It was a cold winter's night in Freeport. My husband and I were seated watching TV, he in his chair and I on the couch. Across the room (the length of our single-story ranch house), there is a lone window looking directly into the living room from the yard. I noticed the figure approaching slowly before subsequently ducking down so that only the crest of his head down to his eyes was visible. He knelt down and began to watch us. And watch and watch and watch.
My heart began to race, and my blood pressure had catapulted so quickly that my head began to throb and pound, and, despite the internal hurricane taking place, I at first pretended not to notice. I kept my eyes fixed on my husband, chatting and laughing as if nothing horrifying was taking place. I kept the intruder in birds eye view for several minutes, hoping he'd just up and leave, taking no interest in our ordinary, sedate state of affairs. Let me also mention that it was six degrees outside.
I continued on with just the same frame of attitude as the time I was robbed at gunpoint years before. I learned that I have a unique ability to remain externally calm despite the fire in my veins and the quaking of my being. Outside, I'm ice, but inside, I'm a tree shaken of all its leaves. Verily, after about ten minutes (I swear that every time I looked at the blank face and noticed it was still there, peeping in a polar vortex, I nearly screamed) I made a decision. Inside, I was absolutely breaking. Each moment that I turned to the TV and then shifted back, my heart skipped several beats.
Finally, with my face turned away, I said to my husband through my teeth, "honey, do NOT look and do NOT react, but there is a man looking at us through the window right now. Don't look!". Despite my urging, his impulse got the better of him. The moment he rose from the chair and turned, the peeper had leaped from view. I told him we needed to call 911. However, before I could even turn on my screen, the knob to the front door began to tremble and shake convulsively.
My husband commanded me to run to our room, a command which he followed as well, which, in such a tumultuous moment, was our only defense - because by then, the intruder was throwing himself against the front door. The jamb and hinged were audibly cracking, all of the items on the glass living room refectory table had begun to tremble and clatter, and the walls all reverberated thunderously.
With all of my strength (my husband had fused disks in his back, so he was totally incapable of assisting), I grasped the bureau by the legs and with all my puny might dragged the son of a bitch across the floor and finally, in one final throe of desperation, pushed it against the door. In the midst of this midnight whirlwind, the front door had been kicked opened and the footsteps, incredibly heavy ones, had tramped down the hallway as if the footfalls were 200 pound blocks of ice, though it hadnt sunk in until I, fresh out of breath and flushed in icy hot sweat, had tumbled backwards onto the bed.
"I have a gun!", my husband shouted repeatedly as the intruder began throwing his weight against the door. Assuming he might also be armed, we slunk to the far side of the bed and ducked down. I phoned 911, and they assured me the police were currently in pursuit. It's an incredibly small, derelict steel town in Western Pennsylvania, hollowed out by the terminus of the steel boom. The police arrived imminently, but in between the call, the threats, and the arrival of PD, I noticed something strange. Something that truly chilled me to the bone.
At some point, the intruder halted, and in a shrill, gravelly tone that sounded devilishly feminine, shouted a few simple words, which had been repeated several times - "this isn't yyyyyourrrrr house! This is NOT YOURRRR HOUSE!". He pounded furiously on the door as he shouted (if you could even call it 'shouting') these words with an almost compendious conviction. My husband, who at the time had been battling bronchitis, was gasping for elusive gulps of air with such severity, I was afraid he might faint or, worse, succumb to asphyxiation.
In a flash, the police had arrived. The thousand pound footsteps retreated, but not before a throng of screams rang out from the front doorway. Shots were fired, and voices had gone frenetic. I removed the dresser and ran out. An officer was splayed out on his back half in and half out of the house and was screaming, screaming with every fiber of his soul. All I could see was blood everywhere. Smeared on the walls, even.
"Don't come out here!", shouted an officer as he called for a medic. But the image was burned in. The first-responding officer had been slashed from temple to chin, left to right, and was screaming and rolling chaotically, as if he was being immolated and had desperately taken to putting himself out. That haunting vision has only grown stronger and with greater clarity since. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't see the flashing terror in his eyes and the gaping of his mouth as he cried out, "I'm blind! Gary, I'm fucking blind! I'll never see her again! Diane! Diane!"
We watched out the window of the bedroom as flashlights played upon the black, frozen woods like strobes. Seeing them spread so broadly only made my heart sink, and soon after, an officer came calling.
"Do you have a friend or relative you could stay with tonight?".
This being a most disheartening sign, we went and stayed with our son and daughter - in - law for two nights until we could fortify the house with new doors, triple paned windows and a full alarm system. For weeks, months, even, we walked around on our toes while continuously throwing glances over our shoulders everywhere we went, but what was most disconcerting was that we felt more vulnerable locked behind closed doors.
To this day, the intruder hasn't been found. I looked into previous owners of our house. We had been living there 18 years by then, and the scent on the trail of discovery was nonexistent. I still don't know what about our house "isn't" ours, and I'm not sure I want to know. This occurred in 2020, just as COVID had begun to scorch the earth. One thing I know intuitively, however, is that no matter how much time passes, unless I grow a third eye on the back of my head, I will never be comfortable again.

In the pursuit of personal gain, human greed often blinds us to the broader implications of our actions. We become fixated on acquiring more, driven by a relentless desire to climb the ladder of success, wealth, and status. Exploiting those who are vulnerable and desperate, willing to do anything to improve their lives can lead to consequences that not only impact society at large but also our personal environment. In this story, Robert Nelson is about the experience of the consequences of his greed that will stay with him forever like haunting echoes.
***
Naya Redbird, a Native American woman with long, dark hair and bright eyes, stood in her front yard surrounded by a crowd of people. She was holding a bundle of herbs in her hand and talking passionately about their healing properties.
The people were amazed by Naya's knowledge and enthusiasm. They could see the genuine care and passion in her eyes, and they felt hopeful that this herb could be the answer they had been looking for.
"As Native Americans, we have always turned to nature to heal ourselves here, in British Columbia," Naya explained, her voice carrying across the street. "And this herb in particular is a gift from the Earth herself. It can heal anyone and anything."
The passer-bys had stopped in their tracks upon hearing Naya's words. Some of them were sick and in pain, and they looked at her with a mix of hope and skepticism. As Naya continued to speak, more and more people gathered around her. There were those who suffered from joint pain, leg pain, and even a blind person who was looking for a cure. Naya listened intently to each person's story.
One woman in a wheelchair rolled up closer to Naya and asked, "Can this herb really help me? I've been in this chair for years and nothing has worked."
Naya smiled warmly and replied, "Come here, please. But before we begin, what is your name?"
"I'm Elena," the woman replied.
"Nice to meet you, Elena. Now, let me see what I can do," Naya said as she reached for a small herb from her bag.
She spread some dried leaves onto Elena's legs, which had been paralyzed for years. The two women waited in silence as the herb worked its magic, and then suddenly, Elena's legs started to twitch and shake.
A few moments later, Elena stood up from her wheelchair, her eyes wide with amazement. "I can walk!" she exclaimed, tears streaming down her face.
The people who had gathered around them gasped in shock and amazement at the sight before them.
"I can't believe it," one person murmured. "She's been in that wheelchair for years."
Naya smiled at Elena and said, "I'm so glad I could help you. Now go and enjoy your newfound freedom."
Then, a young girl led by her mother approached Naya. The girl was wearing sunglasses and she held a white cane in her hand.
Naya looked at the girl and asked gently, "What is your name, my dear?"
"My name is Sofia," the girl replied with a hint of trepidation in her voice.
Naya smiled reassuringly, "Don't worry, Sofia. I'm here to help you. Now tell me, how long have you been blind?"
"I've been blind for as long as I can remember," Sofia replied, her voice barely above a whisper.
Naya asked the girl to lie down and, reached into her pocket and took out another portion of dried leaves. She then distributed it to the girl’s closed eyes.
"Close your eyes, Sofia, and relax," Naya instructed.
The girl complied, and Naya began to hum a soft tune as she gently massaged the herb paste into Sofia's eyelids. After a few minutes, she whispered a few words in a language that no one in the crowd could understand.
Suddenly, Sofia's eyes snapped open, and she gasped in surprise. For the first time in her life, she could see.
"I can see! I can see!" Sofia cried out, tears streaming down her face.
The crowd around them erupted in cheers and applause, stunned by the miracle they had just witnessed.
Naya hugged Sofia and whispered, "Go and explore the world, my dear. You have a lot to catch up on."
Sofia hugged Naya back and then ran towards her mother, who was crying tears of joy.
The people around them whispered in awe and admiration at Naya's incredible gift of healing. For them, Naya was nothing short of a miracle worker, and they couldn't wait to see what she would do next.
Matt stood in the midst of the bustling crowd, his eyes darting around anxiously. He needed those herbs for his ailing mother, but he had no idea how to get them. After he figured out his next move, he started walking around the house keeping a low profile so as not to arouse suspicion.
Matt waited for a few minutes, making sure that no one was watching him before he carefully made his way around the back of the house.
The garden was well-tended and beautifully decorated with colorful flowers and exotic plants.
The place was a vibrant tapestry of colors and textures, bursting with life and energy. As Matt stepped into the garden, he was greeted by a riot of colors, ranging from the deep blues of the lupines to the bright reds of the Indian paintbrushes. The garden was alive with the sound of buzzing bees and fluttering butterflies, flitting from flower to flower in a dance of pollination.
The garden was meticulously arranged in a circular pattern, with a central fire pit surrounded by a ring of stones. The fire pit was filled with burning coals, sending up spirals of smoke that drifted lazily through the air. The stones around the pit were arranged in a spiral pattern, each one engraved with intricate symbols and patterns.
The plants in the garden were arranged in a series of raised beds, each one bursting with a different array of plants and herbs. Matt could see rows of corn stalks standing tall, their green leaves rustling in the breeze. He could smell the heady aroma of sage and sweetgrass, their fragrances mingling in the air.
In the center of the garden stood a small teepee, its canvas sides painted with intricate designs and symbols. The door of the teepee was open, and Matt could see a fire burning inside, sending up flickering shadows that danced across the walls.
As he walked deeper into the garden, Matt could feel a sense of reverence and respect for the Native American culture that had created this beautiful space. The garden was a tribute to the land, a celebration of nature's beauty, and a reminder of the wisdom and traditions of the people who had called this place home for generations.
As he walked deeper into the garden, Matt felt a sense of peace and tranquility wash over him. He had always been fascinated by Indian culture, and this garden felt like a little slice of paradise.
And the next moment, Robert noticed what he was looking for in the corner of the garden, there was the mysterious dried plant that Naya had been showing to the people in the street. He looked around carefully and he took three bags with him, he stole them and took them home.
As Robert scanned the garden, his eyes locked onto the object of his search: the dried plant shrouded in an aura of mystery, the same one Naya had been showcasing to the curious onlookers in the street. He surveyed his surroundings with keen attention, ensuring that no prying eyes were upon him, before grabbing hold of the three bags. With a quick, furtive movement, he liberated the plant from its spot and tucked it securely into the bags. Satisfied with his acquisition, Robert promptly departed for home and he already knew what he was going to do with them.
Excitedly, got into his car and headed for Seattle the next day. As he settled into his seat, he couldn't help but think about the event he had planned for the upcoming weekend.
Upon arrival in Seattle, Robert immediately set to work on his preparations. He posted an event on Facebook, advertising himself as a powerful healer capable of curing any ailment. He had even booked a large lecture hall at a local community center for the event.
As he typed away at his laptop, he could feel the anticipation building inside of him. "This is going to be incredible," he murmured to himself.
After he arrived, Robert nervously paced the lecture hall, checking and re-checking the setup. Just as he was about to step on stage, a man in the audience approached him.
"Excuse me, sir," the man said. "I couldn't help but notice your advertisement. Can you really heal anything?"
Robert turned to the man with a confident smile. "Absolutely," he said. "I have a gift that can cure any ailment known to man. I even offer a warranty."
The man looked skeptical. "How much do you charge for a healing?" he asked.
Robert thought for a moment before replying, "One healing for 500 dollars."
The man raised an eyebrow. "That's quite steep," he said. "But if you can really heal anything, it'll be worth it."
Robert nodded, feeling a surge of excitement. "Trust me," he said. "You won't be disappointed."
Robert treated a lot of people during the lecture. He used the dried leaves. But oddly, the leaves did not heal the people immediately as they worked with Naya. This made him nervous but he thought the leaves might work later.
Robert stood on the stage, surrounded by a crowd of people who had come to seek his healing powers. He held the mysteriously dried leaves in his hands, ready to work his magic.
He started treating the people, placing his hands on them and rubbing the leaves on their skin. However, he quickly noticed that the leaves didn't seem to have an immediate effect like they did when Naya used them. Robert felt a twinge of nervousness in his gut.
"Is everything okay?" a woman asked him, noticing the hesitation in his movements.
Robert forced a smile. "Yes, everything is fine," he replied. "It might take a little time for the leaves to work their magic."
He continued treating the people, but as time went on, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Finally, one of the people he had treated approached him with a concerned expression.
"I don't feel any different," the person said.
Robert's heart sank. "Just give it some time, madam," he said.
As the event continued, Robert grew increasingly worried. The dried leaves he had so confidently brought with him seemed to have lost their potency. He couldn't help but wonder what had gone wrong.
After the event, Robert was left alone with the dried leaves. He examined them closely, searching for any signs of damage or decay. But to his surprise, the leaves appeared to be perfectly intact.
"What's going on?" he muttered to himself.
But he did not worry for long because the money that he earned was a lot. More than 8000 dollars. He knew he was going to be rich with these magical plants, whatever they were. He checked into a hotel and the next day he made another event on Facebook that he would heal people.
Despite the initial setback, Robert's spirits lifted as he counted the money he had earned from the event. The total amount was more than 8000 dollars, which was far beyond what he had expected.
Robert smiled to himself, feeling a rush of excitement. "This is just the beginning," he thought. "With these magical plants, I'm going to be rich."
He checked into a luxurious hotel, relishing in the feeling of the crisp sheets and soft pillows. As he lay in bed, he pondered his next move. He knew that he had to make the most of this opportunity while he still could.
The next day, he made another event on Facebook, announcing that he would be holding another healing session.
As Robert was preparing for his next healing session, there came loud and angry knocks on his hotel room door. He hesitantly opened it, only to be met with a horde of people in the hallway, all of them looking very agitated and upset.
"What's going on?" Robert asked, his voice shaking with fear.
"You're a fraud!" one of the people in the crowd shouted. "We're all much sicker than we were before!"
The people who had come to confront Robert looked visibly worse than they had the day before. They appeared pale and weak, with dark circles under their eyes. Some of them were coughing and wheezing, while others were holding their stomachs in obvious pain. It was clear that whatever ailments they had been hoping to cure had not only gone untreated but had worsened after the supposed healing session.
Some of them appeared to be in a state of utter misery, with their bodies wracked by pain and suffering. A woman was clutching her stomach and groaning in agony. Others were struggling to breathe, their chests heaving with each labored inhalation. Many had dark, sunken eyes and pale, clammy skin, and some were even trembling with fever. Robert wondered how those people could come to his hotel. Their anger was probably so strong that it gave them enough energy.
It was clear that whatever ailments they had been hoping to cure had not only gone untreated but had worsened to a dangerous degree after the supposed healing session. Their anger was fueled not only by disappointment and a sense of betrayal but also by a growing sense of desperation as they searched for a cure for their afflictions. The sight of them was enough to make Robert's heart sink with guilt and regret.
Robert's heart sank as he realized what was happening. The people from his previous healing session had come to confront him, and they were not happy.
"We want our money back," another person yelled.
"And we want you to stop scamming people," a third person added.
Robert tried to reason with them, explaining that he had done his best to heal them with the magical leaves. But the people were not in a forgiving mood. They barged into his room, causing chaos and destruction.
“My cancer is worse!” a man said coughing.
As Robert watched in horror, the people ransacked his belongings and demanded that he give them back their money. As the people grew increasingly agitated, Robert could sense that things were about to take a turn for the worse. Suddenly, some individuals who were still in a slightly better condition lunged at him, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the wall. Others quickly joined in, pummeling him with fists and kicking him when he fell to the ground. Robert tried to shield himself, but the blows kept raining down on him, each one more painful than the last. He could feel the sting of bruises forming on his face and body, and the taste of blood in his mouth. Despite his attempts to fight back, he was outnumbered and overpowered. The beating seemed to go on forever, until finally, the people grabbed their money and fled the scene, leaving Robert battered and broken on the hotel room floor. The experience left him traumatized and deeply shaken, both physically and emotionally.
After rummaging through his drawers, they left him there without his money.
Robert became very disappointed and drove back to his town, Black Rain. There, he went to Naya’s place. She was in her garden, gardening. She was surprised as a stranger was approaching him. Robert looked terribly beaten up. Then Robert asked why the plants did not work. They made people sicker. Naya was first surprised and realized Robert had stolen the plants. And she told Robert that he should not have stolen the plants. The plants were free. The plants had been guarded by a spirit and he puts a curse on the greedy people.
With a heavy heart, Robert left Seattle and drove back to his hometown of Black Rain. He was a broken man, both physically and emotionally, after the disastrous healing session and subsequent beating. He had lost his faith in the magical healing powers of the dried leaves and felt like a fool for ever believing in them.
When he arrived in Black Rain, he knew that he had to seek out Naya for answers. She was the only one who could explain why the leaves had failed him and why they had made the people he had treated even sicker.
As he approached the garden again, he could see Naya in the distance, tending to her plants. The woman looked up when she saw him approaching, surprised to see him in such a state.
"Robert, what happened to you?" she asked, noticing the bruises and cuts on his face.
"It...it didn’t work," Robert muttered, looking down at his feet.
“What?”
Robert finally broke down and told her everything, from stealing the plants to the disastrous healing session and subsequent beating. Naya listened patiently, her face growing increasingly grave. When Robert finished, she took a deep breath and spoke.
"These plants are guarded by a powerful spirit who probably put a curse on the plants that you used."
“I don’t understand…why?”
As Naya was about to reply, a group of men entered the garden and began to carry large bags filled with the dried plants towards the gate, where they loaded them onto a truck.
“These plants are free for everyone and are being donated. You needn’t have stolen them.”
“So the spirit put a curse on it because I stole it?”
“Not exactly. You don’t understand? You did it for greed. I did it for love.”

I have had countless nightmares throughout my life, typically occurring every other night. My most recent one, and one of the worst I've had in a while, happened during a vacation I just got home from. I will need to put some context into this, and this story will be rather long, so bear with me here.
In my most recent nightmare I mentioned above, I woke up normally in my house. It was the middle of the night, but I was hungry, and decided to sneak down the stairs and into the kitchen to grab a snack without waking up my family. Once I was a few feet from the refrigerator, I heard footsteps from several entities behind me. I turned around to see just a few black figures, huddled tightly in a group. I knew who three of the five were by the outlines. They were all hostile animatronics, the ones from the horror video game, Five Nights at Freddy's 4. The video game franchise as a whole does not scare me, nor do really any horror movies or games, so it was weird seeing them watching me grab my snack. I saw the animatronic bear, chicken, and rabbit, but not the fox, and I had no idea who the other 2 figures were. Their eyes were not glowing in the slightest, and they were not approaching me, but only moving exactly as I do, and never getting too close. This did not concern me in the slightest, as a typical hallucination looks just like that for me. I went back to my room to eat my snack and fall sleep, when they stopped moving in their typical pattern, and spread out around the house.
Once I was back in my room, and I had tucked myself back into bed, and I felt the worst sense of sudden dread in my life, as if something terrible was about to happen. I knew by some nightmare logic that the figures really were hunting me down, and then I got scared, knowing that I do feel pain in my nightmares. Indeed, I was about to suffer. I sat in my bed, paralyzed with fear about the situation, and planned to just sit there and pray until sunrise. Worst of all, my door was wide open, and with my bed right next to it, an attack could be too sudden. I was going to have to be lucky, as the animatronics were moving in random patterns, entering rooms around the house. 15 minutes later, I heard footsteps coming to my door. I was paralyzed with fear and dread, because there was one animatronic in particular that I knew was going to take his time and torture me if I was ever caught by him. The animatronic entered my room, but luckily it was not the one I feared most. It was certainly about to kill me still, so I was rapidly planning ways of how I could make my death as fast as it could be. I threw my head into it's jaws, reached my arms out, and crunched it's teeth down into my head. It was fast and painless.
Of course, it's a nightmare, and it was not nearly over yet. That was the easy part done. I woke up again after death, in the same situation again, but outside, in an open field on my land. The layout of the field made the experience worse in a way, as it was mostly open, but with a strip of dense forest running through the middle that takes up about one third of the field. At the bottom and and top were ways through it, without having to go through the brush. This is all on about 5 acres of land, so I did not have much of a place to hide from my now sprinting animatronic pursuers. I woke up with the animatronics in a full sprint everywhere in the field. They were sprinting at all times, even if I had not been seen. I got up, ran, and hid in the densely forested area, and in a thick bush. I waited and got spotted eventually, so I got up and ran until I could no longer run. Eventually, I was caught again, but my death would hurt this time. I died via stab wounds to the gut, and all around the torso, but I was stabbed mercifully fast.
This experience, being a nightmare, meant I still had to die another time. This death would be very different, though. I woke up for the third time, but with the worst dread of my life. The fear this time was unspeakable. For no apparent reason, I was far more scared this time around. I was in the house again, and in my bed, but I stayed in bed and never got out. I just sat up, and waited for sunrise again. I had more hope this time, as the sun was only about twenty minutes from officially rising. I was starting to see light in the sky, but with more fear than I have ever had before, bad instincts kicked in. You see, in the house was a system of 6 radio-like devices me and the family used for communication. I held the "Talk" button, and spoke a message into all the rooms in the house, hoping for my family to respond. As you could imagine this was idiotic. I kept staring at my radio, waiting for a reply, when I heard a reply from my family, but something was awfully wrong. The reply came from the radio I was at, and from directly behind me, on the other side of the bed. I turned around and saw the one animatronic I hoped would never get me, and I was about to suffer.
I backed out of my bed, and into the corner of the room. It approached me awfully slow, giving me the opportunity to run at it, and deliver multiple two foot kicks to the body. I hoped these would do something, but the animatronic was utterly un-phased. Here, I finally saw a red glow in the animatronic's eyes, as it still slowly closed the distance to me. It got to me, put it's hands on my shoulder, and looked down at me, with eyes flickering on and off. This was about to be it, the worst pain of my life. There, I was tortured for minutes upon minutes. It peeled the skin off my arms and legs like giant gloves, sliced tendons and ligaments, and cracked all of my ribs, while keeping me alive. All my other bones were being fractured, and I was getting big cuts in my chest all over the place. It kept me alive until I had looked like a mangled corpse smeared on the ground.
Finally, I got to wake up, and I stayed up for about 2 hours before going back to sleep. Once I woke up, I really was unaffected, and not scared anymore, even in the dark room. When I did go back to sleep, however, I started dreaming again. I woke up in a continuation of that same dream, but this time, in the middle of an unknown forest...

For those who do not know what I am talking about, below is an image of the being that killed me for the third time in my nightmare. I know this is rather ridiculous, but that's just the way it happened.

https://preview.redd.it/rtwrkdj1k8pa1.png?width=250&format=png&auto=webp&s=155c9d12603e5fa8c53bb2b7347169b409966e5a

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Link to original story
https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/10meqmh/the_big_rock_candy_mountain_part_1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The floor of the cell is covered in decades of mildew and dust. This disgusting carpet does nothing to dull the pain as I skip across it, thrown in by someone with the intention of making a point.
My Name’s Mike, and if any of you are the types to go on a deep dive, you probably know A little about me already.
For those of you that don’t, Jesus I don’t know exactly where to begin.
The Cliff’s notes would be that I spent a little over a decade either being a serial killer or a vigilante. I won’t try to justify my actions, both of those are just sides of the same shitty coin. I’m not a person to be idolized or emulated, so I choose not to plead my case.
Now, while I thought that was just about as screwed up as life could get, one day, out of the blue, after burying my best, fuck, my only friend I found myself, somewhere else. A world that looked and felt like mine, but one where the things that go bump in the night actually existed.
Where I came from, I’d seen monsters, to be sure, but only the kind that happen when people break.
Since I’ve been here? Got caught up in some demented gameshow for demons or something, threw a massive shit in the punch bowl of the thing running the production, and got the world’s unluckiest man his freedom.
And that leads me to my current situation, staring down the rage filled, mildly bruised face of that asshole, that fucking, demonic Ted Turner, Art.
He runs a hand aggressively through his slicked back hair, standing at the door to my cell.
“Looks like your little plan didn’t work, exactly as I predicted, you fuck.
I mean, great try with the little cat thing you had, honestly didn’t see that coming. But, Jesus, Mike, what was your end game? “ Art gloats.
“Cards on the table? It was a lot better, but shit fell through, that whiskey abomination, it was the one that ratted me out I assume?
That being said, still got Kev out. And you can’t really ‘flip off his lightswitch’ if he didn’t let you screw around with his wiring, can you? “ I grin, I keep it, even as a Gucci shoe slams into my face.
Am I scared? Of God damn course I am, I’ve been pissing myself (metaphorically speaking.) since I realised that the rules of reality don’t really apply any more.
Every new grain of sand on the beach of hell my life has become, tosses me further down the road of mental failure. Shit, that’s half of what fucked up my last plan in the first place.
If I could have just kept my shit together long enough, I’d be sipping a beer with Kev in some shit hole town somewhere. But the only thing harder than trying to stamp down fear in the face of God’s and monsters, is trying to do it while projecting some kind of ‘death fears me ‘ persona.
Between you and I? Death doesn’t fear me, in fact, it seems to love to hang around. And every day I have to stare down that grim spectre, the closer I get to losing the tenuous grip on reality I have .
“Oh, fuck Kev. He’s smart enough to stay off my radar, and too stupid to figure out a way to come back at me.
He's got a 1 bedroom in Idaho or something? Salud, good on him.
You, I had high hopes for, and then you decide to wipe your ass all over my carpet, cost me more than I could even explain, and even, get me a little roughed up. My favorite shell, anyway.
I want to recoup some loses Mike. So, you, get to be a part of another one of my projects.
You thought The Path was bad? Oh, you literal, fucking clown, you haven’t seen anything.
I won’t spoil it for you, the devil’s in the details and all, but you know what everyone loves?
Prison.
Not being in it themselves, of course, but seeing others, especially those they hate in there.
This place isn’t fair, the path was a boxing match with Queensbury rules, this is a handcuffed knife fight.
And I can’t wait to see you figure out, all the little surprises it has in store for you. “ Art laughs and tosses me a battered, ancient looking smartphone, “ Feel free to drum me up some good press online if you want. “
My heart is pounding, I have to use every bit of will I have to stop from shaking, to roll my neck and sit against the cold, padless cement bed behind me.
I feel sick, my stomach boiling and gurgling.
“For the love of whatever the demonic equivalent of Christ is, why not just kill me? I’m right here, I have no way of fighting back, and you know damn well that if you give me enough time, I’m going to find a way to wipe my ass on your doorframe next. “ My tone is flippant, or at least, I hope it is.
“The ego on you kid, you think you’re that guy don’t you?
They exist, don’t get me wrong, probably a couple thousand folks capable of taking me out, but trust me, you are not one of them.
This isn’t some ‘Arch’ idiocy where I leave my greatest rival alive. This is me watching you squirm because I can, and making a little profit on the deal.
Don’t flatter yourself. “ Art has produced a long thin knife as he talks, he spins and rolls it absently.
“Before your guys dragged me off, I met something. A corner store, I don’t know if it was haunted, possessed, or if it was some kind of creature that just decided to look like a knock off 7-11.
Point being, it was out there, ethereal, I couldn’t hurt it, outwit it, even slow it down. I ran from that thing as fast as I could. It gave me some serious Lovecraft vibes.
You, Art, are not that guy. “ I notice myself tapping my finger nervously on the slime covered floor, I focus, stopping the tic.
The tip of Art’s knife glows, the sick, grey sheen isn’t heat, but something that makes me start to back up.
“I am, but you will never see that. You’re not worth the effort.
I want to give you a little something though. “ Art stalks toward me, I stand as I back into the farthest corner of the cell, “ Proud of your face paint were you? “
Art grins, and for a moment lets some of his true self slip through. For just a moment I see timeless horror in his eyes, a dark black void of consumed souls and unrestrained evil.
That knife parts my flesh with pain like a whip. Without even using the blade, it’s presence flenses my face, opening up raw, textured furrows in my flesh.
He leaves after he is done, laughing to himself.
The pain makes me black out, my stomach is boiling, I come to dry heaving, the effort sends me back into the oblivion of sleep.
I don’t know how long has passed, my face feels like it is on fire, and the thick steel bars of my cell door are closed.
It takes me two minutes of cupping my hands under the grime laden steel tap to get enough water to clear off a spot on the rusted, old, wall mounted steel mirror.
No mortal hand could have scarred me as accurately as Art did. The wounds, not healed, but cauterised as to not make me bleed out, used depth, and width, to create a colorless replica of my makeup.
I know trauma, physical as well as mental, and these are scars that will never heal. As the fact sinks in that my face is literally no longer my own, I scream, heart pounding, I split open my knees on the cold cement floor.
Pain flares, threatens to send me back to the bliss of unconsciousness, but I don’t care.
I read Kev’s journals, and they paint me in a really… positive light, in a sense.
What I mean is, going by what he thought he saw, I’m some kind of supervillian or something. Tossing three hundred pound air conditioners ( it was the outer shell, seventy pounds, physics and luck did the rest.), wrestling Art ( I was clinging on for dear life, had it not been for Jr and the mass of denizens, I’d have been killed with a flick of his wrist.), or appearing like a ghost (people, even immortal are very unobservant. Especially in an emergency.).
I’m great at seeming horrifying, and that’s a weapon in and of itself, but at the end of the day, that’s all it is.
Kneeling in my own blood, vision blurry with pain, I realise how small, vulnerable, and unarmed I truly am.
By the time daylight shines through the yellow reinforced glass window, I’m already awake. I’ve spent an hour and a half calming myself, trying to find some focus, some centre to keep me going.
I’ve been in prison before, back home, first and last time I tried plying my trade outside of America.
Being the stupid payaso gringo that I am I bit off so much more than I can chew that I wound up choking on it for 2 months in a Mexican prison.
The routine of, count, lineup, chow, remained the same.
The demographics of the population on the other hand…
Being observant is one of my main skills and as I was brought into the absurdly sized cafeteria, I was taken aback at just how many people were here.
Tens of Thousands, easily, maybe a hundred. I try and think of how many missing person cases this accounts for, and even that math doesn’t quite add up.
I quickly inventory the groups that make up the place, not that it wasn’t obvious.
The first, of course are the guards. Some, the majority, appear to be human, well geared up and in intimidating physical condition.
But a handful, they are clearly, something else. Some are smooth featured ebony skinned giants, carrying truncheons that could crush a car engine. Others are grinning, pale skinned bad attempts at human copies, wild eyed and twitching.
Second would be what I called the cultists. They all appeared to style themselves after certain tropes and urban legends, clearly human, but dressing, tattooing and mutilating themselves to appear like, myths, legends, and monsters.
The subtle violence I see tells me I’ve found the gangs.
Third are the Everymen, I can’t see any kind of pattern to them, but they seem to make up the majority of the population. They keep their distance from the guards and the cultists, but on more than one occasion I see then stand, united against attempts at extortion.
The last group, I call the candles, people that are clearly on their way out mentally and physically. Sunken eyed, and set upon from all angles, at any moment these folks could be simply snuffed out.
I keep my distance, and stay respectful, the meandering, twisting line seems to take hours to get me my thick slice of crumbling yellow bread, and thick red slurry that reminds me of porridge masquerading as meat.
My coat is gone but I’m left with the majority of the clothing I fashioned back in the path. I see a mix of unwashed orange uniforms and ‘civilian’ clothing, some of the cultists, bordering more on costume than wardrobe.
As the massive, butchers apron wearing man in smeared clown makeup sits down, I wish I’d have been issued something more generic. I saw this coming the second I noticed a lump of Chlorophiles in blood stained getups.
“You sit with us. “ I can’t tell if it’s an accent or speech pattern, the clown sounds strange, either way.
I eat a spoonful of the red sludge.
“No disrespect intended, I’m not one for clubs. I’m going to make no waves, no plays, nothing. I’m a ghost. “ I say, levelly, avoiding eye contact.
Why, you might ask, having been told about my adventures in murder.
Well, that’s just it. Murder is easy, and any time you saw me end a life, it was just that.
A fight, that’s another thing entirely, especially against someone with a significant weight and height advantage.
“Not asking. You got friends. “ The massive clown moves his bulk closer, it’s like sitting next to a forklift.
I eat the bread, it tastes amazing until I swallow, then has a foul, chemical aftertaste.
I drink some tepid, burgundy fluid that might be caffeinated.
No weapons nearby, no one watching that might step in. I’m full of bruises and sprains, and probably anemic from blood loss. Not to mention one eye is running at about fifty per cent. Art didn’t sever the optic nerve last time, but he wasn’t gentle. My heart races.
“I don’t play well with people who take clowning and slap a coat of dark paint on it.
You guys are Clown Killers. You are good at killing, I’m sure, but the clown part, it’s tacked on.
Myself, I’m a killer clown…. “ I had a really good rant planned, honestly, it was a corker, douche bags would have used it in memes for a decade.
But before I can react, with one massive hand, he bounces my face off of the pitted steel table.
It rings my bell, but not as much as I let on. In clowning terms, what I do Is called a pratfall.
For those of you that don’t speak nerd, I oversell the hit, falling backwards, eyes fluttering.
I tip backwards, reaching out my left arm, as if to steady myself. The meat mountain is unbothered, knowing I have no chance unarmed, in this close, he let’s me grab one shoulder of the butchers apron. The material is thick, and matted in stains that will never come out, literally or metaphorically.
If you want to take someone out, in a relatively harmless way, you don’t want to choke them. It takes forever, usually ends up killing them, and generally is a bad idea for everyone involved.
Your goal is go cut off blood flow to the brain as quickly and fully as possible.
I hook my thumb around the opposite shoulder strap, and snap my body backward, the apron acting as an impromptu Garrotte.
His right arm is knotted through my left, as he tries to struggle, to put his murderous intent and ability to work, the choke only becomes tighter.
I don’t want enemies here, and I only have so many tricks to play before things come to a knock down drag out fight, so I leave the clown unharmed.
I do need friends, but the look I get as I take a seat at a loose collection of men is cold and fearful.
A red haired guy, five foot nine or so, makes eye contact, “Anything we can help you with? “ he says, fearless.
“Yeah, despite the face work I’ve had done, I have fuck all in common with any of those penny wise, Icp, Gacy dressed, assholes.
I need a tribe guys, you all look like the unlucky ones around here, but I don’t want to get involved in bloodshed.
I’m Mike “ I know, that’s only mostly true, but I mean it, either way. I extend a hand.
“Chris. “ the red haired guy says, he wears a white dress shirt and surprisingly blue jeans, “Those stains around your cuffs tell me otherwise.
If you’re telling the truth, that’s great. If you are lying, and still sane enough to keep your word, that’s even better. “ Chris’s tone is mirthless, I read him easily. He’s been here a long time for a short life, he looks thirty max, and I shudder to think how young he may have been when he came in.
Chris catches me up on the ins and outs of this place, beyond what a general knowledge of prison would give.
Everyone here has crimes they were not convicted of, that would, otherwise put them in jail for life. A large amount, obviously are murderers, torturers, real bastards.
But a significant minority are just regular folks, maybe a bit thoughtless, but that have collected a litany of small, petty, in cases almost victim less crimes.
No one seems to be aware of the… reality t.v. Meets demonic fast food aspect of things, but there is a Doom cherry on this fear Sunday.
There is a single way someone can get out. To earn 20 tokens.
And how does one earn these tokens you ask?
Each day the prison holds an event, to call it a challenge would insinuate a level of fair play that is simply not there. The events range from somewhat fair, a fight or game of chance, to esoteric rituals complex enough to rip someone’s soul from their body.
These tokens are also the sole form of currency in the prison, they can buy everything from commissary snacks to literal free passes from guards.
The economy has created a cut throat society, the heads of the cults not even taking advantage of being able to be free, but simply reveling in the power of being psychotic and enabled.
The weak are enslaved, their lives traded on the off chance at tokens.
So, of course, braindead asshole that I am, I signed myself right up. Feeling a little more confidant after climbing Mount Bozo.
It's 8pm and the volunteers are rounded up and brought to a massive room that has all the trappings of a gymnasium, but the scale is large enough easily hold the focus of tonight’s events.
In tiered bleachers all around us, our fellow prisoners cheer and scream. The smell of thousands of unwashed, men is overpowering, the din of excitement is deafening.
But my attention is focussed on the small, single floor home, sitting out of place in the middle of the polished wood floor.
What I wouldn’t give for Demi to appear right now, give me the low down on all the supernatural bullshit that is heading my way. But the longer we stayed in the mountain the less and less the most useful voice in my head could, or would, make an appearance.
I study each of my fellow volunteers, the goal seems simple, last the longest in the home. Men enter and leave within minutes. They come out looking shaken, with minor lacerations, and a general sense of shell shock.
By the time my turn arrives, I think I know what I’m in for.
I’m wrong.
As the baby blue door closes behind me, nothing immediately in the home causes me concern. The fixtures and furniture is a bit out of date, the lighting is, not inviting, and there is a general fog of gloom hanging around.
I smile, I’ve felt this before. Granted I had Demi feeding me supernatural errata at the time, but, I’m positive I can wing it.
“So, I think I may have met one of you guys before. Back in New York, a Happy-Face corner store, anyone you know?
Scary dude, took a couple of pieces out of me.
But this, it’s more like an MMA fight, right? I tap out when you start kicking my ass? “ I stretch, trying to see if I’m getting any kind of reaction.
I inventory the objects around me, last time everything that wasn’t nailed down, shifted, changed and tried to take me apart.
You may have noticed by now, I love using the phrase ‘ last time’, and that’s because up until this moment, I haven’t learned a fucking thing here.
Mike’s first rule of paranormal survival, last time means nothing.
“It’s you” the voice is young, late teens, and male.
I spin, expecting violence, then, wishing violence.
I know the young man, not this pale, older, revenant with a self inflicted gunshot wound, but I know him none the less.
I’m not being metaphorical when I say my heart misses a beat, I almost fall over, pounding at my chest to stop it’s arythmatic pounding.
I knew what happened to him, found it out long after I could do anything about it. And wasn’t in the best of places when I did.
I’ll call him a ghost for simplicity sake, but this kid, he’s my first, and biggest mistake.
I based who I turned into on finding what I thought was one of the worst people on earth. This kid’s father.
I did things to him worthy of what I knew he did. And to top it all off, I had him die by his wife’s hand.
Well, a decade later I find out, the guy wasn’t a Saint, but he didn’t do anything worthy of the twisted shit I put him through.
I got wind of some false information put out there in a moment of rage by a tech savvy ten year old. The kid never intended it to see the light of day
“I found out about you Mike, I saw that you were a hero. “ The voice is thin echoes like a stuck record.
“No kid, don’t think that. “ I mumble, I’m shaking, the air is freezing, each breath comes out as white mist.
I’m sitting on the flower printed couch now, and it hits me.
I’d assumed because Art couldn’t screw around in my head last time, the same went for everything here.
Remember what we said about last time.
“My told me what happened one night, what I made you do.
I destroyed her memory of him, I made a real Hero kill him, I couldn’t keep hurting people. “ I can see images, flashing in my mind, memories that are not mine.
I’m counting seconds, trying to focus, trying to stay long enough to get the token. It has to have been fifteen, twenty minutes at least.
I try to work up a smirk, to convince myself that I’m just being played by the paranormal equivalent of a heckler.
That’s not it though, This place, this house, is reaching inside me and finding places to look. As I stare into the young man’s rotted eyes I know this is some part of him, torn away from whatever rest he was entitled to.
The lights dim, then turn off. The house is silent.
Hollywood gets being both a lunatic and a hitman wrong in equal measure. No matter how much morality you want to inject into the profession, there are going to come times when you make mistakes.
As the lights slowly turn to a dull orange glow, I’m surrounded by the hovering, mutilated forms of mine.
Those that died that could have been spared, those that died because of my inaction, or stupidity. I’ve never forgotten them, I use them to make sure I never make the same mistakes again, but having them looming, screaming, all demanding I hear their stories, their accusations, their placations.
It's too much, I stumble from the couch, trying to avoid the icy touch of these phantoms. For a moment I find some last scrap of courage, I close my eyes, shut out the shrieking din of the dead.
The silence hits like a truck, I focus, trying to calm my burned out nerves.
Then they are reignited like a fucking welding torch.
“This place didn’t bring us here.
We’ve been right next to you for years Mike. We can’t leave. “ The voice of my first mistake.
Like a toddler I try to run with my eyes closed, I trip over a glass coffee table, clawing my way up the door, grasping at the handle.
I can feel a slight pull now, almost magnetic, trying to drag me backwards.
My hands shake too much, I have to steady my right wrist with my left hand, the floor becomes slick, I see the door, escape start to move further away as I’m pulled backward.
I've taken a hit or two, and had a couple of three day benders that have made me piss myself. But as I stumble, trying to make progress on the nearly friction less floor, I have another unpleasant first experience.
I grab the handle, pulling myself out of the house, launching my body into a skin peeling tumble across unforgiving plank flooring.
I’m a shaking, fetal wreck, by the time I’ve pulled myself together enough to take in my surroundings, I see the red Led clock displaying my time.
42 seconds. Bottom of the barrel. The jeers and booing from the crowd do nothing for my frayed nerves or the storm of fear and anxiety going through my mind.
I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep, it has nothing to do with the concrete slab that serves as my bed.
My stomach has been knotting and cramping, with each passing second I get more worried I blew some internal gasket in one of the many life or death struggles in the past months.
When I finally manage to vomit, the urge is strong enough I get no where near the filth crusted hole in the floor that serves as my toilet. And my worst fears are confirmed as I see the massive pile of vomit is mostly blood.
… and bones? Is that an eyeball? A piece of fur?
The mass begins to pull itself together, bits and pieces forming the most rudimentary attempt at a face.
“Junior? “ I say, stunned.

Gatling Gull
-ranges from a bit difficult to free round
-can run around him which is fun
-I still run into his bullet sometimes like a fuckin idiot
Bullet King
-has a 50% increased chance to appear if you're playing Convict or using any burn weapon
-otherwise pretty ez
Trigger Twins
-also ez
-just don't run between them
-I always kill Shades first
Blobulord
-big boy
-big target
-just keep your distance
Ammoconda
-"trying to get some MRs? fuck you"
-can use some teleportation bullshit to charge at me halfway across the room
-"why don't you kill the small guys -" I'M TRYING
The Gorgun
-fish go speeeeeennnnnn
-unless you're unlucky to not have enough range it's a cakewalk, just lure her to the other side of the field
Beholster
-cool guns ngl
-do the cha cha slide and you're good
Old King
-did his fight once to unlock the scarf and never bothered to try again
-Particulator+Laser Sight+Helix Bullets+Oiled Cylinder and the old fuck still took a minute
Cannonbolrog
-bouncing bulldozing bastard
-yeah the name's kind of a reach man
Mine Flayer
-the bells are tolling and it's for your funeral
-"thank GOD there are pillars"
Treadnaught
-see this is a much better pun
-hope you did your cardio cause you'll be running around this bastard for miles
Kill Pillars
-"not that hard tbh" - me after my 40th attempt
-always blank their jammed jumping circle
High Priest
-the "easiest" out of the floor 4 bosses cause there can be covers
-don't use slow charging weapons against this guy
Wallmonger
-the small area makes it SO much harder to dodge roll
-always needed like 5 or 6 blanks
Agunim
-fuck big bullets
-I fell from the rooftop the first time I fought him/10
Door Lord
-"wait what the FUCK-"
-are you seriously telling me I can clip through the door and shoot at the door boss unharmed
High Dragun
-"wait this is actually easy are you sure this is - wait why is he grey WHAT THE FUCK -"
-you're more likely to die from the mobs than from the dragon tbh
Resourceful Rat
-sweet jesus this mf on speed
-wtf is Punch-Out
-seriously why can't the mf at Dodge Roll implement something like DDR instead
Advanced High Dragun
- reached him like once after 150 hours and died halfway through
- quite harder to win than it looks
Fuselier
-fuck this guy honestly
-only miniboss with an icon for a reason
-stop restricting the damn ground I'M TRYING TO SHOOT
Shadow Magician
-harmless at long distance
-if you fight him in the Forge there's even covers which is kinda redundant
Blockner
-never seem to dodge his bullet wave unscathed
-pretty alright honestly
Lich
-I'd say slightly underwhelming as a final boss, though I'm usually way too equipped at that point
-again you're way more likely to die from the mobs, if not then die to the Lich because you used up all the ammo
Black Stache
-actually pretty hard cause you have to stay close to him to deal damage
-but hey you get a briefcase of cash
-lure him into his molotov for free damage
Dr.Wolf's Monster
-fuckin easy gg
-spam sticky on that bastard
HM Absolution
-not that hard on my 4th try
-the laser trap attack is free damage actually
Interdimensional Horror
-two attacks, but is deceptively difficult
-other marines got shit aim no wonder they got killed
Cannon
-I stayed too close once and his fatass bounced me into his bullets
-extreme patience test
The Last Human
-"no! you can't defeat me with my machinegun and my fellow human with a single gun!!!"
"haha left arm go BRRRRRRRRR"

I still remember the first time it happened to me. I was taking a nap, in the middle of the day, at one of my friends place. I suddenly open my eyes, thinking I’m fully awake. All I can see is a black shadow, standing centimetres away from me, on my right. Thinking it’s my friend trying to wake me up, I try to get up. My body has this feeling of needles poking me everywhere, it’s so heavy I cannot physically move a finger. I start to panic, why is my friend just looking at me from so close and can’t she see that my eyes are wide opened ? I get this horrible feeling that something is not right. I try to close my eyes, but I am stuck, this shadow watching me seems to get more intense every second. It felt like hours.
I finally woke up in a panic. Still thinking it was my friend that was watching me, I start looking for her in the apartment. She’s no where to be found. I check my cellphone. There’s a text from her saying “brb going to the grocery store” I wait for her to come back. She finally comes back and I ask her why she was standing right next to me, staring, while I couldn’t move my body. She looks scared, she tells me: I left a few minutes after you fell asleep and locked the door.
It wasn’t me.
I still remember the feeling of pure fear.
I was so scared to fall asleep after that day.
I still am.

Life comes in many flavours, and each day we face many questions. Some of these questions are judgements. And some of these judgements involve others in significant and meaningful ways. On the one hand, we seek to satisfy our personal needs -- self-determination -- while maintaining a sense of virtue -- compassion and justice. For many, there is too much injustice and suffering just to ignore. On the other hand, balancing the needs of us and them beckons honest appraisal of situations and people. But where and how should our finger be pointed?

Core psychology of blame

Among the very earliest struggles in a person's life is the process of ego development. In its simplest, ego is about separating good from bad, self from other. Various theories and models strive to explain the ego, or its development, from various perspectives. For the purposes here, I will be referencing object relations theory, which is part psychoanalytic psychology and deals with very early development, starting at birth. A few things will be slightly simplified to keep the text concise.
Within this theory, the first several months involve what is termed the paranoid-schizoid position. The "schizoid" aspect refers to a cognitive-emotional process known as splitting. This is where external objects, including people, are split into opposing mental parts -- to form part objects, or the "good object" version and the "bad object" version of each meaningful external object or phenomenon. For example, when the caregiver is gratifying to the infant, that part object is the "good caretaker"; and when not so gratifying, that caretaker is the "bad caretaker". At this stage of development and understanding, these two "part objects" are not seen as from the same source. Rather, each is a separate thing appearing and disappearing as circumstances and feelings change. The key word here is separation, which we will come back to later.
The other aspect of the paranoid-schizoid position -- the "paranoid" aspect -- refers to a curious side effect of splitting everything into "good" and "bad". Because each "part object" is either all good, or all bad, and because the appearance and disappearance of these mysterious entities is more-or-less out of control, the infant begins to resent and fear the bad objects that keep happening. That is, the baby hates the bad objects but loves the good objects. This is perhaps the very first stage of moral awareness -- raw, albeit mistaken judgement; love the good; hate the bad; pure, uninhibited attraction and repulsion. As a result, or side effect, of these negative or aggressive feelings toward "the bad", the baby may fear possible persecution, invoking paranoia. Strange though that may sound, there is a bit more to it.
Splitting, as between the mentioned "good" and "bad" objects, is only half the story. The other half of splitting is between "good self" and "bad self". That is, because in the paranoid-schizoid position, objects are temporary and impermanent, so too is the self temporary and fleeting. Moreover, the self is either in comfort, or in distress, giving either "good self" or "bad self" -- depending on circumstance. Since the "good self" appears with the "good object", and likewise the "bad self" with the "bad object", the child fears the appearance of the "bad object" even more. This is because its presence entails essentially collapse of the previous self-concept, as if to enter a realm of deserved persecution for being the "bad self" -- and hence the emergence of paranoia.
On an interesting aside, this manner of judging objects and selves as good or bad based solely on whether one is currently in comfort or pain is the essence of Stage 1 in Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development. This is a theory on the progression of individuals throughout life in moral reasoning. Stage 1, termed obedience and punishment orientation, judges those in trouble or pain as inherently bad. In many cases, this view basically blames the victim. Further, this type of reasoning is essentially the basis for the "might makes right" mindset seen in some cases of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). One thing to keep in mind is that we all start there, but not everyone stays there. In this way, having crude moral reasoning later in life is effectively a sign of delayed or regressed development, much like a disability -- ie. "morally disabled".

Completing the person

Eventually, the child will reach a point in development where objects become whole and persistent, able to have simultaneously negative and positive qualities. Objects or people may take on accounts, or balances, allowing for consideration of simple reciprocity, including guilt and reparation. Self and caregiver become distinct entities, where "good" self is no longer lost each time caregiver is absent or busy. Assuming successful progression, blame and judgement is no longer split dichotically between two extremes. Otherwise a new type of splitting is come, where objects and entities, though whole and persistent, are either idealised or devalued.
An important key trend exists between consecutive steps of ego development. This is the trend of expanding persistence and relatedness. In the part-object stage, objects appear and vanish -- some good, some bad. These raw appearances are neither persistent, nor related. In the whole-object stage, objects become persistent, although at first not really related. Because of this initial lack of relation, the secondary type of splitting -- idealisation and devaluation -- is still likely. Basically, since one person or object is fundamentally unrelated to another, including the self, there is "no harm" in seeing one as all good, and another as all bad. Without a stabilising relation, moral judgements can be whimsical yet extreme. A person or object may alternate between being embraced and discarded, depending on present feelings or arrangements. But what makes a stabilising relation?
In general, stabilising relations develop naturally through observation and reason. For example, a caregiver may through time be taken as an intrinsic part of one's need for support. Or a sibling may eventually be seen as fundamentally similar and related. But the building of these relations, or attachments, can be hindered by certain experiences or feelings. For instance, an unstable or unavailable caregiver may leave a child feeling resentment, shame, or guilt. These feelings may then get in the way of building an emotional bond. The resulting lack of security, mixed with possible shame or guilt for not being good enough, may lead to maladaptive and unstable boundaries and self-definition. Some common results are narcissism and borderline personality -- the former as an escape mechanism from feelings of inadequacy, and the latter as unstable border-lines between what is embraced, and what is rejected. These early childhood misgivings can then live on subconsciously, infiltrating the psyche and its future engagements.

Competition and judgement

While the capacity for blame and hate may emerge, as described above, from fundamental urges of attraction and repulsion -- mixed with innate capacity for making inference -- there is another powerful instinct at play. Complex social animals have a built-in game of gene-selection and mate-selection. This game relies on a simple heuristic, or objective -- form competitive hierarchies, and select those at the top. The evolutionary assumption is that competition filters out less desirable code. Without reflection, this pre-configured notion may be taken at face value, often in fact elevated -- whether spoken or kept silent -- to something of religious adherence. But is the argument sound?
In simple times, back in the tribe, individuals tended to grow up closely-knit and fairly uniformly. Regardless which parents one had, pretty much everyone had access to the same quality of food, healthcare, and education. Tools and other amenities could readily be made or obtained by any abled body, often with only modest effort. As a result, there was, compared to modern times, an extremely even playing field. Very little interfered with the above premise that those who achieved success in social hierarchy likely had something special inside. Sure, luck still played a part, but that part was not only far less significant than today, but also far more visible for those of simple tribes. In probably most cases, everybody knew when someone had encountered bad fortune, as individual stories were less hidden.
In the current age, however, personal merit is vastly more obscured and mangled by deceptive forces. The range of disparity in childhood resources and care, the long duration of schooling needed to be competitive, and the sheer price of admission into money-making pursuits, completely destroy any legitimacy the heuristic of selection by social hierarchy may previously have had. Luck may have played a part back then, but today the part played by the lottery of placement into a particular family, time, and place is riddled with inequity. On top of all that, the behaviours and exploits that set one person atop the next are lost from sight through the complex labyrinth of time, legalese, and the unfathomable size of modern society. Hence, the basis of soundness behind judging merit on personal outcome is no longer something that can be supported with any honesty. To praise or blame based on social status and wealth is to partake in folly.

Entity and arrangement defined

Entities are mental objects, and their social accounts, pertaining to people, groups, aggregates, and other moral agents. I say mental objects for two basic reasons. One, individuals and groups change through time. As the saying goes:

"A person never steps into the same river twice; for on the second occasion, one is neither the same person, nor is it the same river" (paraphrased) ~ Heraclitus of Ephesus.

Two, while we may posit that physical substance seems to exist out there, beyond the mind, we nevertheless must work within our mental model, or worldview, when considering those entities and other things of material or mental reality. Hence, entities and objects can be cognised, or considered, solely as mental objects. This phenomenon of the mental becomes even more apparent when we consider the nature of not only being, but identity, character, and personal story. None of these, from what I can tell, can rightly be said to exist outside the mind. Each has arbitrary, situation-specific, and continually shifting boundaries and connotations.
Arrangements, in contrast, are sets of objects; entities; their relative positions; their internal configurations; and their relations and interactions. Arrangements are hence the frameworks in place either materially or logically between and within entities and or objects. Common examples include law, culture, contract, education, and social hierarchy -- but also the physical placement of people and things.
Not surprisingly, the arrangements in place have substantial influence on the outcomes for individuals and society. The same person lowered into two different cultures and circumstances can be expected to have a different time. Education, ideas, values, struggles, and relationships may all be completely changed. The combinations of butterfly effect, disparity of opportunity, and idiosyncratic accident leave open the door for a wide variety of possibility.

Splitting and blaming the entity

Before talking about what to blame, or how to blame it, we might consider some phenomena which may influence one's ability to make sound judgement. As discussed previously, early development can play a big part in both the way one perceives and understands the world, and also the way one feels about, and hence reacts to, situations and challenges within the world. So let us look at some such phenomena.
Splitting, in the post-infancy sense, is the viewing of mental objects -- including and especially people -- as either idealised all good, or devalued all bad. The primary hypothesis goes something along the lines that a child who felt insufficiently loved or attended during infancy and early childhood may develop an internalised sense of unworthiness -- perhaps shame or guilt. In simple terms, the child may internalise a judgement of "not good enough". Since early, particularly pre-linguistic experiences tend to be deeply-seated and hard-conditioned, the person later in life may not only have little if any recall of such experience, but likely has little ability to reflect or challenge the resulting feelings or cognitive distortions. Basically, the only remnant clearly visible may be the feelings and intuitions themselves -- sense of shame, guilt, and never being good enough. However, as with other inescapable negative feelings, the child or later person is prone to forming habits of escape. Most notably here, the person may partake in defence mechanisms, or unconscious patterns of perception and thinking that seek to turn off or escape uncomfortable or stressful cognitions.
Projection is among the most used defence mechanisms. It involves taking an unwanted feeling or judgement, and throwing it upon someone or something else. The idea is to distance oneself from such negative connotations. In the case of internalised shame or guilt of being "not good enough" during childhood, the person is likely to begin casting this judgement upon others. Unreasonable or unattainable standards may be adopted. The world itself may be viewed as inherently broken or untenable. In the case of splitting specifically, black-or-white, all-or-none thinking may be employed to polarise objects or people -- including oneself -- into all good or all bad -- idealisation or devaluation. This type of projection sorts others into something of angels and demons. Furthermore, as in borderline personality disorder, these dichotic judgements may switch regularly depending on current affairs. The key thing to remember here is that projection is done to escape unfaceable feelings or judgements about oneself. Use of this defence mechanism may shift blame from self to another, often in a way that is difficult or impossible for the user to see.
More broadly, splitting belongs to a class of phenomena known as cognitive distortions. In addition to all-or-none thinking, cognitive distortions include overgeneralising, disqualifying the positive, jumping to conclusions, exaggeration, perfectionism, personalisation, always being right, and labelling of others. Obviously these all have significant implications for how one judges others, and indeed how one places blame. For the discussion here, let us talk about one more of these.
Personalisation is when a person takes the blame personally, regardless what external factors may be at play. This style of attribution is inherently self-deprecatory. Alternatively, blame may be placed entirely on another person or group. The distortion here is not that blame is occurring, but that the object is always a conventional moral agent, such as a human or AI. Essentially, an individual with this style of attribution may have an irrational tendency to place blame on agents, rather than circumstances. The trick is understanding why this happens.
As it turns out, the psychology behind placing blame disproportionately on people and other agents, rather than arrangements, is driven by the instinct of social hierarchy. Like brought up earlier, people have a tendency to compare and compete, judging one another into hierarchies of better and worse -- more or less worthy. The more insecure a person feels, or the more internalised shame or sense of inadequacy one has, the more the person may be compelled to cast blame on others. Put simply, insecurity activates the instinct of social hierarchy.
There are some noteworthy side effects to the habit of blaming the agent. One is scapegoating, or the projection of a group's fears and insecurities onto an external object. In scapegoating, the object chosen is often little, if at all, related to the underlying problem or dysfunction. Rather, the group seeks to unload its insecurity onto an unlucky target. This behaviour is much like that done in narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). One might say that groups too, not just people, can have NPD. One common target of scapegoating is minorities, of pretty much any type, who are often blamed for internal inadequacies of the majority regime. Another side effect of blaming the agent is kicking the dog, or chain reactions of blame shifting where each rung of the social hierarchy blames the next rung, all the way to the dog. Similar to scapegoating, kicking the dog picks a target generally unable to defend itself. This style of attribution, moreover, is contagious within organisations, hindering legitimate consideration of how the true underlying issues can best be resolved.

False object of blame

A curious distortion of interest is blindly taking the mental as fact. In the extreme, there is a phenomenon known as psychic equivalence. This is common in children, where the imagined monster under the bed is believed surely to exist. The line between mental and external is still thin. While most older individuals are beyond such explicit equivalence, we nevertheless have no other option for understanding reality than what our mind beholds. Whether for positive or negative, when we see or imagine someone, we are never seeing the real person. What we witness is our mental model, or mental object, of the other. The same goes for their view of us. When they behold us, they are really beholding someone else -- a construct of their imagination. Likewise, when we judge or blame another, we are really blaming someone else -- a monster of our own creation. Sometimes it can help to remember that in our mental, we are all mental.

Another defence mechanism

Aside from cognitive distortions, another key issue stands in the way of finding truth. In order to resolve deeply-seated emotional baggage, that baggage has to be opened. Yet doing so can be both painful and confusing. The mind has another trick up its sleeve to avoid facing the rain -- intellectualisation. Many have heard of rationalisation, or the making up of good-sounding stories to explain otherwise irrational or emotion-based actions and choices. Intellectualisation is related, but distinct. Instead of making up stories to seem more rational, intellectualisation makes up complex frameworks and red herrings to distract oneself and others from getting too close to the underlying feeling. Just like for splitting, the usual root cause is believed to be insecure attachment during infancy and early childhood. The result, especially later in life, is the excessive overreliance on logic and complex frameworks to avoid looking inside toward emotion. Reason becomes a comfortable hideout from hideous feeling. This disposition prevents proper reflection, making it hard or impossible to stop idealising and devaluing others. After all, one cannot stop spilling pain until one finds the source of that pain.

Relation to free will

The notion of free will comes in many definitions. These can get technical. But one fairly common theme is what they seek to support -- often some type of personal, or entity-centric, responsibility or blame. Regardless whether logically sound, the pursuit is in many cases a rationalisation of the instinctual and emotional urges of social hierarchy and ego defence. Essentially, many debates about free will are really struggles, or disagreements, on the nature of blame, and to where it should aim. In general, the belief in free will -- regardless the definition chosen -- is argued in support of some type of entity attribution. Likewise, the disbelief in free will is usually argued in support of system attribution, or blaming the way society or culture is structured. A person may choose a definition specifically to assert the desired end -- a psychological phenomenon called motivated reasoning. This text will avoid choosing a definition, as the underlying principles of behaviour are more important.
A less known paradox exists within the bounds of psychological agency. As is regularly discussed in certain circles of spirituality, there exists a spectrum of self-boundary between immediate, local, relative and timeless, non-local, absolute. This mental state of contraction or expansion depends in part on the grasping or release of fear and attachment. For those unfamiliar, the felt sense of personal agency -- sometimes called doership -- and one's associated beliefs about personal causation, are prone to change, or shift, depending on the present level of anxiety -- especially social and existential anxiety. There are two key aspects related to the sense of being in control.
The first aspect of interest is that of causal scope, or how far we trace the causes and influences behind any given event or decision. For example, as I type this, among the most immediate, or smallest causal scopes, is that of my finger pressing a key. Moving toward greater scope, we may consider that the arm is moving the finger. Further, of course, one might say the body is doing the typing. But the scope need not end there. We can trace back through the causal chains, finding all manner of influence. After all, why do I care about this? What social factors and life experiences influenced this cause? The more immediate the causal scope, the longer and more encumbered the causal chains. Hence, even though when afraid we may focus on the more immediate, hence feeling more in direct control, the more our felt boundaries of self and causality contract, the more short-sighted, distracted, and materially-bound we are. The paradox is in the inverted pyramid of influence atop our actions.
The second aspect relates to impulse and desire versus self-control and composure. Human desire may be divided broadly into basic animal instinct and social image. In Freudian terms, these would be id and ego. The former is often viewed as impulsive or animalistic; the latter as controlled and composed. A meaningful portion of pro-free will arguments seems to equate or compare the composure and planning of socially-conscious actions and choices as representative of the essence of "free will". That is, more "controlled" or deliberate actions were exercising greater free will than their more impulsive or animalistic counterparts. But is this assessment sensible?
On the one hand, being more socially aware likely helps to prevent being manipulated or impeded by others. Most would probably agree thus far. But on the other hand, the more we care about fitting in, or otherwise playing the game of social hierarchy, the more we submit ourselves to social norms and other hive behaviours. Essentially, the more we care about image, the more we let society control us. Despite this emotional tether, those with the biggest egos often proclaim the greatest sense of self-determination. Certainly one could argue that being on top of the hierarchy usually entails greater access to social amenities, some of which offering greater freedom. But there may be some right reservations here. Firstly, the enhanced freedom of high status often comes with enhanced fitment and scrutiny into the externally-defined social mould. This is not always the case, as for example with dictators. But secondly, the vast majority of those playing the ego game are neither in positions of status and power, nor emotionally secure enough to go their own way toward personal happiness. Perhaps most prominently, for most social animals, the hive provides only minimal amenity, and maximal loss of autonomy. Yet the internalised ego and self-concept obscure this reality by making cultural, emotional artifacts of socialisation -- especially during childhood -- appear as self-chosen. The person is thus a product of upbringing, but because these aspects of conditioning are so deep and unconscious, their effects are simply taken for granted as part of who one is. Hence, a second paradox exists in that what may appear as evidence for free will -- ego and composure -- is in fact the very thing enacting the long-seated will of the hive.
On a different note of the free will debate, there seems to be a phenomenon somewhat like "free will of the gaps", where any unknown of psychology or physics is received wholeheartedly as evidence for freedom. While no doubt one may never really know, particularly when stuck in the subjective mind-box, one might consider the effect of splitting, or black-and-white thinking. This habit may, without enough reflection, colour one's assessment of personal agency as either wholly existing, or wholly absent. This is not to say undue burden and other explicit interference is unregarded, but more that even the mere existence of randomness or unpredictability may be taken as sufficient reason to ward off the behavioural influences and effects known by modern psychology. Remember that splitting is driven by egoic insecurity, and that ego has vested interest in building the narrative which best places oneself in the social hierarchy of the mind. Impulsive or controlled, what we choose is there to satisfy instinct, whether animalistic, or socially-focused.

Blaming the arrangement

On the other side of inferred causation -- after instinct -- we have experience, conditioning, and circumstance. Experience and conditioning are carry-overs from past arrangement while circumstance reflects the present arrangement. For simplicity, I will place all three simply under arrangement. To borrow from earlier:

Arrangements ... are sets of objects; entities; their relative positions; their internal configurations; and their relations and interactions. Arrangements are hence the frameworks in place either materially or logically between and within entities and or objects. Common examples include law, culture, contract, education, and social hierarchy -- but also the physical placement of people and things.

With this definition in mind, what then does it mean to blame the arrangement, and what benefit does so doing provide?
First, let us consider the standard Western approach. When we blame the entity, we are accomplishing three fundamental ends:

declaring a point of causal significance;
downgrading social status;
offloading correction;

On the first point, blaming the entity cuts off past influences, including deficiencies and inequalities in access to essential resources like health, respect, education, and experience. One might wonder why respect is included here. But remember the types of issue that arise from internalised shame, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy. These live on subconsciously, causing non-obvious impairments in judgement and performance. Plus they harm health and performance through elevated stress hormones.
On the second point, blaming the entity lowers its public appraisal, thus cutting off access to the types of resources just mentioned.
On the third point, blaming the entity places the burden of correction squarely on the already broken component. For simple matters like enforcing social norms or decency, this type of blame is probably effective in most cases. But when we start looking at bigger matters, like health, education, intelligence, self-restraint, and general performance, the idea of forcing the suboptimal party to fix itself starts to break down. All these matters are heavily influenced by external circumstance through time. So telling the person to fix the resulting dysfunction is like telling them to rewrite their past environment, including their upbringing. Moreover, those from broken pasts are much more often the least supplied -- in both resource and knowhow -- to make things better.
And this brings us to blaming the arrangement. If instead of burdening and downgrading the unfortunate entity, we recognise the conditions of success and failure, we can apply legitimate effort toward enacting a better future. Obviously society as a whole is far better equipped to improve not only the outcome of tomorrow, but the conditions of today. Some of us, by chance, receive the winning hand. This may be in genetics, family configuration, area of schooling, or maybe just missing detrimental accidents and injuries. What sense does it make to hoard the helpings of fate, thus preventing the wealth of shared development and growth? In a world literally brimming with technological advancement, is it really better for the majority to live polarised as minority winners and majority losers?

Arguments

One might argue that blame and praise are natural and effective tools for motivation and modification of behaviour. Natural though they may be, these tools are premised on the limited knowledge and resources of tribal past. Like using a hammer to insert a screw, messy tools ought to be reserved for desperate times only. Modern medicine, psychology, and sociology offer a new toolbox, today readily available, for resolving problems with minimal collateral damage. True, not everyone has fair access to these modern amenities, and that is exactly why we need to stop blaming the victim. The technology is here. We simply need to open the gates.
Another common argument is that absent of pointing fingers, people would lose motivation, or stop caring. There may be some truth here. If we remove the whip from their backs, the slaves may begin to relax. But is that really a bad thing? Per-capita material output is already worlds higher due to automation and tooling. But artificial scarcity is brought in to "keep up the morale". This scarcity is largely in the form of wealth and income inequality, which ensure the true producers of wealth -- the workers -- are kept chasing their imagined carrot. The effect, in practice, is burnout and learned helplessness. The secondary effect is thus decreased performance, which is then "solved" with ever greater artificial scarcity, perpetuating the cycle of lies and suffering. Instead of entertaining a system of slavery with extra steps, why not more equally distribute the tools and technology of efficiency and success?
A darker argument that occasionally gets said out loud is that excessive competition and suffering help to weed out the less desirable traits. Often, it is proclaimed, nature wanted it that way. Ignoring the obvious lack of compassion, is this argument sound? The simple answer is no. The longer answer is not even a little. There are two main reasons. Firstly, the dirty game of filtering by social hierarchy was not only sloppy for its original environment of small tribes, but is completely unfit for modern, complex, abstract society. As explained previously, the legitimacy of individual merit is no longer known by fellow tribespeople. Wealth generation and extraction are too far removed and abstracted for proper outside judgement. And complex systems of power and propaganda further prevent equitable distribution of the fruits of labour. Secondly, the amount of time needed for such mechanisms of trait filtering to make an appreciable difference are substantially longer than the time from now before technology will allow superior selection of traits. There will be no need to compete in the sloppy ways of the past; nor any need to compete at all. The problem of selection is soon resolved. AI is entering the exponential phase. Petty and primitive worry about traits is irrelevant, for multiple reasons. If anything, those unable to understand this are unfit to be making policy decisions.
An argument which comes up enough to mention is that without blaming the entity, criminals would have free reign, able to do whatever they wanted without repercussions. This argument is missing something quite substantial about what is entailed by blaming the arrangement. Simply, if a certain person is believed to lack the self-control for certain situations or positions, that person will be kept away from those circumstances. A common example is driver's licensing, where one must earn the privilege by proving competence. And similarly to that, if someone is blatantly acting out and causing trouble, obviously they would be put somewhere safer. The key is rearranging circumstances as needed for best outcome while maintaining reasonable maximum personal autonomy -- without unnecessary harm, restraint, or loss of dignity. Yes, this is more involved in terms of resources and labour, but that is what technology is for. Naturally people prefer to have more privilege, and that alone is motivation enough to care.
And before someone accuses this approach of being or supporting a social credit system, we must make clear the difference. In social credit systems, blame is placed on the individual ! Sure, the factors used may involve family and acquaintance, but the burden of correction still goes to the person or small group. This is completely different from what is being proposed here.
A final argument relates to expense. On the surface -- especially from within the perspective of a system based on artificial scarcity and excessive wealth inequality -- the idea of having surplus means available for long-term planning may seem unfathomable. People's reluctance in this regard can be understood. But as mentioned above, we are presently, for presumably the first time in our recorded history, entering the age of exponential growth toward advanced artificial intelligence. Things are moving fast already, and both hardware and software are showing no slowing. If computational capacity continues to double regularly like it has for a long time now, we are probably looking at readily accessible post-human intelligence within five to ten years. Short of disaster or tyrannical interference, existing worries about labour and intellect shortage should soon evaporate. Yes, this time things are different. There is no known precedent.

Summary

Our natural instinct may tell us to blame the person. And Western culture may polarise this tendency to the extreme. But with a little understanding of why we feel the need to downsize others, we may be able to mend the splitting within us. Society may be designed around a game of hierarchy, but one need not partake. By knowing the factors that promote or inhibit wellbeing, and by using the knowledge and tools of modern, we can cast off the shallow assumptions behind us, to build something worth keeping. The first step is looking inside, to see the feeling that fears connection. Then we may look outside, to see that most are facing similar struggle. Situations are what make or break the person. If one should blame, blame the arrangement. The past may not be one for changing, but greater compassion today can find greater love tomorrow.

Hello,

I wanna build a new Pc for me and my brother gets my current one. Is this combo good?Should I get DDR4 or DDR5 Ram?Do I need to update the BIOS by myself or how is it? Can I even use it when the motherboard got an older BIOS version?Thanks for you help. Monitor resolution: 2560x1440
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Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-22 01:59 EDT-0400

Greetings! I have a Viking VCFF136SSS5 French Door refrigeratofreezer that recently stopped making ice.
Water comes from kitchen RO system. Dispenser inside the left door still flows normally, so I think I can rule out blocked filter and supply plumbing.
Can anyone suggest the leading causes and ways I can troubleshoot it?
Also, not sure if it's related, but a few days back we heard some odd rhythmic tapping/clicking noises coming from the left wall of the fridge, lasted a couple hours then never happened again. That might have been when the ice production stopped... it could have taken us a couple days to consume enough to notice it was not replenishing.
I appreciate any help!

I have a 2005 pair of Air Carnivores, the first reissue... I believe. Had 'em since new, but never wore them. Now, I'm feeling nostalgic for the early '90s, and would like to rock 'em.
Are they safe to wear, or will they fall apart with use like the OG 2000 Jordan V reissues? Are they made out of the same PU crap? Any help would be appreciated. I'd hate to destroy them just by walking out my front door. They're too pretty! If anybody has any experience with wearing 18+ y/o reissued Nikes, please... let me know.

(BTW, if anybody needs an upper or a sole for a 2000 Jordan V Black / Metalic restoration... I kept mine, even though they're in multiple pieces. Just ask. They are no longer of use to me.)

You Matter to Her in a Way No One Else Could
When you died and were reborn, you became divine. You were love, and you were violence, and you were my miracle. A God sprung forth from the decaying machinery of your broken body. Koishi, the God of Love and Hate—have mercy on us all.
Down by the shore of one of the great Lunar seas, there sat a lonely shack thatched with feathers. Inside, there was a massive wani no less than eight leagues long… and her infant son. To that crocodile who had never known true familial love, that delicate little child—who cooed and smiled at his mother’s every move—was nothing less than a miracle. Such a delicate life in her claws, who knew nothing but unconditional love for his mother—to the crocodile, it was proof there was still good in the world.
She was tired, but the crocodile forced herself to stay awake. There was something she needed to do—a memory she wanted to share with the most important person in her life.
So, with all the caution and tenderness in the world, she picked up her child with her jaws and coaxed him into her throat pouch. The newborn child, perhaps having some shared instinct with his crocodilian mother, did not cry or struggle. Instead, he let out a giggle as he poked his head out from between his mother’s jagged teeth. With a snort, the dragon climbed out of her thatch hut, and crawled along the shore, drawing a meandering trail in the sand as she went.
When she reached the point where the water came to shore in gentle waves, the crocodile set herself down in the sand, letting the waves wash in and lick at her child in gentle sprays. Her child giggled as the Lunar sea’s tickled him with its pure waters, and as he did, his mother couldn’t help but feel at peace.
Nothing. Nothing at all would be able to take this from her.
Her miracle.
Toyohime opened her eye to clear blue skies.
She flexed her fingers, and instead of feeling the cold steel of the ship she started to tear apart, she felt so many tiny pebbles, warmed by their time in the sun. Sand? She brought a fistful of the stuff into her vision, before letting it fall through her fingers and run down her face. It was too real to be a dream.
Toyohime sat up to observe her surroundings. As far as the eye could see, there were infinite stretches of sand collected into wind-swept dunes that obscured the horizon. It was hot. Unbelievably so for what was supposedly the void. She felt a gentle gust of warm wind pass by her and toss her hair. This place… this impossible place… was she dead?
She rose to her feet, fighting biting aches and pains from her battle not too long ago. No—not dead. Somehow, she had survived—there was no other explanation. And as she looked down to assess the damage she had taken, her suspicions were only confirmed. Her right arm was missing, and in its place was nothing but a healed stump. The nasty cuts and bruises she had received in the fighting had all healed over for the most part, the only evidence they happened at all being residual scars that were yet to disappear. The ground was covered in dried blood. She must’ve been laying here in this sand trap for hours.
She brought her free arm, completely healed, up to the general space where her right eye was to find an arrow still protruding from it. Wrapping her fingers around the shaft, Toyohime tore it out in a fluid motion, causing the wound to reopen and drip blood onto the sands below. But, through some miraculous action, it was mere moments before the flow of blood stopped as the wound healed shut. Her right eye was still inoperable, but this healing ability was downright uncanny, even for a god.
She flexed her fingers. It felt like there was a hole in her head from which memories and feelings poured out. The mystery of how she got here, who she killed, and whether she could even trust her own senses had no answer—Toyohime knew she herself had made sure of that. She supposed there was a good reason. The less she knew, the better. That was something she could trick herself into believing.
Though no matter how much she forced herself to forget, she had the horrible feeling she had done something unforgivable—something she would kill over. In a sea of atrocities however, she could hardly even begin to suppose what that might have been. Maybe the heat was starting to fry her brain.
After spending a few minutes snapping the arrows lodged in her body by their shafts, Toyohime looked to the horizon, and then up. Ahead, there was a massive sand dune, no less than five times her height, and beyond the crest—a black pillar of smoke. Toyohime was not alone.
As she made her way up the shifting incline, Toyohime got to thinking about her next course of action. If this wasn’t a hallucination, then it most certainly had to be some extension of Koishi's will. Land in an impossible space… the creation of something impossible like that could only be a factor of a deteriorating mind, or God. And Toyohime had no time to consider the possibility of a crumbling psyche—not when she had a duty left unfulfilled.
But then… that would mean this was the paradise of Koishi’s mind. Surely, by her side is where she would find her salvation. She had already come to terms with it—that there was nothing left for her in the old world. Koishi could pervert and corrupt reality in whatever twisted ways she wanted—as long as it was the creation of her heart, it would be sufficient. Everything beyond that was not worth saving to the former princess.
… But that also meant there would be more enemies. More people she had to kill. She was ready. Ready to kill and ready to die in the name of love.
And as she planted her boot upon the peak of that sand dune, she saw the whole world become bare before her. A fair distance away was the crashed wreck of a golden ship, releasing plumes of black smoke as it burnt away. From this distance, it was difficult to make out any finer details, but she was sure the occupants had escaped. Satori was resourceful and stubborn, if nothing else. Dying in a crash was an impossibility.
She then traced a line from the ship through the shifting sands—to a city upon the horizon. Massive towers of glass and steel pushing against the sky, half buried in the sand, bending light around them as they reflected the intense heat of the sun. It gave the sight an unnatural fuzziness, as if the city was threatening to disappear at any moment.
As she traced the decaying visage of those buildings upwards, she saw a thin line reach beyond and into the sky. The line separated into two before converging back on itself. Above the city, etched upon the sky itself, was a pitch black gap in reality, opened and filled with so many eyes. And above still, the object of Toyohime’s desires and her sole driving factor—Koishi Komeiji.
Though the God’s eye was open, as well as the myriad collection of smaller eyes and drooling jaws that had lined every square inch of her squirming appendages, it was hard to tell if she was awake or conscious. Toyohime knew Koishi best, and if she had any guess as to what Koishi had been doing in the time they spent apart, it was receding back into the numbing comfort of her own mind. Even now, Toyohime figured she was still dreaming, avoiding the cruel weight of her responsibility. What manifested outside of her mind must’ve been some sort of twisted runoff.
Down there, hidden in the dunes, Toyohime knew there were those who would take this dream from Koishi. Those who would hurt Koishi. Those people would’ve done just as well to dig their own graves and build their own coffins. Because so long as Toyohime drew breath, she would protect Koishi with everything she could muster—that was her promise and the nature of her impossible, unconditional love.
Koishi was Toyohime’s second chance.
This time, one way or another, there would be no opportunity for a third.
Mima, on the other hand, had woken up quite a bit earlier than Toyohime had.
She had not suffered any fatal wounds or debilitating strikes leading up to the point where the reality around her started to crumble and distort—but she had briefly lost consciousness regardless. She figured that might’ve been a good thing; an action so absurd and so against everything she knew, perpetrated by an impossibly powerful being… even if a mere glimpse didn’t physically tear her mind to ribbons, she had no interest in trying to understand such a nonsensical event.
Mima awoke not in a desert, but in a grand sprawling city of seemingly human construction. Though the sun still hung overhead, the impossible hills and mountains of sand that caged the city in, always seemed to shift and move in the most calculated way… such that the sun was always put out. Caught in the shade, the city looked like it was in a perpetual night, in spite of the blinding yellow of the endless desert just beyond its limits.
Though that was the case, the city was far from dark. Street lamps, blinding neon signs, blinking traffic lights, apartments and houses with windows illuminated by the fluorescent lights within… It gave the impression the city was alive. It seemed exactly as a real bustling city at night, with its breathing and blinking—but there were no people. No matter how far Mima walked, no matter how many buildings she popped in, she would encounter no souls. She would find, in those buildings, immaculate setpieces filled with lived-in charm, hints and implications of life—but not people. Not even Yukari, who she wandered the streets in search of.
She recognized this place. This city—Tokyo. It couldn’t have possibly been, but it was the same Tokyo she grew up in, back before the Moonlight Descent and before the Kaiju. Before her chance meeting with the youkai who used to be her friend. This city, trapped in the middle of the desert, caught in an artificial night that obscured the flow of time—somehow it managed to be the perfect recreation of a long lost city, as if someone had taken a scalpel to the part of Mima’s brain that held onto the precious memories of her past life. It was comforting, being back in familiar territory, but it also carried along a pervasive uneasiness. The nostalgia said it was real, but the rational mind knew better than to buy into an impossible mirage—made all the more uneasy by the deathly silence of its streets.
After wandering around for a dozen minutes or more, Mima eventually came to find Yukari in a 24-hour fast food joint. She was sitting, out of her suit and miraculously healed, on a stool that faced the street outside, with her head down and a small pool of drool collecting at the point where the corner of her mouth met the countertop. Renko always said Maribel could fall asleep anywhere.
Mima floated back and forth around the gently snoring form of Yukari for a bit, considering her options. She changed back into her Renko form for a second, and after adjusting her hat a little, she reached over to tap Yukari on the shoulder… but then shied away. Glancing at Yukari, then back to her bag, she rummaged through its bottomless contents and pulled out a whole host of items: hand mirrors, makeup kits, two liter bottles of listerine, mints and peppermint breath spray and assorted beauty products.
She stole a quick glance back at Yukari to make sure she was asleep before going at it—in one go, she dumped every minty product she could into her mouth before swishing the unholy mixture in her mouth. It was not a moment later that she coughed out all of that liquid ice with a retch and a gag. Sheepishly, she turned her head to see if Yukari had woken up in all the commotion. Luckily, she was still knocked out something fierce. Mima might’ve guessed she was dead, if it weren’t for the occasional snore.
Undeterred, she opened a hand mirror and began to apply her makeup. Carefully. There was a subtle art to it—she only needed enough to hide any unsightly blemishes she might’ve gotten from her rather shut-in lifestyle as a ghost. Anything more, and Maribel was bound to notice Mima was purposefully fixing her appearance around her. None of that. Mima was trying for a more subliminal approach… It’s what worked in the past, after all.
Well, upon further thought, Mima figured “worked” was too strong a word. She did die before she saw any results, after all. But enough of that, Mima thought—now that she regained her memories, she’s finally gotten another shot. This being the apocalypse and all, she figured she should probably make it count.
She clicked close her portable hand mirror and, along with the rest of her stuff, threw it back into her field bag. She stole one last glance at Yukari, who was still sleeping soundly, before straightening her hat and clearing her throat.
“Maribel…” she said in a quiet, sing-song voice. She placed a hand on Yukari’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Maribel, wake up.”
No response. Mima pouted as she shook her around again. “Merry? It’s so scary around here—I need someone super strong and amazing by my side. Maybe we could hold hands?”
Nothing but more snoring. Mima’s expression fell. “... Okay, seriously. Wake up.”
“Don’t make me break out the big guns, Merry,” Mima said, digging through her bag and pulling out an airhorn. “I’ll do it. You think I’m bluffing?”
A tense beat passes. Mima stows away the airhorn. “... Ah, I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t do something like that to you. You’re too cute, hehe.”
“I’m not above this, though.” She reaches back into her bag and pulls out a spray bottle filled with water… before giving Yukari’s face a couple of quick spritzes.
That quiet, tranquil expression to Mima seemed almost a timeless representation of the relationship she shared with Maribel quickly contorted into one of disgust. After a moment of being pelted with spray after spray of water droplets, Yukari finally was roused from her sleep, a squinty, grouchy mess.
“Who..? Urgh…” She mumbled with a groan. When Yukari saw Renko, immaculately constructed before her with enough accuracy to convince her she came straight from her memories, she froze. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “... Renko?”
“Hehe… Yep, it’s me! Your best friend. Best girl-friend, even. That is, a girl who is also a friend. Not a girlfriend, you know? Aha… Unless? Kidding, kidding.” Mima flashed an easy smile. “Glad you’re awake. Hey, before you say anything else—how do I look? I look cute, right? I know we’re in the middle of saving the world and everything, but I’ve actually been spending a lot of time taking care of my appearance.”
As Mima continued to ramble on and Yukari continued to wake up, her expression made a slow and gradual pivot. Where at first Yukari couldn’t hide her bemusement from her face—as well as that strange pained expression someone would have, seeing a loved one they have long since finished mourning appear upon their doorstep—she eventually came to settle on an empty stare and a neutral, apathetic expression. It hurt Mima a little, seeing such a radical turn in her demeanor.
“Oh,” Yukari muttered. “It’s just you.”
Mima didn’t think she intended it, but there was a layer of latent annoyance in her words. Or maybe it was disappointment? A thousand years or more apart did a lot to shift their relationship. That much was clear—and it hurt.
Yukari took a moment to look Mima up and down. With a scoff and a roll of her eyes, she delivered an unceremonious answer. “You look fine.”
Mima sighed in response. “Hey, I’ll take it.”
“More importantly…” As Yukari continued, she craned her neck around to absorb every detail of her surroundings: everything from the light fixtures above to the tables that were so meticulously set and prepared. “... Where are we?”
Her eyes naturally gravitated toward the front counter and the kitchen section that was just behind—meticulously wrapped burgers and fresh fries, set underneath heat lamps… it was as if they were all made recently. But that wasn’t even the strangest detail Yukari’s eyes were able to pick out. Upon one of the tables was a tray, filled with half eaten food—as if the patrons ceased to exist in the middle of their meal. This was beyond a mere liminal space, where it gave the impression of once being a place where people gathered—it was closer in relation to the scene of an ongoing disaster, where people had left in a hurry.
In that way, it didn’t carry much of the surreal quality of a place no longer meant for humans—it more so felt like a place with a cursed history, its sinister and mysterious narrative etched into its skin and flesh through the vestiges of human presence. Mima could tell, being a ghost herself, there was more to this place than the physical construction. As to what ‘more’ was, she could not place.
She could tell Yukari was thinking something similar by the way she walked around and took in the feeling of the place. Her posture was rigid and cautious, but not necessarily ready and waiting for danger. There was a quiet dread to the things that weren’t, but should’ve been.
“I’m trying to figure that out myself,” Mima replied, following Yukari around with her arms folded behind her back. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but… I think we’re back in Tokyo.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Yukari replied. She walked over to the table with the food and traced a finger across its top. No dust clung to the surface of her finger, as if the tabletop had recently been cleaned. She brought the back of her palm close to the food. It was still radiating just a little bit of heat, as if it had been freshly served. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“... Assuming this is all very much real, this must be Koishi’s doing,” Yukari declared, taking a moment to look down at herself. As she flexed her fingers, her eyes narrowed. Mima figured she might’ve just realized she had been healed and mysteriously back to her usual outfit. She still looked younger and weaker than she once was, but there was an undeniable, albeit subtle increase in the vitality she seemed to convey. As Yukari’s eyes wandered to the empty city street outside, Mima couldn’t help but notice that expression—that idle, faraway gaze that looked like Yukari had trapped herself in a vivid daydream. She couldn’t help but realize how much Maribel had changed—and yet stayed the same.
“Whatcha thinking, Merry?” Mima tried, shuffling up to Yukari’s side.
“Yukari.”
“Oh. Right. Ha, that’s my bad. My bad…”
“I’m thinking: why Tokyo specifically?” With a wave of her hand, Yukari opened a gap next to her. Through that little tear in reality was a bird’s eye view of the whole city, as well as the infinite desert that surrounded it. “... There must be some significance to this location, but I couldn’t possibly imagine what it could be. Not right now, knowing what we know.”
“Hey, I grew up in Tokyo, you know? Maybe it has something to do with that? And… y’know, we were teaching in Tokyo before…” Mima gestured vaguely around herself. “... Everything, I guess. Maybe Koishi’s reacting to our memories.”
“Could be. Could just as easily be something related to Koishi. Could be nothing at all.” The view through the gap eventually fizzled out, leaving nothing but the inky blackness of the pocket dimension Yukari held dominion over. She let out a sigh before stitching the gap closed with a wave of her hand. “I’d suggest we keep on moving. Collect as much information as we can about this place. But only what we need—the plan is still largely the same. There’s no telling when she will appear again. Best be as quick about it as we can.”
“Oh. Uh… Alright. That’s cool.”
“... What?”
“Hm?”
“What’s wrong? You disagree?”
“Oh no, ah…” A sheepish grin crawled across Mima’s face. “I was just thinking about how much you’ve changed, is all. It’s just… you know, a huge city missing all of its people is pretty mysterious, huh? Don’t you want to do more exploring? Poke around a bit and take in the sights? Like we used to—just one last time?”
There was an unsettling period of silence where Yukari stared straight through Mima with that flat look. She averted her eyes for a passing moment. When Yukari returned her gaze to Mima, it was steely and cold. “No. Neither of us are kids anymore. We have duties and responsibilities that we can not abandon. Not for anything.”
Yukari brushed past Mima. The gesture wasn’t very rough at all, but Mima felt it come at her hard. As Yukari opened the door, she looked back at Mima and gestured to her to follow.
“Let’s go.”
Orin did not want much from life.
There was Satori, her master, who she cared about deeply. There was Okuu, her best friend, who she loved. There was Koishi, the younger sister of her master, who she felt obligated to take care of. And of course, there was her job of transporting corpses, which she could do endlessly and without tiring. Those things more or less encompassed everything she cared about—Orin was a simple person.
So as she crawled out the emergency hatch located at the top of the ship her master had so recklessly buried into a sand dune, she couldn’t help but feel so hopelessly out of her depth. With a groan, she hoisted herself over the lip of the hatch before losing her balance and tumbling over.
As she tumbled downward, bumping her head against every little edge the ship had on her way down, the visor to her suit cracked and then shattered. But as she flopped down into the warm sand, her arms and legs spread in a state of absolute fatigue, she couldn’t really bring herself to care about the warning tones in her helmet—or the fact she was able to breathe the air here, in what used to be the void. Frankly, all she could think about was how much she wanted to go home.
“Orin! Are you okay?” A familiar voice called from somewhere outside her field of vision. It was followed by the hasty clattering of boots on metal as they no doubt clambered down the ship in a hurry.
All Orin could offer in response was a weak grunt and the extension of a thumbs up.
“Are… are you insane?” Another voice called soon after, all breathless and hoarse. It cracked with exertion, as if it had already been worn out by so much screaming. “Satori, what form of devil possessed you to do that? We could’ve all died!”
Satori, of course, didn’t respond. Not before she entered Orin’s field of view, her own helmet long since thrown away. Her face was etched with a rare look of concern, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief when she saw Orin manage a weak smile. Wordlessly, Satori jostled off the smashed helmet from Orin’s suit and brushed away any remaining debris… before pulling her into a tight embrace.
Orin, dazed and shocked from the crash, could manage little else than to rest her head upon her master’s shoulders as she was pulled in. But through whatever stores of energy she had left, she managed to raise her arms and wrap them around in loose reciprocation.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”
Satori pulled back from the hug, but stayed kneeling by Orin’s side. Cautiously, she looked to the horizon, as if she had caught a vanishing glimpse of something stalking them from behind the shifting sands. She extended an elbow for Orin to grab on to. “Let’s go. Can you stand?”
“I… I think so,” Orin mumbled, hooking one of her arms around Satori’s elbow and placing a hand on her shoulder for support. Her master lifted, and in response Orin tried her best to stumble onto her feet, with mixed results. As she straightened herself out with the help of Satori, she heard her bones shift and crackle in strange ways—followed by an absolute lightning strike of localized pain in the leg and the fuzzy static that came to replace it.
After a sharp intake of breath and a pained wince, Orin settled into a decidedly unconvincing posture—she plastered a smile on her face and shifted all of her weight onto the other leg in a poor imitation of nonchalance, but Satori’s face only got graver. It broke Orin’s heart. For a moment, Orin tried to separate herself from her master so she could stand on her own—but Satori only squeezed her in closer, as if she would’ve lost Orin the second she let go.
That didn’t surprise Orin much. She knew better than anyone that the events one year ago were still fresh in her master’s mind. Even now, it haunted her every action, and now the consequences were starting to catch up with everyone involved. But to Orin, that didn’t matter. It never did—not so long as Satori was her master, and Orin was her pet. Satori could march to the deepest pit of Hell, pick a fight with a God, oppose reality itself… and Orin would march along right beside her, no matter what.
Patchouli, on the other hand, did not share the same sentiment. She marched up to the two, at least temporarily uncaring of the fantastical environment they found themselves in, and went straight to airing out her grievances.
“Recklessly engaging with Toyohime like that, against all better logic… one day, and this day might very well come sooner than you think, your obsession with that cursed woman will hurt someone you care about,” Patchouli snapped. As she looked to Orin, whose body was riddled with evidence of blunt trauma, her expression softened. “... It already has.”
“As if we had any other choice. It was our best shot to kill her, once and for all,” Satori replied, stone-faced and cold. “... Besides, let Orin speak for herself. As if you know what she does and doesn’t wish for.”
“... Orin wasn’t the only person who got hurt. Or killed.”
“It just so happens that Eirin conveniently falls outside my definition of ‘people I care about.’ I fail to see the issue.” Satori snorted with disgust, as if offended by the mere implication. Orin wanted to speak up and cut between the fighting, but couldn’t find the strength to oppose her own master. “That aside, who says I was the one who got her killed? She got herself killed, following her own incomprehensible mess of half-baked ideas and strategies. What are you coming at me for?”
“How could you be so cold toward someone like her? Especially since we were all fighting out there together, as comrades? Have you no shame?”
“I’ve no love for her. Not after what she did to my sister.” Satori stared straight into Patchouli’s eyes. Sometimes her master was like this—staring straight ahead through a person, as if judging the content of their soul itself. Sometimes, this was literally the case, given that she made liberal use of her opened third eye. “We might be fighting beside each other, but we’re fighting for completely different things. Yukari, Eirin, Kaguya, even you and I—we’re all fighting for something different. Those are just the facts. Just as it was a fact that Koakuma had darkness in her heart. It’s that kind of fact.”
“How cynical. Aren’t we friends?”
Satori fixed Patchouli with a steady glare as she thought through her answer. Even with an open eye, Orin found her master’s thought process difficult to parse.
“... No. We aren’t,” Satori settled. “It’s not a secret—I’m fighting to get my sister back. I’m fighting to kill the person who turned her into a monster. I’m fighting to protect my family. You are doing none of those things—you’re fighting for a more abstract reason: protecting the world, or preventing human suffering, or whatever other justification you assign to your actions. It’s admirable, but recognize that It’s only by convenience that we’re here, helping each other out.”
“... Is that right?” Patchouli muttered under her breath. “Then if it came between Yukari, or Eirin, or me, or anyone else… and your family. Who would you choose?”
Silence.
“It’s best to be honest with ourselves. It saves us the heartache.”
“I see.”
In the silence that came after, the atmosphere seemed to become heavier. Orin spent each passing beat being suffocated by the pressure. Her eyes darted from Patchouli to her master, and then back again.
“Er…” Orin started. “Let’s ah… could we just figure out what we’re going to do next, maybe? Without fighting—that would be nice.”
“Good plan, Orin,” Satori said. Though strangely enough, she wouldn’t take her eyes off of Patchouli. “I’m not quite sure what we would do without you.”
Patchouli looked away. Orin couldn’t help but feel vaguely responsible—though the second the thought even popped into mind, Satori squeezed a little tighter, as if in reassurance.
“... There’s no use in arguing,” Patchouli said with a heavy sigh. “Or rather, it’s a subject for later, when we aren’t all in danger. For now, I agree—we should figure out our next steps.”
The guns had long since run quiet.
Those satellites—their powerful bodies forged by the greatest minds, cast in the strongest metals, and mounted with the fiercest weapons humanity could muster—how could they have possibly matched the horror of God’s wrath? They could never, and for their hubris, their bodies and their souls were scattered and broken as a million glittering lights upon the ocean.
Those were the kinds of things Kaguya Houraisan thought about as she sat beside a flickering fire, her only source of light deep in the darkness of a desert night, not a few meters from the turned and battered wreckage of the CNS Beyond the Sun. In the void, It was battered by unseen force, turned three times—and upon the fourth, struck down and consumed by the void, as was the divine will of God. To its crew, it might have seemed like nothing less than a castigation of divine nature—but Kaguya knew it was nothing more than the temper tantrum of a child. As infant children must necessarily cry, Koishi must necessarily kill—it was her unconscious will.
Woe upon humanity, as its greatest accomplishment was brought low and made worthless before a child. Her own child. What a dubious honor it was—being the mother of such a terrifying, omnipresent killer.
Kaguya was on the ship when it was attacked by Toyohime. She was there to see Eirin march on to meet her. And she was there to see her die. It didn’t bother Kaguya too much—after all, she had watched Eirin die countless times. She will likely watch her die countless more, before all is said and done. But it was there, seized by the temporary shock, that Kaguya lost consciousness. When she woke up, she was deep within the fresh wreckage of humanity’s greatest weapon—alone. On what happened to her crew, and why Kaguya was spared, she could only make guesses.
With no direction and no plan, Kaguya spent what felt like hours wandering the claustrophobic halls of that great metal cage of a ship. But she was alone. Alone in such a way that not even the impression of humanity remained. Even the spot where she saw three men become atomized by Toyohime’s attack, which had burnt dark impressions of their silhouettes into the steel, was mysteriously void of any sign they were killed at all. The damage remained, but the people were gone—erased from existence in a way only God could manage.
When she eventually emerged from the dark recesses of the ship into a darker night, with nothing but the stars above and the inexplicable ground below, she could do nothing but start a simple fire. The night was cold, and she had a feeling it would be long. Warmth would be needed.
This, alone and huddled by a dying fire, must have been the end. Kaguya shifted closer to the flame, and held her knees closer to her chest. She didn’t know what to do. When her own daughter had sought her out, she didn’t know what to say. All she could do was recognize—that in pursuit of an easy life, she had made things so much worse. She wondered if it was too late to make things right between herself and Koishi. If Kaguya had looked up to her daughter now, and said sorry, would she hear? Would she care?
She wasn’t sure. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to find out.
As she stared at the stars above, Kaguya heard the shuffling of boots displacing the sand. The sounds came in an irregular, halting motion. When it came to a stop, Kaguya lowered her gaze to the figure who stood at the edge of her fire’s light.
A moon rabbit in a pilot suit, all ripped up, tattered, and blackened by combat. In the gaps of her suit, her skin had melted away from severe burns—and froze in place, creating large patches of gangrenous tissue that covered her body. As Kaguya’s eyes drifted downward, she noticed a patch of body that had a view to the other side. Somehow, by some miracle of medicine, the wound remained stable and closed.
Her face was concealed by her helmet, tinted and patterned by a spider web of cracks, but by the way she stood, so still and lopsided, Kaguya had the impression of an empty gaze just behind the facade.
The moon rabbit carried in her left hand a revolver, its chambers empty and on display as the mechanism that connected the grip to the top half of the hung loose. In her other hand, was an ax, splintered in half at the handle from excessive use and its blade caked in a thick layer of blood.
Without a word, the moon rabbit collapsed into a heap by the fire.
Kaguya rushed to the moon rabbit’s side and, upon removing her helmet, froze.
Atonement—she wondered if it was even possible.
Previous Chapter:
Interim Chapter 11

Platform(s): PC I believe (I watched a YouTube play it)
Genre: Horror
Estimated year of release: around 2014 (peak YouTube game plays I think)
Graphics art style: semi realistic gore, tub full of blood, would show pictures of gore, dark and old setting. Mostly dark colors like black and grey but would have deep blood red to contrast the gore
Notable characters: I don’t remember other characters, you just played as the character
Notable gameplay mechanics: you would pick things up and look at them closer, could be pictures or items, would be like a puzzle to find clues to open safes or doors. Would keep items and use them to open other areas or escape. You use arrows to move to different rooms
Other details: Okay this is just going to be a description if what I remember because I genuinely can't find it. It's an older horror game where you click arrows to go through an old house and there are puzzles throughout the house to keep moving on. I don't remember if this is a different game from the same creator or not but later on you end up at another house and in the vents a body pops up. Then you end up at a church and realize the apocalypse is about to happen? A similar game style to another game where you go through a mansion with all of these weird things to do an interview or something and you end up going into a maze finding a cabin where there is a man murdered? Please help me I'm desperate to find the names of them

I followed logical increments but added a different tower as well as a different CPU cooler, since the cooler they (Enthusiast PC) talk about is not available in Germany. The tower should be fine, as I checked the measurements, but I am slightly worried about:

My choice of alternative CPU cooler, i.e. if it will be just as good as the CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX
The whole cooling fan situation, since I am worried about negative air pressure with three intake coolers in front, one exhaust cooler in the back and the three CPU coolers set to exhaust at the top of the case

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i9-13900KF 3 GHz 24-Core Processor	€614.90 @ Alza
CPU Cooler	Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE 65.57 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	€179.89 @ Alternate
Motherboard	ASRock Z790 Pro RS ATX LGA1700 Motherboard	€236.94 @ Computeruniverse
Memory	Corsair Vengeance 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5200 CL40 Memory	€239.99 @ Amazon Deutschland
Storage	Western Digital Black SN850 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	€289.00 @ Amazon Deutschland
Video Card	MSI SUPRIM X GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card	€1929.00 @ Mindfactory
Case	Asus ROG Strix Helios ATX Full Tower Case	€354.90 @ Amazon Deutschland
Power Supply	Corsair HX1000i (2022) 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	€204.90 @ Alza
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€4049.52
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-22 06:40 CET+0100

Have been wanting to build a PC for a while and am finally getting a chance to due to a new job. Would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions for improvement!
Budget is 2500-2800 USD and intended use is mostly gaming, office work, and some video/photo editing. I also have 2 4k monitors I would ideally want to use with it.
[PCPartPicker Part List](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/cC2cwc)

TypeItemPrice
:----:----:----
**CPU** [Intel Core i9-13900K 3 GHz 24-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/DhVmP6/intel-core-i9-13900k-3-ghz-24-core-processor-bx8071513900k) $559.99 @ Newegg
**CPU Cooler** [Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition 57.3 CFM CPU Cooler](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/hHDJ7P/cooler-master-hyper-212-rgb-black-edition-573-cfm-cpu-cooler-rr-212s-20pc-r1) $90.78 @ Amazon
**Motherboard** [MSI MAG B660 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/H7gFf7/msi-mag-b660-tomahawk-wifi-ddr4-atx-lga1700-motherboard-mag-b660-tomahawk-wifi-ddr4) $189.95 @ Amazon
**Memory** [Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/khmFf7/corsair-vengeance-rgb-pro-32-gb-2-x-16-gb-ddr4-3600-memory-cmw32gx4m2z3600c18) $104.99 @ Amazon
**Memory** [Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/khmFf7/corsair-vengeance-rgb-pro-32-gb-2-x-16-gb-ddr4-3600-memory-cmw32gx4m2z3600c18) $104.99 @ Amazon
**Storage** [Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/f3cRsY/samsung-980-pro-2-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-mz-v8p2t0bam) $159.99 @ Amazon
**Video Card** [Asus TUF GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/rdjBD3/asus-tuf-gaming-oc-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-12-gb-video-card-tuf-rtx4070ti-o12g-gaming) $849.99 @ B&H
**Case** [Corsair iCUE 5000X RGB ATX Mid Tower Case](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/v7Dkcf/corsair-icue-5000x-rgb-atx-mid-tower-case-cc-9011212-ww) $169.99 @ Newegg
**Power Supply** [Corsair RM1000x (2021) 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jRvdnQ/corsair-rm1000x-2021-1000-w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-cp-9020201-na) $189.95 @ Amazon
*Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts*
Total (before mail-in rebates) $2440.62
Mail-in rebates -$20.00
**Total** **$2420.62**
Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-03-22 01:05 EDT-0400

Generally wondering if any parts I should reconsider or if there would be benefits in paying more for the AMD instead of the intel.
I was originally going to go with the Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX for cooling as I liked the aesthetic but liquid coolers are a bit daunting to me and had some noise concerns so I switched to a fan. Would love input as to whether this is the right switch or if liquid is really worth it.

Would be very grateful for any help!

I’m playing black ops 2 the town map for survival and I had a full team. There was a floating door and then over time someone left. Then there was another floating door and all the zombies started running. Someone else left. I couldn’t find my last teammate at this point and we we’re on like level five or something. None of the zombies had heads and all of a sudden rock music started playing in the game??? Whoever my last teammate was kept reviving me cuz I kept getting down but he was nowhere to be seen. Someone help me comprehend what this was 😭 I’m kinda new to the game so I assume it was someone fucking with me?

Ge french door refrigerator black

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