo in. Afterwards, she placed her pot down.
"I'm finished!" she declared, only to feel nauseous and barf into her pot.
"Man, you girls are sick!" Chris teased them. "Regardless, Lindsay's still in the game, and Courtney just went from 22nd to 4th place in two seasons!"
"Drats!" Shawn complained.
Both girls have finished throwing up. "Looks like you have to go," Lindsay told Courtney.
"I know," Courtney moped. "I almost got to the million dollars, and I've never been in 4th place before."
"At least you did much better than before, and you're not wearing a chicken hat this time," Shawn said.
Courtney smiled in response. "I wanted to win the season, but I did learn to value friendship and cooperation, and like Lindsay said, those are more worthy than cash."
"I'm just glad you're not being mean to me for once," Lindsay said.
"We'll take down Heather and be the final two," Shawn said. "We promised Noah, and we're also promising you as well."
"Not sorry to interrupt," Chris got between them, "but Courtney should be getting going right about now."
"Shove it, McLean!" Courtney shoved Chris to the floor with one hand. "I'm saying goodbye to my friends, but I will enter the Lame-osine soon."
\
The footage skipped ahead to Courtney standing near the limo. She saw Lindsay and Shawn waving goodbye to her. After returning the gesture, she entered the limo with a smile on her face. The limo's tires revved up and sped off into the night, leaving behind two trails of fire.
Just as Shawn and Lindsay were about to go to their trailer, they were stopped by a snobby voice.
"Love to stick around, but it's been a long day and I'm gonna hit the showers," Heather bragged and got off the stage. "Great work, everybody."
While Lindsay rolled her eyes and left, Shawn stayed back, but had a face filled with anger and vengeance.
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The scene cut to a shot of the washroom. Inside, Heather was bathing herself and humming a tune.
Unbeknownst to her, Shawn snuck to the side of the bathroom. He had a barrel filled with gumbo with him. After placing it down, he hooked the shower pipe to the barrel, wrapped it with tape, and turned the wheel to let the gumbo flow through.
Heather was heard screaming once the gumbo rained on her. "What the... Ew! Ugh, oh! Is this sewage?! Stop it! Stop! Oh! No!"
Seeing that his job was done, Shawn laughed to himself and turned in for the night as Heather continued to scream in anguish.
Chris popped up into the camera's view. "And you'll see how our remaining contestants suffer next time on Total Drama Action!"
(Roll the Credits)
\
(Bonus Clip)
"I want Shawn to win Season 2, but I won't mind if Lindsay does the job for him," Courtney said inside the limo. "She's pretty capable of handling herself, and I did hear about her plan to become the Queen of France, which I kinda want to see come to fruition." The C.I.T. laughed for a few seconds. "I know my parents want me to succeed and thrive for victory, but I'm certain that they'll see how far I've gotten in the competition and be proud of it. That's not to say I won't quit trying. I just have to never give up."
16th/15th: Harold
16th/15th: Dawn
14th: Lightning
13th: Sky
12th: Jo
11th: Beth
10th: Brick
9th: Duncan
8th: Mike
7th: Amy
6th: Rodney
5th: Noah
4th: Courtney
2023.03.24 22:41 KimJongFunk KimJongFunk's master list of safe and low calorie fast food options
Hello everyone! This is my master list of safe and low calorie fast food options. This list is posted with the intention of helping those with a fear of fast food or those who are simply hoping to eat some lower calorie fast food options. Please use the knowledge gained from this post to make sure you eat a good, full meal without fear or worry.
Also, for those who may suffer from disordered eating, recovery is possible. Please seek professional help and reach out to friends and loved ones for support. You are not alone.
All foods listed are prepared in standard ways with standard ingredients unless specified. This information comes directly from the nutritional info provided by the restaurants, so please do not come at me if it is outdated or incorrect. I have tried to include as many items as I could that are ~500 calories or less, although there are a few exceptions. Soda and regular coffee/espresso is not included on the list because those are pretty standard anywhere you go.
I am starting with McDonald's and will update as I can with other restaurants.
McDonald’s:
submitted by KimJongFunk to u/KimJongFunk [link] [comments]
Also, for those who may suffer from disordered eating, recovery is possible. Please seek professional help and reach out to friends and loved ones for support. You are not alone.
All foods listed are prepared in standard ways with standard ingredients unless specified. This information comes directly from the nutritional info provided by the restaurants, so please do not come at me if it is outdated or incorrect. I have tried to include as many items as I could that are ~500 calories or less, although there are a few exceptions. Soda and regular coffee/espresso is not included on the list because those are pretty standard anywhere you go.
I am starting with McDonald's and will update as I can with other restaurants.
McDonald’s:
| Burgers: | kcal |
|---|---|
| Hamburger | 250 |
| Cheeseburger | 300 |
| McDouble | 400 |
| Big Mac | 540 |
| - with lite Mac sauce | 505 |
| - with no Mac sauce | 460 |
| Chicken and Fish: | kcal |
| McChicken | 400 |
| - with no mayo | 300 |
| McCrispy | 470 |
| - with no butter sauce | 420 |
| 4 piece nuggets | 170 |
| 6 piece nuggets | 250 |
| 10 piece nuggets | 410 |
| Filet-O-Fish | 390 |
| - with no tartar sauce | 300 |
| - with no cheese | 360 |
| - plain with no tartar sauce or cheese | 270 |
| Fries and Sides: | kcal |
| Kids fries | 110 |
| Small fries | 230 |
| Medium fries | 320 |
| Large fries | 480 |
| Apple slices | 15 |
| Breakfast: | kcal |
| Egg McMuffin | 310 |
| - with no cheese | 260 |
| - with no canadian bacon | 290 |
| Sausage McMuffin | 400 |
| - with no cheese | 350 |
| Sausage McMuffin with Egg | 480 |
| - with no cheese | 430 |
| Sausage McGriddle | 430 |
| Bacon, Egg, & Cheese McGriddle | 430 |
| - with no cheese | 380 |
| Sausage Biscuit | 460 |
| Sausage Burrito | 310 |
| Fruit & Maple Oatmeal | 320 |
| - with no cream | 300 |
| Hashbrowns | 140 |
| Sweet Things: | kcal |
| Vanilla ice cream cone | 200 |
| Hot fudge sundae | 330 |
| Caramel sundae | 330 |
| Apple pie | 230 |
| Chocolate chip cookie | 170 |
| Small vanilla shake | 480 |
| Small strawberry shake | 470 |
| Small chocolate shake | 520 |
| Oreo McFlurry | 510 |
| Condiments: | kcal |
| Barbeque sauce | 45 |
| Spicy buffalo sauce | 30 |
| Creamy ranch sauce | 110 |
| Honey mustard sauce | 60 |
| Sweet n' sour sauce | 50 |
| Ketchup packet | 10 |
| Honey | 50 |
| McCafe and Coffee: | kcal |
| Small iced coffee (any flavor) | 140 |
| Medium iced coffee (any flavor) | 190 |
| Large iced coffee (regular and vanilla) | 260 |
| - Caramel | 270 |
| Small iced latte (regular) | 90 |
| Medium iced latte (regular) | 120 |
| Large iced latte (regular) | 170 |
| Small iced latte (caramel or vanilla) | 180 |
| Medium iced latte (caramel or vanilla) | 220 |
| Large iced latte (caramel or vanilla) | 330 |
| Small iced vanilla latte | 180 |
| Medium iced vanilla latte | 220 |
| Small hot latte (regular) | 140 |
| Medium hot latte (regular) | 190 |
| Large hot latte (regular) | 250 |
| Small hot latte (vanilla or caramel) | 250 |
| Medium hot latte (vanilla or caramel) | 320 |
| Large hot latte (vanilla or caramel) | 390 |
| Small iced mocha | 280 |
| Medium iced mocha | 320 |
| Large iced mocha | 450 |
| Small mocha latte | 290 |
| Medium mocha latte | 380 |
| Large mocha latte | 470 |
| Small caramel frappe | 420 |
| Medium caramel frappe | 490 |
| Small mocha frappe | 430 |
| Medium mocha frappe | 490 |
| Small cappuccino (regular) | 110 |
| Medium cappuccino (regular) | 160 |
| Large cappuccino (regular) | 200 |
| Small cappuccino (vanilla or caramel) | 210 |
| Medium cappuccino (vanilla or caramel) | 260 |
| Large cappuccino (vanilla or caramel) | 340 |
| Small caramel macchiato | 260 |
| Medium caramel macchiato | 320 |
| Large caramel macchiato | 400 |
2023.03.24 22:15 DerHamer24 Blackbeard’s Breakfast - Heavy Seas Beer. What a week, I think it’s time to get a little twisted. Happy Friday! 🍻
 | submitted by DerHamer24 to showerbeer [link] [comments] |
2023.03.24 22:01 AshaPatera Off topic amusement
 | submitted by AshaPatera to AshaPatera [link] [comments] |
2023.03.24 21:30 Trash_Tia In my town of Brightwood Pines, murder was legal. I didn't question it until I started getting toothache.
Murder was legal in our town of Brightwood Pines.
I had grown up seeing it. At eight years old, I watched a man come into our local café while I drank my peanut butter chocolate milkshake and shot two people dead.
There was no malice in his eyes, or any kind of hatred. It was just a normal guy who smiled at the waitress and winked at me. Mom told me to keep drinking my milkshake and I did—licking away excess whipping cream while the bodies were hoarded out, and pooling red was cleaned from the floor. I could still see flecks of white inside red, and my stomach twisted.
But I didn’t feel…scared. I had no reason to be. Nobody was screaming or crying.
The man who had shot them had sat down to eat burger and fries, and didn’t blink an eye. That was my first experience seeing death—and not my last.
With no rules forbidding murder, you would think a town would tear itself apart.
That is not what happened.
Murder was legal, yes, but it didn’t happen every day. It happened when people had the urge. Mom explained it to me when I was old enough to understand. “The urge” was a phenomenon which had been affecting town’s people long before I was born, and there was no real way to stop it. So, it didn't stop. Mom told me she had killed her first person at the age of seventeen. Her math teacher. There was no reason or motive. Mom said she just woke up one day and wanted to kill someone.
Unfortunately, it was her math teacher who had gotten in the way. I always wondered why she described her killing so vividly to me. I was eight years old, and mom spent hours detailing how she had successfully managed to sever his head from his body with nothing but a phone charger, and a knife taken from her kitchen.
That specific killing became more of a bedtime story to lull me to sleep.
Mom would sit on the edge of my bed and tell me all the ways she had wanted to murder her math teacher—describing how it felt for his blood to spatter her hands and paint her face.
I didn’t like her smile when she told me about her killing. Sometimes I got scared she was going to murder me too. Growing up, I have been constantly on edge. Every day I woke up and pressed my hand to my forehead, asking myself the same questions. Did I want to kill anyone? And those thoughts blossomed into paranoia when I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. It’s not like I didn’t know what it was like.
Dad had let me hold a knife, and taught me how to properly hold a gun, and mom gave me lessons in severing body parts. Both of them wanted me to follow through with The Urge when it hit me inevitably, and I wanted to fit in.
Our elementary school teacher had told my class as little kids, that The Urge was part of growing up, and if we fought it, if we tried to get out of it, our mind and body would face the consequences. She didn’t elaborate, though I didn’t really want her to. All our teacher had to say was “bleeding from the mouth” and “severe reaction in the brain” and I was already squirming, along with my twelve other classmates. The Urge became something I anticipated instead of fearing. Because, if I got it—if I had my first kill as young as my mom, then my parents would be proud of me.
When I started middle school, our neighbors were caught killing and cannibalising their children, turning them into bone broth. I knew both of the kids. Clay and Clara. I had played with them in their yard and eaten cookies with them.
Clara told me she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, and Clay used to tug on my pigtails to get my attention. They were like siblings to me. No matter what my parents said, or my teacher’s, my gut still twisted at the thought of my neighbors doing something like that. Days after the cops had arrived, I saw Mrs Jenson watering her plants. But when I looked closer, there was no water. She was just holding an empty hose over her prize roses.
I stood on my tiptoes, peering over our fence. “Mrs Jenson?”
“I am okay, Elle.”
Her voice didn’t sound okay.
“Are you sure?” I asked. I pointed at the hose grasped in her hand. “You forgot to turn your water on.”
“I know.”
“Mrs Jenson…” I took a deep breath before I could stop myself. “Did you like killing Clay and Clara?”
“Why, yes,” she hummed. “Of course I did. I slurped up that bone broth like it was my prize tomato soup. They were…. delicious.”
I nodded. “But… didn’t you love them?”
She didn’t reply for a moment before seemingly snapping out of it and turning to me with a bright smile. With too many teeth. That was the first time I started to question The Urge.
It was supposed to make you feel good, acting like a relief, a weight from your chest. Killing another human being was exactly what the people in our town needed. But what about killing their families and children?
Did it really make them feel good?
Looking at my neighbor, I couldn’t see the joy my mom had described in her eyes. In fact, I couldn’t see anything. Her expression was the kind of blank which scared me. It was oblivion staring back, ripped of real human emotion. Mrs Jenson’s smile stretched across her lips, like she could sense my discomfort. I noticed she was yet to clean her hands.
Mrs Jenson’s fingernails were still stained a scary shade of red. Instead of replying, the woman moved towards my fence in slow, stumbling strides. She was dragging herself, like moving caused her pain, agony I couldn’t understand. It was exactly what my mother had insisted didn’t exist when killing. Pain.
Humanity. All of the adults told us we would not feel those things when killing. We wouldn’t feel regret, or contempt. We would just feel good.
It was a release, like cold water coming over us. We would never feel better in our lives than when we were killing—and our first would be something special. When Mrs Jenson’s fingers still slick with her children’s blood wrapped around the wooden fence, I found myself paralysed. Her manic grin twisted and contorted into a silent wail, and once vacant eyes popped open. Like she was seeing me for the very first time. “I want to go home,” she whispered, squeezing onto the wooden fence until her own fingers were bleeding.
“Can you tell them to let me go home? I would like to see my children. Right now. Do you hear me?” Mrs Jenson wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her gaze was glued to thin air.
She was crying, screaming at something only she could see—and for a moment I wondered if ghosts were real. I twisted around to see if there were any ghosts, specifically the ones of her children, but there was nothing. Just fall leaves spiralling in the air in pretty waves.
“Mrs Jenson is sick,” she told me once I was sitting at the dinner table eating melted ice-cream. It tasted like barf running down my throat.
I didn’t see Mrs Jenson after that.
Well, I did.
She looked different, however.
Not freakishly different, though I did notice her hair color had changed. I remembered it being a deep shade of brown, and when my neighbor returned with an even wider smile, it was more of a blondish white. When I questioned this, mom told me it was a makeover.
The Urge affected people in different ways, and with Mrs Jenson, after having her come-down, she had decided on a change. Mom’s words were supposed to be reassuring, adding that there was no reason to be scared of The Urge.
But I didn’t want to be like Mrs Jenson and have a mental breakdown over my killing. I wanted to be like mom and have a glass of wine and laugh over the sensation of taking a life. Mrs Jenson was my first real glimpse into the negativity of killing because it was so normalised. Dying, for example, wasn’t feared.
From a young age, we had been taught that it was a vital part of life, and dying meant finding peace. When I first started high school, I expected killing to happen. Puberty was when The Urge fully blossomed. Weapons were allowed, but only out of classes. In other words, under no circumstances must we kill each other in class, but the hallways were a free-for-all.
I had seen attempts during my freshman year, but no real killing.
Annalise Duval was infamously known as the junior girl who had rejected The Urge, and thrown out of school. Struck with the stomach flu on the day of her attempted killing, I only knew the story from word-of-mouth. Apparently, the girl had attempted to kill her mother at home, failed, and then bounded into school, screaming about laughter in the walls, and people whispering into her head.
Obviously, my classmate was labelled insane—and judging from her nosebleed, the girl’s body had ultimately rejected The Urge, and her brain was going haywire. Nosebleeds were a common side effect. I heard stories from kids saying there was blood everywhere, all over her hands and face, smeared under her chin. She had been screaming for help, but nobody dared go near her. Like rejection was contagious. Annalise survived. Just. I still saw her on my daily bike-ride to school.
She was always sitting cross legged in front of the forest with her eyes closed, like she was praying. The rumor was, after being thrown out by her parents, the girl wandered around aimlessly, muttering about whispering people and laughter in her head. It was obvious her rejection had seriously affected her mental state, but I did feel sorry for her.
It wasn’t known what had caused her to reject The Urge, though some of the kids in her class did comment that she had been complaining of a loose tooth beforehand. Mom told me to stay away from her, and I did. Annalise Duval was the first and only case of rejection, and thanks to her, I knew exactly what would happen if it happened to me too. So, I ignored the bad feeling about my neighbor, and forced myself to anticipate the day when I would get my very own urge to kill. I waited for it.
On my fourteenth birthday, I confused a swimming stomach and cramps for The Urge, which turned out to be my first period.
I remember biking my way home, witnessing a man cut off a woman’s head with an axe.
It’s funny, I thought I would be desensitised to seeing human remains and severed heads, glistening red seeping across the sidewalk, but it was the passion in the man’s face as he swung the axe and dug in real hard, chopping right through bone and not stopping, even when intense red splattered his face and clothes, until the woman’s head hit the ground, which sent my stomach creeping into my throat.
Then, it was the vacancy in his eyes, a twitching smile as he held the axe like a prize.
Part of me wanted to stay, to see if he had a similar reaction to Mrs Jenson. I wanted to know if he regretted what he had done, but once I was meeting his gaze, and his grin was widening, the toe of his boot kicking the woman’s motionless body, I turned away from him and pedalled faster, my eyes starting to water. It wasn’t long before my lunch was inching its way up my throat, and I was abandoning my bike on the side of the road, and choking up undigested Mac N’ cheese onto steaming tarmac.
I didn’t tell mom about the man, and more importantly, my odd reaction to his killing. I wasn’t supposed to be feeling sick to my stomach. Murder was normal. I wasn’t going to get in trouble for it, so why did seeing it make me sick?
I had been taught as a little kid that visceral reactions were normal, and it was okay to be scared of killing and murder. However, what our brains told us was right wasn’t always the truth. Our teacher had held up a teddy bear and stabbed into its stuffing with a carving knife.
We had all cried out, until the teacher told us that the bear didn’t care about dying. In fact, it was ready to find peace. And it didn’t hurt him.
In other words, we had to ignore what our minds told us was bad.
Mom told me I would definitely start having conflicting feelings before my first killing, but that it was nothing to worry about.
I did worry, though. I started to wonder if I was going to become the next Analise Duval. Maybe the two of us would become friends, sharing our delusions together.
My 17th birthday came and went—and still no sign of The Urge. I noticed mom was starting to grow impatient. She had a routine of coming to check my temperature every morning, regardless of whether I felt sick or not.
“How are you feeling?” I couldn’t help but notice mom’s smile was fake.
She dumped my breakfast on a tray in front of me, and when I risked nibbling on a slice of toast, she dropped the bombshell.
“Elle, you are almost eighteen years old,” she said. I noticed her hands were clenched into fists. “Do you feel anything?”
I considered lying, though then I would have to kill someone—and without The Urge, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do that.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, propping myself up on my pillows. “Most of the kids in my class—”
She cut me off with a frustrated hiss. “Yes, I know. They have all killed someone and you haven’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “People are starting to notice, Elle.” She spoke through a smile which was definitely a grimace. “And when people start to notice, they get suspicious. I’ve been on the phone with three different doctor’s this morning, and all of them want to book you in for an MRI. Just to make sure things are normal.”
“MRI?” I almost choked on the apple I had been chewing.
“Yes.” Mom sighed. “We can’t ignore that things aren’t…. abnormal. You are seventeen years old and haven’t had one urge to kill. The minimum for your age is one kill,” she said. “Minimum. Elle. You have not killed anyone, and when I bring it up you change the subject.”
I changed the subject because she started asking if I wanted to practise. I wasn’t sure what “practise” meant, but from the slightly manic look in her eye, my mom wasn’t talking about dolls or teddy bears. It was so-called normal to practise killing. There were even people who volunteered to be targets at the local scrapyard. Most of them were old people.
Joey Cunningham in my class told everyone his uncle took him to practise when he was thirteen—and he had killed three people without The Urge. Five years on, Joey had accumulated a total of fourteen kills.
He never failed to remind everyone almost every class. I could taste the apple growing sour in the back of my mouth. Mom was just trying to help, and it’s not like I was doing this intentionally. The idea of going to the scrapyard and killing random people, even if they gave me permission to, wasn’t appealing in the slightest. “I’m okay.” I said, and when mom’s eyes darkened, I followed that up with, “I mean… I have spare time after class, so…?”
I meant to finish with, “Maybe.” But the word tangled in my mouth when I took a chunk out of the apple, and pain struck. Throbbing pain, which was enough to send my brain spinning off of its axis. For a moment, my vision feathered, and I was left blinking at my mother who had become more silhouette than real person. I was aware of the apple dropping out of my hand, but I couldn’t think straight.
The pain came in waves, exploding in my mouth. When I was sure I could move without my head spinning, I slammed my hand over my mouth instinctively to nurse the pain, except that just made it worse. Fuck. Had I chipped my tooth? Blinking through blurry vision, I knew my mom was there. But so was something else.
As if my reality was splintering open, another seeping through, I suddenly had no idea where I was, and a familiar feeling of fear started to creep its way up my spine. The thing was though, I knew exactly where I was. I had known this town, this house, my whole life.
So that feeling of fear didn’t make sense.
The more I mulled the thought over in my mind, however, pain striking like lightning bolts, something was blossoming.
It both didn’t make sense, and yet it also did. In the deep crevices of my mind, that feeling was familiar. And I had felt it before. No matter how hard I squinted, though, I couldn’t make it out.
When I squinted again, a sudden shriek of noise rattled in my skull, and it took me a disorienting moment to realise what I could hear was laughter. Hysterical laughter. Which seemed to grow louder and louder, encompassing my thoughts until it was deafening. Not just that. The walls were swimming, my posters flashing in and out of existence before seemingly stabilising themselves. I blinked. Was I… losing my mind?
Maybe this was a side-effect of rejecting The Urge.
“Elle?” Mom’s voice cut through the phantom laughter which faded, and I blinked rapidly. “Sweetie, are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
The word was in my mouth before the thought could cross my mind. I shook my head, swallowing. “Yeah, I’m… fine.”
She nodded, though her expression darkened. Scrutinising. I knew she couldn’t wait to get me under an MRI. “Alright. Finish your breakfast. School starts in half an hour.” Mom stopped at the threshold. She didn’t turn around. “I really do think practising killing will help a lot.”
I flinched when another wave of laughter slammed into me—faded, but very much there. Definitely not a figment of my imagination.
Checking in my bedroom mirror, I didn’t have a loose tooth. Even thinking that, though, panic started to curl in the root of my gut.
When I was sure I wasn’t losing my mind after checking and rechecking the walls were actually real, I got washed and dressed, grabbing my backpack.
My brain wouldn’t shut up on my way to school, and my gut was twisting and turning, trying to projectile that meagre slice of toast.
Annalise Duval had complained of a loose tooth before she rejected The Urge. Was that what was going to happen to me?
Was it all because of that stupid apple?
At school, I was surprised to be cornered by a classmate I had said maybe five words to in our combined time at Briarwood High.
Kaz Issacs was one of the first kids in my class to be hit with The Urge, and almost ended up like Annalise Duval. I don’t even think it was The Urge. I think he was driven to kill through emotions, like so many adults had tried to tell us wasn’t real. Kaz was a confusing case where a teenager had actually blossomed early, or not at all, and struck with his own intent.
People argued that there was paranoia, and the local doctor insisted he was fine, though I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t paranoia.
Kaz didn’t need The Urge. Halfway through math class, two years prior, I had been daydreaming about the rain. It rarely rained in Brightwood. Every day was picturesque. I did remember rain. I knew what it felt like hitting my face and dropping into my open mouth and cupped hands. When I asked mom if it was ever going to rain, though, she got a funny look on her face. “Sweetie, it doesn’t rain in Brightwood.” She told me. Which just confused me even more. It’s not like I had imagined the feeling of freezing cold rain, and my own shivering as I splashed through puddles without an umbrella.
The more I pried into these memories, I realised there were no puddles in Brightwood. It never rained. So, where had I jumped into puddles? Did I really dream of my experiences in the rain, and if so, how?
How did I know what it felt like? These thoughts came over me pretty much every day, and that day had been no different.
My gaze had been on the windowpane, trying to guess what a raindrop would look like sliding down, when Kaz Issacs let out an exaggerated sigh from behind me.
In front of him, Jessa Pollux had been tapping her pen on her desk. It wasn’t annoying at first, then she kept doing it—tap, tap, tappity tap. And then it was annoying. I could tell it was annoying, because Kaz had politely asked her three times to stop making noise, to which she had ignored him, and if anything, tapped louder, this time drumming in frenzied beats on her workbooks. Now, I had grown up learning that The Urge came with no warning or motive, or reason. It happened whether you liked it or not. Kaz was… different. His case was rare.
This time he did have a motive, and despite having it hammered into us our whole lives that killing didn’t need a reason and was not driven by negative emotion, my classmate did have a reason—and was in fact driven by anger.
Anger strong enough to murder.
This time, I saw it happen in clarity. When I caught movement in the corner of my eye, I was twisting around with the rest of the class, to see the boy halfway off his chair, his fingers wrapped around a knife.
The girl instantly knew what he was going to do, even without turning around. We weren’t supposed to be scared of dying, I thought dizzily, watching the girl let out a wail and dive forwards, her eyes cartoon like. Like an animal, Kaz already had a tight hold of her ponytail and tugged her back. Though in fight or flight, this girl was screaming, flailing.
She didn’t want to die, I thought.
Was that normal?
Mom always insisted if it was our time, it was our time. If someone attacked us, even family members, then we accepted it.
I caught the moment her elbow knocked into the boy’s mouth, just as he drove the blade of the knife into her skull. Until then, he had been panting and laughing, his eyes lit up with an insanity I only knew from my mom’s tales.
She told me stories where her friends had gotten pleasure from killing. As quick as it had come, though, the euphoria of taking someone’s life left the boy’s eyes, and he dropped to the ground, one hand over his mouth, the other slipping from the knife.
The teacher was already commenting on no murder allowed in class and ordering Kaz to go and clean himself up. I wasn’t sure he could hear her though. When he lifted his head, I glimpsed something seeping through his fingers, running in sharp rivulets down his wrist.
And then my gaze was flicking to his expression which was definitely not what I was expecting. Replacing joy and unbridled pleasure was fear. His eyes were wide, frightened, lips twisted.
It was the exact same expression I had seen on Mrs Jenson. A cocktail of confusion and pain, followed by a sense of emptiness. Like neither of them could understand where they were, or even who they were. I guessed that was what The Urge did, or the variants which contorted in people and made them reject it.
Like a wounded animal, Kaz’s frenzied gaze scanned our faces and he blinked, before realising his nose was bleeding. “Fuck.” He muffled under his hand. The boy jumped to his feet, and in three shaky strides, he was pulling open the classroom door and disappearing down the hallway in a stumbled run. The next day, the boy came to class with his usual smile.
When I asked him what happened, he explained it was just an ”abnormal reaction” and he was fine. Kaz’s words were strange though.
He wasn’t even looking at me, and his smile was far too big. He got his first kill though, so that gave him bragging rights as the first sophomore to come of age. Kaz Issacs and Annalise Duval both had similar experiences. One of them had clearly lost their mind, while the other seemingly avoided it.
And speaking of Kaz, it wasn’t the norm for him to be talking to me at school. But there he was, blocking my way into the classroom.
“Hey.” He was quick to side-step in front of me when I tried pushing him out of the way.
There had been an instance the year prior when I considered asking him to prom. He was a reasonably attractive guy, reddish dark hair sprouting from a baseball cap. But then I remembered what he did to that girl in front of him. I remembered the sound of his knife slicing through skin, cartilage and bone, and despite her cry, her wails for him to stop, he kept going, driving it further and further into her skull. I couldn’t look him in the eye after that.
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
My mouth was still sort of hurting, and I was questioning my sanity, so speaking to Kaz wasn’t really on my to-do list that morning.
Kaz didn’t move, sticking an arm out so I couldn’t get passed him. “Have you got toothache by any chance?” To emphasise his words, he stuck his finger in his mouth, dragging his index across his upper incisors.
“Like, bad toothache.” His voice was muffled by his finger. Kaz leaned forward, arching a brow. “You do, don’t you? Right now, you feel your whole mouth is on fire and yet you can’t detect any wobblies.”
The guy’s words sent a slither of ice tingling down my spine. He was right. I hadn’t felt right since biting into that apple.
When I didn’t say anything, his lip twitched into a scowl. “Alright. You don’t want to talk.” He raised two fingers in a salute. “Suit yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “When you feel like talking, I’m here, aight? I’ll be your support system or whatever.”
Kaz’s words didn’t really hit me until several days later when I woke up with a throbbing mouth, knelt over the corpse of my mother.
The Urge had finally come. It was something I had been anticipating and fearing my whole life, terrified I wouldn’t get it and end up ostracized by my loved ones. But when I saw my mom’s body, and the vague memory of plunging a kitchen knife into her chest hit me, I didn’t feel happy or relieved. I felt like I had done something bad. Which was the wrong thing to think. Killing was good, the words echoed in my mind. Killing was our way of release. How could I think that when there was a knife clutched between my fingers?
The weapon which had killed her. Hurt her. How was this supposed make me feel good and not like I was dying? My mother's eyes were closed.
Peaceful. Like she had accepted her death. The teeth of the blade dripped deep, dark red, and I know I should have felt something which was joy, or happiness. Except all I felt was empty.
I felt despair in its purest form which began to chew me up from the inside as I lulled from my foggy thoughts. I screamed. I wasn't supposed to scream. I wasn't supposed to cry, but my eyes were stinging, and I felt like I was being suffocated. I saw flashes in quick succession; a room bumbling with moving silhouettes, and the smell of... coffee. Mom never let me try coffee, and I was sure we never had it in the house. So, how did I know the feeling of it running down my throat and quenching my thirst? How did I know the aroma of crushed coffee beans struggling to prick at memories refusing to surface? My mouth throbbed once again, my thoughts growing foggy and distant.
Just like in my bedroom, the walls started to swim. This time, I dived to my feet and jumped over my mom’s corpse, slamming my hands into them. They were real. I could feel them.
Even as I slammed my fists into them, however, somehow, they felt wrong. Like I was hitting an object which was supposed to be real but wasn’t. Almost as if on cue, there it was again.
Laughing. Loud shrieks of hysterical laughter thrumming in time to dull pain pounding in my back tooth. Blinking through an intense mind fog choking my mind, my first coherent thought was that yes, Kaz was right. I did have a loose tooth, and when I was sure of that, I was stuffing my bloody fingers inside my mouth and trying to find it. I had grabbed at the knife feverishly, my first thought to cut it out, when there was a sudden knock at my front door.
Slipping barefoot on the blood pooling across our kitchen floor, I struggled to get to the door without throwing up my insides.
Annalise Duval was standing on my doorstep. I had seen her in an odd assortment of clothes, but this one was definitely eye catching.
The girl was wearing a wedding dress which hung off of her, the veil barely clinging onto the mess of bedraggled curls she never brushed. Blinking at me through straggly blonde hair, the girl almost resembled an angel. The dress itself was filthy, blood and dirt smeared down the corset, and the skirt torn up. But she did suit it, in a weird way. “Hello, Elle.” The girl lifted a hand in a wave. Her smile wasn’t crazed, like my classmates had described. Instead, it was… sad.
Annalise’s gaze found my hands slick with my mother’s blood, though barely seemed fazed.
“Do you want to see the wall people?” She whispered.
Until then, I had ignored her ramblings. Then I started hearing the laughing, and suddenly “wall people” didn’t sound so crazy after all.
I nodded.
“Can you hear the laughing?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Mmm.” She did a twirl in the dress. “That’s how it started for me. Laughing. I heard a looooottt of laughing—and then I found the wall people.” I winced when she came close, so close, almost suffocating me. “Nobody believes me and it’s sad. I’m just trying to tell people about the wall people and they label me as crazy. They say something went wrronnnggg with my head,” Annalise stuck two fingers into her temple, miming pulling a trigger. “I’m not the wrong one. I know about the wall people, and the laughing. I know why I got the urge to kill my mom.”
“Annalise,” I spoke calmly. “Can you tell me what you mean?”
“Hm?”
Her eyes were partially vacant, that one slither of coherence quickly fading away.
Instead of speaking, I took her arm gently, and pulled her down my driveway. “Can you show me what you found?”
Annalise danced ahead of me, tripping in her wedding dress. She cocked her head. “Did you kill your mother?” Her lips twitched. “That’s funny. According to the wall people, you’re not supposed to kill someone until seasonal two.”
The girl blinked, giggling, and I forced myself to run after her. Jesus, she was fast. Even wearing a wedding dress. Annalise leapt across the sidewalk, twisting and twirling around, like she was in her own world. Before she landed in front of me, and her expression almost looked sane. “I wonder which season it will be. Will it be Summer? Maybe Fall, or Winter. I guess it’s not up to you, is it? It’s up to The Urge.”
Laughing again, the girl grabbed my hand, her fingernails biting into my skin. I glimpsed a single drop of red run from her nose, which she quickly wiped with the sleeve of her dress, leaving a scarlet smear. “Let’s go and see the wall people, Elle,” she hummed. As her footsteps grew stumbled, blood ran down her chin, spotting the sidewalk. I don’t know if coherency ever truly hit Annalise Duval, but knowing she was bleeding, her steps grew quicker. More frenzied.
“Your nose,” was all I could say, when rivers of intense red strained the girl’s dress.
Annalise nodded with a sad smile. “I know!” she said. “Don’t worry, it will stop when I shut up.” Her smile widened. “But what if I don’t shut up? What if I show you the wall people?” To my surprise, she leapt forward and flung out her arms, tipping her head back and yelling at the sky. “What if I don’t shut up?” Annalise laughed. “What are the wall people going to do, huh? Are you going to explode my brain?”
When people started to come out of their houses to see what was going on, I dragged her into a run.
“Are you insane?” I hissed out.
“Maybe!”
Annalise seemed to be floating through awareness and whatever the fuck The Urge had done to her. “Don’t worry, they’re just peeking.”
“What?”
The girl had an attention span of a rock. Her gaze went to the sky. “They’re going to turn the sun off so I can’t show you.”
Her words meant nothing to me, before the clouds started to darken, and just like Annalise had predicted, the sky started to get dark.
Knowing that somehow this supposedly crazy girl knew when things were going to happen only quickened my steps into a run.
“Hey!”
Halfway down the street, Kaz Issacs was riding his bike towards us. Which I found odd. Kaz didn’t own a bike. He rode the bus to school.
“Elle!” Waving at me with one hand, his other grasping at handlebars, Kaz pedalled faster. “Yo! Do you want to hang out?”
“Peeking.” Annalise said under her breath.
Ignoring Kaz, I nodded at Annalise to keep going, though the boy didn’t give up. We twisted around, and he caught up easily, skidding on the edge of the sidewalk. When he came to an abrupt stop in front of us, his gaze flicked to Annalise. “Shouldn’t you be praying in the forest?”
The girl recoiled back like a cat, hissing out, “Peeking!”
Kaz shot me a look. “Of all the people you could have made friends with you chose Annalise Duval?” His eyes softened when I ignored him and pulled the girl further down the road. Kaz followed slowly on his bike.
"Where are you going anyway? Isn't it late?”
It was 4pm.
Hardly late.
I decided to humor him. “We’re going to see the wall people.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” I turned my attention to him. “You asked me if I had a toothache, right?”
His expression crumpled. “I did?”
I noticed Annalise was clingier with him around, sticking to my side. Every time he moved, she flinched, tightening her grip on my arm. She was leading us into the forest, and I swore, the closer we were getting to the clearing, the more town’s people were popping up out of nowhere. An old woman greeted us, followed by a man with a dog, and then a group of kids from school. Annalise entangled her fingers in mine, pulling me through the clearing.
Kaz followed, hesitantly, biking over rough ground. I caught him fall off balance for a moment before his hands flew out to grasp onto his handlebars. “Once again, I think this is a bad idea,” he said in a sing-song voice. “We should go back.”
When it was too dangerous for his bike, he abandoned it and joined my side.
“Elle, the girl is insane,” Kaz hissed out. “What are you even doing? What is this going to accomplish except potentially getting lost?”
“I want to know if she’s telling the truth,” I murmured back.
He scoffed. “Telling the truth? Look at this place!” He spread out his arms, gesturing to the rapidly darkening forest. “There’s nothing here!”
“No.” Annalise ran ahead, staggering over trippy ground. “No, it’s right over here!” She was still fighting a nosebleed, and her words were starting to slur. The girl twisted to Kaz. “You’re peeking,” she spat, striding over to him until they were face to face. “Stop peeking,” she said, her fingers delving under her wedding skirt where she pulled out a knife and pressed it to his throat. “If you peek again, I will cut you open.”
Kaz nodded. “Got it, Blondie. No peeking.”
Annalise didn’t move for a second, her hands holding the knife trembling. “You’re not going to tell me I’m crazy again,” she whispered.
“You’re not crazy,” Kaz said dryly.
“Say it again.”
“You’re not crazy!” He yelped when she pressed pressure onto the blade. “Can you stop swinging that around? Jeez!”
Annalise shot me a grin, and it took a second for me to realise.
Kaz was scared of the knife.
He was scared of dying—which meant, whether he liked it or not, the boy had in fact not gone through with The Urge.
I thought the girl was going to slash Kaz’s throat open in delight, but instead she looped her arm in his like they were suddenly best friends.
“Come on, Elle!” She danced forwards, pulling the boy with her. “We’re closeeeee!”
I wasn’t sure about that.
What we were, however, was lost. When the three of us came to a stop, it was pitch black, and I was struggling to see in front of me. Annalise, however, walked straight over to thin air, and gestured to it with a grin. “Tah-da!” Spluttering through pooling red, she let out a laugh.
“See!”
Kaz, who was still uncomfortably pressed to her no matter how hard he strained to get away, shot me a look I could barely make out.
“I’m sorry, what did I say? That we were going to get lost? That Annalise is certifiably crazy and we’re very fucking lost?”
At first, I thought I really was crazy. Maybe Annalise’s condition was contagious. I could hear it again. Laughing.
But this time it was coming from exactly where Annalise was pointing—and when the girl slammed her hand into thin air, there was a loud clanging noise which sounded like metal.
Slowly, I made my way towards it, and when my hands were touching sleek metal, what felt like the corners of a door, more pain struck my upper incisors. “Holy shit.” Kaz was pressing himself against the door, and then slamming his fists into it. “The crazy bitch was right.” His words hung in my thoughts on a constant cycle, as we delved into what should have been forest.
After all, we had been standing in the middle of nowhere. The laughter was deafening when I stepped over the threshold, and I had to slap my hands over my ears to block it out. Through the invisible door, however, was exactly what Annalise had described. Wall people.
All around us were what looked like television screens, and on those screens—were people. Faces.
They were not part of the laughter. The laughter was mechanical and wrong, rooted deep inside my skull. The faces which stared down at us looked like normal people, men and women, with some of them teens, and even younger children. Annalise and Kaz were next to me, their head s tipped back, gazes glued to the screens. Not the ones I was looking at. The ones on tiny computer monitors.
It was when I was tearing my eyes from our audience, did I start to see what made Kaz stiffen up next to me. One screen in particular showed his face. He was younger, maybe a year or two. No, I thought, barf creeping up my throat. It was when he had killed that girl.
His hands clasped in his lap were still stained and slick with her blood. The Kaz on the screen seemed a lot more laid back, his feet resting on the table in front of him. There was a cockiness in his eyes I had never seen before. This boy’s eyes were cruel. “Why exactly have you signed up for this program?” A man’s voice crackled off screen.
“Duh.” Kaz held up his scarlet hands, a grin twisting on his lips. “So I can get my Darkroom rep back.” He leaned forward, his eyes wide. “That is going to happen, right? I don’t do this shit for free, and I’ve got one million followers to impress, man. Darkroom loves me. Even if I did go too far that one time, which wasn't even my fault."
“You are correct.” The man said. “Darkroom does benefit from its influencers. Our program aims to help satisfy certain… needs across the planet, by broadcasting them right here,” He paused. “You have killed five people before signing up for Darkroom, correct? Your parents?”
“Parents and brother,” Kaz chuckled. “I gutted them with my fave knife, and then filmed it. Obviously, my Tik-Tok got taken down with all the freaks in the comments moaning, and suddenly I find you guys! A whole lot of sick fucks, but who’s complaining, right? Not me.”
“And,” the man cleared his throat. “You will keep killing? We are aware the initial implant impacted your brain quite badly. In the subdued state, you will keep killing, as the so-called ‘urge’ says. However, in reality we will be sending signals to your brain which will make you kill.”
“Alright, do it.”
“Are you sure? We couldn’t help noticing during your first kill, you seemed to… well, react in a way we haven’t seen before.”
He cocked his head. “Did my fans like it?”
“Well, yes—”
“Good.” Kaz held out his arm. “Do it again. And do it right this time. As long as I’m getting 40K every appearance, I’m good. You can slice my brain up all you want, I’m getting paid and followers. So.” His gaze found the camera.
“What are you waiting for?”
When the screen went black, before flickering to a birds-eye view, and then a close up of my house, I felt my legs give-way.
As if on impulse, I prodded at my mouth and felt for the loose tooth.
“That…” Kaz spoke up, his voice a breathy whisper. His eyes were still glued to the screen. “That… wasn’t me! Well, it was me... but I don’t… I don’t remember that!”
Instead of answering him, I turned to the startled looking boy when alarm bells started ringing, and the room was suddenly awash in red.
“Peeking!” Annalise screamed, dropping to her knees, rocking backwards and forwards.
Ignoring her, I focused on Kaz. Or whoever the fuck he was. “You need to knock my tooth out. Now."
submitted by Trash_Tia to nosleep [link] [comments]
I had grown up seeing it. At eight years old, I watched a man come into our local café while I drank my peanut butter chocolate milkshake and shot two people dead.
There was no malice in his eyes, or any kind of hatred. It was just a normal guy who smiled at the waitress and winked at me. Mom told me to keep drinking my milkshake and I did—licking away excess whipping cream while the bodies were hoarded out, and pooling red was cleaned from the floor. I could still see flecks of white inside red, and my stomach twisted.
But I didn’t feel…scared. I had no reason to be. Nobody was screaming or crying.
The man who had shot them had sat down to eat burger and fries, and didn’t blink an eye. That was my first experience seeing death—and not my last.
With no rules forbidding murder, you would think a town would tear itself apart.
That is not what happened.
Murder was legal, yes, but it didn’t happen every day. It happened when people had the urge. Mom explained it to me when I was old enough to understand. “The urge” was a phenomenon which had been affecting town’s people long before I was born, and there was no real way to stop it. So, it didn't stop. Mom told me she had killed her first person at the age of seventeen. Her math teacher. There was no reason or motive. Mom said she just woke up one day and wanted to kill someone.
Unfortunately, it was her math teacher who had gotten in the way. I always wondered why she described her killing so vividly to me. I was eight years old, and mom spent hours detailing how she had successfully managed to sever his head from his body with nothing but a phone charger, and a knife taken from her kitchen.
That specific killing became more of a bedtime story to lull me to sleep.
Mom would sit on the edge of my bed and tell me all the ways she had wanted to murder her math teacher—describing how it felt for his blood to spatter her hands and paint her face.
I didn’t like her smile when she told me about her killing. Sometimes I got scared she was going to murder me too. Growing up, I have been constantly on edge. Every day I woke up and pressed my hand to my forehead, asking myself the same questions. Did I want to kill anyone? And those thoughts blossomed into paranoia when I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. It’s not like I didn’t know what it was like.
Dad had let me hold a knife, and taught me how to properly hold a gun, and mom gave me lessons in severing body parts. Both of them wanted me to follow through with The Urge when it hit me inevitably, and I wanted to fit in.
Our elementary school teacher had told my class as little kids, that The Urge was part of growing up, and if we fought it, if we tried to get out of it, our mind and body would face the consequences. She didn’t elaborate, though I didn’t really want her to. All our teacher had to say was “bleeding from the mouth” and “severe reaction in the brain” and I was already squirming, along with my twelve other classmates. The Urge became something I anticipated instead of fearing. Because, if I got it—if I had my first kill as young as my mom, then my parents would be proud of me.
When I started middle school, our neighbors were caught killing and cannibalising their children, turning them into bone broth. I knew both of the kids. Clay and Clara. I had played with them in their yard and eaten cookies with them.
Clara told me she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, and Clay used to tug on my pigtails to get my attention. They were like siblings to me. No matter what my parents said, or my teacher’s, my gut still twisted at the thought of my neighbors doing something like that. Days after the cops had arrived, I saw Mrs Jenson watering her plants. But when I looked closer, there was no water. She was just holding an empty hose over her prize roses.
I stood on my tiptoes, peering over our fence. “Mrs Jenson?”
“I am okay, Elle.”
Her voice didn’t sound okay.
“Are you sure?” I asked. I pointed at the hose grasped in her hand. “You forgot to turn your water on.”
“I know.”
“Mrs Jenson…” I took a deep breath before I could stop myself. “Did you like killing Clay and Clara?”
“Why, yes,” she hummed. “Of course I did. I slurped up that bone broth like it was my prize tomato soup. They were…. delicious.”
I nodded. “But… didn’t you love them?”
She didn’t reply for a moment before seemingly snapping out of it and turning to me with a bright smile. With too many teeth. That was the first time I started to question The Urge.
It was supposed to make you feel good, acting like a relief, a weight from your chest. Killing another human being was exactly what the people in our town needed. But what about killing their families and children?
Did it really make them feel good?
Looking at my neighbor, I couldn’t see the joy my mom had described in her eyes. In fact, I couldn’t see anything. Her expression was the kind of blank which scared me. It was oblivion staring back, ripped of real human emotion. Mrs Jenson’s smile stretched across her lips, like she could sense my discomfort. I noticed she was yet to clean her hands.
Mrs Jenson’s fingernails were still stained a scary shade of red. Instead of replying, the woman moved towards my fence in slow, stumbling strides. She was dragging herself, like moving caused her pain, agony I couldn’t understand. It was exactly what my mother had insisted didn’t exist when killing. Pain.
Humanity. All of the adults told us we would not feel those things when killing. We wouldn’t feel regret, or contempt. We would just feel good.
It was a release, like cold water coming over us. We would never feel better in our lives than when we were killing—and our first would be something special. When Mrs Jenson’s fingers still slick with her children’s blood wrapped around the wooden fence, I found myself paralysed. Her manic grin twisted and contorted into a silent wail, and once vacant eyes popped open. Like she was seeing me for the very first time. “I want to go home,” she whispered, squeezing onto the wooden fence until her own fingers were bleeding.
“Can you tell them to let me go home? I would like to see my children. Right now. Do you hear me?” Mrs Jenson wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her gaze was glued to thin air.
She was crying, screaming at something only she could see—and for a moment I wondered if ghosts were real. I twisted around to see if there were any ghosts, specifically the ones of her children, but there was nothing. Just fall leaves spiralling in the air in pretty waves.
“Mrs Jenson is sick,” she told me once I was sitting at the dinner table eating melted ice-cream. It tasted like barf running down my throat.
I didn’t see Mrs Jenson after that.
Well, I did.
She looked different, however.
Not freakishly different, though I did notice her hair color had changed. I remembered it being a deep shade of brown, and when my neighbor returned with an even wider smile, it was more of a blondish white. When I questioned this, mom told me it was a makeover.
The Urge affected people in different ways, and with Mrs Jenson, after having her come-down, she had decided on a change. Mom’s words were supposed to be reassuring, adding that there was no reason to be scared of The Urge.
But I didn’t want to be like Mrs Jenson and have a mental breakdown over my killing. I wanted to be like mom and have a glass of wine and laugh over the sensation of taking a life. Mrs Jenson was my first real glimpse into the negativity of killing because it was so normalised. Dying, for example, wasn’t feared.
From a young age, we had been taught that it was a vital part of life, and dying meant finding peace. When I first started high school, I expected killing to happen. Puberty was when The Urge fully blossomed. Weapons were allowed, but only out of classes. In other words, under no circumstances must we kill each other in class, but the hallways were a free-for-all.
I had seen attempts during my freshman year, but no real killing.
Annalise Duval was infamously known as the junior girl who had rejected The Urge, and thrown out of school. Struck with the stomach flu on the day of her attempted killing, I only knew the story from word-of-mouth. Apparently, the girl had attempted to kill her mother at home, failed, and then bounded into school, screaming about laughter in the walls, and people whispering into her head.
Obviously, my classmate was labelled insane—and judging from her nosebleed, the girl’s body had ultimately rejected The Urge, and her brain was going haywire. Nosebleeds were a common side effect. I heard stories from kids saying there was blood everywhere, all over her hands and face, smeared under her chin. She had been screaming for help, but nobody dared go near her. Like rejection was contagious. Annalise survived. Just. I still saw her on my daily bike-ride to school.
She was always sitting cross legged in front of the forest with her eyes closed, like she was praying. The rumor was, after being thrown out by her parents, the girl wandered around aimlessly, muttering about whispering people and laughter in her head. It was obvious her rejection had seriously affected her mental state, but I did feel sorry for her.
It wasn’t known what had caused her to reject The Urge, though some of the kids in her class did comment that she had been complaining of a loose tooth beforehand. Mom told me to stay away from her, and I did. Annalise Duval was the first and only case of rejection, and thanks to her, I knew exactly what would happen if it happened to me too. So, I ignored the bad feeling about my neighbor, and forced myself to anticipate the day when I would get my very own urge to kill. I waited for it.
On my fourteenth birthday, I confused a swimming stomach and cramps for The Urge, which turned out to be my first period.
I remember biking my way home, witnessing a man cut off a woman’s head with an axe.
It’s funny, I thought I would be desensitised to seeing human remains and severed heads, glistening red seeping across the sidewalk, but it was the passion in the man’s face as he swung the axe and dug in real hard, chopping right through bone and not stopping, even when intense red splattered his face and clothes, until the woman’s head hit the ground, which sent my stomach creeping into my throat.
Then, it was the vacancy in his eyes, a twitching smile as he held the axe like a prize.
Part of me wanted to stay, to see if he had a similar reaction to Mrs Jenson. I wanted to know if he regretted what he had done, but once I was meeting his gaze, and his grin was widening, the toe of his boot kicking the woman’s motionless body, I turned away from him and pedalled faster, my eyes starting to water. It wasn’t long before my lunch was inching its way up my throat, and I was abandoning my bike on the side of the road, and choking up undigested Mac N’ cheese onto steaming tarmac.
I didn’t tell mom about the man, and more importantly, my odd reaction to his killing. I wasn’t supposed to be feeling sick to my stomach. Murder was normal. I wasn’t going to get in trouble for it, so why did seeing it make me sick?
I had been taught as a little kid that visceral reactions were normal, and it was okay to be scared of killing and murder. However, what our brains told us was right wasn’t always the truth. Our teacher had held up a teddy bear and stabbed into its stuffing with a carving knife.
We had all cried out, until the teacher told us that the bear didn’t care about dying. In fact, it was ready to find peace. And it didn’t hurt him.
In other words, we had to ignore what our minds told us was bad.
Mom told me I would definitely start having conflicting feelings before my first killing, but that it was nothing to worry about.
I did worry, though. I started to wonder if I was going to become the next Analise Duval. Maybe the two of us would become friends, sharing our delusions together.
My 17th birthday came and went—and still no sign of The Urge. I noticed mom was starting to grow impatient. She had a routine of coming to check my temperature every morning, regardless of whether I felt sick or not.
“How are you feeling?” I couldn’t help but notice mom’s smile was fake.
She dumped my breakfast on a tray in front of me, and when I risked nibbling on a slice of toast, she dropped the bombshell.
“Elle, you are almost eighteen years old,” she said. I noticed her hands were clenched into fists. “Do you feel anything?”
I considered lying, though then I would have to kill someone—and without The Urge, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do that.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, propping myself up on my pillows. “Most of the kids in my class—”
She cut me off with a frustrated hiss. “Yes, I know. They have all killed someone and you haven’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “People are starting to notice, Elle.” She spoke through a smile which was definitely a grimace. “And when people start to notice, they get suspicious. I’ve been on the phone with three different doctor’s this morning, and all of them want to book you in for an MRI. Just to make sure things are normal.”
“MRI?” I almost choked on the apple I had been chewing.
“Yes.” Mom sighed. “We can’t ignore that things aren’t…. abnormal. You are seventeen years old and haven’t had one urge to kill. The minimum for your age is one kill,” she said. “Minimum. Elle. You have not killed anyone, and when I bring it up you change the subject.”
I changed the subject because she started asking if I wanted to practise. I wasn’t sure what “practise” meant, but from the slightly manic look in her eye, my mom wasn’t talking about dolls or teddy bears. It was so-called normal to practise killing. There were even people who volunteered to be targets at the local scrapyard. Most of them were old people.
Joey Cunningham in my class told everyone his uncle took him to practise when he was thirteen—and he had killed three people without The Urge. Five years on, Joey had accumulated a total of fourteen kills.
He never failed to remind everyone almost every class. I could taste the apple growing sour in the back of my mouth. Mom was just trying to help, and it’s not like I was doing this intentionally. The idea of going to the scrapyard and killing random people, even if they gave me permission to, wasn’t appealing in the slightest. “I’m okay.” I said, and when mom’s eyes darkened, I followed that up with, “I mean… I have spare time after class, so…?”
I meant to finish with, “Maybe.” But the word tangled in my mouth when I took a chunk out of the apple, and pain struck. Throbbing pain, which was enough to send my brain spinning off of its axis. For a moment, my vision feathered, and I was left blinking at my mother who had become more silhouette than real person. I was aware of the apple dropping out of my hand, but I couldn’t think straight.
The pain came in waves, exploding in my mouth. When I was sure I could move without my head spinning, I slammed my hand over my mouth instinctively to nurse the pain, except that just made it worse. Fuck. Had I chipped my tooth? Blinking through blurry vision, I knew my mom was there. But so was something else.
As if my reality was splintering open, another seeping through, I suddenly had no idea where I was, and a familiar feeling of fear started to creep its way up my spine. The thing was though, I knew exactly where I was. I had known this town, this house, my whole life.
So that feeling of fear didn’t make sense.
The more I mulled the thought over in my mind, however, pain striking like lightning bolts, something was blossoming.
It both didn’t make sense, and yet it also did. In the deep crevices of my mind, that feeling was familiar. And I had felt it before. No matter how hard I squinted, though, I couldn’t make it out.
When I squinted again, a sudden shriek of noise rattled in my skull, and it took me a disorienting moment to realise what I could hear was laughter. Hysterical laughter. Which seemed to grow louder and louder, encompassing my thoughts until it was deafening. Not just that. The walls were swimming, my posters flashing in and out of existence before seemingly stabilising themselves. I blinked. Was I… losing my mind?
Maybe this was a side-effect of rejecting The Urge.
“Elle?” Mom’s voice cut through the phantom laughter which faded, and I blinked rapidly. “Sweetie, are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
The word was in my mouth before the thought could cross my mind. I shook my head, swallowing. “Yeah, I’m… fine.”
She nodded, though her expression darkened. Scrutinising. I knew she couldn’t wait to get me under an MRI. “Alright. Finish your breakfast. School starts in half an hour.” Mom stopped at the threshold. She didn’t turn around. “I really do think practising killing will help a lot.”
I flinched when another wave of laughter slammed into me—faded, but very much there. Definitely not a figment of my imagination.
Checking in my bedroom mirror, I didn’t have a loose tooth. Even thinking that, though, panic started to curl in the root of my gut.
When I was sure I wasn’t losing my mind after checking and rechecking the walls were actually real, I got washed and dressed, grabbing my backpack.
My brain wouldn’t shut up on my way to school, and my gut was twisting and turning, trying to projectile that meagre slice of toast.
Annalise Duval had complained of a loose tooth before she rejected The Urge. Was that what was going to happen to me?
Was it all because of that stupid apple?
At school, I was surprised to be cornered by a classmate I had said maybe five words to in our combined time at Briarwood High.
Kaz Issacs was one of the first kids in my class to be hit with The Urge, and almost ended up like Annalise Duval. I don’t even think it was The Urge. I think he was driven to kill through emotions, like so many adults had tried to tell us wasn’t real. Kaz was a confusing case where a teenager had actually blossomed early, or not at all, and struck with his own intent.
People argued that there was paranoia, and the local doctor insisted he was fine, though I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t paranoia.
Kaz didn’t need The Urge. Halfway through math class, two years prior, I had been daydreaming about the rain. It rarely rained in Brightwood. Every day was picturesque. I did remember rain. I knew what it felt like hitting my face and dropping into my open mouth and cupped hands. When I asked mom if it was ever going to rain, though, she got a funny look on her face. “Sweetie, it doesn’t rain in Brightwood.” She told me. Which just confused me even more. It’s not like I had imagined the feeling of freezing cold rain, and my own shivering as I splashed through puddles without an umbrella.
The more I pried into these memories, I realised there were no puddles in Brightwood. It never rained. So, where had I jumped into puddles? Did I really dream of my experiences in the rain, and if so, how?
How did I know what it felt like? These thoughts came over me pretty much every day, and that day had been no different.
My gaze had been on the windowpane, trying to guess what a raindrop would look like sliding down, when Kaz Issacs let out an exaggerated sigh from behind me.
In front of him, Jessa Pollux had been tapping her pen on her desk. It wasn’t annoying at first, then she kept doing it—tap, tap, tappity tap. And then it was annoying. I could tell it was annoying, because Kaz had politely asked her three times to stop making noise, to which she had ignored him, and if anything, tapped louder, this time drumming in frenzied beats on her workbooks. Now, I had grown up learning that The Urge came with no warning or motive, or reason. It happened whether you liked it or not. Kaz was… different. His case was rare.
This time he did have a motive, and despite having it hammered into us our whole lives that killing didn’t need a reason and was not driven by negative emotion, my classmate did have a reason—and was in fact driven by anger.
Anger strong enough to murder.
This time, I saw it happen in clarity. When I caught movement in the corner of my eye, I was twisting around with the rest of the class, to see the boy halfway off his chair, his fingers wrapped around a knife.
The girl instantly knew what he was going to do, even without turning around. We weren’t supposed to be scared of dying, I thought dizzily, watching the girl let out a wail and dive forwards, her eyes cartoon like. Like an animal, Kaz already had a tight hold of her ponytail and tugged her back. Though in fight or flight, this girl was screaming, flailing.
She didn’t want to die, I thought.
Was that normal?
Mom always insisted if it was our time, it was our time. If someone attacked us, even family members, then we accepted it.
I caught the moment her elbow knocked into the boy’s mouth, just as he drove the blade of the knife into her skull. Until then, he had been panting and laughing, his eyes lit up with an insanity I only knew from my mom’s tales.
She told me stories where her friends had gotten pleasure from killing. As quick as it had come, though, the euphoria of taking someone’s life left the boy’s eyes, and he dropped to the ground, one hand over his mouth, the other slipping from the knife.
The teacher was already commenting on no murder allowed in class and ordering Kaz to go and clean himself up. I wasn’t sure he could hear her though. When he lifted his head, I glimpsed something seeping through his fingers, running in sharp rivulets down his wrist.
And then my gaze was flicking to his expression which was definitely not what I was expecting. Replacing joy and unbridled pleasure was fear. His eyes were wide, frightened, lips twisted.
It was the exact same expression I had seen on Mrs Jenson. A cocktail of confusion and pain, followed by a sense of emptiness. Like neither of them could understand where they were, or even who they were. I guessed that was what The Urge did, or the variants which contorted in people and made them reject it.
Like a wounded animal, Kaz’s frenzied gaze scanned our faces and he blinked, before realising his nose was bleeding. “Fuck.” He muffled under his hand. The boy jumped to his feet, and in three shaky strides, he was pulling open the classroom door and disappearing down the hallway in a stumbled run. The next day, the boy came to class with his usual smile.
When I asked him what happened, he explained it was just an ”abnormal reaction” and he was fine. Kaz’s words were strange though.
He wasn’t even looking at me, and his smile was far too big. He got his first kill though, so that gave him bragging rights as the first sophomore to come of age. Kaz Issacs and Annalise Duval both had similar experiences. One of them had clearly lost their mind, while the other seemingly avoided it.
And speaking of Kaz, it wasn’t the norm for him to be talking to me at school. But there he was, blocking my way into the classroom.
“Hey.” He was quick to side-step in front of me when I tried pushing him out of the way.
There had been an instance the year prior when I considered asking him to prom. He was a reasonably attractive guy, reddish dark hair sprouting from a baseball cap. But then I remembered what he did to that girl in front of him. I remembered the sound of his knife slicing through skin, cartilage and bone, and despite her cry, her wails for him to stop, he kept going, driving it further and further into her skull. I couldn’t look him in the eye after that.
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
My mouth was still sort of hurting, and I was questioning my sanity, so speaking to Kaz wasn’t really on my to-do list that morning.
Kaz didn’t move, sticking an arm out so I couldn’t get passed him. “Have you got toothache by any chance?” To emphasise his words, he stuck his finger in his mouth, dragging his index across his upper incisors.
“Like, bad toothache.” His voice was muffled by his finger. Kaz leaned forward, arching a brow. “You do, don’t you? Right now, you feel your whole mouth is on fire and yet you can’t detect any wobblies.”
The guy’s words sent a slither of ice tingling down my spine. He was right. I hadn’t felt right since biting into that apple.
When I didn’t say anything, his lip twitched into a scowl. “Alright. You don’t want to talk.” He raised two fingers in a salute. “Suit yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “When you feel like talking, I’m here, aight? I’ll be your support system or whatever.”
Kaz’s words didn’t really hit me until several days later when I woke up with a throbbing mouth, knelt over the corpse of my mother.
The Urge had finally come. It was something I had been anticipating and fearing my whole life, terrified I wouldn’t get it and end up ostracized by my loved ones. But when I saw my mom’s body, and the vague memory of plunging a kitchen knife into her chest hit me, I didn’t feel happy or relieved. I felt like I had done something bad. Which was the wrong thing to think. Killing was good, the words echoed in my mind. Killing was our way of release. How could I think that when there was a knife clutched between my fingers?
The weapon which had killed her. Hurt her. How was this supposed make me feel good and not like I was dying? My mother's eyes were closed.
Peaceful. Like she had accepted her death. The teeth of the blade dripped deep, dark red, and I know I should have felt something which was joy, or happiness. Except all I felt was empty.
I felt despair in its purest form which began to chew me up from the inside as I lulled from my foggy thoughts. I screamed. I wasn't supposed to scream. I wasn't supposed to cry, but my eyes were stinging, and I felt like I was being suffocated. I saw flashes in quick succession; a room bumbling with moving silhouettes, and the smell of... coffee. Mom never let me try coffee, and I was sure we never had it in the house. So, how did I know the feeling of it running down my throat and quenching my thirst? How did I know the aroma of crushed coffee beans struggling to prick at memories refusing to surface? My mouth throbbed once again, my thoughts growing foggy and distant.
Just like in my bedroom, the walls started to swim. This time, I dived to my feet and jumped over my mom’s corpse, slamming my hands into them. They were real. I could feel them.
Even as I slammed my fists into them, however, somehow, they felt wrong. Like I was hitting an object which was supposed to be real but wasn’t. Almost as if on cue, there it was again.
Laughing. Loud shrieks of hysterical laughter thrumming in time to dull pain pounding in my back tooth. Blinking through an intense mind fog choking my mind, my first coherent thought was that yes, Kaz was right. I did have a loose tooth, and when I was sure of that, I was stuffing my bloody fingers inside my mouth and trying to find it. I had grabbed at the knife feverishly, my first thought to cut it out, when there was a sudden knock at my front door.
Slipping barefoot on the blood pooling across our kitchen floor, I struggled to get to the door without throwing up my insides.
Annalise Duval was standing on my doorstep. I had seen her in an odd assortment of clothes, but this one was definitely eye catching.
The girl was wearing a wedding dress which hung off of her, the veil barely clinging onto the mess of bedraggled curls she never brushed. Blinking at me through straggly blonde hair, the girl almost resembled an angel. The dress itself was filthy, blood and dirt smeared down the corset, and the skirt torn up. But she did suit it, in a weird way. “Hello, Elle.” The girl lifted a hand in a wave. Her smile wasn’t crazed, like my classmates had described. Instead, it was… sad.
Annalise’s gaze found my hands slick with my mother’s blood, though barely seemed fazed.
“Do you want to see the wall people?” She whispered.
Until then, I had ignored her ramblings. Then I started hearing the laughing, and suddenly “wall people” didn’t sound so crazy after all.
I nodded.
“Can you hear the laughing?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Mmm.” She did a twirl in the dress. “That’s how it started for me. Laughing. I heard a looooottt of laughing—and then I found the wall people.” I winced when she came close, so close, almost suffocating me. “Nobody believes me and it’s sad. I’m just trying to tell people about the wall people and they label me as crazy. They say something went wrronnnggg with my head,” Annalise stuck two fingers into her temple, miming pulling a trigger. “I’m not the wrong one. I know about the wall people, and the laughing. I know why I got the urge to kill my mom.”
“Annalise,” I spoke calmly. “Can you tell me what you mean?”
“Hm?”
Her eyes were partially vacant, that one slither of coherence quickly fading away.
Instead of speaking, I took her arm gently, and pulled her down my driveway. “Can you show me what you found?”
Annalise danced ahead of me, tripping in her wedding dress. She cocked her head. “Did you kill your mother?” Her lips twitched. “That’s funny. According to the wall people, you’re not supposed to kill someone until seasonal two.”
The girl blinked, giggling, and I forced myself to run after her. Jesus, she was fast. Even wearing a wedding dress. Annalise leapt across the sidewalk, twisting and twirling around, like she was in her own world. Before she landed in front of me, and her expression almost looked sane. “I wonder which season it will be. Will it be Summer? Maybe Fall, or Winter. I guess it’s not up to you, is it? It’s up to The Urge.”
Laughing again, the girl grabbed my hand, her fingernails biting into my skin. I glimpsed a single drop of red run from her nose, which she quickly wiped with the sleeve of her dress, leaving a scarlet smear. “Let’s go and see the wall people, Elle,” she hummed. As her footsteps grew stumbled, blood ran down her chin, spotting the sidewalk. I don’t know if coherency ever truly hit Annalise Duval, but knowing she was bleeding, her steps grew quicker. More frenzied.
“Your nose,” was all I could say, when rivers of intense red strained the girl’s dress.
Annalise nodded with a sad smile. “I know!” she said. “Don’t worry, it will stop when I shut up.” Her smile widened. “But what if I don’t shut up? What if I show you the wall people?” To my surprise, she leapt forward and flung out her arms, tipping her head back and yelling at the sky. “What if I don’t shut up?” Annalise laughed. “What are the wall people going to do, huh? Are you going to explode my brain?”
When people started to come out of their houses to see what was going on, I dragged her into a run.
“Are you insane?” I hissed out.
“Maybe!”
Annalise seemed to be floating through awareness and whatever the fuck The Urge had done to her. “Don’t worry, they’re just peeking.”
“What?”
The girl had an attention span of a rock. Her gaze went to the sky. “They’re going to turn the sun off so I can’t show you.”
Her words meant nothing to me, before the clouds started to darken, and just like Annalise had predicted, the sky started to get dark.
Knowing that somehow this supposedly crazy girl knew when things were going to happen only quickened my steps into a run.
“Hey!”
Halfway down the street, Kaz Issacs was riding his bike towards us. Which I found odd. Kaz didn’t own a bike. He rode the bus to school.
“Elle!” Waving at me with one hand, his other grasping at handlebars, Kaz pedalled faster. “Yo! Do you want to hang out?”
“Peeking.” Annalise said under her breath.
Ignoring Kaz, I nodded at Annalise to keep going, though the boy didn’t give up. We twisted around, and he caught up easily, skidding on the edge of the sidewalk. When he came to an abrupt stop in front of us, his gaze flicked to Annalise. “Shouldn’t you be praying in the forest?”
The girl recoiled back like a cat, hissing out, “Peeking!”
Kaz shot me a look. “Of all the people you could have made friends with you chose Annalise Duval?” His eyes softened when I ignored him and pulled the girl further down the road. Kaz followed slowly on his bike.
"Where are you going anyway? Isn't it late?”
It was 4pm.
Hardly late.
I decided to humor him. “We’re going to see the wall people.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” I turned my attention to him. “You asked me if I had a toothache, right?”
His expression crumpled. “I did?”
I noticed Annalise was clingier with him around, sticking to my side. Every time he moved, she flinched, tightening her grip on my arm. She was leading us into the forest, and I swore, the closer we were getting to the clearing, the more town’s people were popping up out of nowhere. An old woman greeted us, followed by a man with a dog, and then a group of kids from school. Annalise entangled her fingers in mine, pulling me through the clearing.
Kaz followed, hesitantly, biking over rough ground. I caught him fall off balance for a moment before his hands flew out to grasp onto his handlebars. “Once again, I think this is a bad idea,” he said in a sing-song voice. “We should go back.”
When it was too dangerous for his bike, he abandoned it and joined my side.
“Elle, the girl is insane,” Kaz hissed out. “What are you even doing? What is this going to accomplish except potentially getting lost?”
“I want to know if she’s telling the truth,” I murmured back.
He scoffed. “Telling the truth? Look at this place!” He spread out his arms, gesturing to the rapidly darkening forest. “There’s nothing here!”
“No.” Annalise ran ahead, staggering over trippy ground. “No, it’s right over here!” She was still fighting a nosebleed, and her words were starting to slur. The girl twisted to Kaz. “You’re peeking,” she spat, striding over to him until they were face to face. “Stop peeking,” she said, her fingers delving under her wedding skirt where she pulled out a knife and pressed it to his throat. “If you peek again, I will cut you open.”
Kaz nodded. “Got it, Blondie. No peeking.”
Annalise didn’t move for a second, her hands holding the knife trembling. “You’re not going to tell me I’m crazy again,” she whispered.
“You’re not crazy,” Kaz said dryly.
“Say it again.”
“You’re not crazy!” He yelped when she pressed pressure onto the blade. “Can you stop swinging that around? Jeez!”
Annalise shot me a grin, and it took a second for me to realise.
Kaz was scared of the knife.
He was scared of dying—which meant, whether he liked it or not, the boy had in fact not gone through with The Urge.
I thought the girl was going to slash Kaz’s throat open in delight, but instead she looped her arm in his like they were suddenly best friends.
“Come on, Elle!” She danced forwards, pulling the boy with her. “We’re closeeeee!”
I wasn’t sure about that.
What we were, however, was lost. When the three of us came to a stop, it was pitch black, and I was struggling to see in front of me. Annalise, however, walked straight over to thin air, and gestured to it with a grin. “Tah-da!” Spluttering through pooling red, she let out a laugh.
“See!”
Kaz, who was still uncomfortably pressed to her no matter how hard he strained to get away, shot me a look I could barely make out.
“I’m sorry, what did I say? That we were going to get lost? That Annalise is certifiably crazy and we’re very fucking lost?”
At first, I thought I really was crazy. Maybe Annalise’s condition was contagious. I could hear it again. Laughing.
But this time it was coming from exactly where Annalise was pointing—and when the girl slammed her hand into thin air, there was a loud clanging noise which sounded like metal.
Slowly, I made my way towards it, and when my hands were touching sleek metal, what felt like the corners of a door, more pain struck my upper incisors. “Holy shit.” Kaz was pressing himself against the door, and then slamming his fists into it. “The crazy bitch was right.” His words hung in my thoughts on a constant cycle, as we delved into what should have been forest.
After all, we had been standing in the middle of nowhere. The laughter was deafening when I stepped over the threshold, and I had to slap my hands over my ears to block it out. Through the invisible door, however, was exactly what Annalise had described. Wall people.
All around us were what looked like television screens, and on those screens—were people. Faces.
They were not part of the laughter. The laughter was mechanical and wrong, rooted deep inside my skull. The faces which stared down at us looked like normal people, men and women, with some of them teens, and even younger children. Annalise and Kaz were next to me, their head s tipped back, gazes glued to the screens. Not the ones I was looking at. The ones on tiny computer monitors.
It was when I was tearing my eyes from our audience, did I start to see what made Kaz stiffen up next to me. One screen in particular showed his face. He was younger, maybe a year or two. No, I thought, barf creeping up my throat. It was when he had killed that girl.
His hands clasped in his lap were still stained and slick with her blood. The Kaz on the screen seemed a lot more laid back, his feet resting on the table in front of him. There was a cockiness in his eyes I had never seen before. This boy’s eyes were cruel. “Why exactly have you signed up for this program?” A man’s voice crackled off screen.
“Duh.” Kaz held up his scarlet hands, a grin twisting on his lips. “So I can get my Darkroom rep back.” He leaned forward, his eyes wide. “That is going to happen, right? I don’t do this shit for free, and I’ve got one million followers to impress, man. Darkroom loves me. Even if I did go too far that one time, which wasn't even my fault."
“You are correct.” The man said. “Darkroom does benefit from its influencers. Our program aims to help satisfy certain… needs across the planet, by broadcasting them right here,” He paused. “You have killed five people before signing up for Darkroom, correct? Your parents?”
“Parents and brother,” Kaz chuckled. “I gutted them with my fave knife, and then filmed it. Obviously, my Tik-Tok got taken down with all the freaks in the comments moaning, and suddenly I find you guys! A whole lot of sick fucks, but who’s complaining, right? Not me.”
“And,” the man cleared his throat. “You will keep killing? We are aware the initial implant impacted your brain quite badly. In the subdued state, you will keep killing, as the so-called ‘urge’ says. However, in reality we will be sending signals to your brain which will make you kill.”
“Alright, do it.”
“Are you sure? We couldn’t help noticing during your first kill, you seemed to… well, react in a way we haven’t seen before.”
He cocked his head. “Did my fans like it?”
“Well, yes—”
“Good.” Kaz held out his arm. “Do it again. And do it right this time. As long as I’m getting 40K every appearance, I’m good. You can slice my brain up all you want, I’m getting paid and followers. So.” His gaze found the camera.
“What are you waiting for?”
When the screen went black, before flickering to a birds-eye view, and then a close up of my house, I felt my legs give-way.
As if on impulse, I prodded at my mouth and felt for the loose tooth.
“That…” Kaz spoke up, his voice a breathy whisper. His eyes were still glued to the screen. “That… wasn’t me! Well, it was me... but I don’t… I don’t remember that!”
Instead of answering him, I turned to the startled looking boy when alarm bells started ringing, and the room was suddenly awash in red.
“Peeking!” Annalise screamed, dropping to her knees, rocking backwards and forwards.
Ignoring her, I focused on Kaz. Or whoever the fuck he was. “You need to knock my tooth out. Now."
2023.03.24 21:16 twenty_liu When my father died, he left me a box of cassette tapes. I wish I'd never listened to them.
The last time I saw my father, my priorities in life were figuring out which houses on my street would be giving out the full-size candy bars, or how to score an invitation to Samantha’s birthday party at the zoo. So when I received news that he had died, I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel much of anything.
My brother, he had moved to London to be closer to his wife’s family and mom passed away a few years ago. Breast cancer. I don’t often think about my father but in those last months I’d thought about him a lot. I had to stay an extra year to finish up my degree and by the time I had graduated only my brother brought flowers to the ceremony.
So it came as a complete surprise when I found out that my father was not only a well-respected psychologist, with books and everything to his name, but also a well-respected psychologist who had left his entire estate to me. An actual mansion (albeit in Maine) with the eight bedrooms and those lawn hedges that needed frequent trimmings. I guess he never remarried either.
I’ve been living at the mansion for about a week now, going through his old things, tidying up where I can. It feels invasive in a way, and nosy, because I’m really just his daughter in namesake only. The mansion itself is like something out of a Disney movie; there are these white marble, twin staircases that wrap around the entrance when you first walk in and I’m still finding new corridors and doors that lead to rooms I haven’t seen. The main living room (there are a total of three) echos when you talk just above a whisper and a single bedroom in this place is about the size of my apartment back in LA.
Despite all that, I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to sell this place, not just because this is way too much space for one person, but because there’s something about it that gives me the creeps. It’s not run down or anything; no cobwebs in the corners or rotting wood beams, and if there are stairs that lead to a basement torture chamber, I haven’t found them yet.
No, it’s because there are these giant velvet wall hangings with some sort of crest or symbol on them that I don’t recognize. There’s a circle and in the middle there’s an assortment of rectangles and a line running through them, looking almost like a circuit board– I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the best at describing these things. One wall hanging, I could understand. But why are they in every single room, draped over chairs and blocking out windows?
And then there are the framed portraits. I found one that must’ve been my father; he vaguely resembled the man I remembered and I could see my eyes in his. But the other photos, men and women of all races ranging from early twenties to what looked like eighty. Who were they? There must’ve been about a hundred or so of these photos, placed all over the mansion and even a week later I’m still discovering new ones in the oddest places. Just yesterday night, I was reading on my phone when a noise outside startled me. When I went to pick up my phone, I found another portrait under the bed.
On top of that I’m a city girl through and through, and here, you get blank stares just mentioning the word “traffic”. It’s also about a twenty minute drive to the nearest grocery store, and all of the houses around me might as well have their own zip codes.
But it was what I found tonight that was by far the most unnerving. I’d just finished dinner - Mac and Cheese with cut up hotdogs - a dish that felt almost insulting to the kitchen it was made in, when I decided I’d spend some time tonight organizing more of my father's things. I had KEEP, DONATE, SELL, and TRASH piles with the KEEP pile looking the most lonely by far.
There was one room I hadn’t spent much time in, that I had only peeked in for a brief moment when I first arrived. Judging by the handsome mahogany desk, the floor-to-wall bookshelves and the velvet green chaise lounge and leather chair, it was unmistakably my father’s office. There was something about this room that I wanted to save for last and there was no real reason for it, nothing I could express in words, anyways.
The room had been arranged with obvious care. I felt a sense of familiarity when I walked in, traced my fingers across these books I’d never heard of, wondered if my father had actually read of all them or if they were for display only. But it was what was tucked under his desk that caught my attention, a cardboard box with a single word scribbled on it.
CATHERINE
My name. My father wanted me to find this - but why?
I wasted no time in peeling off the packing tape, bracing myself for disappointment but hoping for something more. Well, it was a good thing I had prepared because I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little let down by what was in the box.
Cassette tapes. Twenty or so cassette tapes, stacked neatly in rows and on top of each other. I pulled a few from the top and they were all labeled with names and a number - patients of my father, perhaps?
Now, I may be showing my age here but I’ve never actually used a cassette player. It was by method of deduction that I spotted one sitting on my father’s desk, and after consulting trusty old Google, I was able to play the first tape.
To protect the identity of his patients, I’m going to use initials here. But I wanted to transcribe this session because while I’ve never been to therapy myself, something about this feels off to me. This is the tape that’s been labeled “RT 1”.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Ashton: Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Ashton, you must be R.
RT: (Ahem) Yes. Yes I am.
Dr. Ashton: Well R, the floor is all yours. Would you like to talk about what’s been on your mind?
RT: I’m a bit nervous right now, if you couldn’t tell. (Laughs) Too much caffeine this morning, that’s why my hands are shaky. See?
Dr. Ashton: Can’t blame you, coffee is what gets me through most days. I hope I’m not the one making you nervous, I promise my friends down at county jail all say I’m really nice.
RT: (Laughs) No! No it’s not you. It’s just uh, this is my first time doing this, y’know? My boyfriend he uh, he’s been kinda nagging me to do this, therapy.
Dr. Ashton: Mhm.
RT: It’s just. He wants us to come out to our families. It’s been a whole year, so I get where he’s coming from, I do. But my parents, my family. I don’t think they would…
Dr. Ashton: Support you. You don’t think they would understand.
RT: It’s not just that. My family, they uh. Think the term here is “religious fanatics”? (Laughs) Like straight up drank the Kool-Aid, think all sinners are going to Hell, burn in eternal damnation and all that.
Dr. Ashton: But you don’t believe in any of that.
RT: Of course not! I mean, c’mon. It’s 2019. You’d think that by now people can think for themselves.
Dr. Ashton: So it sounds like your family, they have some views you don’t agree with. And it’s causing issues in your relationship. Have you thought about putting some distance? Between you and them.
RT: Yeah. We talked about moving outta this place, to New York or maybe Seattle. That would be nice, I think. Different. But my mom, she uh. Well she has Alzheimer's. And I know in a few years she’s not going to… going to all be there. I know, right? If she knew I were gay she’d tell me I’m going to burn in Hell without even blinking. But she’s still my mom. Woman who raised me. Must be all that Catholic guilt in me. (Laughs)
Dr. Ashton: Tell me about your partner. How’d you two meet?
RT: Grindr. Romantic right? (Laughs) Neither of us were really looking for anything serious, but when you’re one of like 100 gay men within a 50 mile radius and you meet someone you actually click with? It was just supposed to be drinks, our first date. Then one bar turned to two, then three, and before you know it, it’s 4 in the morning and we’re getting burgers and milkshakes at Denny’s. I think the both of us knew what we had found.
Dr. Ashton: And how’s the relationship been? Any issues besides…
RT: Besides the one thing that’d destroy my relationship with my family? Ha! Things are nice, they’ve been good. I work nights and he works a 9 to 5 so our schedules don’t always line up but… we make it work.
Dr. Ashton: Am I sensing some hesitation there?
RT: Nothing gets past you doctor.
Dr. Ashton: Please, call me Gabriel.
RT: Oh uh, sure. But yeah it’s just that… okay so, I like my job. I work security at the hospital and I know it’s not the most prestigious thing in the world and I’m not making the big bucks. But I like it. I’ve always been more of uh, more of a night owl. And I really like my coworkers, y’know? It just feels familiar to me.
Dr. Ashton: Mhm.
RT: But M. He… he wants me to quit. To find something with more “normal hours”.
Dr. Ashton: Why does he want that?
RT: I guess it’s because he wants us to spend more time together? I don’t know. I think it’s sweet that he wants to see me more. We don’t live together right now and uh, it’s really only the weekends when we can see each other.
Dr. Ashton: And you’re okay with that? Only seeing him on the weekends?
RT: I mean, no. I want to see him more too. But it’s my job, you know? I’m not just gonna quit my job. And well, to be honest I’ve always had the feeling that… that he…
Dr. Ashton: That he?
RT: … that he looks down on it? I’m not sure. I don’t know if it’s in my head or… He’s never said anything to me, just wanna be clear. But when we’re out with his friends, he makes these little… little comments. Am I making any sense?
Dr. Ashton: Can you give an example? Of these comments.
RT: Yeah like uh, he’ll say stuff about how he’s the sugar daddy in the relationship. Jokingly, of course. He does make a lot more than me. What with his fancy remote job. We’re not living together right now but it’s something we've talked about. And I know you have to discuss finances before moving in with someone, I get that. But he’s always bringing up how he wants a partner to contribute equally to bills, that he doesn’t want to be supporting anyone. I get all of that! But it’s just something about the way he says it…
Dr. Ashton: Do you feel like these comments are digs at your character? At you?
RT: Honestly? Yeah I do. Like if he has a problem with how much I’m making, just tell me. We’re both adults right? Gotta communicate and all that?
Dr. Ashton: It almost sounds like he’s ashamed of you.
RT: You know what? I think that’s exactly it. I think he might be ashamed of me.
Dr. Ashton: So M, he wants you to tell your family about your relationship, even though that’s not what you want to do.
RT: …yeah….
Dr. Ashton: And he looks down on your job, makes these comments in front of his friends. Do you ever wonder what he says to them when you’re not there?
RT: Well…
Dr. Ashton: R, it sounds like people have always been telling you what to do, your family telling you what to believe in, M telling you that you need to go to therapy, you need to find a different job. Doesn’t that get exhausting?
RT: …
Dr. Ashton: It sounds exhausting to me. Can I tell you something that I learned way too late in life?
RT: What’s that?
Dr. Ashton: “No” is a complete sentence. It’s okay to set boundaries, especially with those closest to you.
RT: I… I guess you’re right.
Dr. Ashton: And R? I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, or even if you think this about yourself. But I’m going to tell you right now, that you are enough.
RT: No one’s ever said that to me.
Dr. Ashton: Can you say it to yourself right now?
RT: Ha. Yeah uh, I… I am enough?
Dr. Ashton: There are always going to be outside influences R, like a close-minded family or a partner that doesn’t see your potential. But what’s important is that you see it in yourself. Because I see it in you. I see a man who has passion for what he does, who values the bonds of family, who desires to love and to be loved. A man who’s deserving.
RT: I… I’ve never really thought of myself in that way Dr. Ash– Gabriel.
Dr. Ashton: Well, that’s what I’m here for, R. To offer a new perspective. To help you see these things that you might not even have known.
RT: Wow, yeah. I mean. I just… You’ve given me a lot to think about. Really.
Dr. Ashton: And right on schedule, it looks like our time is up. I’ll be seeing you again next week? Same time?
RT: Yeah. Yeah I think I’ll be seeing you again.
END TRANSCRIPT
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to hear my father’s voice again. A longing I didn’t even know I had. It had been so many years, yet hearing him brought me back to chasing ice cream trucks in the summer, flying kites on those especially windy days.
The therapy session itself, I’m no expert but it was a little weird, right? A little too personal? If anyone has more experience with this I’d love to know your thoughts because I plan on going through all of these tapes.
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My brother, he had moved to London to be closer to his wife’s family and mom passed away a few years ago. Breast cancer. I don’t often think about my father but in those last months I’d thought about him a lot. I had to stay an extra year to finish up my degree and by the time I had graduated only my brother brought flowers to the ceremony.
So it came as a complete surprise when I found out that my father was not only a well-respected psychologist, with books and everything to his name, but also a well-respected psychologist who had left his entire estate to me. An actual mansion (albeit in Maine) with the eight bedrooms and those lawn hedges that needed frequent trimmings. I guess he never remarried either.
I’ve been living at the mansion for about a week now, going through his old things, tidying up where I can. It feels invasive in a way, and nosy, because I’m really just his daughter in namesake only. The mansion itself is like something out of a Disney movie; there are these white marble, twin staircases that wrap around the entrance when you first walk in and I’m still finding new corridors and doors that lead to rooms I haven’t seen. The main living room (there are a total of three) echos when you talk just above a whisper and a single bedroom in this place is about the size of my apartment back in LA.
Despite all that, I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to sell this place, not just because this is way too much space for one person, but because there’s something about it that gives me the creeps. It’s not run down or anything; no cobwebs in the corners or rotting wood beams, and if there are stairs that lead to a basement torture chamber, I haven’t found them yet.
No, it’s because there are these giant velvet wall hangings with some sort of crest or symbol on them that I don’t recognize. There’s a circle and in the middle there’s an assortment of rectangles and a line running through them, looking almost like a circuit board– I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the best at describing these things. One wall hanging, I could understand. But why are they in every single room, draped over chairs and blocking out windows?
And then there are the framed portraits. I found one that must’ve been my father; he vaguely resembled the man I remembered and I could see my eyes in his. But the other photos, men and women of all races ranging from early twenties to what looked like eighty. Who were they? There must’ve been about a hundred or so of these photos, placed all over the mansion and even a week later I’m still discovering new ones in the oddest places. Just yesterday night, I was reading on my phone when a noise outside startled me. When I went to pick up my phone, I found another portrait under the bed.
On top of that I’m a city girl through and through, and here, you get blank stares just mentioning the word “traffic”. It’s also about a twenty minute drive to the nearest grocery store, and all of the houses around me might as well have their own zip codes.
But it was what I found tonight that was by far the most unnerving. I’d just finished dinner - Mac and Cheese with cut up hotdogs - a dish that felt almost insulting to the kitchen it was made in, when I decided I’d spend some time tonight organizing more of my father's things. I had KEEP, DONATE, SELL, and TRASH piles with the KEEP pile looking the most lonely by far.
There was one room I hadn’t spent much time in, that I had only peeked in for a brief moment when I first arrived. Judging by the handsome mahogany desk, the floor-to-wall bookshelves and the velvet green chaise lounge and leather chair, it was unmistakably my father’s office. There was something about this room that I wanted to save for last and there was no real reason for it, nothing I could express in words, anyways.
The room had been arranged with obvious care. I felt a sense of familiarity when I walked in, traced my fingers across these books I’d never heard of, wondered if my father had actually read of all them or if they were for display only. But it was what was tucked under his desk that caught my attention, a cardboard box with a single word scribbled on it.
CATHERINE
My name. My father wanted me to find this - but why?
I wasted no time in peeling off the packing tape, bracing myself for disappointment but hoping for something more. Well, it was a good thing I had prepared because I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little let down by what was in the box.
Cassette tapes. Twenty or so cassette tapes, stacked neatly in rows and on top of each other. I pulled a few from the top and they were all labeled with names and a number - patients of my father, perhaps?
Now, I may be showing my age here but I’ve never actually used a cassette player. It was by method of deduction that I spotted one sitting on my father’s desk, and after consulting trusty old Google, I was able to play the first tape.
To protect the identity of his patients, I’m going to use initials here. But I wanted to transcribe this session because while I’ve never been to therapy myself, something about this feels off to me. This is the tape that’s been labeled “RT 1”.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Ashton: Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Ashton, you must be R.
RT: (Ahem) Yes. Yes I am.
Dr. Ashton: Well R, the floor is all yours. Would you like to talk about what’s been on your mind?
RT: I’m a bit nervous right now, if you couldn’t tell. (Laughs) Too much caffeine this morning, that’s why my hands are shaky. See?
Dr. Ashton: Can’t blame you, coffee is what gets me through most days. I hope I’m not the one making you nervous, I promise my friends down at county jail all say I’m really nice.
RT: (Laughs) No! No it’s not you. It’s just uh, this is my first time doing this, y’know? My boyfriend he uh, he’s been kinda nagging me to do this, therapy.
Dr. Ashton: Mhm.
RT: It’s just. He wants us to come out to our families. It’s been a whole year, so I get where he’s coming from, I do. But my parents, my family. I don’t think they would…
Dr. Ashton: Support you. You don’t think they would understand.
RT: It’s not just that. My family, they uh. Think the term here is “religious fanatics”? (Laughs) Like straight up drank the Kool-Aid, think all sinners are going to Hell, burn in eternal damnation and all that.
Dr. Ashton: But you don’t believe in any of that.
RT: Of course not! I mean, c’mon. It’s 2019. You’d think that by now people can think for themselves.
Dr. Ashton: So it sounds like your family, they have some views you don’t agree with. And it’s causing issues in your relationship. Have you thought about putting some distance? Between you and them.
RT: Yeah. We talked about moving outta this place, to New York or maybe Seattle. That would be nice, I think. Different. But my mom, she uh. Well she has Alzheimer's. And I know in a few years she’s not going to… going to all be there. I know, right? If she knew I were gay she’d tell me I’m going to burn in Hell without even blinking. But she’s still my mom. Woman who raised me. Must be all that Catholic guilt in me. (Laughs)
Dr. Ashton: Tell me about your partner. How’d you two meet?
RT: Grindr. Romantic right? (Laughs) Neither of us were really looking for anything serious, but when you’re one of like 100 gay men within a 50 mile radius and you meet someone you actually click with? It was just supposed to be drinks, our first date. Then one bar turned to two, then three, and before you know it, it’s 4 in the morning and we’re getting burgers and milkshakes at Denny’s. I think the both of us knew what we had found.
Dr. Ashton: And how’s the relationship been? Any issues besides…
RT: Besides the one thing that’d destroy my relationship with my family? Ha! Things are nice, they’ve been good. I work nights and he works a 9 to 5 so our schedules don’t always line up but… we make it work.
Dr. Ashton: Am I sensing some hesitation there?
RT: Nothing gets past you doctor.
Dr. Ashton: Please, call me Gabriel.
RT: Oh uh, sure. But yeah it’s just that… okay so, I like my job. I work security at the hospital and I know it’s not the most prestigious thing in the world and I’m not making the big bucks. But I like it. I’ve always been more of uh, more of a night owl. And I really like my coworkers, y’know? It just feels familiar to me.
Dr. Ashton: Mhm.
RT: But M. He… he wants me to quit. To find something with more “normal hours”.
Dr. Ashton: Why does he want that?
RT: I guess it’s because he wants us to spend more time together? I don’t know. I think it’s sweet that he wants to see me more. We don’t live together right now and uh, it’s really only the weekends when we can see each other.
Dr. Ashton: And you’re okay with that? Only seeing him on the weekends?
RT: I mean, no. I want to see him more too. But it’s my job, you know? I’m not just gonna quit my job. And well, to be honest I’ve always had the feeling that… that he…
Dr. Ashton: That he?
RT: … that he looks down on it? I’m not sure. I don’t know if it’s in my head or… He’s never said anything to me, just wanna be clear. But when we’re out with his friends, he makes these little… little comments. Am I making any sense?
Dr. Ashton: Can you give an example? Of these comments.
RT: Yeah like uh, he’ll say stuff about how he’s the sugar daddy in the relationship. Jokingly, of course. He does make a lot more than me. What with his fancy remote job. We’re not living together right now but it’s something we've talked about. And I know you have to discuss finances before moving in with someone, I get that. But he’s always bringing up how he wants a partner to contribute equally to bills, that he doesn’t want to be supporting anyone. I get all of that! But it’s just something about the way he says it…
Dr. Ashton: Do you feel like these comments are digs at your character? At you?
RT: Honestly? Yeah I do. Like if he has a problem with how much I’m making, just tell me. We’re both adults right? Gotta communicate and all that?
Dr. Ashton: It almost sounds like he’s ashamed of you.
RT: You know what? I think that’s exactly it. I think he might be ashamed of me.
Dr. Ashton: So M, he wants you to tell your family about your relationship, even though that’s not what you want to do.
RT: …yeah….
Dr. Ashton: And he looks down on your job, makes these comments in front of his friends. Do you ever wonder what he says to them when you’re not there?
RT: Well…
Dr. Ashton: R, it sounds like people have always been telling you what to do, your family telling you what to believe in, M telling you that you need to go to therapy, you need to find a different job. Doesn’t that get exhausting?
RT: …
Dr. Ashton: It sounds exhausting to me. Can I tell you something that I learned way too late in life?
RT: What’s that?
Dr. Ashton: “No” is a complete sentence. It’s okay to set boundaries, especially with those closest to you.
RT: I… I guess you’re right.
Dr. Ashton: And R? I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, or even if you think this about yourself. But I’m going to tell you right now, that you are enough.
RT: No one’s ever said that to me.
Dr. Ashton: Can you say it to yourself right now?
RT: Ha. Yeah uh, I… I am enough?
Dr. Ashton: There are always going to be outside influences R, like a close-minded family or a partner that doesn’t see your potential. But what’s important is that you see it in yourself. Because I see it in you. I see a man who has passion for what he does, who values the bonds of family, who desires to love and to be loved. A man who’s deserving.
RT: I… I’ve never really thought of myself in that way Dr. Ash– Gabriel.
Dr. Ashton: Well, that’s what I’m here for, R. To offer a new perspective. To help you see these things that you might not even have known.
RT: Wow, yeah. I mean. I just… You’ve given me a lot to think about. Really.
Dr. Ashton: And right on schedule, it looks like our time is up. I’ll be seeing you again next week? Same time?
RT: Yeah. Yeah I think I’ll be seeing you again.
END TRANSCRIPT
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to hear my father’s voice again. A longing I didn’t even know I had. It had been so many years, yet hearing him brought me back to chasing ice cream trucks in the summer, flying kites on those especially windy days.
The therapy session itself, I’m no expert but it was a little weird, right? A little too personal? If anyone has more experience with this I’d love to know your thoughts because I plan on going through all of these tapes.
2023.03.24 19:59 sj_numba1 Grinding and brewing suggestions?
Just got this interesting coffee yesterday from Little Wolf. “La Pradera - Lot 1” Colombia (Mango, Taffy, Juicy). Washed Pink Bourbon. 1900M Elevation. Roast date is 3/21/23. Using a v60 and grinding using Ode w/ gen 2 burrs. I normally go with the Tetsu recipe but wanted to see how others would go about it. TIA!
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2023.03.24 19:47 Max_imum_Overdrive The Bad Death and Worse Resurrection of Buster Scuggum
The Bad Death (and Worse Resurrection) of Buster Scuggum
Ray Handler was the kind of nice guy who was calm, cordial, and friendly to everyone, unless you crossed him. He would let small things slide, because he never wanted trouble with anyone, unless they deserved it. However, if the insult or sin against him was serious enough, his cold wrath was a real danger to be wary of.
Buster Scuggum was a friend of a friend, who had been brought out to Ray's farmhouse for a bi-monthly movie night, and had been welcomed under Ray's roof on account of the friend that brought him. Hospitality was a serious affair to Ray. He had been taught by his mother that the rules of hospitality were sacred to the most ancient gods of mankind, not to be broken lightly. He didn't actually believe in gods, but he liked the rules. They set well with his natural inclinations. One of those rules was that anyone who came asking for shelter or company with pure intentions should be granted entrance. Another rule was that anyone who proved to have ill intentions, or showed disrespect, was to be punished, severely, for their insult to the gods.
What was first evident about Buster was that he was a bit simple-minded, a twenty six year old man who thought and acted like a fifteen year old. What became known later was the fact that Buster was a sneak thief. It made sense to anyone who had known him for very long. Anytime he was around, random objects had a way of disappearing. Wherever he went, he wore a lime green backpack with a black and red anarchy symbol spray painted on it. That was where he stashed all the things he stole from anyone who made the mistake of letting him into their home.
When that movie night was over, and all the guests had gone on home, Ray was cleaning up after his guests. The first thing he noticed missing was a small, gold handled, forceps that he usually kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. It was a strange thing for any of his guests to have been messing with. He couldn't imagine why anyone would have moved it. He was confused and annoyed, but not as much as when he discovered the second missing object, a small action figure based on one of Ray's favorite movie franchises. It was a childhood treasure that Ray had managed to hold onto throughout the years. He kept it in a small alcove by the bathroom, and now it was just gone. His mood was turning foul, and then he happened to look at his movie shelves, and saw the empty place. What should have been in that space was a special edition VHS box set of Ray's favorite science fiction saga. This was intolerable. Ray stared at the empty hole in his collection, now seething with anger. It was obvious that one of his guests had robbed him, had violated his hospitality. Even though all of those things together were only worth a few hundred dollars, Ray was furious. It wasn't about the monetary value, it was about the principle, it was about the insult.
He thought about the weird young man with the backpack, who had trouble looking people in the eyes. He recalled how the backpack had seemed a bit heavier after he arrived, bulged a bit more, how Buster had kept disappearing during the movie, and had then left without thanking Ray for having him there. It was fairly obvious to Ray who the thief was, and Ray wanted vengeance. He would give the dirty sneak one chance to return the pilfered items, and if he refused, then it was time for punishment.
Ray spent the next morning making preparations. That evening, he drove his van across several county lines to the home of Buster Scuggum. He took his strongest hickory cane with him. Buster answered Ray's knock at the door wearing a furry pink pajama onesie that resembled a cartoon dog. Ray was very calm and deliberate with his wording as he told Buster that he knew Buster was a thief. He never raised his voice as he demanded the return of his property. Buster sneered and forcefully stated that he had no idea what Ray was talking about. He said that he hadn't stolen anything. In one swift motion, Ray grabbed Buster by the arms and threw him to the ground outside. He struck the lying thief across the back of the head with his cane, and Buster lay still. Ray bound his hands and feet with zip ties, and gagged him with duct tape, before hauling him into the rear of the van. Then he went inside the house and located his things. They were all still in the backpack, so Ray took it and returned to the van. Buster did not regain consciousness until they were back at Ray's hog farm.
Buster was stirring but not quite awake as Ray dragged him down to the wooded acre at the back of his fields. There, beneath the walnut and maple trees, a little shed had been built into the side of a hill. Inside, Ray strapped the unrepentant sneak thief to a partially reclined metal table. Using more zip ties, tightly bound around Buster's arms and legs, above the biceps and midway up the thighs, he cut off the flow of blood to the extremeties. That being done, he used smelling salts and splashes of cold water to revive his captive. He wanted Buster fully aware for the next part. Buster groggily rose to consciousness, jerking his body against the restraints and gnawing at the duct tape that filled his mouth and pulled against the back of his head. Ray chuckled at the spectacle. He gave the helpless fellow a couple of minutes to fully realize his plight. Then, he started up the reciprocating saw. This was a saw made specially for carving up the carcasses of hogs, and Ray was using it to remove Buster's limbs. First, he cut off the hands, just for the drama of it. Buster's muffled screams brought him pleasure. Next, off came the right arm, then the left. Ray tossed them into a bloody pile on top of a thick plastic tarp. He moved on to the legs, not bothering with the feet. The point had been made. Those went on the pile as well. Ray left his living but limbless prisoner hanging on the table, as he dragged the severed body parts out past the hog barns. There were five numbered barns at the top of the rise, and one un-numbered barn that sat by itself. Ray went to the un-numbered barn with his grisly load.
The un-numbered barn had a dozen hogs inside. These were special hogs, born in a single litter eight years before. Ray had know immediately that there was something odd about them. The veterinarian he had consulted called it an atavistic condition. Ray called it spooky. He figured that the sow that birthed them had gotten into something bad in the fields that had caused the weird mutations, the atavism. As the piglets had grown, their peculiar attributes had become more pronounced. The dark skin and hair had turned jet black, with strange, asymmetrical, striations and whorls of gray. The bony buds on the spine had grown into thick, sharp, spikes. The tusks that grew in their mouths were too long, too sharp, and too many. The strange, blood red, eyes now bulged menacingly from their savage looking faces. Ray tossed Buster's arms and legs into the feeding troughs. After sniffing at the rare offering, the hungry hogs dug in to their supper.
Ray moved what was left of Buster, who was sobbing uncontrollably into the duct tape gag, onto a metal, two wheeled, dolly. That made it easier to take him out to the hog barn, and gave him a way to set Buster up to watch as the hogs finished off the first course of their meal. There wasn't much left but bones at that point. Those hogs were very hungry. The crunching sounds as they bit through to the marrow were most appalling.
Ray taunted Buster with a bottle of sorghum syrup, which he proceeded to pour over Buster's genitals. The hogs grunted excitedly as they caught the scent, and Buster's tear soaked eyes went wide with new terror. Ray cackled with glee as he unstrapped the struggling Buster, then lifted and tossed his writhing torso over the metal railing, directly into the midst of the hogs. Two hours later, it was as though Buster Scuggum had never been there.
For several days afterwards, Ray would chuckle as he sprayed the water that washed out all of the hog shit into the sluice.
"Goodbye, Buster, you stinking thief!" he said, as he watched the foul, waste filled, water flow through the channel, down the hill, back into the wooded acre where a large sinkhole swallowed it all up. The sinkhole, being surrounded by trees which blocked the wind, was a convenient method of sewage disposal, that kept the usual stink of a hog raising operation to a minimum. Ray jokingly referred to it as his stinkhole.
After almost a month, things on the hog farm had got back to their usual routine. Ray's belongings were back in their proper places, and he rarely laughed about the fate of Buster Scuggum, because he no longer gave any thought to him. The police had come around once, asking questions about that movie night, which was the last place he had been seen alive. Ray had given them the same answer that all of his guests had given, that Buster had left by himself and presumably driven home. Having no other information to go on, the police had stopped working on the investigation. So, Ray figured the matter was over with. But then the disturbances began.
At first, it was just a smell. That smell was a god awful stench of death and shit that could come out of nowhere and gag a man to the point of retching, but still just a smell. Soon after the smell began, Ray started noticing little trails of black goop here and there on the farm. He reasoned that a fox or raccoon was messing around in the sewage from the hog barns. He thought he'd have to put out some traps for it. But then there were fungal blooms appearing wherever he'd seen the black goop. The blooms were weird, mottled things, with wrinkled black masses surrounding misshapen white fruits that had dark colored spots giving them the appearance of skulls emerging from the rot of a decaying corpse. Slimy black tendrils emerged from the wrinkly mass, radiating outward to foul the surrounding dirt and choke out the grass. Ray mixed up several buckets of a sulfur, salt, and baking soda concoction that he poured directly onto the fungal blooms. They made a shrieking sound as they withered away, similar to the sound a rubber balloon makes as it's air is slowly released.
A few weeks later, Ray was sitting on the porch at night, just gazing at the stars, and contemplating all the strange goings on. His reverie was disturbed by a noise that came up from the yard to the side of the house that faced the hog barns. He stood and stared out into the murky night. Just at the edge of the porch light's glow, something was moving toward the house. What half lurched, half slithered into view was a grotesque mockery of the human form, consisting of foetid grayish brown lumps of sewage, shot through with thick black veins of slimy fungus. With disgust, Ray realized that this was the stinking thing that had been haunting his land. It was probably responsible for that litter of mutant pigs. There was also something horribly familiar about that golem of filth. It continued to approach until Ray screamed out that was far enough. The thing lifted it's head into the light, and Ray recognized in the arrangement of squishy, moist, lumps, the unmistakable features of Buster Scuggum.
Ray caught a big whiff of offal stench as the thing with Buster Scuggum's face began to speak. It had a horrible, gurgling, voice, that nevertheless did sound much as Buster had in life. What it had to say was bone chilling. It spoke of vengeance, terrible, bloody and violent. It spoke of karmic debts that must be repayed, of reaping what one has sown. It spoke of propitiation to the forces that governed life and death. It spoke so eloquently that Ray realized it was a good deal smarter than Buster had been. In fact, Ray became convinced that this thing was in fact not Buster Scuggum, or at least not all. He didn't know why a being such as this would want to wear that face, or make threats on Buster's behalf, but as nasty as it was, it was clearly something supernatural, like the gods he had never believed in. He figured that meant that he needed to, as respectfully as was necessary, find out the rules that it existed by.
"All right, you," Ray said in his cold, emotionless voice. "You can just stop pretending now. I know you ain't him. He was never so good at talking. I don't know what you actually are, but you're not that low down thief who disrespected my hospitality. Now, if you've got something better to say, I'm listening. Otherwise, go on back to whatever hole you slithered out of."
The thing that was not Buster Scuggum stared into the eyes of the man who killed him, and Ray Handler stared unflinchingly back. Soon the stinking sewage and foetid fungus of it's body began to shift and writhe, flowing thickly from one form to another with wet sucking sounds. It grew to ten feet tall, taking a new, more feminine form. The black fungus spread out, covering the body in a slimy skin. The likeness of Buster sank into the central mass, disappearing into the inky black, and a pale white fruiting body grew from the slender neck, forming a new head. Black tendrils grew up into the shape of antlers to adorn the head, giving it a somewhat regal appearance. Somehow, it reminded Ray of his mother. A breathy, feminine, voice now emerged from somewhere in the new form.
"See me!" it demanded.
"Yeah," replied Ray. "Yeah, I see you. What do you want, though?"
"House."
"House? My house?! You just hold on there. You're not laying claim to my home. Nothin' doin'!"
"No. New house. Not yours. Not stinkhole."
Ray blinked back his surprise. The thing knew about the stinkhole. Well, why not? It had to have picked up the little that was left of Buster from there, after all. Was that where it was from? And now it wanted Ray to, do what, build it a new house? Ray's mind was spinning with implications, and possibilities.
"Well, whatever you are, you aren't going to scare me with your ghost act, and you're not likely to rat me out to any authorities neither. Let's say I build you a house. What's in it for me?"
"Blessings," came the unexpected answer.
"Blessings? So, what, you're some kind of angel now? Ain't that something? An angel of shit!"
"You will call me goddess."
"Fat chance. What sort of blessings?"
"Blessings."
Ray chewed his bottom lip as he thought about it. Maybe all this could actually work out in his favor. If not, he could at least buy some time until he could figure out a way to kill the thing. He wondered if his anti fungal concoction would be enough. Maybe fire? But for now, best to play along.
"All right. It's a deal. Just show me where you want your house."
The thing led Ray out to a lonely, hidden corner of a field, lighting the way with fungal growths that glowed with a greenish bioluminescence. She marked the area with a fairy ring of foul looking mushrooms. Ray indicated his understanding and agreement, and trudged back to the house. The thing stayed in the circle.
In the morning, Ray outfitted a four wheeled all terrain vehicle with a small trailer, and hauled some tools, a pile of lumber, and some old scrap wood out to the fairy ring. The thing was still standing in the center. It looked dried out and thin, like the discarded husk of a cicada. He touched it with a long piece of lumber, and it fell apart, crumbling into thousands of dry little shards. He left the remains alone. He knew better than to presume the thing was dead. The giant woman form had only been a vehicle for it, discarded now that it was no longer necessary. He set to work. First, he laid out beams along the outside of the ring, positioning them to join at the corners. Then he began laying out more timbers in the proper layout to build the framework. He left the wood in place while fetching his drill and screws. When he turned back to the lumber, he was startled to see them already assembled and standing. Tendrils of black fungus lashed the wood together. Apparently the thing was going to lend a hand. Shaking off the surprise, he started fitting panels of wood onto the frame. Each one was immediately seized by new patches of fungus that fixed it in place. The work went quickly, and by evening he had completed a twelve square foot shed with a steeply pitched roof. The black fungus covered every inch of wood in hard ridges and whorls of gnarly material. One particular spot caught Ray's attention. The chaos of asymmetrical lines coalesced there into a recognizable pattern. It was the pattern of a human face. It was the face of Buster Scuggum, twisted in agony and horror. Ray laughed out loud.
"Boy, you never looked better! That's a hell of a way to be resurrected, sneak thief, or is it reincarnated?"
Back at the house, Ray found an object at his door. It looked like a gigantic owl pellet, but on picking it up, he discovered it to be a package, wrapped in old animal skins. It was heavy. Inside, he discovered several nuggets of silver, a few small amethysts, and an uncut emerald the size of an acorn. So, that's what the thing had meant by blessings. He could get used to it.
Over the next few seasons, the stinkhole was overgrown with the foul fungus. At first it was just a delicate web of black tendrils, but on hot, humid nights the skull like blooms appeared, and as the summer wore on, there were more of those each time. By the time the October chill had slowed the spread, the stinkhole bore a sizeable hill of fungus, and the surrounding trees had begun to mutate. The bark turned black, the sap turned blood red, and the leaves all grew sharper, harder, and spikier. But, every so often, a new furry package appeared on Ray's porch, filled with natural gemstones and silver nuggets. He didn't know what the fungus thing was doing back there, and he didn't mind. He could afford to buy new land, if he had too. She had been right about one thing, though. In his mind, Ray had started to call her goddess.
submitted by Max_imum_Overdrive to ShackAtTheNexusOfHere [link] [comments]
Ray Handler was the kind of nice guy who was calm, cordial, and friendly to everyone, unless you crossed him. He would let small things slide, because he never wanted trouble with anyone, unless they deserved it. However, if the insult or sin against him was serious enough, his cold wrath was a real danger to be wary of.
Buster Scuggum was a friend of a friend, who had been brought out to Ray's farmhouse for a bi-monthly movie night, and had been welcomed under Ray's roof on account of the friend that brought him. Hospitality was a serious affair to Ray. He had been taught by his mother that the rules of hospitality were sacred to the most ancient gods of mankind, not to be broken lightly. He didn't actually believe in gods, but he liked the rules. They set well with his natural inclinations. One of those rules was that anyone who came asking for shelter or company with pure intentions should be granted entrance. Another rule was that anyone who proved to have ill intentions, or showed disrespect, was to be punished, severely, for their insult to the gods.
What was first evident about Buster was that he was a bit simple-minded, a twenty six year old man who thought and acted like a fifteen year old. What became known later was the fact that Buster was a sneak thief. It made sense to anyone who had known him for very long. Anytime he was around, random objects had a way of disappearing. Wherever he went, he wore a lime green backpack with a black and red anarchy symbol spray painted on it. That was where he stashed all the things he stole from anyone who made the mistake of letting him into their home.
When that movie night was over, and all the guests had gone on home, Ray was cleaning up after his guests. The first thing he noticed missing was a small, gold handled, forceps that he usually kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. It was a strange thing for any of his guests to have been messing with. He couldn't imagine why anyone would have moved it. He was confused and annoyed, but not as much as when he discovered the second missing object, a small action figure based on one of Ray's favorite movie franchises. It was a childhood treasure that Ray had managed to hold onto throughout the years. He kept it in a small alcove by the bathroom, and now it was just gone. His mood was turning foul, and then he happened to look at his movie shelves, and saw the empty place. What should have been in that space was a special edition VHS box set of Ray's favorite science fiction saga. This was intolerable. Ray stared at the empty hole in his collection, now seething with anger. It was obvious that one of his guests had robbed him, had violated his hospitality. Even though all of those things together were only worth a few hundred dollars, Ray was furious. It wasn't about the monetary value, it was about the principle, it was about the insult.
He thought about the weird young man with the backpack, who had trouble looking people in the eyes. He recalled how the backpack had seemed a bit heavier after he arrived, bulged a bit more, how Buster had kept disappearing during the movie, and had then left without thanking Ray for having him there. It was fairly obvious to Ray who the thief was, and Ray wanted vengeance. He would give the dirty sneak one chance to return the pilfered items, and if he refused, then it was time for punishment.
Ray spent the next morning making preparations. That evening, he drove his van across several county lines to the home of Buster Scuggum. He took his strongest hickory cane with him. Buster answered Ray's knock at the door wearing a furry pink pajama onesie that resembled a cartoon dog. Ray was very calm and deliberate with his wording as he told Buster that he knew Buster was a thief. He never raised his voice as he demanded the return of his property. Buster sneered and forcefully stated that he had no idea what Ray was talking about. He said that he hadn't stolen anything. In one swift motion, Ray grabbed Buster by the arms and threw him to the ground outside. He struck the lying thief across the back of the head with his cane, and Buster lay still. Ray bound his hands and feet with zip ties, and gagged him with duct tape, before hauling him into the rear of the van. Then he went inside the house and located his things. They were all still in the backpack, so Ray took it and returned to the van. Buster did not regain consciousness until they were back at Ray's hog farm.
Buster was stirring but not quite awake as Ray dragged him down to the wooded acre at the back of his fields. There, beneath the walnut and maple trees, a little shed had been built into the side of a hill. Inside, Ray strapped the unrepentant sneak thief to a partially reclined metal table. Using more zip ties, tightly bound around Buster's arms and legs, above the biceps and midway up the thighs, he cut off the flow of blood to the extremeties. That being done, he used smelling salts and splashes of cold water to revive his captive. He wanted Buster fully aware for the next part. Buster groggily rose to consciousness, jerking his body against the restraints and gnawing at the duct tape that filled his mouth and pulled against the back of his head. Ray chuckled at the spectacle. He gave the helpless fellow a couple of minutes to fully realize his plight. Then, he started up the reciprocating saw. This was a saw made specially for carving up the carcasses of hogs, and Ray was using it to remove Buster's limbs. First, he cut off the hands, just for the drama of it. Buster's muffled screams brought him pleasure. Next, off came the right arm, then the left. Ray tossed them into a bloody pile on top of a thick plastic tarp. He moved on to the legs, not bothering with the feet. The point had been made. Those went on the pile as well. Ray left his living but limbless prisoner hanging on the table, as he dragged the severed body parts out past the hog barns. There were five numbered barns at the top of the rise, and one un-numbered barn that sat by itself. Ray went to the un-numbered barn with his grisly load.
The un-numbered barn had a dozen hogs inside. These were special hogs, born in a single litter eight years before. Ray had know immediately that there was something odd about them. The veterinarian he had consulted called it an atavistic condition. Ray called it spooky. He figured that the sow that birthed them had gotten into something bad in the fields that had caused the weird mutations, the atavism. As the piglets had grown, their peculiar attributes had become more pronounced. The dark skin and hair had turned jet black, with strange, asymmetrical, striations and whorls of gray. The bony buds on the spine had grown into thick, sharp, spikes. The tusks that grew in their mouths were too long, too sharp, and too many. The strange, blood red, eyes now bulged menacingly from their savage looking faces. Ray tossed Buster's arms and legs into the feeding troughs. After sniffing at the rare offering, the hungry hogs dug in to their supper.
Ray moved what was left of Buster, who was sobbing uncontrollably into the duct tape gag, onto a metal, two wheeled, dolly. That made it easier to take him out to the hog barn, and gave him a way to set Buster up to watch as the hogs finished off the first course of their meal. There wasn't much left but bones at that point. Those hogs were very hungry. The crunching sounds as they bit through to the marrow were most appalling.
Ray taunted Buster with a bottle of sorghum syrup, which he proceeded to pour over Buster's genitals. The hogs grunted excitedly as they caught the scent, and Buster's tear soaked eyes went wide with new terror. Ray cackled with glee as he unstrapped the struggling Buster, then lifted and tossed his writhing torso over the metal railing, directly into the midst of the hogs. Two hours later, it was as though Buster Scuggum had never been there.
For several days afterwards, Ray would chuckle as he sprayed the water that washed out all of the hog shit into the sluice.
"Goodbye, Buster, you stinking thief!" he said, as he watched the foul, waste filled, water flow through the channel, down the hill, back into the wooded acre where a large sinkhole swallowed it all up. The sinkhole, being surrounded by trees which blocked the wind, was a convenient method of sewage disposal, that kept the usual stink of a hog raising operation to a minimum. Ray jokingly referred to it as his stinkhole.
After almost a month, things on the hog farm had got back to their usual routine. Ray's belongings were back in their proper places, and he rarely laughed about the fate of Buster Scuggum, because he no longer gave any thought to him. The police had come around once, asking questions about that movie night, which was the last place he had been seen alive. Ray had given them the same answer that all of his guests had given, that Buster had left by himself and presumably driven home. Having no other information to go on, the police had stopped working on the investigation. So, Ray figured the matter was over with. But then the disturbances began.
At first, it was just a smell. That smell was a god awful stench of death and shit that could come out of nowhere and gag a man to the point of retching, but still just a smell. Soon after the smell began, Ray started noticing little trails of black goop here and there on the farm. He reasoned that a fox or raccoon was messing around in the sewage from the hog barns. He thought he'd have to put out some traps for it. But then there were fungal blooms appearing wherever he'd seen the black goop. The blooms were weird, mottled things, with wrinkled black masses surrounding misshapen white fruits that had dark colored spots giving them the appearance of skulls emerging from the rot of a decaying corpse. Slimy black tendrils emerged from the wrinkly mass, radiating outward to foul the surrounding dirt and choke out the grass. Ray mixed up several buckets of a sulfur, salt, and baking soda concoction that he poured directly onto the fungal blooms. They made a shrieking sound as they withered away, similar to the sound a rubber balloon makes as it's air is slowly released.
A few weeks later, Ray was sitting on the porch at night, just gazing at the stars, and contemplating all the strange goings on. His reverie was disturbed by a noise that came up from the yard to the side of the house that faced the hog barns. He stood and stared out into the murky night. Just at the edge of the porch light's glow, something was moving toward the house. What half lurched, half slithered into view was a grotesque mockery of the human form, consisting of foetid grayish brown lumps of sewage, shot through with thick black veins of slimy fungus. With disgust, Ray realized that this was the stinking thing that had been haunting his land. It was probably responsible for that litter of mutant pigs. There was also something horribly familiar about that golem of filth. It continued to approach until Ray screamed out that was far enough. The thing lifted it's head into the light, and Ray recognized in the arrangement of squishy, moist, lumps, the unmistakable features of Buster Scuggum.
Ray caught a big whiff of offal stench as the thing with Buster Scuggum's face began to speak. It had a horrible, gurgling, voice, that nevertheless did sound much as Buster had in life. What it had to say was bone chilling. It spoke of vengeance, terrible, bloody and violent. It spoke of karmic debts that must be repayed, of reaping what one has sown. It spoke of propitiation to the forces that governed life and death. It spoke so eloquently that Ray realized it was a good deal smarter than Buster had been. In fact, Ray became convinced that this thing was in fact not Buster Scuggum, or at least not all. He didn't know why a being such as this would want to wear that face, or make threats on Buster's behalf, but as nasty as it was, it was clearly something supernatural, like the gods he had never believed in. He figured that meant that he needed to, as respectfully as was necessary, find out the rules that it existed by.
"All right, you," Ray said in his cold, emotionless voice. "You can just stop pretending now. I know you ain't him. He was never so good at talking. I don't know what you actually are, but you're not that low down thief who disrespected my hospitality. Now, if you've got something better to say, I'm listening. Otherwise, go on back to whatever hole you slithered out of."
The thing that was not Buster Scuggum stared into the eyes of the man who killed him, and Ray Handler stared unflinchingly back. Soon the stinking sewage and foetid fungus of it's body began to shift and writhe, flowing thickly from one form to another with wet sucking sounds. It grew to ten feet tall, taking a new, more feminine form. The black fungus spread out, covering the body in a slimy skin. The likeness of Buster sank into the central mass, disappearing into the inky black, and a pale white fruiting body grew from the slender neck, forming a new head. Black tendrils grew up into the shape of antlers to adorn the head, giving it a somewhat regal appearance. Somehow, it reminded Ray of his mother. A breathy, feminine, voice now emerged from somewhere in the new form.
"See me!" it demanded.
"Yeah," replied Ray. "Yeah, I see you. What do you want, though?"
"House."
"House? My house?! You just hold on there. You're not laying claim to my home. Nothin' doin'!"
"No. New house. Not yours. Not stinkhole."
Ray blinked back his surprise. The thing knew about the stinkhole. Well, why not? It had to have picked up the little that was left of Buster from there, after all. Was that where it was from? And now it wanted Ray to, do what, build it a new house? Ray's mind was spinning with implications, and possibilities.
"Well, whatever you are, you aren't going to scare me with your ghost act, and you're not likely to rat me out to any authorities neither. Let's say I build you a house. What's in it for me?"
"Blessings," came the unexpected answer.
"Blessings? So, what, you're some kind of angel now? Ain't that something? An angel of shit!"
"You will call me goddess."
"Fat chance. What sort of blessings?"
"Blessings."
Ray chewed his bottom lip as he thought about it. Maybe all this could actually work out in his favor. If not, he could at least buy some time until he could figure out a way to kill the thing. He wondered if his anti fungal concoction would be enough. Maybe fire? But for now, best to play along.
"All right. It's a deal. Just show me where you want your house."
The thing led Ray out to a lonely, hidden corner of a field, lighting the way with fungal growths that glowed with a greenish bioluminescence. She marked the area with a fairy ring of foul looking mushrooms. Ray indicated his understanding and agreement, and trudged back to the house. The thing stayed in the circle.
In the morning, Ray outfitted a four wheeled all terrain vehicle with a small trailer, and hauled some tools, a pile of lumber, and some old scrap wood out to the fairy ring. The thing was still standing in the center. It looked dried out and thin, like the discarded husk of a cicada. He touched it with a long piece of lumber, and it fell apart, crumbling into thousands of dry little shards. He left the remains alone. He knew better than to presume the thing was dead. The giant woman form had only been a vehicle for it, discarded now that it was no longer necessary. He set to work. First, he laid out beams along the outside of the ring, positioning them to join at the corners. Then he began laying out more timbers in the proper layout to build the framework. He left the wood in place while fetching his drill and screws. When he turned back to the lumber, he was startled to see them already assembled and standing. Tendrils of black fungus lashed the wood together. Apparently the thing was going to lend a hand. Shaking off the surprise, he started fitting panels of wood onto the frame. Each one was immediately seized by new patches of fungus that fixed it in place. The work went quickly, and by evening he had completed a twelve square foot shed with a steeply pitched roof. The black fungus covered every inch of wood in hard ridges and whorls of gnarly material. One particular spot caught Ray's attention. The chaos of asymmetrical lines coalesced there into a recognizable pattern. It was the pattern of a human face. It was the face of Buster Scuggum, twisted in agony and horror. Ray laughed out loud.
"Boy, you never looked better! That's a hell of a way to be resurrected, sneak thief, or is it reincarnated?"
Back at the house, Ray found an object at his door. It looked like a gigantic owl pellet, but on picking it up, he discovered it to be a package, wrapped in old animal skins. It was heavy. Inside, he discovered several nuggets of silver, a few small amethysts, and an uncut emerald the size of an acorn. So, that's what the thing had meant by blessings. He could get used to it.
Over the next few seasons, the stinkhole was overgrown with the foul fungus. At first it was just a delicate web of black tendrils, but on hot, humid nights the skull like blooms appeared, and as the summer wore on, there were more of those each time. By the time the October chill had slowed the spread, the stinkhole bore a sizeable hill of fungus, and the surrounding trees had begun to mutate. The bark turned black, the sap turned blood red, and the leaves all grew sharper, harder, and spikier. But, every so often, a new furry package appeared on Ray's porch, filled with natural gemstones and silver nuggets. He didn't know what the fungus thing was doing back there, and he didn't mind. He could afford to buy new land, if he had too. She had been right about one thing, though. In his mind, Ray had started to call her goddess.
2023.03.24 19:46 endersgame69 Adopted By Humans VI C49
Epilogue
Yes. I enjoyed our welcome home party, everybody did. I don’t remember much of it, but I woke up in Lisa’s apartment with her holding out a cup of coffee and vowed, “I will never drink again.”
The Silent Civil War was over in all but name. A small division of mixed elite teams was formed from both militaries, operating out of [Redacted] and remained active to conduct raids on those who let slip that they would like to restart it. I like to think they were bored a lot though, which would be for the best, if they were.
In the weeks and months that followed, the military of Dlamias sent a few brigades to Earth to train alongside their human counterparts, and a number of them joined the new fighting league, making celebrities of the teams. Most humans referred to the combatants as ‘The New Gladiators’ and I won’t pretend I did not make an enormous fortune off of endorsement deals and advertising revenue.
Thanks to mandatory collective bargaining, I also made the combatants exceptionally rich too. They got a substantial cut of everything. I was not a greedy business person, and the wealth wouldn’t exist without their blood, sweat, and bruises, so how could I be?
It also served as a form of ‘intimidation’ although I didn’t realize it quite at first. It seemed to me that the Earth First movement was mostly made up of people who needed something to feel good about, but it’s hard to be loudly smugly superior when you’re presented with very clear visual evidence that you’re anything but.
Especially when trying to act that way makes you despised at every turn. The crackdown on that behavior online meant that communities of hateful figures also found it almost impossible to form, and holding that view openly became a career killer… if a person was lucky.
The human government showed its gratitude to the Red Spark by granting them unlimited tax exemption for docking at any human port, for them or any ship under the command of Captain Bonny Red. They had no idea that this docking exemption would allow her to greatly expand her operation to include enough ships to one day become the Pirate Queen.
And I don’t think the ones who passed that resolution realized how long my species lived. They thought they were granting a tax exemption for a few decades at most, to a single ship. They didn’t anticipate a fleet for over half a millenia. And pirate that she was, she would take full advantage of that fact. Though to her credit she would always spend liberally, she and all her crew.
And give good deals on contracts with the planetary government.
I suppose it all evened out.
True to her word, the retired Admiral Archer left with her just the way she said. But more than that, she also took on official human crewmembers. Her ship could crew around nine hundred and she was definitely shorthanded, so from what I heard in her message before departure, she took on a crew of five hundred ex-military from the human Starmada. Admiral Archer, I'm sure, was tickled pink to see the stars again.
I won’t pretend I didn’t watch the sky sometimes and wonder if she was back in orbit. We corresponded a fair bit, of course.
But a year came and went without her return.
Construction of Starbase Yggdrassil was going smoothly.
Fauve grew older, she turned twenty, Michael turned seven.
Life was good. Ordinary. Peaceful.
A second year slipped past. Michael turned eight, and Fauve turned twenty-one. She had her first drink as an adult with her family and friends, Bonny Red sent her a card and a bottle of liquor that arrived a few months late on a trading and delivery vessel. It probably cost a small fortune to send. And it was delicious, a kind of fungus based alcohol with a pungent odor and a natural sweetness. It had Enkanti writing on it. I supposed my world was starting to develop its own alcohol industry.
I’d lost track of that. But back home, my fighting league was rapidly becoming a popular distraction, as much so as Ballyball, and there was a call to import human fighters to the homeworld, along with brewmasters…
And the first humans took massive incentives to travel to my world as temporary residents.
Bonny Red’s precedent definitely worked in their favor on that one.
A third year slipped by, and the first students began to arrive on Dlamias. Reports of increased efficiency, higher morale, and in general just plain better performance out of those soldiers who saw human therapists resulted in a sudden interest in the science of the mind.
So more ‘host families’ took in my people’s aspiring care workers, opening up a whole new field of study, and even more people who I knew would serve my goals of revolution at home one day.
Once they knew more, their inevitable return would let them see how damaged our culture was, and I planned on putting as much money behind them as I needed to in order to allow them to provide treatment to our common citizens.
That was for the future though, life was good, and life was normal. Michael was nine and excelling in his martial arts, Genghis and Iskandar were avid teachers of an emerging form of combat that blended the two distinct styles, and were talking about opening a training hall after Iskandar’s enlistment ended.
My fighting league had gotten a great deal of attention, and other predator species began to take an interest, so much so that a few two person teams formed, including, out of all things, a very ‘feline’ like species that shared a border with the vast Zenti Empire and had been monitoring the goings on between Earth and Dlamias for quite some time.
My sister’s work was bearing fruit as the first demihuman governor was elected in Ohio. A racoon male who it was widely said got a lot of votes based on ‘cuteness’. But that was chiefly said by critics.
Chi’cagoa Rea’s reconstruction was partially completed, and the other demihumans in the world began to concentrate there where the most services were available and there would be ample space to live.
And all in all, things were good.
I thought a lot about that pale blue dot in the sunbeam on which I lived. And all the other little dots out there for all our worlds. I was optimistic. Not only was there no chance now of the dot I was born on clashing with the dot I’d made into my home, but I had every reason to think that my quiet revolution or ‘quiet reset’ of my homeworld’s culture would go on unchallenged and even unnoticed until it was not only too late to stop it, but by then I hoped that nobody would want to stop it.
But it is an eternal truth that actions have consequences.
And my brief consideration for how the other species would react was grossly understated.
Or so I found out when Bonny Red’s face came on screen. “Bucko!” She shouted as soon as I saw her face, no greeting, no playful banter, and her face was really close to the screen. “Look at this!” She immediately shared her screen and on it I saw a speaker belonging to a species I wasn’t immediately familiar with.
His body was made up of bits of shells and exposed soft looking flesh, he was rather round and had a long tube coming down from what passed for a face, a series of soft looking fleshy stalks on his head with what I believe were eyeballs at the end. One look at him and as a frankly talented xenobiologist I knew I was looking at a prey evolved species.
“...I for one am alarmed, appalled, everyone should be! It’s one thing if predators kill each other, then who cares?! But there’s a growing common ground between predators that cannot stand! We cannot let them kill us all! We can’t! We can’t! We can’t!” She switched away to another screen, in the picture-in-picture view I could see Byron and Boatswain standing in triumph at the final clash in the last match, to the cheers of humans and with a very interested Grand Admiral watching intently.
“...This is just proof that predators are bloodthirsty animals…” She shut it off, and I heard a rumble as her screen shook. “Listen here bucko, get them record’ns off this call and show it to the ambassador. Tell that scallywag to get it to the Earth government and make em listen. A buncha species are gett’n down right nervous now, worried about a return to them bad old days what nobody wants. Get yer space station built, and get them ships goin, I don’t know what’s what out there now, but if they be spoil’n fer a fight, I’d rather ye got ships an guns and good intentions, than just good intentions. Ye savvy?”
“Yes. But… where are you? What’s with the rattling?” I asked.
“Satorian space… I took a wee bit of a detour.” She huffed, “That there be the rumble of one of their lil cruisers firin on me ship. Seems they’re a wee bit upset about me find’n things I weren’t quite meant to find an they be tryin to blow me to Davy Jones locker.”
My hearts raced all at once.
“Are you in danger?!” I shouted.
“Always! But noth’n deadly yet! Just get that to both worlds and tell’m to arm. Maybe they can defuse things by talkin nice like. I’ll see you soon, matey, sorry bout the delay and all!” She said and stood up, I saw her draw her blaster out of the compartment on her chair. “Blow’em to the bottom lads! Then hit high warp, if their clinger ships let anyone on, show em dlamisa hospitality!”
I heard her let out the long cry of ‘Roooo!’ which was joined by human warcries, and the transmission cut off.
The easy times, it seemed, could not stay around forever.
My mind went back to the little blue dot again… the photo of which I will include here for the sake of those who have requested it through repeated editions of this work…
I was worried about Bonny Red, but if she said it wasn’t a real danger, it wasn’t. I told myself that a lot, too.
I didn’t know what lay on the road ahead for us all, or our own little dots scattered around the eternal stars in the endless void.
But I would do my best, that was all I could do. All any of us could do.
And as for what was best? That’s a story for another time.
📷
The Pale Blue Dot from the Voyager One Spacecraft, taken in 1990.
submitted by endersgame69 to TheWorldMaker [link] [comments]
Yes. I enjoyed our welcome home party, everybody did. I don’t remember much of it, but I woke up in Lisa’s apartment with her holding out a cup of coffee and vowed, “I will never drink again.”
The Silent Civil War was over in all but name. A small division of mixed elite teams was formed from both militaries, operating out of [Redacted] and remained active to conduct raids on those who let slip that they would like to restart it. I like to think they were bored a lot though, which would be for the best, if they were.
In the weeks and months that followed, the military of Dlamias sent a few brigades to Earth to train alongside their human counterparts, and a number of them joined the new fighting league, making celebrities of the teams. Most humans referred to the combatants as ‘The New Gladiators’ and I won’t pretend I did not make an enormous fortune off of endorsement deals and advertising revenue.
Thanks to mandatory collective bargaining, I also made the combatants exceptionally rich too. They got a substantial cut of everything. I was not a greedy business person, and the wealth wouldn’t exist without their blood, sweat, and bruises, so how could I be?
It also served as a form of ‘intimidation’ although I didn’t realize it quite at first. It seemed to me that the Earth First movement was mostly made up of people who needed something to feel good about, but it’s hard to be loudly smugly superior when you’re presented with very clear visual evidence that you’re anything but.
Especially when trying to act that way makes you despised at every turn. The crackdown on that behavior online meant that communities of hateful figures also found it almost impossible to form, and holding that view openly became a career killer… if a person was lucky.
The human government showed its gratitude to the Red Spark by granting them unlimited tax exemption for docking at any human port, for them or any ship under the command of Captain Bonny Red. They had no idea that this docking exemption would allow her to greatly expand her operation to include enough ships to one day become the Pirate Queen.
And I don’t think the ones who passed that resolution realized how long my species lived. They thought they were granting a tax exemption for a few decades at most, to a single ship. They didn’t anticipate a fleet for over half a millenia. And pirate that she was, she would take full advantage of that fact. Though to her credit she would always spend liberally, she and all her crew.
And give good deals on contracts with the planetary government.
I suppose it all evened out.
True to her word, the retired Admiral Archer left with her just the way she said. But more than that, she also took on official human crewmembers. Her ship could crew around nine hundred and she was definitely shorthanded, so from what I heard in her message before departure, she took on a crew of five hundred ex-military from the human Starmada. Admiral Archer, I'm sure, was tickled pink to see the stars again.
I won’t pretend I didn’t watch the sky sometimes and wonder if she was back in orbit. We corresponded a fair bit, of course.
But a year came and went without her return.
Construction of Starbase Yggdrassil was going smoothly.
Fauve grew older, she turned twenty, Michael turned seven.
Life was good. Ordinary. Peaceful.
A second year slipped past. Michael turned eight, and Fauve turned twenty-one. She had her first drink as an adult with her family and friends, Bonny Red sent her a card and a bottle of liquor that arrived a few months late on a trading and delivery vessel. It probably cost a small fortune to send. And it was delicious, a kind of fungus based alcohol with a pungent odor and a natural sweetness. It had Enkanti writing on it. I supposed my world was starting to develop its own alcohol industry.
I’d lost track of that. But back home, my fighting league was rapidly becoming a popular distraction, as much so as Ballyball, and there was a call to import human fighters to the homeworld, along with brewmasters…
And the first humans took massive incentives to travel to my world as temporary residents.
Bonny Red’s precedent definitely worked in their favor on that one.
A third year slipped by, and the first students began to arrive on Dlamias. Reports of increased efficiency, higher morale, and in general just plain better performance out of those soldiers who saw human therapists resulted in a sudden interest in the science of the mind.
So more ‘host families’ took in my people’s aspiring care workers, opening up a whole new field of study, and even more people who I knew would serve my goals of revolution at home one day.
Once they knew more, their inevitable return would let them see how damaged our culture was, and I planned on putting as much money behind them as I needed to in order to allow them to provide treatment to our common citizens.
That was for the future though, life was good, and life was normal. Michael was nine and excelling in his martial arts, Genghis and Iskandar were avid teachers of an emerging form of combat that blended the two distinct styles, and were talking about opening a training hall after Iskandar’s enlistment ended.
My fighting league had gotten a great deal of attention, and other predator species began to take an interest, so much so that a few two person teams formed, including, out of all things, a very ‘feline’ like species that shared a border with the vast Zenti Empire and had been monitoring the goings on between Earth and Dlamias for quite some time.
My sister’s work was bearing fruit as the first demihuman governor was elected in Ohio. A racoon male who it was widely said got a lot of votes based on ‘cuteness’. But that was chiefly said by critics.
Chi’cagoa Rea’s reconstruction was partially completed, and the other demihumans in the world began to concentrate there where the most services were available and there would be ample space to live.
And all in all, things were good.
I thought a lot about that pale blue dot in the sunbeam on which I lived. And all the other little dots out there for all our worlds. I was optimistic. Not only was there no chance now of the dot I was born on clashing with the dot I’d made into my home, but I had every reason to think that my quiet revolution or ‘quiet reset’ of my homeworld’s culture would go on unchallenged and even unnoticed until it was not only too late to stop it, but by then I hoped that nobody would want to stop it.
But it is an eternal truth that actions have consequences.
And my brief consideration for how the other species would react was grossly understated.
Or so I found out when Bonny Red’s face came on screen. “Bucko!” She shouted as soon as I saw her face, no greeting, no playful banter, and her face was really close to the screen. “Look at this!” She immediately shared her screen and on it I saw a speaker belonging to a species I wasn’t immediately familiar with.
His body was made up of bits of shells and exposed soft looking flesh, he was rather round and had a long tube coming down from what passed for a face, a series of soft looking fleshy stalks on his head with what I believe were eyeballs at the end. One look at him and as a frankly talented xenobiologist I knew I was looking at a prey evolved species.
“...I for one am alarmed, appalled, everyone should be! It’s one thing if predators kill each other, then who cares?! But there’s a growing common ground between predators that cannot stand! We cannot let them kill us all! We can’t! We can’t! We can’t!” She switched away to another screen, in the picture-in-picture view I could see Byron and Boatswain standing in triumph at the final clash in the last match, to the cheers of humans and with a very interested Grand Admiral watching intently.
“...This is just proof that predators are bloodthirsty animals…” She shut it off, and I heard a rumble as her screen shook. “Listen here bucko, get them record’ns off this call and show it to the ambassador. Tell that scallywag to get it to the Earth government and make em listen. A buncha species are gett’n down right nervous now, worried about a return to them bad old days what nobody wants. Get yer space station built, and get them ships goin, I don’t know what’s what out there now, but if they be spoil’n fer a fight, I’d rather ye got ships an guns and good intentions, than just good intentions. Ye savvy?”
“Yes. But… where are you? What’s with the rattling?” I asked.
“Satorian space… I took a wee bit of a detour.” She huffed, “That there be the rumble of one of their lil cruisers firin on me ship. Seems they’re a wee bit upset about me find’n things I weren’t quite meant to find an they be tryin to blow me to Davy Jones locker.”
My hearts raced all at once.
“Are you in danger?!” I shouted.
“Always! But noth’n deadly yet! Just get that to both worlds and tell’m to arm. Maybe they can defuse things by talkin nice like. I’ll see you soon, matey, sorry bout the delay and all!” She said and stood up, I saw her draw her blaster out of the compartment on her chair. “Blow’em to the bottom lads! Then hit high warp, if their clinger ships let anyone on, show em dlamisa hospitality!”
I heard her let out the long cry of ‘Roooo!’ which was joined by human warcries, and the transmission cut off.
The easy times, it seemed, could not stay around forever.
My mind went back to the little blue dot again… the photo of which I will include here for the sake of those who have requested it through repeated editions of this work…
I was worried about Bonny Red, but if she said it wasn’t a real danger, it wasn’t. I told myself that a lot, too.
I didn’t know what lay on the road ahead for us all, or our own little dots scattered around the eternal stars in the endless void.
But I would do my best, that was all I could do. All any of us could do.
And as for what was best? That’s a story for another time.
📷
The Pale Blue Dot from the Voyager One Spacecraft, taken in 1990.
2023.03.24 19:29 LordJim11 Only Britain could have produced Douglas Adams.
 | submitted by LordJim11 to Snorkblot [link] [comments] |
2023.03.24 18:50 nmeed7 Recommendations requested: restaurants and cafes/coffee shops
Would like to try some new spots in the area and am looking for recommendations!
submitted by nmeed7 to moncton [link] [comments]
- Favourite restaurant regardless of price
- Favourite restaurant when on a budget
- Favourite takeout/quick eats
- Favourite cafe (esp. to sit and relax/read on a weekend)
- Cafes that have lots of options for "non-coffee" people, like nutella lattes, raspberry mochas, maple lattes, sweetened caramel macchiatos, etc.
2023.03.24 18:30 MatildaTheCat13 3/23 Drunken Facebook Live Recap
3/23 Drunken Facebook Live
We open on MS trying to pick a position for her phone, repeating, “listen, listen.” She finally sets it down and asks if we can hear her and see her. ‘Cause here’s the thing, here’s the thing (she’s been repeating herself a lot and it’s been 30 seconds).
The worst British accent you can imagine kicks in
She says she’s been sitting at home, completed all she needed to do for the day (lol like what), so she goes to the fridge to see if there’s anything fun, juicy or naughty in here. She reminds us that they had a party a few weeks ago and produces a Bud Light Lime Platinum Seltzer which, in a 16oz can, comes at a whopping 8% ABV. “Crikey,” she says, because she’s apparently already had 3 of them because she was feeling a little thirsty and they’ve hit her like a ton of bricks. She claims she hasn’t drank in a few days. She says something about not being able to shotgun and then the video jump cuts.
“Am I frozen? Can you see me? Let me know if you can see me.” She asks, making a box around her head with her hands. “Send me hearts if you can see me; send me something” because she just got another spam call and wasn’t sure if she was back.
(We’ve dropped the British accent, but then the blaccent starts halfway through this…) So here’s the thing about this spam call. The person that had her number before her, his name starts with A and she calls him by a slightly different version of A. She doesn’t think he ever paid his taxes. She says she changed her number last year and whoever A is (“A if you can see this - hello - you need to pay your taxes”). She did a deep dive to see if it was for her and was getting paranoid. She repeats herself again saying, “whoever A is you gotta pay your taxes ‘cause they keep calling me and trying to get me to pay your taxes and I’m not going to do it because I got too many to pay honey.” and flicks her tongue like a snake several times. [2:30]
She goes on to respond to a comment that the seltzers are not that good but they do the job okay and walks off screen saying she’s going to see what else they have. (The British accent is back.)
She returns brandishing a bottle of Don Julio but says she doesn’t drink that because it’s reposado. There’s another bottle or two (she says “these are C’s and I can’t reach them”). Apparently there’s a lot up there.
Someone must have asked about shots because she says, “shots?! Not of that…maybe of Titos… should I take one? C’s gonna wring my neck when he gets home.” She laughs and then clarifies that no, just kidding, “he’s not gonna do shit.” She takes another large swig of the seltzer and remarks that, “these are sneaky little devils” (No shit they’re almost 2 times the ABV of an average beer). She clearly intended on doing some work, like making graphics, listening to the Girls Next Level podcast and determined that she deserved a little (she clicks her tongue a few times) ‘cause she hasn’t been drinking and working out like crazy (she stops to make a grabbing gesture at the camera and taps her nails on the counter) repeats that she’s been working out like crazy and then loudly burps and decides that she’s gonna have a little midday cocktail. So she’s just working on making graphics and gets through about 2 and half these in and “oh my godddd”
She replies to comments. (“Same, M, same.”) Must be a follower. Not a name I recognized. So she decides that it’s time to do a shot because she wants to get real with us, as she has a lot on her mind. She walks off screen and we hear a grunt of her trying to climb on the counter but she returns, deciding that she didn’t want to risk breaking the stove. She decides to go back and try again, one by one and reaches up - sticking a foot way out as the only part of her in frame. The first bottle she grabs is bourbon whiskey and she makes a bunch of retching noises at it.
She’s off screen again. “This is what mama wants,” but she can’t reach it. There’s more walking off screen, this time the opposite direction to grab a chair. She’s back in frame setting the chair down and says she normally only drinks tequila but if it’s not tequila, she’ll drink vodka. But not reposado. Anyways, she’s back closer to her phone screen now with the bottle of Tito’s. It’s not got a lot left in it. She grabbed a shot glass at some point and is now unscrewing the cap while still holding the shot glass.
“Here’s the thing. I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m just feeling very share-y.” She pours a shot about 80% full and imitates Shrek saying, “that’ll do, donkey, that’ll do.” And then mutters, “I am probably such a disappointment to my parents.” She grabs her Starbucks tumbler and laughs that she’s going to wash it down with a little collagen.
Shot goes down. She sips the tumbler; it’s basically empty. She refills a tiny bit from the fridge water dispenser.
“Here’s the thing.” She stops again to recover from the shot. “I have a lot of things to cover.”
Number 1: (she pauses for like 10 seconds) “Should I go back to school?” She starts saying she’s having a mid-30, then corrects herself to say that she’s going be 30 in a few weeks and asks if she’s having a crisis. Should she go back to school? Should she be an FBI agent? She doesn’t fucking know. “What do I want to do when I grow up?! Like I’m having one of those breakdowns.” She says she loves her job and wants to keep doing it but she wants it to feel like fun and not a job, you know what I mean? She says she feels in between, like she’s being called to do something big but isn’t sure what it is. That’s the problem. And she keeps praying, and praying, and praying and god’s not giving her any answers. She feels like god’s giving her different paths and she asks why not give her a compass or a map, like “we have mapquest.” She will print off the directions like she used to. She just doesn’t know what her path is. And it’s not that she’s scared, she’s excited - she just wants to know what it is. “Can someone shed light like on this?” She asks the chat if anyone else felt like this coming up on their thirties. “I feel like it’s building up inside me like a champagne bottle.” She demonstrates what she means by sliding her hands up her chest and pushing her boobs up and remarks, “look at these saggy old boobs.” So it’s like a champagne bottle that’s about to pop and this is what she’s supposed to do but she doesn’t know.
She has a secret to share. In the back of her mind (it’s not a forever thing she doesn’t think) but she’s always had a calling to-
She cuts herself off to read comments of people agreeing and someone is in the same boat. So she loves her job and she’s never gonna quit social media or Red Aspen or network marketing in general because she thinks it’s a smart move. But she knows she’s supposed to do something and she doesn’t know what it is.
So it’s something she’s been pondering on the backburner. She wants to open an influencer studio. Kind of like somewhere that people can go and shoot content but that might not make sense to you if you’re not in that wheelhouse but it makes sense to her. It’s where you go to shoot fun content, drink mimosas, do social media training. She wants to open a social media academy.
She starts complaining about having the longest hair on her face. Apparently it’s bright red.
M comments again and so does someone named A (no not our tax guy, A) who apparently JUST told her boyfriend that she wanted to open a studio so MS says A should message her so they can talk.
She’s being TOTALLY vulnerable right now because she’s SO prideful and she hates being like ehh about things but she feels really intimidated by paperwork and contracts and things of that nature (sure explains the fucked up house purchase, huh??) So that makes her apprehensive. Someone comments that they could see her opening a bookstore/coffee shop. Which she gets excited about because her other idea was a “champagne library kind of???” (Even she doesn’t sound convinced, which is fine because why are all of her ideas excuses to drink?) Oh good, she clarifies that her, “biggest passions are alcohol” well not passions, she laughs. She enjoys it. She’s gotten to a point where her relationship with alcohol is healthy enough for her to be like, “I enjoy drinking. I like it. I don’t have any fucking kids running around. Whatever.” She’s going to enjoy it while she can because she doesn’t know if she wants kids or not. “That’s a whole nother fucking wine down Wednesday story.”
She starts a couple times, stops to mutter a viewer comment under her breath, and then says that she doesn’t want to share too much because she’s scared that people will steal her idea. But she knows she could do something really good. Asheville is becoming such a hotspot for bachelorette weekends. (There’s a comment from a parent of three boys and this person apparently drinks because of them. Lovely.)
It used to be -if you used to follow her for a long time - you would know her relationship with alcohol used to be really bad and it was every single day going ham. Now it’s like an every now and then she gets a huh - feeling.
She wants a place where women can come together, share ideas, be inspired, get a little buzzed because she feels like we’re more open when we do that. And she just wants it to be an encouraging and inclusive space. That’s what she would want to work around all day every day for the rest of her life. Big sigh. She doesn’t know. Apparently M knows about a space in Charlotte that is similar and MS agrees but the space doesn’t really speak to her. She’s never had a passion to go there because something feels like it’s missing. It’s not, “MS.” She wants all the things she loves: books, plants, bird feeders and bird baths, pink, bubblegum, champagne, mimosas, playboy. When she thinks of what’s in her brain, those are the first things that come to mind. (Hey it makes sense since she’s basically half drunk all the time). She just wants fun, girly, everyone is accepted, everyone can share ideas and mesh and maybe they’ll have fuckin’ spray tans there. She doesn’t even know. She has this idea - it’s so big that it literally keeps her up right now. It could have spray tans, lash extensions, LIKE A BEAUTY BAR. She just has so many different things. She wants to do so many things.
She mutters I don’t know a few times, considers an outdoor space for this academy and responds to another comment. She says struggling and in a weird phase of life where “who am I?” Like zoolander. But it’s exciting. She prefaces this by saying she doesn’t know how long people have been following her but she went live about a year ago in tears saying she doesn’t know what she wants to or where she fits in. She says she was in a really bad place then but now she’s in a place where she’s excited. And she’s gonna be really honest - she loves instagram but she stops and says she’s gonna need another shot for this, which she starts pouring. She says she’s totally gonna wanna delete this video later (I see how well that worked out…) so if we’re here, soak it up.
She goes and gets more water. She says she’s a Don Julio, Patron, Casa Migos girlie (she’s replying to a comment) not a Tito’s girlie. (For the record, the shot glass is about half full this time). The shot goes down, she sips water and grimaces at the taste. “I feel like I could light a match and it would just start on fire” (referring to her breath.)
So what was she just saying? She stops to reply to F, who is apparently very close to her house and should bring her ass over. She hears a horn honk outside and she panic shuffles off to see if C is home. He’s not. (No shit, there’s 45 more minutes to go and I wish I was kidding.)
What she’s feeling is like - she stops again to justify the water sipping and technically it’s her leftover collagen.
She remembers about “the gram” and reminds us that she’s probably going to delete this later because she’s going to feel like a fucking idiot. “It’s almost like both times that my account went away -” she stops again to ask if anyone is going to be offended if she vapes. Apparently if you are, she doesn’t know what to tell you. She hits the vape and expels a large plume of white smoke up towards the ceiling.
“So both times my instagram went again -like it just happened again- it’s the weirdest sensation because it’s like I haven’t been upset about it.” She mentioned that earlier when she was doing her nails an hour ago. It was the weirdest sensation that she just feels free and by no means does she want that to happen. It sucked financially. She felt like it had a hold on her and feels like god is like “what are you doing? You could do so much more. But what? Just give me mapquest! I’m so confused.” And like she said she will never give up network marketing because in her heart and gut and she’s speaking from a tipsy place like it’s just silly not to have that source of income and she’s wearing the nails right now so why wouldn’t she do that? She thinks she’ll be in network marketing until she’s 80 (not retiring sounds about right lol). She feels like she just needs to own something but doesn’t know what it is. She has a vision but doesn't know.
More comment reading. She lives for girls. She’s such a girl’s girl. A girl’s hangout is her fucking shit. She’s even thought about hosting “MS Gras” since she’s from New Orleans cause it’s a play on Mardi Gras and doing all the - she stops to lean in to read a comment and starts giggling.
One of her friends from middle school, K, has jumped on. She says she hopes she’s not making a fool of herself (too late) but if she is, there’s only 44 of us here. She asks, “remember back in the day when you would go live and there would be like 10,000 people watching?” (this has never happened.) Apparently we would be an OG real one if we remembered that. (I don’t think delusions count as memories.) When she was live she was going through that horrid break up and apparently passed out on that video. It was a combination of antidepressants, wine, and a hot bath. She went live and went burrr (she mimes leaning forward like passing out). It was actually more like 4000 people on there because it used to be like that. She shouts out someone whose name has been popping up for years.
She asks if we want to hear a secret. She’s feeling like - she says this is literally what it’s like to hang out with her in real life. Just so we know. (She tells someone, “fuck him and fuck that basement.” I think maybe referring to her ex D, whose parents let her live in their basement for awhile? Someone please correct me.)
She says C is definitely the guy she wants to marry and seems a little surprised with herself that she said that. “Whaaat that’s so weird. I wanna marry him so bad. He’s just the best.” That’s her secret. She’s just weird about stuff like that. Those are the things that she only says in person to her best best friends. Like she “def wants to marry C. He’s literally the best human. I’m pretty sure he was like an angel that was dropped into my lap.” He’s the greatest and she burps again. “And I like toot on him all the time and he doesn’t even care.” He likes that about her (must be the tennis ball smell, amirite?). She repeats the line from the earlier nail live that apparently, “it’s like hanging out with my best friend except you're hot.” She slaps herself on the chest like she really felt that compliment.
She says again she doesn’t know. She asks if she should just get a job and then groans very loudly. She’s very confused. [20:03] She says she needs to be out of her house more. She repeats herself then pauses and continues contemplating what she said. “Who would have thought that 3 of these guys would send me because back in the day I used to take like 15 Trulys ” (she’s holding up the platinum seltzer again.) “Now I can drink 3 of these and I’m feeling like a rockstar.” (I know math is hard but Truly is 5% ABV. These are 8%. Yes, 8 > 5.)
Someone in the comments suggests that she and KG should open something. She agrees and calls KG one of her best friends and is about to remind us that she lives nearby until MS gets distracted by the dishes she “just can’t with” in the sink.” In terms of proximity, MS says she could spit and hit KG’s house. They do talk about stuff like this but we have to understand that KG has 3 kids 10 and under and that’s a lot going on. MS goes on to say that KG is very smart, has lots of connections and resources and would definitely support and encourage MS but KG just has a lot on her plate right now.
MS laments again that she’s having this breakdown where she knows she’s meant to do something big and then thinks “well maybe I should just get a new tattoo.” and she says god is like, “girl stop. Stop selling yourself short. Stop playing small.”
At the beginning of the video she walks in holding what appeared to be a piece of black fabric. It was bunched up and hard to make out what piece of clothing it was. Well, wonder no more because she was also working on her laundry and holds up her bra. She says people have been asking what kind of bras she wears so this is it. It looks to be a satiny black piece with some scalloped lace on the top edges and has a small pink bow on it. It also has an underwire. She says it’s a Victoria’s Secret Body by Victoria Demi and it’s unlined but no padding. I’ll say now that in trying to recap this, if this seems like she jumps from topic to topic with no seemingly coherent transition, you’d be right. All these breaks are her interjecting into her own speech.
Her neighbor SW comes on right as she’s agreeing about maybe starting a podcast and whines that SW should come over. She makes a pouty face and tells SW she’s “having a breakdown.” She goes back to showing off the bra and says, “SW I am lit right now come over immediately. Actually don’t cause C and I are having date night but whatever.” She is now trying on the bra over her shirt and says again this is the bra she wears and that this is probably the question she gets most in her DMs. The bra has now been tossed to the side.
She mutters a comment about doing a vision board for turning 30 but decides to entertain the podcast idea instead, though she doesn’t know what she would talk about. Like just daily things? Like this is what she’s doing?
She coordinates with SW again about going to their hairdresser’s house to get her hair done. Apparently she’s going at 2 to get it washed and styled (presumably for the trip in a couple days) because she doesn’t feel like doing it. (Does she ever feel like doing anything besides getting drunk?) She goes on to inaudibly mutter some comments.
Back to the podcast. She thinks people would be bored because she doesn’t have that much to talk about then tries to take a sip of the seltzer but realizes it’s turned around in her hand so she adjusts.
Someone says she’s funny so she could just get drunk and - she cuts off reading the comment and starts a story about how while she was getting her spray tan today, she was thinking about what to call the podcast (there’s another vape hit at 24:05). She stumbles over her words but comes up with, “In love and a little drunk” or “Late and a little drunk.”
She resumes comment reading to confirm with SW about the hair appointment at 2 and must catch someone complaining about her reading comments because she says, “oh I’m reading comments that’s SO annoying. I hate when people do that and I do that.”
Podcast again. She says she doesn’t give a fuck and wants to be able to drink on her podcast and do whatever she wants. She repeats the title ideas above but again says she doesn’t know and doesn’t think she has that much valuable information. “I’m good at social media. Well not that good cause my instagram keeps getting fucking deleted.” She says she’s been self-employed for the last 6 years so she should have some knowledge to give.
I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s said, “I don’t know.” Anyway, a podcast could be cool, she thinks. She claims she’s being vulnerable again and says, “I sell myself short and then I’m like… do people really want that? Do people want this business or that podcast?” She replies to a comment that she’s not good at writing. She wants to write a book but then she’s like “I’m not good at [writing].” She says god has infiltrated her and wants her to do something scary and hard and to her, anything she hasn’t done is hard. She was talking to KG about this apparently and KG says that lots of people think that social media is hard and comparatively it comes so easy to MS because “if you like me, you like me, if you don’t, you don’t.”
There’s comment reading, muttering and a random observation that her teeth look kinda white. Apparently social media was the one thing that came easy so where does she go from here?
She’s explaining how KG, SW, and herself get their hair done at S’s house because they all live so close together and apparently when one girl is getting their hair done, another will pop by (must be nice being unemployed). Anyways, she’s recapping SW and says SW “missed the pow wow” (yikes bro.) She reiterates that she’s having a midlife/thirties/third life crisis. She thinks she’s supposed to do something really good but can’t figure out what it is.
Seltzer sip. “I’m definitely no role model so we can scratch that off the list.” (Wait, we’re not gonna volunteer at Big Brothers Big Sisters like we said after the racism incident?) She stops to examine her fake lashes and says they look kinda good. (Drunk goggles work on the person wearing them, too?)
Normally when she gets into one of these moods, she thinks she should go get another tattoo or piercing and shift that energy into something else but this time, “something’s a brewin.’”
She gets asked if she misses working in medical aesthetics and says that’s something KG brought up. “You were so good at that; you were so knowledgeable about it.” She agrees and says she did love it but admits that she’s being a little prideful about working for herself. And she can’t be an injector unless she becomes an RN and kudos to everyone who is a nurse or NP or CNA because she doesn’t want to do that (spoiler: they don’t want you either). She grimaces and says she feels bad saying this but doesn’t feel bad saying that she doesn’t want to go to hospitals. “I’m not like a caring-” and she cuts herself off. “I’m caring but not” she’s turning her hands over themselves trying to find the words. “But not like that. I don’t know if that makes sense. Sorry.” So anyways she loves the industry but in order to make the most money you need to be a nurse or a doctor and she doesn’t really have that passion for people and tries to laugh it off. She does have a passion for plastic surgery and injectables.
She has so many ideas it keeps her up at night. She’s still talking about how she loves and know so much of that industry. “Like this is how much botox you need, this is the filler you need. Like I am so good at that.” She has no shame in going back as an employee or medical assistant and that’s fine but doesn’t want to have to wake up at 7am to work for someone else.
More comment muttering and she asks SW if she’s ready for Florida. “I almost just flashed you but then I would definitely get deleted off facebook, too.” Seltzer sip. Another comment starts with, “my little family is moving your way,” and she viscerally recoils, shaking her head, starts pouring another Tito’s shot and says, “I’m going to tell you right now if your kid was over here, I would be doing this in the kitchen.” There’s a small sip in the shot glass and she drinks it. She winces again at the taste and chases with water. She loves her niece and nephew but would be like, “do you want to watch another movie? I’m not very maternal.” The only reason she’s even considering kids is because C is a lot more… a parent than she is. A commenter named J says she missed things like this and MS says she’s embarrassed and definitely going to delete this. “Well, I’m not embarrassed. I am who I am. But I am deleting this.” Vape reappears. [32:55] “If you’re going to screen record me and blast me to a troll page, do it now.” And double flips the bird.
So C is the only one that she ever thought about having kids with because he is a lot more sensitive and sweet and she’s a little more like… … she grimaces trying to find the words “like oh you want to do this? Why are you wasting your time? Like just go do it then. Like what are you doing?” She asks J to come here and hug her. C is very much a Pisces and very much needs to think about all the options and then make a decision while she’s like “it’s not that hard just do it.” They’re definitely opposites.
She shouts out B. She and B went to high school together. B has all these “gorgeous babies and I’m like ugh how do you do it. I’m jealous.” She makes a considerable pout. She doesn’t know how to do it. She doesn’t know how to raise a kid. In perfect timing, she hits the vape again [34:17]. “Look at me! I can barely take care of myself! Are you kidding me?!”
J calls her by her “government name” and MS says people are apparently surprised when they find out that’s her real name. Like what would M be short for? “M is a weird name. Like I don’t know. Blame my mom. Call S (her mom).”
She wishes more of us lived there. She thinks she needs to get a hobby other than just her job because she’s bored. She’s read 18 books this year, in 2 and a half months. “You can only create so much content. Just so you guys know.” Seltzer sip. Showing off nails.
She feels bad for not being the average influencer. “Like all these other influencers have like a million followers.” She rolls her eyes, belches louder than I’ve ever heard, and apologizes for it. Then burps 3 more times. “I’m definitely deleting this. I feel like all these other people have so many followers and I’m like what am I doing wrong? It’s like the richer you are, the more followers you get.” Vape hit. [36:16] “It’s like you have to be really, really, really, really rich. I live in an average house. It’s cute, it’s nice but it’s average. And it makes me sad that I’m like, I would not settle for anything less than white cabinets because I thought like that’s the influencer thing to do. And I’m like, that’s sad.” She does like white cabinets but, “it’s so crazy how instagram has like brainwashed me.” Comment muttering. Showing off nails. “These are my new fucking nails, girl.” Someone asks how to get those nails to stick. She tells M to go watch her previous video because in it she explains that if your nails don’t stick, this is what you’re doing wrong. She demonstrates by pressing her nails into her palms that she can press as hard as she wants and they are not coming off. Just take your time and press each one down for 30 seconds. Comment muttering.
She has to pee and asks if we can wait. Then polishes off the seltzer. She walks off screen and you hear the can hit a container of other recyclables. She crosses back through the screen the other direction and says “Am I having a breakdown on Facebook? Good god.” She goes to the bathroom and her urinating is audible, even with her phone still in the kitchen. [38:04] The toilet flushes and she appears. “Okay, I’m back.” She starts washing her hands in the kitchen sink and reads comments. Gasping she goes, “You guys could hear that!? No! No! Stop! Wait, could you really hear it?” She winces and laughs. “I don’t care, I feel you guys are all my best friends. I mean there’s only 50 people here. You guys have to be loyal.”
More whining about what she wants to do and what her calling is. “Did you guys hear me toot? ‘Cause I tooted, too.” She smacks her forehead.
Real question. “Send hearts if you’re ready for a real legit question.” She confirms she tooted again. She needs advice on something. She’s off camera for something going in her tumbler, I think. Apparently she and N are going to get together next Friday.
She had cut herself off to reply to N but is back on track to remind us that she’s going to turn 30 on April 10. She was born on Easter Sunday. Fun fact. They apparently brought her to her mom in a little Easter egg. Commenting muttering. “Really? ‘Cause I feel like I’m such a mess!” she smooshes her face. She says her parents were really poor and lived in downtown New Orleans. Like really raggedy projects. So while her mom was in labor, “for fuckin’ forever,” her dad, being a gambler, went to the casino and hit the jackpot. It was $15,000 and at the time that was a huge amount of money. Compared to 1993, that’s like double now. He picked her mom up in a limo.
So she’s celebrating her 30th, which is a Monday, Easter is the day before, and she’s hosting her family for Easter. It’s going to be lit and apparently Survivor themed. There will be things for the kids but when they go down for a nap there is going to be “Survivor shit. Like you’re voted off. The tribe has spoken.” So she has some stuff that weekend and doesn’t know what she wants to do. C says she needs to be ready the whole weekend because he has stuff planned Friday and Saturday. Comment muttering and yelling to commenter M that F from earlier is in Charlotte, too. Burps. Repeats C has plans for Friday and Saturday. Easter is Sunday and her birthday is Monday so she’s torn. She kind of wants to do a solo trip. She loves being alone. It’s what she likes and is comfortable with. C is okay with it. She loves traveling alone and everyone who has followed her for an extended period time knows she’s been to NYC several times alone, DC, Florida, even Mexico. She enjoys being alone so it’s nothing like that. So she needs opinions. It’s either Paris, and if it was Paris, it would just be exploring and, “eating like a lot of fucking baguettes. I don’t know; I’m living my best Emily in Paris. Like I’ll get a chocolate croissant or something.” Or she goes to West Palm Florida alone and do a spa –
So she’s confused because if she goes to Paris alone the flight is $4500-$5000 because she “wants a bed on the plane” or she could go to West Palm, take all that cash and have a badass spa, beach day. For her, her happiness has always been by herself. Her mom, to this day, would ask if MS wanted friends over and MS would say no. She’s always been like that. Comment muttering. She just needs 4 days. She could take the money that she was going to spend on a first class, Delta One flight to Paris and do a badass spa, beach day. She definitely wants to do something just for her for her 30th. Comment muttering. (I swear to god I didn’t screw up and recap the same shit twice - she literally just repeats herself so much.) So West Palm. She laments that her poor niece also rubs her hands together, like MS is now, when thinking about something. Someone in the comments suggests a private beach, cabana, shopping spree. She seems excited now and says that’s what she’s been playing with. She wants to have a fun weekend with her family but wants to make it about Easter but her birthday is the day after Easter and this is still real life, like people still have to work. (Just not her.) So just 4 or 5 days in West Palm with shopping, a good spa - top of the tier spa. “The thing is with Paris is that it’s a long ass flight. I would want food, I would want a bed. All the things.” So she could cut that in half and still do a badass weekend in West Palm. “Or a badass fucking like 5 days.” Plus out of Asheville, they have Allegiant flights, “for like nothing.” She could get to West Palm for like $80.
Now here comes a part I thought we’d never revisit but it’s been living rent free in my head ever since. She asks viewers if they remember when she surprised C with a trip to Spain, “and then Covid happens. Rude.” They had to cancel it. She goes to refill her water again. They were “going to go to Paris - going to go to Barcelona and Spain but then Covid…and I couldn’t even have fun. I couldn’t go.” Water sip. “I’m thinking solo trip to West Palm. Badass spa, nice-ass resort. I think that’s the move.” She says she’s about to jump off because it’s been forever (there’s still 12 more minutes), her phone is about to die, and she’s so embarrassed. Comment reading and muttering. Someone must have asked her where she would go if she could go anywhere and she’s contemplating the question while tapping her nails on her teeth. She asks the person if they’ve ever done Rome because she thinks she would do Rome. She says she also has an adventurous side, “so maybe Portugal? Ugh. Barcelona. I feel like Barcelona is calling me.” She says hi baby to someone and then another comment mentions a trip to Santorini and she goes, “Santorini? Fucking do it. Let’s go. Santorini are you kidding me? Should I go there for my 30th?” She’s gone back to the fridge and is bent down, reaching the bottom shelf for another seltzer.
KG and JT are on the live now. “I am just drunk and spilling my guts, so anyone who wants to record this to share later about what a fucking dickhead I am, go ahead and do it.” She opens the can using the end of a spoon.
Back to the West Palm idea. She’s thinking 5 days, spa, beach, everything, cabana, private everything. She could pay what she would have paid just to get to Paris.
And here’s the left turn none of us saw coming. She says she’s thinking bachelorette party. “Are you ready SW, KG, and JT?” She’s swaying side to side, dancing and hyping this moment up. “JT come over! Come over! You’re literally right by my house.” she yells. “Come here right now or I’m going to be upset.” Seltzer sip. “Vegas. Vegas penthouse for my bachelorette. Like a Vegas - fucking Vegas penthouse. I want it to be like Hangover style. I want to wake up and there’s a fucking tiger in my room. I want to wake up with strippers and tigers in my room and that’s that.” More whining for JT to come over. JT replies and MS asks her to bring her something from Sonic. She gasps and asks if JT will bring her those tater tots with the chili on them. “Is that like a thing? At Sonic?”
She’s replying to a comment: “No, I’m not getting married. I mean I feel like it’s coming soon. Coming soon to a theater near you. We’ll see. But when I do get engaged…” JT is trying to confirm the order and she repeats that JT should bring the tater tots with the cheese on them and like, chili. She’s apparently literally across from MS’s house. She repeats about the Vegas penthouse. Then pauses. Sighs. “You guys I’m a fucking mess.” She looks out the window and realizes that her umbrella has “rolled down the fucking bank. It’s fine.” She greets CW, who she calls, “Sug,” like half of sugar, it sounds like. (I don’t know if CW got married but I’m going with what would have been her maiden name then to differentiate from MS’s boyfriend, C.) CW is important because CW is her ex-husband, BW’s sister. Her “ex-sister-in-law. Old sister-in-law from when I was married.” She tells CW she was talking about it the other day and realizes that this year on July 12 she would have been married for 9 years, then makes a grotesque face, smacks herself in the forehead and says, “that’s crazy.” So CW and MS have always been friends. She repeats it would have been 9 years. “Can you imagine? That’s insane.”
“See I can keep friends with my ex sister in law, why does my instagram keep getting deleted? I don’t understand.” She invites CW (who she keeps calling Sug) to come see the house because “it’s cute.” Apparently Sug misses her and she misses her, too. She reminisces about a place they used to go together (Carowinds - an amusement park) that she went for the first time since then last year and it was so fun. She asks if there are any roller coaster riders in the house because she rode the biggest roller coaster. More comment muttering and she reminds us she was “literally married to her brother.” Seltzer sip. “How many of you guys didn’t know I was married? This will be my second marriage.”
“To be fair I had more fun with you than your brother.” she’s replying to CW again and laughing. “Love him but I always had more fun with you.” JT must have teased her because MS says, “JT shut up.”
“Yeah I was just an old married broad.” (At 21. Riiiigght.) “JT are you coming over or no? Cause I can wait until you get here cause you’re literally across the street.” She’s commenting on the hair on her face again.
She starts to talk about her first wedding but stops to burp again. “So picture this.” (she makes a camera with her hands in front of her face.) “My first wedding um this just tells you how old I am. This tells you how old I am. My first wedding, my bridesmaids’ dresses. Guess what color they were. Just guess. Just guess. Bridesmaids dress colors. The theme!? The theme of my first wedding was lemons! I’m not joking. Like the fucking fruit or whatever it is. Lemons. That was the theme of my first wedding. That’s how old I am.” Seltzer sip. “The color of my bridesmaids’ dresses - it was a different time, it was a different time. Bright yellow, no. It’s so embarrassing. It’s not that embarrassing. I mean it was a good wedding. It was a good ass wedding. Like everyone tells me they had a bomb ass time at my wedding but... Green, no. Not pink. Zebra print oh god. Zebra print with the pink sash no that was like homecoming. Lemons were a vibe at the time. They really were. They really were. So this was 2014.” She takes a step back. “I had blue. I had blue bridesmaid dresses and the whole thing like all the centerpieces -” Someone in the comments, I’m guessing CW is saying, “blue you made me wear blue.” All the centerpieces were a bowl of lemons. “But that was like kind of the vibe back then. It was blue and yellow.” She doesn’t know what it will be the next time she gets married. “Probably just like neutrals, like everyone can wear what they want. Nude, beige, blush pink kinda thing. Okay it was not bright blue. It was not that bad. It was just like regular blue.” (The photos we saw were teal but whatever. I don’t expect her to remember her own wedding or be able to accurately describe colors.) Her dress wasn’t yellow. It was white. No, it was ivory. And it was this huge strapless princess dress.
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We open on MS trying to pick a position for her phone, repeating, “listen, listen.” She finally sets it down and asks if we can hear her and see her. ‘Cause here’s the thing, here’s the thing (she’s been repeating herself a lot and it’s been 30 seconds).
The worst British accent you can imagine kicks in
She says she’s been sitting at home, completed all she needed to do for the day (lol like what), so she goes to the fridge to see if there’s anything fun, juicy or naughty in here. She reminds us that they had a party a few weeks ago and produces a Bud Light Lime Platinum Seltzer which, in a 16oz can, comes at a whopping 8% ABV. “Crikey,” she says, because she’s apparently already had 3 of them because she was feeling a little thirsty and they’ve hit her like a ton of bricks. She claims she hasn’t drank in a few days. She says something about not being able to shotgun and then the video jump cuts.
“Am I frozen? Can you see me? Let me know if you can see me.” She asks, making a box around her head with her hands. “Send me hearts if you can see me; send me something” because she just got another spam call and wasn’t sure if she was back.
(We’ve dropped the British accent, but then the blaccent starts halfway through this…) So here’s the thing about this spam call. The person that had her number before her, his name starts with A and she calls him by a slightly different version of A. She doesn’t think he ever paid his taxes. She says she changed her number last year and whoever A is (“A if you can see this - hello - you need to pay your taxes”). She did a deep dive to see if it was for her and was getting paranoid. She repeats herself again saying, “whoever A is you gotta pay your taxes ‘cause they keep calling me and trying to get me to pay your taxes and I’m not going to do it because I got too many to pay honey.” and flicks her tongue like a snake several times. [2:30]
She goes on to respond to a comment that the seltzers are not that good but they do the job okay and walks off screen saying she’s going to see what else they have. (The British accent is back.)
She returns brandishing a bottle of Don Julio but says she doesn’t drink that because it’s reposado. There’s another bottle or two (she says “these are C’s and I can’t reach them”). Apparently there’s a lot up there.
Someone must have asked about shots because she says, “shots?! Not of that…maybe of Titos… should I take one? C’s gonna wring my neck when he gets home.” She laughs and then clarifies that no, just kidding, “he’s not gonna do shit.” She takes another large swig of the seltzer and remarks that, “these are sneaky little devils” (No shit they’re almost 2 times the ABV of an average beer). She clearly intended on doing some work, like making graphics, listening to the Girls Next Level podcast and determined that she deserved a little (she clicks her tongue a few times) ‘cause she hasn’t been drinking and working out like crazy (she stops to make a grabbing gesture at the camera and taps her nails on the counter) repeats that she’s been working out like crazy and then loudly burps and decides that she’s gonna have a little midday cocktail. So she’s just working on making graphics and gets through about 2 and half these in and “oh my godddd”
She replies to comments. (“Same, M, same.”) Must be a follower. Not a name I recognized. So she decides that it’s time to do a shot because she wants to get real with us, as she has a lot on her mind. She walks off screen and we hear a grunt of her trying to climb on the counter but she returns, deciding that she didn’t want to risk breaking the stove. She decides to go back and try again, one by one and reaches up - sticking a foot way out as the only part of her in frame. The first bottle she grabs is bourbon whiskey and she makes a bunch of retching noises at it.
She’s off screen again. “This is what mama wants,” but she can’t reach it. There’s more walking off screen, this time the opposite direction to grab a chair. She’s back in frame setting the chair down and says she normally only drinks tequila but if it’s not tequila, she’ll drink vodka. But not reposado. Anyways, she’s back closer to her phone screen now with the bottle of Tito’s. It’s not got a lot left in it. She grabbed a shot glass at some point and is now unscrewing the cap while still holding the shot glass.
“Here’s the thing. I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m just feeling very share-y.” She pours a shot about 80% full and imitates Shrek saying, “that’ll do, donkey, that’ll do.” And then mutters, “I am probably such a disappointment to my parents.” She grabs her Starbucks tumbler and laughs that she’s going to wash it down with a little collagen.
Shot goes down. She sips the tumbler; it’s basically empty. She refills a tiny bit from the fridge water dispenser.
“Here’s the thing.” She stops again to recover from the shot. “I have a lot of things to cover.”
Number 1: (she pauses for like 10 seconds) “Should I go back to school?” She starts saying she’s having a mid-30, then corrects herself to say that she’s going be 30 in a few weeks and asks if she’s having a crisis. Should she go back to school? Should she be an FBI agent? She doesn’t fucking know. “What do I want to do when I grow up?! Like I’m having one of those breakdowns.” She says she loves her job and wants to keep doing it but she wants it to feel like fun and not a job, you know what I mean? She says she feels in between, like she’s being called to do something big but isn’t sure what it is. That’s the problem. And she keeps praying, and praying, and praying and god’s not giving her any answers. She feels like god’s giving her different paths and she asks why not give her a compass or a map, like “we have mapquest.” She will print off the directions like she used to. She just doesn’t know what her path is. And it’s not that she’s scared, she’s excited - she just wants to know what it is. “Can someone shed light like on this?” She asks the chat if anyone else felt like this coming up on their thirties. “I feel like it’s building up inside me like a champagne bottle.” She demonstrates what she means by sliding her hands up her chest and pushing her boobs up and remarks, “look at these saggy old boobs.” So it’s like a champagne bottle that’s about to pop and this is what she’s supposed to do but she doesn’t know.
She has a secret to share. In the back of her mind (it’s not a forever thing she doesn’t think) but she’s always had a calling to-
She cuts herself off to read comments of people agreeing and someone is in the same boat. So she loves her job and she’s never gonna quit social media or Red Aspen or network marketing in general because she thinks it’s a smart move. But she knows she’s supposed to do something and she doesn’t know what it is.
So it’s something she’s been pondering on the backburner. She wants to open an influencer studio. Kind of like somewhere that people can go and shoot content but that might not make sense to you if you’re not in that wheelhouse but it makes sense to her. It’s where you go to shoot fun content, drink mimosas, do social media training. She wants to open a social media academy.
She starts complaining about having the longest hair on her face. Apparently it’s bright red.
M comments again and so does someone named A (no not our tax guy, A) who apparently JUST told her boyfriend that she wanted to open a studio so MS says A should message her so they can talk.
She’s being TOTALLY vulnerable right now because she’s SO prideful and she hates being like ehh about things but she feels really intimidated by paperwork and contracts and things of that nature (sure explains the fucked up house purchase, huh??) So that makes her apprehensive. Someone comments that they could see her opening a bookstore/coffee shop. Which she gets excited about because her other idea was a “champagne library kind of???” (Even she doesn’t sound convinced, which is fine because why are all of her ideas excuses to drink?) Oh good, she clarifies that her, “biggest passions are alcohol” well not passions, she laughs. She enjoys it. She’s gotten to a point where her relationship with alcohol is healthy enough for her to be like, “I enjoy drinking. I like it. I don’t have any fucking kids running around. Whatever.” She’s going to enjoy it while she can because she doesn’t know if she wants kids or not. “That’s a whole nother fucking wine down Wednesday story.”
She starts a couple times, stops to mutter a viewer comment under her breath, and then says that she doesn’t want to share too much because she’s scared that people will steal her idea. But she knows she could do something really good. Asheville is becoming such a hotspot for bachelorette weekends. (There’s a comment from a parent of three boys and this person apparently drinks because of them. Lovely.)
It used to be -if you used to follow her for a long time - you would know her relationship with alcohol used to be really bad and it was every single day going ham. Now it’s like an every now and then she gets a huh - feeling.
She wants a place where women can come together, share ideas, be inspired, get a little buzzed because she feels like we’re more open when we do that. And she just wants it to be an encouraging and inclusive space. That’s what she would want to work around all day every day for the rest of her life. Big sigh. She doesn’t know. Apparently M knows about a space in Charlotte that is similar and MS agrees but the space doesn’t really speak to her. She’s never had a passion to go there because something feels like it’s missing. It’s not, “MS.” She wants all the things she loves: books, plants, bird feeders and bird baths, pink, bubblegum, champagne, mimosas, playboy. When she thinks of what’s in her brain, those are the first things that come to mind. (Hey it makes sense since she’s basically half drunk all the time). She just wants fun, girly, everyone is accepted, everyone can share ideas and mesh and maybe they’ll have fuckin’ spray tans there. She doesn’t even know. She has this idea - it’s so big that it literally keeps her up right now. It could have spray tans, lash extensions, LIKE A BEAUTY BAR. She just has so many different things. She wants to do so many things.
She mutters I don’t know a few times, considers an outdoor space for this academy and responds to another comment. She says struggling and in a weird phase of life where “who am I?” Like zoolander. But it’s exciting. She prefaces this by saying she doesn’t know how long people have been following her but she went live about a year ago in tears saying she doesn’t know what she wants to or where she fits in. She says she was in a really bad place then but now she’s in a place where she’s excited. And she’s gonna be really honest - she loves instagram but she stops and says she’s gonna need another shot for this, which she starts pouring. She says she’s totally gonna wanna delete this video later (I see how well that worked out…) so if we’re here, soak it up.
She goes and gets more water. She says she’s a Don Julio, Patron, Casa Migos girlie (she’s replying to a comment) not a Tito’s girlie. (For the record, the shot glass is about half full this time). The shot goes down, she sips water and grimaces at the taste. “I feel like I could light a match and it would just start on fire” (referring to her breath.)
So what was she just saying? She stops to reply to F, who is apparently very close to her house and should bring her ass over. She hears a horn honk outside and she panic shuffles off to see if C is home. He’s not. (No shit, there’s 45 more minutes to go and I wish I was kidding.)
What she’s feeling is like - she stops again to justify the water sipping and technically it’s her leftover collagen.
She remembers about “the gram” and reminds us that she’s probably going to delete this later because she’s going to feel like a fucking idiot. “It’s almost like both times that my account went away -” she stops again to ask if anyone is going to be offended if she vapes. Apparently if you are, she doesn’t know what to tell you. She hits the vape and expels a large plume of white smoke up towards the ceiling.
“So both times my instagram went again -like it just happened again- it’s the weirdest sensation because it’s like I haven’t been upset about it.” She mentioned that earlier when she was doing her nails an hour ago. It was the weirdest sensation that she just feels free and by no means does she want that to happen. It sucked financially. She felt like it had a hold on her and feels like god is like “what are you doing? You could do so much more. But what? Just give me mapquest! I’m so confused.” And like she said she will never give up network marketing because in her heart and gut and she’s speaking from a tipsy place like it’s just silly not to have that source of income and she’s wearing the nails right now so why wouldn’t she do that? She thinks she’ll be in network marketing until she’s 80 (not retiring sounds about right lol). She feels like she just needs to own something but doesn’t know what it is. She has a vision but doesn't know.
More comment reading. She lives for girls. She’s such a girl’s girl. A girl’s hangout is her fucking shit. She’s even thought about hosting “MS Gras” since she’s from New Orleans cause it’s a play on Mardi Gras and doing all the - she stops to lean in to read a comment and starts giggling.
One of her friends from middle school, K, has jumped on. She says she hopes she’s not making a fool of herself (too late) but if she is, there’s only 44 of us here. She asks, “remember back in the day when you would go live and there would be like 10,000 people watching?” (this has never happened.) Apparently we would be an OG real one if we remembered that. (I don’t think delusions count as memories.) When she was live she was going through that horrid break up and apparently passed out on that video. It was a combination of antidepressants, wine, and a hot bath. She went live and went burrr (she mimes leaning forward like passing out). It was actually more like 4000 people on there because it used to be like that. She shouts out someone whose name has been popping up for years.
She asks if we want to hear a secret. She’s feeling like - she says this is literally what it’s like to hang out with her in real life. Just so we know. (She tells someone, “fuck him and fuck that basement.” I think maybe referring to her ex D, whose parents let her live in their basement for awhile? Someone please correct me.)
She says C is definitely the guy she wants to marry and seems a little surprised with herself that she said that. “Whaaat that’s so weird. I wanna marry him so bad. He’s just the best.” That’s her secret. She’s just weird about stuff like that. Those are the things that she only says in person to her best best friends. Like she “def wants to marry C. He’s literally the best human. I’m pretty sure he was like an angel that was dropped into my lap.” He’s the greatest and she burps again. “And I like toot on him all the time and he doesn’t even care.” He likes that about her (must be the tennis ball smell, amirite?). She repeats the line from the earlier nail live that apparently, “it’s like hanging out with my best friend except you're hot.” She slaps herself on the chest like she really felt that compliment.
She says again she doesn’t know. She asks if she should just get a job and then groans very loudly. She’s very confused. [20:03] She says she needs to be out of her house more. She repeats herself then pauses and continues contemplating what she said. “Who would have thought that 3 of these guys would send me because back in the day I used to take like 15 Trulys ” (she’s holding up the platinum seltzer again.) “Now I can drink 3 of these and I’m feeling like a rockstar.” (I know math is hard but Truly is 5% ABV. These are 8%. Yes, 8 > 5.)
Someone in the comments suggests that she and KG should open something. She agrees and calls KG one of her best friends and is about to remind us that she lives nearby until MS gets distracted by the dishes she “just can’t with” in the sink.” In terms of proximity, MS says she could spit and hit KG’s house. They do talk about stuff like this but we have to understand that KG has 3 kids 10 and under and that’s a lot going on. MS goes on to say that KG is very smart, has lots of connections and resources and would definitely support and encourage MS but KG just has a lot on her plate right now.
MS laments again that she’s having this breakdown where she knows she’s meant to do something big and then thinks “well maybe I should just get a new tattoo.” and she says god is like, “girl stop. Stop selling yourself short. Stop playing small.”
At the beginning of the video she walks in holding what appeared to be a piece of black fabric. It was bunched up and hard to make out what piece of clothing it was. Well, wonder no more because she was also working on her laundry and holds up her bra. She says people have been asking what kind of bras she wears so this is it. It looks to be a satiny black piece with some scalloped lace on the top edges and has a small pink bow on it. It also has an underwire. She says it’s a Victoria’s Secret Body by Victoria Demi and it’s unlined but no padding. I’ll say now that in trying to recap this, if this seems like she jumps from topic to topic with no seemingly coherent transition, you’d be right. All these breaks are her interjecting into her own speech.
Her neighbor SW comes on right as she’s agreeing about maybe starting a podcast and whines that SW should come over. She makes a pouty face and tells SW she’s “having a breakdown.” She goes back to showing off the bra and says, “SW I am lit right now come over immediately. Actually don’t cause C and I are having date night but whatever.” She is now trying on the bra over her shirt and says again this is the bra she wears and that this is probably the question she gets most in her DMs. The bra has now been tossed to the side.
She mutters a comment about doing a vision board for turning 30 but decides to entertain the podcast idea instead, though she doesn’t know what she would talk about. Like just daily things? Like this is what she’s doing?
She coordinates with SW again about going to their hairdresser’s house to get her hair done. Apparently she’s going at 2 to get it washed and styled (presumably for the trip in a couple days) because she doesn’t feel like doing it. (Does she ever feel like doing anything besides getting drunk?) She goes on to inaudibly mutter some comments.
Back to the podcast. She thinks people would be bored because she doesn’t have that much to talk about then tries to take a sip of the seltzer but realizes it’s turned around in her hand so she adjusts.
Someone says she’s funny so she could just get drunk and - she cuts off reading the comment and starts a story about how while she was getting her spray tan today, she was thinking about what to call the podcast (there’s another vape hit at 24:05). She stumbles over her words but comes up with, “In love and a little drunk” or “Late and a little drunk.”
She resumes comment reading to confirm with SW about the hair appointment at 2 and must catch someone complaining about her reading comments because she says, “oh I’m reading comments that’s SO annoying. I hate when people do that and I do that.”
Podcast again. She says she doesn’t give a fuck and wants to be able to drink on her podcast and do whatever she wants. She repeats the title ideas above but again says she doesn’t know and doesn’t think she has that much valuable information. “I’m good at social media. Well not that good cause my instagram keeps getting fucking deleted.” She says she’s been self-employed for the last 6 years so she should have some knowledge to give.
I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s said, “I don’t know.” Anyway, a podcast could be cool, she thinks. She claims she’s being vulnerable again and says, “I sell myself short and then I’m like… do people really want that? Do people want this business or that podcast?” She replies to a comment that she’s not good at writing. She wants to write a book but then she’s like “I’m not good at [writing].” She says god has infiltrated her and wants her to do something scary and hard and to her, anything she hasn’t done is hard. She was talking to KG about this apparently and KG says that lots of people think that social media is hard and comparatively it comes so easy to MS because “if you like me, you like me, if you don’t, you don’t.”
There’s comment reading, muttering and a random observation that her teeth look kinda white. Apparently social media was the one thing that came easy so where does she go from here?
She’s explaining how KG, SW, and herself get their hair done at S’s house because they all live so close together and apparently when one girl is getting their hair done, another will pop by (must be nice being unemployed). Anyways, she’s recapping SW and says SW “missed the pow wow” (yikes bro.) She reiterates that she’s having a midlife/thirties/third life crisis. She thinks she’s supposed to do something really good but can’t figure out what it is.
Seltzer sip. “I’m definitely no role model so we can scratch that off the list.” (Wait, we’re not gonna volunteer at Big Brothers Big Sisters like we said after the racism incident?) She stops to examine her fake lashes and says they look kinda good. (Drunk goggles work on the person wearing them, too?)
Normally when she gets into one of these moods, she thinks she should go get another tattoo or piercing and shift that energy into something else but this time, “something’s a brewin.’”
She gets asked if she misses working in medical aesthetics and says that’s something KG brought up. “You were so good at that; you were so knowledgeable about it.” She agrees and says she did love it but admits that she’s being a little prideful about working for herself. And she can’t be an injector unless she becomes an RN and kudos to everyone who is a nurse or NP or CNA because she doesn’t want to do that (spoiler: they don’t want you either). She grimaces and says she feels bad saying this but doesn’t feel bad saying that she doesn’t want to go to hospitals. “I’m not like a caring-” and she cuts herself off. “I’m caring but not” she’s turning her hands over themselves trying to find the words. “But not like that. I don’t know if that makes sense. Sorry.” So anyways she loves the industry but in order to make the most money you need to be a nurse or a doctor and she doesn’t really have that passion for people and tries to laugh it off. She does have a passion for plastic surgery and injectables.
She has so many ideas it keeps her up at night. She’s still talking about how she loves and know so much of that industry. “Like this is how much botox you need, this is the filler you need. Like I am so good at that.” She has no shame in going back as an employee or medical assistant and that’s fine but doesn’t want to have to wake up at 7am to work for someone else.
More comment muttering and she asks SW if she’s ready for Florida. “I almost just flashed you but then I would definitely get deleted off facebook, too.” Seltzer sip. Another comment starts with, “my little family is moving your way,” and she viscerally recoils, shaking her head, starts pouring another Tito’s shot and says, “I’m going to tell you right now if your kid was over here, I would be doing this in the kitchen.” There’s a small sip in the shot glass and she drinks it. She winces again at the taste and chases with water. She loves her niece and nephew but would be like, “do you want to watch another movie? I’m not very maternal.” The only reason she’s even considering kids is because C is a lot more… a parent than she is. A commenter named J says she missed things like this and MS says she’s embarrassed and definitely going to delete this. “Well, I’m not embarrassed. I am who I am. But I am deleting this.” Vape reappears. [32:55] “If you’re going to screen record me and blast me to a troll page, do it now.” And double flips the bird.
So C is the only one that she ever thought about having kids with because he is a lot more sensitive and sweet and she’s a little more like… … she grimaces trying to find the words “like oh you want to do this? Why are you wasting your time? Like just go do it then. Like what are you doing?” She asks J to come here and hug her. C is very much a Pisces and very much needs to think about all the options and then make a decision while she’s like “it’s not that hard just do it.” They’re definitely opposites.
She shouts out B. She and B went to high school together. B has all these “gorgeous babies and I’m like ugh how do you do it. I’m jealous.” She makes a considerable pout. She doesn’t know how to do it. She doesn’t know how to raise a kid. In perfect timing, she hits the vape again [34:17]. “Look at me! I can barely take care of myself! Are you kidding me?!”
J calls her by her “government name” and MS says people are apparently surprised when they find out that’s her real name. Like what would M be short for? “M is a weird name. Like I don’t know. Blame my mom. Call S (her mom).”
She wishes more of us lived there. She thinks she needs to get a hobby other than just her job because she’s bored. She’s read 18 books this year, in 2 and a half months. “You can only create so much content. Just so you guys know.” Seltzer sip. Showing off nails.
She feels bad for not being the average influencer. “Like all these other influencers have like a million followers.” She rolls her eyes, belches louder than I’ve ever heard, and apologizes for it. Then burps 3 more times. “I’m definitely deleting this. I feel like all these other people have so many followers and I’m like what am I doing wrong? It’s like the richer you are, the more followers you get.” Vape hit. [36:16] “It’s like you have to be really, really, really, really rich. I live in an average house. It’s cute, it’s nice but it’s average. And it makes me sad that I’m like, I would not settle for anything less than white cabinets because I thought like that’s the influencer thing to do. And I’m like, that’s sad.” She does like white cabinets but, “it’s so crazy how instagram has like brainwashed me.” Comment muttering. Showing off nails. “These are my new fucking nails, girl.” Someone asks how to get those nails to stick. She tells M to go watch her previous video because in it she explains that if your nails don’t stick, this is what you’re doing wrong. She demonstrates by pressing her nails into her palms that she can press as hard as she wants and they are not coming off. Just take your time and press each one down for 30 seconds. Comment muttering.
She has to pee and asks if we can wait. Then polishes off the seltzer. She walks off screen and you hear the can hit a container of other recyclables. She crosses back through the screen the other direction and says “Am I having a breakdown on Facebook? Good god.” She goes to the bathroom and her urinating is audible, even with her phone still in the kitchen. [38:04] The toilet flushes and she appears. “Okay, I’m back.” She starts washing her hands in the kitchen sink and reads comments. Gasping she goes, “You guys could hear that!? No! No! Stop! Wait, could you really hear it?” She winces and laughs. “I don’t care, I feel you guys are all my best friends. I mean there’s only 50 people here. You guys have to be loyal.”
More whining about what she wants to do and what her calling is. “Did you guys hear me toot? ‘Cause I tooted, too.” She smacks her forehead.
Real question. “Send hearts if you’re ready for a real legit question.” She confirms she tooted again. She needs advice on something. She’s off camera for something going in her tumbler, I think. Apparently she and N are going to get together next Friday.
She had cut herself off to reply to N but is back on track to remind us that she’s going to turn 30 on April 10. She was born on Easter Sunday. Fun fact. They apparently brought her to her mom in a little Easter egg. Commenting muttering. “Really? ‘Cause I feel like I’m such a mess!” she smooshes her face. She says her parents were really poor and lived in downtown New Orleans. Like really raggedy projects. So while her mom was in labor, “for fuckin’ forever,” her dad, being a gambler, went to the casino and hit the jackpot. It was $15,000 and at the time that was a huge amount of money. Compared to 1993, that’s like double now. He picked her mom up in a limo.
So she’s celebrating her 30th, which is a Monday, Easter is the day before, and she’s hosting her family for Easter. It’s going to be lit and apparently Survivor themed. There will be things for the kids but when they go down for a nap there is going to be “Survivor shit. Like you’re voted off. The tribe has spoken.” So she has some stuff that weekend and doesn’t know what she wants to do. C says she needs to be ready the whole weekend because he has stuff planned Friday and Saturday. Comment muttering and yelling to commenter M that F from earlier is in Charlotte, too. Burps. Repeats C has plans for Friday and Saturday. Easter is Sunday and her birthday is Monday so she’s torn. She kind of wants to do a solo trip. She loves being alone. It’s what she likes and is comfortable with. C is okay with it. She loves traveling alone and everyone who has followed her for an extended period time knows she’s been to NYC several times alone, DC, Florida, even Mexico. She enjoys being alone so it’s nothing like that. So she needs opinions. It’s either Paris, and if it was Paris, it would just be exploring and, “eating like a lot of fucking baguettes. I don’t know; I’m living my best Emily in Paris. Like I’ll get a chocolate croissant or something.” Or she goes to West Palm Florida alone and do a spa –
So she’s confused because if she goes to Paris alone the flight is $4500-$5000 because she “wants a bed on the plane” or she could go to West Palm, take all that cash and have a badass spa, beach day. For her, her happiness has always been by herself. Her mom, to this day, would ask if MS wanted friends over and MS would say no. She’s always been like that. Comment muttering. She just needs 4 days. She could take the money that she was going to spend on a first class, Delta One flight to Paris and do a badass spa, beach day. She definitely wants to do something just for her for her 30th. Comment muttering. (I swear to god I didn’t screw up and recap the same shit twice - she literally just repeats herself so much.) So West Palm. She laments that her poor niece also rubs her hands together, like MS is now, when thinking about something. Someone in the comments suggests a private beach, cabana, shopping spree. She seems excited now and says that’s what she’s been playing with. She wants to have a fun weekend with her family but wants to make it about Easter but her birthday is the day after Easter and this is still real life, like people still have to work. (Just not her.) So just 4 or 5 days in West Palm with shopping, a good spa - top of the tier spa. “The thing is with Paris is that it’s a long ass flight. I would want food, I would want a bed. All the things.” So she could cut that in half and still do a badass weekend in West Palm. “Or a badass fucking like 5 days.” Plus out of Asheville, they have Allegiant flights, “for like nothing.” She could get to West Palm for like $80.
Now here comes a part I thought we’d never revisit but it’s been living rent free in my head ever since. She asks viewers if they remember when she surprised C with a trip to Spain, “and then Covid happens. Rude.” They had to cancel it. She goes to refill her water again. They were “going to go to Paris - going to go to Barcelona and Spain but then Covid…and I couldn’t even have fun. I couldn’t go.” Water sip. “I’m thinking solo trip to West Palm. Badass spa, nice-ass resort. I think that’s the move.” She says she’s about to jump off because it’s been forever (there’s still 12 more minutes), her phone is about to die, and she’s so embarrassed. Comment reading and muttering. Someone must have asked her where she would go if she could go anywhere and she’s contemplating the question while tapping her nails on her teeth. She asks the person if they’ve ever done Rome because she thinks she would do Rome. She says she also has an adventurous side, “so maybe Portugal? Ugh. Barcelona. I feel like Barcelona is calling me.” She says hi baby to someone and then another comment mentions a trip to Santorini and she goes, “Santorini? Fucking do it. Let’s go. Santorini are you kidding me? Should I go there for my 30th?” She’s gone back to the fridge and is bent down, reaching the bottom shelf for another seltzer.
KG and JT are on the live now. “I am just drunk and spilling my guts, so anyone who wants to record this to share later about what a fucking dickhead I am, go ahead and do it.” She opens the can using the end of a spoon.
Back to the West Palm idea. She’s thinking 5 days, spa, beach, everything, cabana, private everything. She could pay what she would have paid just to get to Paris.
And here’s the left turn none of us saw coming. She says she’s thinking bachelorette party. “Are you ready SW, KG, and JT?” She’s swaying side to side, dancing and hyping this moment up. “JT come over! Come over! You’re literally right by my house.” she yells. “Come here right now or I’m going to be upset.” Seltzer sip. “Vegas. Vegas penthouse for my bachelorette. Like a Vegas - fucking Vegas penthouse. I want it to be like Hangover style. I want to wake up and there’s a fucking tiger in my room. I want to wake up with strippers and tigers in my room and that’s that.” More whining for JT to come over. JT replies and MS asks her to bring her something from Sonic. She gasps and asks if JT will bring her those tater tots with the chili on them. “Is that like a thing? At Sonic?”
She’s replying to a comment: “No, I’m not getting married. I mean I feel like it’s coming soon. Coming soon to a theater near you. We’ll see. But when I do get engaged…” JT is trying to confirm the order and she repeats that JT should bring the tater tots with the cheese on them and like, chili. She’s apparently literally across from MS’s house. She repeats about the Vegas penthouse. Then pauses. Sighs. “You guys I’m a fucking mess.” She looks out the window and realizes that her umbrella has “rolled down the fucking bank. It’s fine.” She greets CW, who she calls, “Sug,” like half of sugar, it sounds like. (I don’t know if CW got married but I’m going with what would have been her maiden name then to differentiate from MS’s boyfriend, C.) CW is important because CW is her ex-husband, BW’s sister. Her “ex-sister-in-law. Old sister-in-law from when I was married.” She tells CW she was talking about it the other day and realizes that this year on July 12 she would have been married for 9 years, then makes a grotesque face, smacks herself in the forehead and says, “that’s crazy.” So CW and MS have always been friends. She repeats it would have been 9 years. “Can you imagine? That’s insane.”
“See I can keep friends with my ex sister in law, why does my instagram keep getting deleted? I don’t understand.” She invites CW (who she keeps calling Sug) to come see the house because “it’s cute.” Apparently Sug misses her and she misses her, too. She reminisces about a place they used to go together (Carowinds - an amusement park) that she went for the first time since then last year and it was so fun. She asks if there are any roller coaster riders in the house because she rode the biggest roller coaster. More comment muttering and she reminds us she was “literally married to her brother.” Seltzer sip. “How many of you guys didn’t know I was married? This will be my second marriage.”
“To be fair I had more fun with you than your brother.” she’s replying to CW again and laughing. “Love him but I always had more fun with you.” JT must have teased her because MS says, “JT shut up.”
“Yeah I was just an old married broad.” (At 21. Riiiigght.) “JT are you coming over or no? Cause I can wait until you get here cause you’re literally across the street.” She’s commenting on the hair on her face again.
She starts to talk about her first wedding but stops to burp again. “So picture this.” (she makes a camera with her hands in front of her face.) “My first wedding um this just tells you how old I am. This tells you how old I am. My first wedding, my bridesmaids’ dresses. Guess what color they were. Just guess. Just guess. Bridesmaids dress colors. The theme!? The theme of my first wedding was lemons! I’m not joking. Like the fucking fruit or whatever it is. Lemons. That was the theme of my first wedding. That’s how old I am.” Seltzer sip. “The color of my bridesmaids’ dresses - it was a different time, it was a different time. Bright yellow, no. It’s so embarrassing. It’s not that embarrassing. I mean it was a good wedding. It was a good ass wedding. Like everyone tells me they had a bomb ass time at my wedding but... Green, no. Not pink. Zebra print oh god. Zebra print with the pink sash no that was like homecoming. Lemons were a vibe at the time. They really were. They really were. So this was 2014.” She takes a step back. “I had blue. I had blue bridesmaid dresses and the whole thing like all the centerpieces -” Someone in the comments, I’m guessing CW is saying, “blue you made me wear blue.” All the centerpieces were a bowl of lemons. “But that was like kind of the vibe back then. It was blue and yellow.” She doesn’t know what it will be the next time she gets married. “Probably just like neutrals, like everyone can wear what they want. Nude, beige, blush pink kinda thing. Okay it was not bright blue. It was not that bad. It was just like regular blue.” (The photos we saw were teal but whatever. I don’t expect her to remember her own wedding or be able to accurately describe colors.) Her dress wasn’t yellow. It was white. No, it was ivory. And it was this huge strapless princess dress.