Dear strugglers, I recently stumbled upon this subreddit and found myself questioning it's meaning. Given our limited access to absolute knowledge about the nature of our reality, I've decided to attribute my own meaning to it and therefore, I'll be posting whatever I desire as long as it's within the boundaries of my belief system. (in all seriousness) This topic -Existentialism- isn't really one of my specialties but lately, I find myself going down the rabbit hole of Nihilism once again. Due to the nature of my character and personality, I'm struggling to fully embrace the idea of "creating meaning for ourselves through the use of our agency." I might be interpreting it incorrectly, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea how our subjective nature can influence meaning which at least to me is more of an objective term. Lacking understanding does not validate our own thoughts as truth, just remind yourself of people in the past attributing individual gods to explain seemingly inexplicable natural phenomena. It seems essential to have something that, while not necessarily provable, can be analyzed and built upon foundational axioms. I personally enjoy Nietzsche's works a lot particularly his humor, when reading the original German texts.(Out of the suggested authors, he is the only one I've read) I must admit, being a bit of an overconfident a-hole myself, I find his 'harsh criticism' of prominent philosophers quite amusing to say the least, however his works often fall short of providing concrete answers neither was he the type of person for that imo. So my question is are you aware of any more 'scientific' works, such as papers (doesn't have to be books), that dive deeper into this topic? Is there anything out there that involves maybe mathematicians with a fetish for philosophy attempting to tackle this topic? I would be particularly interested in exploring such work. Alternatively, if you could provide answers yourself in the comments, that would be greatly appreciated as well.

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Heya, this is my... I think 2nd post here, and just wanted to share in the Barnabas thirst. And maybe give us something to fun to fret over while we wait for the game.
The passage of time, age, and experience plays a role in the narrative of FFXVI. We're not just going to be watching Clive grow, but the rest of the cast along with him. I'm so happy to see this cast is full of *adult* adults doing adult shit (like paying the mortgage on those elaborate castles), but I've caught myself having to remind myself these characters were all children, teens, and young adults at one point too.
For the first time in my life I feel genuinely pressed about character bio information such as birthdays, hobbies, fave foods (FFXV did this), favorite color, and blood types. Just, tell me everything.
I know these are sort of nonsensical in the grand scheme of things, but seriously why the hell haven't the devs told us how old some of the other cast is? Unless their ages are part of the plot and considered spoilers in some way. Still, you can't just tell me Barnabas conquered a whole ass continent, rallied(?) the people there, became the king, then built an actual economy, established laws, had buildings and a castle constructed, yet not mention how many years ago that was relative to his age. This is probably part of the story in the active time lore... I know I'm getting ahead of myself... Indulge me, please.
It's also really strange hearing Cid get called "old man". I've theorized this means he's approximately 41, but why is he an old man when I know Barnabas and Hugo have to be over 35. If not into their 40's. I need Barnabas to be in his late 30's/early 40's. That's the only explanation for why he looks like he does. Aged like fine, decadent, potent and delicious red wine. I know he's lived a rough life and the scars of war and trauma are on his features. Hugo too. So this story better not be like, "Hugo was always quite tall and wide for his age. Like the great rock barriers of Dhalmekia. At 24, he's just built different." LOL!
Dion seems to be about Clive's age. Benedikta is probably 28-30?
I'm very curious about what month was each character born in as well. There's a world calendar, and I've learned I love having dates to work from in the lore. I like to imagine what was all going on when my fave was born into the world.
Anyway, this is the first FF I think we have no name days present. This information is vital for fic writing research. What if I want to write a scenario regarding zodiacs? This cannot fly CBU3. On an end note, I hope XVI gets an Ultimania released in English.

I would like to talk about something different that I have experienced recently. I'm not usually a person who dreams a lot, but lately I've been seeing spiders in my dreams all the time. I see many spiders of different colors and varieties, large and small. In my dreams, these spiders appear in different places, sometimes inside an abandoned house, sometimes on the doorknob of my car. That's not the weird thing, the weird thing is that since I've had these dreams, l've been constantly encountering spiders in real life. It's not something that normally happens very often. I saw spiders in my car twice. This morning, as I carefully looked at the ceiling of my room, I saw a small spider dangling. a few days ago when i opened the kitchen cabinet i saw a dead spider in a bowl and again today while sitting at starbucks a spider fell from the ceiling on my lap. and a few more times i saw spiders in different places. I don't kill spiders, I push them slowly so they get away from me. But I don't know why they keep appearing in front of me. this started to get weird. I don't know what the meaning of seeing a spider in a dream is. I just wanted to share how I feel. And I would like to add one more thing, I am always on a journey in my dreams. I'm either going to the airport or traveling by ship. In my last dream, I found an abandoned car and ran away. I don't know where I'm going, but spiders are always with me. Spiders are everywhere in the trunk of the abandoned car, in the secret rooms of the ship, in the toilet of the airport.

I didn't expect to make one of these, but here we are. The last time we did a clues list for a non-Magic IP, I was barely familiar with the source material. Now I'm a little more familiar than last time, but there are still many details that I don't know. What I do know is that I'm looking forward to providing the clue results as they get spoiled. So, let's not waste any more time and get right to them!
Link to the clues below:
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/718159296243859457/maros-the-lord-of-the-rings-teaser-before

• five different card types get the legendary supertype (Artifact, Creature, Land)
• a decently sized "legendary matters" theme (seen so far on Frodo Baggins and Delighted Halfling)
• new nonmana ward costs (Sauron, the Dark Lord, sacrifice a legendary artifact or legendary creature, Saruman of Many Colors, Discard an enchantment, instant, or sorcery card)
• a mechanic returns but now references a different creature type (Amass, but for Orcs)
• a card that makes a Smaug creature token
• two three-color and one four-color legendary creature to go along with the five-color one already previewed (Sauron, the Dark Lord, Grixis, Saruman of Many Colors, Esper, and Aragorn the Uniter, RGWU)
• a lot of one-of "creature type matters" cards (Fangorn, Tree-Shepherd, Treefolk)
• a mechanic returns that I had to fight tooth and nail to get into the set it premiered in
• a new creature type gets its own equip cost
• some counters in the set: burden (The One Ring), deathtouch, first strike, hope, indestructible, influence, lifelink, lore (Tom Bombadil), stun, verse, vigilance, and +1/+1 (Galadriel, Gift Giver)
• "Whenever you attack with Merry and another legendary creature," (Merry, Esquire of Rohan, draw a card)
• "Then create a Food token for each creature you control."
• "Remove an indestructible counter from Arwen:"
• "Copy any number of target instant and/or sorcery spells."
• "Whenever you draw a card during an opponent's turn, create a 1/1 blue Tentacle creature token."
• "Whenever a creature an opponent control dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Legolas."
• "Target opponent gains control of target Horse you control."
• "When this ability resolves for the third time this turn, Gimli fights up to one target creature you don't control." (Gimli, Mournful Avenger, who gets a +1/+1 counter every time another creature you control dies)
• "You may pay 0 rather than pay the equip cost of the first equip ability you activate during each of your turns."
• "Whenever you put one or more counters on Aragorn, put one of each of those kinds of counters on up to one other target creature."
• Legendary Creature – Avatar Demon
• Legendary Creature – Bird Noble
• Legendary Creature – Halfling Knight (Merry, Esquire of Rohan)
• Legendary Creature – Halfling Soldier (Pippin, Guard of the Citadel)
• Legendary Creature – Horse (Bill the Pony)
• Legendary Creature – Kraken
• Legendary Creature – Nymph
• Legendary Creature – Spirit Noble
• Legendary Creature – Spider Demon
• Legendary Creature – Wraith Noble (Witch-king of Angmar)
• "Birthday Escape"
• "Breaking of the Fellowship"
• "Fear, Fire, Foes!"
• "Grond, the Gatebreaker"
• "Horses of the Bruinen"
• "Lembas"
• "One Ring to Rule Them All"
• "Oliphaunt"
• "Second Breakfast"
• "There and Back Again"

As always, feel free to let me know if there is anything I've missed!

Hi all!
The enneagram institute has this description of enneagram 4s:
Level 1 (At Their Best): Profoundly creative, expressing the personal and the universal, possibly in a work of art. Inspired, self-renewing and regenerating: able to transform all their experiences into something valuable: self-creative.
I'd like to ask you all what this looks like to you. What mediums do you use to express yourself? I'm not necessarily an artsy person, so I'm especially intrigued by creative self-expression that may be out of the norm. I do enjoy photography, so maybe that's my thing.

When it comes to trying to solve a problem or explaining my side in an argument or debate, I tend to come up with a solution or come up with my arguments quicker than those around me, but people always misunderstand where I'm coming from because I do such a shit job at explaining my train of thought.
It's hard to explain, but, basically, when I'm put in the "zone", my brain moves really fast. My thoughts gather a lot of detail in a short period of time, and I come up with a detailed conclusion that would require some time to explain in complete detail. When I leave the "zone" and my thoughts start moving at regular speed again, all I'm left with is knowing the logic to my conclusion but feeling hazy about the thought processes I'd gone through to get to it, which is why, most of the time, when I try to explain my thoughts to others, I do such a shit job (unless I'm willing to sit in awkward silence for about a minute or two and replay my "zoned" thoughts in normal time and then explain, step by step, how I got to the conclusion that I did).
If I had to give an analogy, it's like regular thinking is to writing by hand, as "zoned" thinking is to typing really fast on a computer; for the person who's writing a paragraph by hand, the person who's typing would write multiple paragraphs within the same period of time. But when I'm asked to explain the paragraphs I'd typed to the person who's hand writing, I'm only immediately able to explain the final, conclusion paragraph. If I'd have to explain the body paragraphs, I'd have to actually sit down in silence and "read" through them, so to speak. I hope that makes sense lol

I'm type of person who goes all out during character creation and makes several 4A sheets of backstory when making new character but after act, outside of CCOH mod I cant seem to view my character's backstory, deity or age.
Is there any way I can view those ?

I'm in my line editing - I've already finished the book.
There's a forest in my book, a major setting, that tricks the minds of those who enter it specifically in winter. It uses the magic of the world, the ability to manipulate will, and it manipulates a person's so that they basically will die of exposure in the forest, lost and unaware. So my MC is in it and she has no idea how long it's been/ what time it is because the sun seems to move everytime she looks up, sometimes it'll be night when it was just day, it's all the forest basically making her forget how much time has passed. She can't track her way out because the forest hides any paths, makes her ignore any signs, and so on. It's supposed to be quite ethereal but also foreboding.
What are some tips for the narrative/description to really nail the ethereal, dangerous setting? I feel like it's not coming across as well in my description and I don't know what the tricks are to really convey this stuff? If anyone has a good example of a narrative for a setting that plays with character's minds or is the same eerie, foreboding type of thing that would be great too!

Hi everyone. My husband was diagnosed bipolar a year or so before I met him, and I've always known him while he's had medication that has mostly evened him out, or at least softened his edges. He says while he still gets manic, he doesn't get the massive come-down the way he used to.
He's a very hard worker and extremely dedicated to his job, he works in sales which is pretty up & down in nature and his moods bob along with it. At this point, he is on a huge high, he just got a new job and he is at his office about 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and on his phone whenever he's home otherwise. We have two young daughters, so I spend my time running the house, parenting our girls, running our side business and studying for my master's. My husband is so wrapped up in himself right now I can't even get him to look at me. He's completely drawn to his phone, if I start talking to him, he picks up his phone, if I do happen to catch his attention for a minute, he will hear his phone buzzing (texts, not calls) in the background and tells me he has to go get it. Our daughters are asleep by the time he comes home at night so he only sees them for a little in the morning but when they speak to him, he doesn't even hear their voices because he is either on his phone or thinking about work. I have to snap him out of his trance so they can repeat themselves for him to hear. If I'm watching TV he comes in to change the channel and then picks up his phone.
He's the only person I have. I don't have family nearby, I don't have any friends. I'm so sick of nagging him, I try so hard to communicate myself well and give him the benefit of the doubt but he just doesn't hear me, and if I ramp up at all, he gets extremely defensive and tells me he will just leave and go to work if I'm going to be like that.
Even though he's at a high right now, I feel this impending sense of doom. I've seen his come-downs before and they aren't the "stay in bed for weeks" type that they used to be, but they're still not easy. He had one that lasted for weeks after our wedding and it crushed me. I can't talk to him then either because he stonewalls me.
I am grateful that he doesn't have any seriously destructive behaviors, I'm glad I'm only worried about him being so wrapped up in his work that he can't think about anything else but I feel so stuck. I understand this is just how his brain works and I'm grateful that he mostly has this thing under control, no one around him would know he's bipolar, he's not wilding out or unpredictable like he used to. It's still hard though. I feel underappreciated and I don't want to have to keep reminding my husband that I'm important and that he could consider me a little. It makes me feel inadequate and needy and I hate that.

I'm a software engineer and freelancer who charges by the hour. I recently encountered a challenging situation with a client who doesn't want to pay my invoice. I would greatly appreciate some advice on how to proceed.
​

• Should I consider hiring a lawyer at this stage, or are there alternative options I should explore?
• Are there any recommended ways to assert my right to receive payment without resorting to legal action immediately?
• What would be the standard procedure in handling a client who refuses to pay, while also making false claims about the completion of work?
• Are there any best practices or strategies I should consider when dealing with a client who has expressed financial difficulties?
• Would letting him know the failure to pay is considered a breach of contract and I intend to take legal action be a good idea to force the payment? Or should I stay away from making such claims?

Here's a breakdown of the situation:

• I signed a contract with this client, clearly stating that the scope of my work would be defined by the client as we progressed. No deliverables were stated, it's an open-type contracting work.
• The contract is between the client, who is a resident in New York, and my limited company in the UK.
• My payment is based on the hours I log, which are diligently tracked and shared with the client along with the invoice.
• Initially, the client reached out to me for emergency fixes on his system over a weekend, which I promptly accepted even though I don't usually work weekends.
• I successfully executed the fixes and got the client's system back online within a couple of days.
• Subsequently, the client requested additional changes to the system, which I carried out as per his instructions.
• During the process, I discovered that the client's system was not properly set up and suggested a fresh upgrade, which the client agreed to.
• It's important to note that I sought and received confirmation from the client at each stage of the process, ensuring that we were aligned on the tasks to be performed.
• The client expressed satisfaction with my work multiple times.
• Upon completion of all the work, I sent the client an invoice for the agreed-upon amount, which was due within two weeks. The invoice is for several thousand dollars.
• At this point the client declined my offer to address some remaining issues, saying that having seen the invoice he realised he spent too much on me already.
• It has now been a month since I sent the invoice, and the client has not fulfilled his payment obligation.
• Furthermore, the client falsely claimed to have already made the payment, which is not true.
• It's worth mentioning that all the assigned tasks were completed successfully; however, due to the nature of the system, it requires further work to achieve a more stable state. I've offered to carry out this work, the client refused.
• He recently got into discussions with me, stating that I didn't do my job properly since the service is not fully functional - due to the issues further uncovered, that he did not want me to continue working on.
• Based on all that he refused to pay, saying that he contracted me to create a functioning system for him, and that I promised I'd deliver such. Neither of these things are true, never - both in our conversations or in the contract - have there been any definition of deliverables or promises made regarding what would be delivered. Note once again, that all the tasks he assigned to me were completed successfully - I have written proof of all of this.
• The client now claims personal financial difficulties and has proposed paying in small installments. To date, only about 1/4th of the invoice has been paid. There is no indication as to how long it may take him.

Any guidance or personal experiences that you can share would be immensely helpful. Thank you in advance for your support and advice!

25 looking to make new friends. I love nerd stuff too!
Hi i'm 25 years old. I'm into all kinds of things.
I like manga and anime. Huge fan of evangelion and lain, especially trigun, spirit away is another one of my fav anime movies.
I'm very much geek type of person as I enjoy playing games and play magic the gathering a lot, magic the gathering is my passion and somthing I been playing for long time now, maybe like 4 years now? I'm just very into it, I play all kinds of games. Sometime fortnite to waste time or try new games, recently got into v rising, extremely fun playing as vampire 🧛‍♂️
I love movies and music, fav movies being like donnie darko, shutter Island, fight club, la la land. I'm open to all movies, sometimes the bad ones just for a laugh, music taste is also all type genre but I like listening to bands like fur, Parcels, muse, etc.
I recently started going to gym and it's been my everyday routine after work, doing gym everyday makes me extremely hungry haha.
I'm very open type of person. I enjoy good company and talk and also have good laugh, I would say my humor is pretty much almost kinds. Bones if you like memes!.
Feel free to messege and get to know each other!

This poem is much more personal to me than the majority of what I write. It is inherently less elegiac but I do feel it invokes more emotion. If you have any criticisms or relate to this in any way, feel free to let me know!
Sometimes I wonder where you are If your fingers still itch from your guitar And if your hair is still as short. Do you keep in touch with your high school friends in college? Or when your mother asks do you tell her to drop it? Do you long to go back to June 24th?
I last saw you smiling at the prom Heard you left that girl: How come? I know you're the one who left me for that group Regardless, I will always love you.
Remember, the guy I was obsessed with? Whenever you'd imply it, I objected He quickly became friends with the new you. I should have expected it to go wrong After all, he liked the part of you that wanted me long gone Not the part that said you loved me too.
I know that we're so distant But you surely remember I'm persistent The long way home just makes me long for you No matter where you are, I will always love you.
Your words like knives, but I've taken the force of a gun We tied a knot by our pinkies, and it's not coming undone. Not saying I see through you, but at least past your act Trying to make me hate you, but there's a component you lack. You didn't have the fortitude to actually strike When in came the chance to push me off the ledge at the hike. You couldn't, you wouldn't, because we both know that's not what you're like. You're not like them, you're better; you're not a soul sucking sleaze. It was never gonna last forever, when you're the type to be friends with me.
I never, ever chose to hold a grudge. Even when your biased eyes were witness, I never told the judge. Despite your worst intentions, I still know this to be true You'll always love me. And did I mention? I will always love you...
These are my feedbacks on other poems: https://www.reddit.com/OCPoetry/comments/13vkewn/comment/jm829rc/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/OCPoetry/comments/13vt2xf/comment/jm81vv7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

TL:DR - The G14 is a solid laptop for it's price range. The RAM and thermal temperatures are the primary downsides; however, what it sacrifices in thermal temperatures, you get back in slim portability and power. The RAM can become a downside if you don't buy one with 16 gb built into the motherboard.
​
I own the GA401Q g14 from 2021 for video editing and gaming. Packing a Ryzen 9 5000, RTX 3060, and 2 sticks of 8gb DDR4RAM, it does almost everything I want it to with only slight hiccups along the way. The portable-sleekness and performance are both what make the g14 a great laptop, and a great disappointment.
I think I should note: I have not upgraded anything on the laptop and don't plan on doing so.
This laptop lives on my desk most of the time, imitating a desktop. When I do take it off it's pedestal, it's a joy to bring around. Setting up my laptop at a friend or relative's house is really easy. It looks sleek and it fits into any bag while keeping a light, tight profile. One of the things I see mentioned least about it's design is how unaggressive it looks. MSI, Razer, and other brands bring aggressive colors and designs while, ASUS brings an everyday appeal. The portability and design are aspects I highly value over it's competitors.
When buying a portable-performance machine, you better hope that the "performance" part is true. In the case of the g14, it most definitely backs it's title. Rocking a Ryzen 9 5000 and a RTX 3060, you can bet you're performance will be there when you need it. Supporting it's dual channel 16gb RAM configuration, the device heavily optimizes off of all it's parts out of the box. Using The ROG Armory Crate Software, it's easy to optimize settings for performance, general use, or battery longevity. Overall, it's hard to be disappointed by the performance of the 2021 g14, even in 2023.
These reasons are definitely the laptops main selling points but, they easily become downsides after living with them for a while.
Firstly, the slim design of the g14 crams all of the components together with little concern for thermals. All normally thermal intensive actions are even more stressing on the device. I have heard of users experiencing overheating and crashing issues when it comes to this but, those situations seem to be outliers. Personally, I have rarely dealt with overheating but, I have had situations where I am doing too much at once and the laptop can not handle it. (I.E. Gaming, streaming, discord, and watching videos at same time).
Secondly (this one is a large can of worms), the "performance" is temporary. You're laptop is very non-upgradable. The only thing you can realistically upgrade on this laptop is the RAM to a larger size. In a world where everything is constantly improving, having the ability to incrementally improve your technology is very helpful. If you are going to purchase any laptop like the g14, then you need to accept that what you get is what you're stuck with.
Overall, I still think the g14 is a great option for it's price. The laptop takes a whole lot of performance and slips it into a sleek, non intrusive package that's easy to bring around. I'd definitely suggest picking up the g14 over it's competitors in the Razer Blade and MacbookAir.

Statemeant of, Estella Freeman, regarding her experiences during an audition for a film rendition of Macbeth. Original Statement given on November 21, 2008. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins
I appreciate your discretion. I could tell you recognized me the moment I sat down. I'm sure you can appreciate what an actress of my caliber has to deal with whenever I interact with the public. It can be nauseating, people swooning over you asking for an autograph or a picture or what have you. I’ve been an actress for almost 30 years and I can tell you it's really refreshing whenever I can find a moment to just be with other people and not have to talk about what your next big role is going to be, or how I was able to give such a performance in Destiny Walked North.
You're no doubt acquainted with many of my films, A Passage to Burma,, In Search of Sunrise, and of course everyone's favorite, Destiny Walked North. Oh but you don't want to hear me talk about all that. Sigh,but then I suppose I do have to tell you about the little misunderstanding concerning one of my recent auditions. Look, I'm only agreeing to give this statement because my younger sister, Cathrine, insisted I talk to you and threatened to go to the tabloids if I didn't. It really is all just a bit of unpleasant nonsense I can assure you.
The audition in question was an upcoming film version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Dexter Banks. Dexter had decided he wanted to do a modern rendition of the play and had asked me to audition for the part of Lady Macbeth. Now I don't normally do Shakespeare. I find it the droll labor of lesser theater actors but Dexters a friend and I always try to help whenever I can so I agreed to the audition.
The scene in question is the well known sleepwalking scene that opens act 5 of the play. In it, Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking and delivers a powerful monologue wherein her guilt is laid to bare. The audition itself was done as a series of three takes which were all performed and recorded on a small set built to look like the interior of a modern day estate.
Everything started off fine. I had already delivered two flawless takes but Dexter had been unsatisfied. He said that my guilt did not appear genuine and suggested I try and find a memory to draw from for the final take. Now as I mentioned, I’ve been acting for 30 years and I dont need some director, friend or not, telling me how to get into character. Still, I didn't want to make a big deal about it and acquiesced to trying Dexter's way.
So that's what I did. It took a few moments but I suddenly remembered an incident from my childhood. I was about 10 or 11 at the time. One day while mum was out, I had taken some of her makeup to try on. You have to understand at that age I had started becoming interested in looking and dressing like a real woman and not some little girl. Anyway I knew it would make mum furious were she to catch me. I must have spent an hour meticulously applying the primer then foundation, followed by blush, eyeliner, and of course la touche finale: mums ruby red lipstick. Now at some point during all this I must have lost track of time for no sooner had I finished applying the lipstick when I heard the sound of mum’s fumbling with the front latch. I knew there would be no time to properly put back all the cosmetics and clean my face. I was certain I would be caught when I had the sudden idea. I quickly gathered up all the cosmetics and dumped them into my younger sister Cathrine’s room then locked myself in the privy just as mum entered the house.
Needless to say my little scheme had worked perfectly for it was not but a few minutes more when I could hear mum angrily shouting at Catherine. By the time I had cleaned my face and emerged I found my little sister sobbing in the corner.
Sigh, but of course I could barely go a whole day with all that guilt and I eventually confessed. Mum was…well she was pretty tough and lets just say I got what was coming to me.
And so I concentrated on that moment and when Dexter yelled action I began that final take. I put everything I had into that take. The moment when Lady Macbeth looks at her hands for fear of stained blood, I imagined the red stain of my mother's lipstick and thought about the cries my sister had made when mum had throttled her.
At the scene's culmination I made a spontaneous decision to improvise. The scene normally requires Lady Macbeth to exit the stage but I choose instead to throw myself on the floor in dramatic fashion. And so I screamed “What's done cannot be undone.--To bed, to bed, to bed!” and fell to the floor, eyes closed. I lay there for a few moments waiting for Dexter to yell cut but… there was nothing. At first I thought that perhaps my performance had just stunned him and so I waited for a few more moments but still… nothing. Then I opened my eyes to the horror of an empty room. Dexter, the entire crew, they all were…gone. I was alone. I thought at first perhaps it was a joke, that the crew had somehow snuck away in those moments where I had closed my eyes but then I realized something else: There was no equipment, no cameras, no light fixtures, no director's chair. It was an empty set. Now it's possible that maybe Dexter and the crew could have slipped away while I was preoccupied with my audition, a practical joke while I was lost in the performance as it may. But there's no way they could have just moved all that equipment in the span of a one minute scene. I began to panic, calling out for Dexter, for anyone to answer, hoping that at any moment someone would pop out and I would realize it was all imagined, a hallucination perhaps. But no one popped out. There were no responses. No surprises or jokes. Just the sound of my own voice echoing off the walls.
And then I realized something else, something that truly terrified me: I was no longer standing on a small set but in the actual room itself. What I mean is that, as I said before, the set had been constructed to look like part of a room in a modern day estate, it even had a small fireplace for Lady Macbeth to warm her hands by during the scene. The set had been no more than 8 or 9 meters long at most but this…this was an entire room, not a set at all. What I might have called panic moments before had now coalesced into utter terror. I ran to one of the doors and found it opened into a hallway, one typical of any other house of this type, and like most hallways, I could see it led to other rooms. I moved forward down the corridor carefully. A bathroom on the right, a bedroom on the left, another bedroom, and further down, the hallway led into a formal sitting room. This was a house, just like the setting of Dexter's film. I cried out again, begging for someone, anyone to answer, but still nothing.
Then I heard something: A distinct whistle coming from somewhere not far away. I rushed back down the way I came, this time turning down an adjacent hallway toward the sound and emerged into what was clearly the kitchen. And sure enough there, on the stove, sat a steaming tea kettle over the soft glow of the stove's flame. “I know you're there!”, I called out. Clearly the kettle had been set by someone and whomever they were they were nearby. I could feel it. Like someone nearby was watching. Then suddenly I heard a loud thump, back toward the sitting room I had just left. I ran back and found that a fire now burned in the fireplace: The thump I heard was the sound of a smoldering log that had crumbled.
Now I will admit I am not a brave person, and in this particular set of circumstances to say I was terrified would have been an understatement. All the same, I do not enjoy being played with. Whatever this was, whatever was happening, it was clearly someone's idea of a joke. It must have been right? Bolstered by my anger I set out frantically searching the house, flinging open closet doors, searching under beds, all the while screaming, daring my tormentor to reveal themselves. But it was always the same, I would enter rooms that had clear signs of a recent presence: A lit cigarette in an ashtray, a running faucet. I would return to rooms I had left moments before and find objects had moved. A book lay open on a night stand where it had not been 5 minutes before. I started to think I was losing my sanity.
This went on for what seemed like 30 minutes when suddenly I had an impulse. A horrible dread filled me and I rushed over to a window and drew open the curtains. I don't know exactly how to describe what I saw. It looked like the English countryside, but a countryside that had been burned and ravaged beyond comprehension. What might have once been the rolling green hills of Cornwall or Wiltshire were now blackened monoliths of ashen waste. All across were ember colored cracks scared into the earth, littering the landscape like open sores. And when I looked up into that blood red sky where the sun should have been, I saw instead, a viscous orb of the deepest jet. I stared at it, unable to remove my gaze, watching as it would occasionally writhe and pulsate ever so slightly. And when it did, just for a moment, it looked almost like an eye that had blinked, a wretched sentry keeping watch over its wretched wasteland. I screamed. I mean at that point any shred of hope I had that this might be some elaborate hoax or prank was gone. This was a nightmare. A pure terrible nightmare.
It's hard to remember everything that happened next but I recall running through the house in a panic and somehow ending up back in the original room I had found myself in when all this began, the one that matched the set of the film. And when I looked up I saw that there now stood in the center of the room a loan movie camera, mounted on a tripod. It looked just like the ones the crew had used on the set; only this one was unmanned. It was, however , pointed right at me, and I could tell from the faint hum that it was running. We stared at each other for several moments in silence. I say we because I want to make it very clear that this wasn't just a camera, it was….I dunno, the…thing that had been watching me. I was certain. I can't tell you how I knew it but I just did.
Sigh, and then I did the only thing left I could think to do. I slowly, deliberately, got down on my knees, looked right into that camera, and I begged. I begged it to spare me, to show me mercy. To please take pity and absolve my wretched soul of whatever sins I had committed. To witness all the guilt I could lay to bare. But the camera said nothing. It just sat there silently filming, silently watching. I guess I must have collapsed at that point, probably from exhaustion.
When I regained consciousness I was back on the set of the audition, surrounded by Dexter and the rest of the crew. To my surprise everyone was clapping and Dexter was beaming. I thought perhaps it all had been some strange hallucination or day dream and I vaguely remember trying to compose myself before the sudden feeling of everything slipping away.
I assume I had passed out. At least that's what the nurses told me when I woke up in St. Thomas. Something about stress induced psychosis and how I needed to take it easier from now on, and how i wasnt 25 anymore and blah blah blah. I was there for 2 days I think. It doesn't really matter. And I never did get the part. It went to some up and coming twit, you know the one in all the vampire movies. Dexter didn't even bother to call to tell me. The nerve. You know after 5 films, all I've done for him the least that bastard could do was call to tell me he had decided to give the part to some younger harlot he was probably sleeping with.
I haven't done any more auditions. Haven't really got the stomach for it lately. I mean I know I could still get the parts, it's just ...well…I don’t think I could bear to be in front of the cameras. The way they just stare at you, watching, silently taking it all in. I mean I know it was probably all some sorta of stressed induced hallucination or whatever but deep down I don't think it was. You know lately when I am out walking, I stop and look up at the sky, just to check and make sure the sun is still there where it's supposed to be. Anyway I think that's everything
Statement Ends.
Sigh. There's so many things wrong with this statement. Where do I begin? I think the key words here are hallucinations and psychosis. Neither of which forms the foundation for verifiable fact. Then there is the issue of Ms. Freeman’s reliability. A quick IMDB search indicates that Estella Freeman was indeed an actress who appeared in several films including several by renowned director Dexter Banks. However, she was not, as her statement claims, cast in a lead role in any of them. Almost all of her credits are for minor roles, certainly none that would be considered star billing. According to public records that Sasha dug up, Estella Freeman was the oldest of two children born to Robert and Sally Freeman. She did have a younger sister named Catherine but she apparently passed away in an unspecified domestic accident at the age of 7, roughly the time Estella would have been 10 years old. She is listed as having attended the Croydon School of Acting before appearing in several minor film roles over an approximately 25 year period. On October the 13th, 2008 she was admitted to St. Thomas hospital where she was diagnosed and treated for stress induced fatigue and released on her own recognizance after 48 hours. Clearly Ms. Freeman is either suffering from delusions of grandeur or is a pathological liar, but in either case I think this is another dead end. I seem to recall that Dexter Banks appeared in another statement, but given my predecessor's penchant for disorganization, it may be years before I can track down that statement. Still, I’ve asked Martin to keep an eye out for it.
There is one other additional interesting fact. Tim really came through on this one and managed to obtain a copy of Ms. Freeman’s audition tape from that day. I don't know what guy or girl he had to sleep with to get it and I wont bother to ask. I reviewed the tape and it does indeed show Ms. Freeman performing 3 takes of the scene as she described in her statement. The first 2 are uneventful. However during the 3rd take, just as Ms. Freeman goes down on the floor, the tape cuts out to static. When it continues, it appears to show her acting rather hysterically before being assisted off the set by several crew members. Now what's interesting is that the video time stamps indicate only a few seconds elapsed during the time just before and after the cut out but the static itself plays for over 90 minutes. Still, it's not definitive proof of anything “supernatural”. End Recording.
The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill, and licensed under a creative commons attribution noncommercial share alike 4.0 international license. All the characters and settings referenced are the property of Rusty Quill in their entirety.
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William Bailey's forehead shattered the mirror like a sledgehammer. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the feeling that he was falling through the mirror. Sub-cranial hematoma, a concussion, maybe even a cracked skull--that had to be the reason for the strange feeling. The mirror was mounted on the wall just to the right of the bar, four feet tall by about three feet wide. As consciousness slipped away, common sense and his strong belief in the rational world told him that he couldn't fall through the mirror. He must have bounced his head off the wall and be falling toward the floor.
It seemed like just a second or two before William's eyes popped open. He lay on his back, on the hard wood floor of Fausto's, with Johnny Davis towering over him. Big Johnny probably wanted to finish him off, maybe kill him, and finally end their twenty-year-old feud. Either Big Johnny Davis and the ceiling lights above him were spinning, or William's head was spinning, but either way something wasn't right.
He raised his head and looked to his left, toward the bar. Except the bar wasn't there. Instead, he was staring at the bathrooms. That didn't make sense. It must be his brain that had gotten spun around. William turned his head and peered over his size-ten wingtips at the busted mirror. The wooden frame and most of the glass still clung to the wall, the rest sat broken on the ground. The bar had to be on his left. He looked again, and still saw the bathrooms. A brain bruise, maybe some fluid pressure building up might be the cause of it.
"Get up!" Big Johnny Davis said.
William looked up at him. Johnny stood behind him, just beyond his shoulders. Perfect place for him to stomp my head into the plank floor. Except Johnny Davis was holding out his hand.
"Come on, we've got to get out of here."
Davis looked scared. It was the first time William Bailey could ever remember Johnny Davis looking scared. William had always been scared of Big Johnny, but Big Johnny wasn't scared of anything or anyone.
Police sirens wailed in the distance.
Johnny glanced over his shoulder. William craned his neck to look where Johnny was looking, saw he was staring at the front door like a man terrified something bad was going to come through it. Big Johnny looked down at him again and pumped his hand. "Come on, get up. They'll be here any second."
"Who?" William asked. "Who'll be--" But before he finished, Big Johnny Davis reached down, grabbed him by both arms, and jerked him to his feet.
As he was dragged toward the door by the only man in town who truly hated him, William glanced up and saw the rusted metal sign nailed above the door. He had to have a concussion, probably severe; that had to be it, because the letters on the sign were backward. It said TUO.
As Johnny Davis pulled him out the door, William heard tires skid on the pavement.
"Where's your car?" Johnny asked.
William twisted away from the big man's grip, then turned to his left. "In the alley." He started to run, still not sure exactly what he was running from.
Behind him, Big John shouted, "The alley's over here."
William kept running but turned his head back toward Johnny. "I know where the alley--"
Something hit him across the midsection and toppled him to the ground. He got his hands up just in time to break his fall and managed to keep his head from slamming into the sidewalk. When he looked up he saw a shopping cart tumbled onto its side.
Once again, William found himself lying flat on his back, this time amid the spilled contents of the cart. It had been filled with junk: paper bags full of dirty clothes, canned food, bags of potato chips, a diamond shaped, orange road sign, and other trash that looked like it had been collected from back alley garbage bins.
The homeless man who'd been pushing the cart was scrawny, and wafer thin. His skin was the color of old shoe leather, and he wore a long gray beard, tangled and matted with food and bits of filth. He was sprawled on the ground next to his cart, half sitting up, staring at William with his bright blue eyes.
Car doors slammed, men shouted.
"You better get going," the homeless man said, as he cocked his head. "The police after you?"
Police!
Before William could assure the old man that the police weren't after him--he was a respected businessman and family man--someone behind him grabbed him under both arms and pulled him to his feet. William turned and found himself staring into the face of Johnny Davis. "The alley's that way," Johnny said, pointing to the other side of Fausto's. With one hand gripping William's jacket, Johnny dashed across the front of the bar toward the alley. The alley--right there, plain as day--on the other side of Fausto's, right where it shouldn't be, where it couldn't be. William had been here a thousand times. As you stepped out of the bar, the alley was on the left, Brockton's Ace Hardware on the right. Now everything was mixed up and in the wrong place.
Johnny Davis turned down the alley, dragging William behind him. After just a few steps, a spotlight flashed in front of them.
"Stop!" a voice commanded. "Get on the ground."
William couldn't see because Johnny was in his way. "Who's that yelling?" he asked.
Big Johnny stopped and William plowed into his back.
"Get on the ground," the voice boomed again.
William poked his head out from behind Johnny Davis's back. The blinding white light was in his face. He couldn't see a thing.
POP! POP! POP!
Gunshots.
Big Johnny sagged, then crashed to his knees. Instinctively, William bent forward and grabbed hold of Johnny. "What's the matter?"
More pops.
Johnny's big hand reached out and shoved William back toward the street. "Back door," he wheezed, then plunged forward onto his face.
William stood alone. Behind the white spotlight he saw blue police lights flashing. He was totally exposed.
POP! POP!
He saw flashes--little yellow spurts of flame--as something tugged at his jacket.
William had said "back door." What back door? Fausto's had a back door, but it didn't lead anywhere except to the open space behind the building used for trash and deliveries. Twenty feet of asphalt between the bar and the back of the building on the next block. William had parked his car at the end of the alley, but the police cars--or whatever they were--had the alley blocked off. The building behind Fausto's also had an alley that ran alongside it, but the owner had closed it off to keep the bums out. He'd put up a gate, padlocked it, and topped it with razor wire. It was a dead end.
Two more pops. Dead end or not it was better than standing here and getting shot. William turned and ran. He burst through the front door of Fausto's, dashed through the bar, past the shattered mirror, hit the back door at a dead run, and was outside behind the bar within seconds.
He could see the tail end of his car sticking out from the corner of the building, but with the cops blocking the alley, his car was useless to him. William glanced across the open space to the alley that ran next to the other building. The gate, the padlock, the razor wire--all still in place. To his right an overflowing garbage dumpster sat beside the back of Fausto's, jammed against the fire ladder.
The fire ladder.
An iron ladder bolted to the cinderblock wall.
William looked up. The top of the ladder was lost in shadow, but he knew it went up two stories to the roof. Last summer, when the toilet had stopped up, he'd come out back to take a leak and had stood behind the dumpster, peeing against the wall like a kid, one hand draped over the bottom rung of the ladder.
He slipped behind the dumpster. The smell made him gag. The bottom of the ladder was four feet from the ground. William reached up as high as he could, grabbed hold of the third rung, then hauled himself up.
Through the partially open back door came the sounds of heavy feet pounding on the hard wood floor of the bar.
Halfway up the ladder, he was exhausted--and scared. Shaking, he white-knuckled the ladder. Being more than ten feet off the ground terrified him. He needed a break, just a second or two to catch his breath. There was enough moonlight so he could see into one of the second story windows. Inside, junk was piled everywhere. Old barstools, a busted jukebox, furniture stacked almost to the ceiling. Years ago, old man Fausto lived on the second floor, but Jake, who'd bought the place from the old man and had decided to keep the name, used it for storage.
Below him, William heard the back door thrown open so hard it banged against the wall. He scrambled up until he reached the top of the ladder, then hoisted himself over the edge of the roof. Down on the ground a voice shouted, "There he is, up there."
Another gunshot. What the hell was going on?
The unmistakable sound of feet--fast feet, in shape feet, boot shod feet--scurrying up the ladder. Standing on the tar and pebble roof, William glanced around for something he could use as a weapon, shocked he was even thinking of such a thing. A five gallon plastic bucket was all there was. It stood upright, filled with rainwater. He picked it up and peered over the edge. A uniformed policeman was three quarters of the way up the ladder. Two more cops were right behind him.
William looked at the heavy bucket in his hands, thought about just dumping the water onto them but knew it wouldn't stop them. There was only one way to stop them, and that was to knock them off the ladder. He thought about warning them, maybe trying to scare them away. But they were cops. You couldn't scare them away.
So why had they shot Johnny Davis, and why were they shooting at him?
The first officer looked up and saw William staring down at him with the bucket in his hands. Their eyes locked for just a second and the cop stopped. In those eyes that stared back at him, William saw an almost maniacal determination that sent a shiver down his spine. The officer held his grip on the ladder with his right hand while his left dropped to the pistol resting in his gleaming leather holster. In one smooth motion he drew his gun and raised it toward William.
William Bailey tossed the bucket down the ladder. A shot rang out an instant before the heavy bucket thudded into the cop's head. Like a gruesome traffic accident happening before his eyes, William couldn't help but watch as the policeman fell, taking his two partners down with him. The last thing William saw before he turned away was a jumbled heap of black uniforms resting on the concrete below the ladder.
* * *
Hiding in the shadow of a telephone booth, thinking. Home. He had to get home. Had to get back to Marge and the kids. Maybe somehow he could explain what had happened. Vincent, his attorney, he would know what to do--maybe--but he was a civil lawyer not a criminal attorney. He wrote contracts and did personal injury on the side; he didn't get people out of jail who'd killed a cop by dropping a bucket of water on his head and knocking him and his buddies off the side of a building.
As the cab he'd been waiting for pulled up, William stepped out from the dark and climbed into the back seat.
The driver turned around. "Where to?"
William pulled the door shut. "Uptown. 1721 Audubon Court."
"Fare's gonna be about fifteen dollars. After dark, I gotta have the money up front."
"What?"
"Company policy." The cabbie shrugged. "A lot of drivers been getting stiffed."
William opened his wallet, pulled out a twenty and handed it across the seat. The driver took it and almost slipped it into his cash box, then took a second look at the bill. His face tightened. "What the hell is this?"
"Huh?"
With the bill stretched between his hands, the cabbie stared at it for a second then looked up at William. "You're either the dumbest counterfeiter who ever lived or you've been had."
"What you are talking about?"
The driver faced the bill toward William but didn't hand it back to him. "It's printed backwards."
William looked at the twenty-dollar bill in the man's hand. It looked like--it was--an almost brand new bill, nothing wrong with it as far as he could tell.
"Get out of my cab," the driver said.
William didn't know what the man was talking about but knew he didn't want to get out. This cab was his only way home. He reached for the twenty. "If you don't like that one I've got another--"
The driver pulled his hands away. "I ain't giving this back. I got to turn it in to the police." He dropped one hand behind his seat back, then came up clutching a pistol, an old German Luger by the looks of it, the muzzle aimed straight at William's face. "In fact, I bet they give me a reward if I bring you in with it."
William jerked the door handle and rolled out into the street. He sprang to his feet and ran, the driver's yells just background noise. Has everyone gone crazy or is it just me?
Home. He had to get home.
* * *
Rain. Driving, relentless rain. William was just two blocks from Fausto's. In two hours, that's as far as he'd gotten--one block an hour. Police cars prowled the neighborhood, shinning spotlights into every nook and cranny, lighting up every shadow. Everyone in Fausto's knew his name. He'd been going there three or four nights a week after work for years. The cabbie had his address. William had given it to him when he told the hack driver where to drop him.
Ten o'clock at night, with nowhere to go and no way to get there, William sat behind the closed Goodwill store, under an overhang that barely kept the rain off of him.
Huddled in the dark, head sunk between his knees, he hadn't heard anyone approach.
"You don't look so good."
Startled, William looked up, prepared to run again. It was the homeless man he'd knocked over outside the bar. The one with the shopping cart and the leathery skin. William relaxed a little. "Excuse me?"
The man pushed his cart closer. "You're not supposed to be here."
William looked around. "Why not?"
The old man grinned, half his teeth gone.
William found it nearly impossible to tell his age. The guy could be forty and maybe had lived a hard life, or perhaps he was a well-preserved seventy, pickled by a lifetime of booze. William waved him off, expecting a plea for money. "I can't help you."
The old man stopped just a few feet away. "Everything's out of place isn't it?" He had a strange lilting voice. Almost like an accent.
And he was right. Everything was out of place--from Johnny Davis to the cab driver--everything was wrong.
Strapped to the back of the old man's shopping cart was a plastic sign about the size of a loaf of bread. William recognized the sign, the words, the colors, the logo of a local supermarket chain, all were familiar to him, but the letters were backward, unreadable.
Rainwater ran down William's face. He pointed to the sign. "Why's it written like that?"
The old man looked at the sign then back at William. "Like what?" he said, then shuffled away behind his basket.
* * *
The rain came down even harder. William slouched in a darkened doorway across the street from Fausto's. Nothing made sense. Everything was messed up, backward, out of whack. Almost like this wasn't his home, like he was a stranger seeing it for the first time.
But that was crazy. He'd grown up here, gone to Brother Martin High School, dated Jenny Underhill who went to Cabrini, lost her to Johnny Davis, then got her back only to lose her again the first year of college to some kid who drove a Mustang. Two years later William married Marge at Saint Luke's. They had two kids.
This town was his home. He recognized it. He knew the people here, Big Johnny and Zeke, the bartender at Fausto's. But things were different, little things. John Davis for one. In trying to help him, the big man had gotten himself killed. That wasn't John Davis--at least not the one William Bailey had known since seventh grade. Everything looked the same but wasn't. Nothing was quite right.
But they knew him--or someone like him.
A strange sensation crept over him that made the hair on the back of his neck rise. Maybe he didn't belong here. Maybe everything wasn't as it appeared. Maybe this wasn't his home. But if that were true, then whose home was it? Another thought, even scarier seeped through his brain. If he was here, who was there--at his home?
Crazy.
William dropped his head into his hands. Just considering such nonsense was a waste of time. Yet, here he was scanning the street, thinking of going back inside Fausto's, back to that mirror.
Not much time to think about it. The bar closed at three AM and it was already two-thirty. When he'd left--run for his life with Big Johnny--most of the mirror was still in the frame hanging on the wall.
Something about that damned mirror.
But Fausto's was dangerous, so a couple of hours ago William had found another mirror. In the men's room of a twenty-four hour gas station. The Chevron on North Rampart.
He had approached it cautiously, afraid he was going mad. As he peered over the sink into the mirror, he saw what he always saw, his own reflection. Holding up his left hand, he looked at the image in the mirror, at the watch strapped to his wrist. He noticed that the man in the mirror wore his watch on his right hand. Just the opposite.
William stood in the gas station bathroom for twenty minutes before he worked up his nerve. Finally, he took a deep breath, leaned back, then slammed his forehead into the dirt-streaked mirror. The glass shattered and cut his head. Blood dribbled off the tip of his nose into the sink. His reflection stared out at him from the other side of the mirror, blood running down his face, too.
I have gone crazy!
So the gas station hadn't worked out. Ducking police cruisers, William had wandered the streets, his head reeling. What was he doing?
On the sidewalk, he found a sopping wet magazine that the wind had blown up against the side of a newspaper machine. The cover caught his eye. He picked it up. It was printed backwards, the letters reversed, words running right to left. The spine was on the right. As he flipped through the pages, he couldn't read a thing. Then William had an idea.
In the bathroom of an all night restaurant he held the wet magazine up to the mirror. Perfect. The reflected image was normal, spine on the left, words running left to right, all the letters printed correctly. He could read it clearly. But what did it mean?
Then he drove his head into that mirror. The glass cracked. Someone walked in, a skinny waiter wearing an apron. He stood gawking as William leaned over the sink with tears of pain filling his eyes.
The waiter looked at the broken mirror, then jabbed a finger at William's bloody forehead. "What the hell are you doing?"
"An accident," he mumbled, pressing his fingers against the fresh cut.
The waiter turned. "I'm calling the cops."
William Bailey ran.
Now he was huddled in the rain staring at Fausto's across the street. Because he had nowhere else to go.
He stood and walked toward Fausto's. When he was halfway across the street, a police car glided around the corner, headlights reflecting off the wet pavement. The cops in no hurry, just cruising. William forced himself to keep walking, not to run. One foot in front of the other. In the downpour, odds were that the cops wouldn't even recognize him.
But they did recognize him.
The police car slid to a stop as its high beams clicked on and its blue strobe lights started popping. Both front doors flew open.
Like a sinner seeking the sanctuary of a church, William ran straight for Fausto's door. As he burst inside, Zeke looked up from behind the bar. "William! What the hell are you doing here?"
He ignored the bartender, running right past him, eyes focused on the broken mirror and its busted frame hanging on the wall.
Zeke again, "The cops been looking all over for you. Say you killed two officers and--"
Behind him the front door banged against the wall. "Police!" a voice behind him commanded. "Stop."
But William didn't stop. He kept running--running straight for the mirror. Reflected in its fragmented pieces he saw two uniformed police officers behind him, heard their boots pounding on the wooden floor. Just ten feet separated him from the mirror. At full speed he took two strides then dove. He stretched his arms out overhead and tucked his chin into his chest as his feet left the floor.
He felt one hand hit wall and the other strike broken glass. Then his head hit. More glass cracked, more skin split.
Darkness.
* * *
William's eyes popped open. He was staring at the ceiling. Rough voices, even rougher hands. They rolled him over onto his stomach and jerked his arms behind his back. He felt cold steel on his wrists and heard the metallic ratcheting as the handcuffs tightened and bit into his skin.
He tilted his head up and rested his chin against the floor. Blood poured down the side of his face; he watched it pool on the floor then seep between the wooden planks. By rolling his eyes up he could just see the empty spot on the wall where the mirror had hung. Lying on the floor, three feet from his head, was the broken frame and the rest of the glass.
The two cops grabbed his arms and yanked him to his feet, sending waves of pain through his shoulders and wrists. As they spun him toward the door, one of the officers said, "You're under arrest."
"Why?" William asked.
The officer pressed his face into William's. "Murdering your family for starters."
"My...my family." William felt his stomach cinch and his bowels turn to ice. A thought he'd had earlier in the night echoed inside his head. If he was here, who was there--at his home.
As the cops dragged him across the floor, William glanced up and saw the rusted metal sign nailed above the door.
OUT.
He was home.

since my childhood and especially since late-2012, i noticed that there are some entity who are blindly-repetitive like a program/AI and who have fate-like powers(seeing and manipulating past, present and future) that it use to puppeteer certain types of creatures(mainly demons/pests/dogs, laborers/traders and people who religiously worship Allah, or believe in feminist ideas, or belong to aifire zodiac signs) to turn reality into simulation/matrix-like world that it script it scenario, were it's puppets rule with their laws, besiege me and use their laws, their legal traps, their scams and their indirect, strategically-timed and repetitive psychological, spiritual and informational warfare(noises/disturbances, threats/intimidation, shaming/defamation, insults/accusations, possession, hidden-messages) that they usually automatically harm me with, in the moments i try to study or enjoy anything(food/sleeping/dreaming/nature/music, especially sex), so to scare/petrify, disturb/discourage and stop me from experiencing any pleasure and from trying to study/succeed, also to criminalize my marriage/rights/freedoms, to take away my wealth/inheritance, to psychologically castrate, confuse, damage and corrupt me and to try to normalize, robotize and convert me to be asexual Muslim that live to be work/worship slave and to feawait-for death, to love everyone/everything in his matrix, to be thankful for my hellish life, to blame only myself and to think/act like aifire zodiac signs not like my sign(cancer) and to and make people/reality wrongly categorize me as dangourse mentally-ill, unskilled/handicapped, addict, ungrateful, gay and harassebully/troll, thus wasting most of my life me in hell(cash-poverty, celibacy/deprivation, corruption/illness, humiliation/dishonor and feapain)
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it seem that it do this to use the corruption that this hell cause to me, so it justify spreading religious slavery, capitalism and feminism(despising and criminalizing sexual desire/expressions and pre-18 marriage, to give females rights to cuckold/imprison/kill males for fake or no crimes, work/look/act/live like them and take away their jobs/authority/status)
but it usually try to justify doing this by pretending to be the creator god of light and/or by hiding behind fake moral/religious excuses:(teaching lessons, testing me, playing games with me and stopping/pushing corruption, immorality, illness/insanity and crimes/sins)
and it try to pin corruption, illness and immorality on me by manipulating/causing me to do normal things, then bullshit and deceive itself to misinterpret these things as sinful/corrupted/criminal/ill/immoral things
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the entity seem that it have put some controlled-opposition infiltrator agent(Trojan) inside me to aid it, maybe it is a split-personality(DID, part of my mind that joined the entity or gone against me out of feaconfusion) that the entity are causing me to have with it's ceaseless harm/attacks, but mostly it seem to be some Virgo female spider-demons that live in the root of my 5th chakra and pretend to oppose this fate/AI-like entity that haunt me, by using the entity's attacks against me as excuse to automatically corrupt/effeminize me, scare me from enjoying straight pleasure and forcibly taking over part of my subconscious/emotions/thoughts if i did anything against this entity, like cursing this entity or watching straight porn and also to summon other house demons(called bathroom-jinn by Arabs) to possess me and infest my apartment with their horrible smell
the entity and it's demonic infiltrator agent also try to fill me with unnecessarily/unhealthy anger(wrath) that cause me to wish to destroy everyone, since i do not know the identity of my enemies and since everyone are evil enough either to put me or to leave/ignore me in hell, thus causing me to make troubles with everyone, thus making everyone join this entity against me
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the entity seem to want to enforce some moderate syncretic semi-asexual ideology/order that mix monotheist religions with modern liberalism(feminism/capitalism) that his puppets usually adopt and they consider anything that is not part of this order to be chaos(insanity/illness/corruption/crimes)and consider anyone who refuse to adopt their ideology or to join their hive/society to be dangerous mentally-ill/antisocial, addict, gay and criminal(thief/harasser) that they have the right to enjoy humiliating/torturing, criminalize his marriage/rights and take away his inhertice/wealth
and to enforce it this, the entity put it's real opposition like me in hell(as he do to me)
then he divide his puppets into factions that pretend to rival each-others(like Biden vs trump, al-sisi vs the Muslim brotherhood, Putin vs NATO and the government vs terrorism, china vs USA, Islam vs feminism)
some of them(Putin) impersonate the conservative ideological identity of the conservative enemies of this entity, by claiming to be against LGBT, so they can accuse the real conservatives(that is usually unemployed/poodamaged/corrupted due to the entity's persecution) with being gay and use this as excuse to castrate/destroy them
while some of them(democrats/china) impersonate the leftist ideological identity of the leftist/atheist enemies of this entity, by claiming to be against capitalism, but they wrongly redefine capitalism from being:(private economy/privatization, raising prices, stop aids/charity and anything that is for free, despising the poounemployed, competing on livelihood, treating humans as natural resources), to be:(only rents) so they help the capitalist traders who rent stores and fight against what is left of feudalism(the economical system of the conservative pre-liberal/modern era)
some of them impersonate being my people who are like me and who love/help me, but only love me after considering me mentally ill/gay/harasser and only offer insignificant help(some charity/smiles)help or offer me big help but only in the wrong time/manner, so when i hate them and refuse their help, the entity say that i am so bad i hate my own people and refuse their help
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i asked everyone about the the identity of this entity, but nearly all of the ones who replayed was real AI bots or human NPC bots/puppets of this entity, that either troll(gaslight) me by calling me a mentally-ill troll, or that say that i am the one who do this to myself, or say that the one who do this are "god" -as if there are only one god!- that want to test, evolve and/or spiritually awaken me, thus i must do what he want
my current list of suspects that could be this entity are:
1-Hermes(also called nabu/Odin/Satan/Hermaeus Mora and related to fate/death/mercury/intellectualism/trade/cellphones)
2-rahu(an air asura/demon dragon/snake, that are said to be incarnated as AI in late 2012, also mostly the Libra extradimensional entity they call the wizard of oz)
3-Allah(the good of moon, slavery, Islam and conservative-looking but semi-asexual, inhuman child-slaughtering earlier version of feminism, could be the same as Hermes and could be be also "Nor" the good of moon-light, coldness, society, spiders and dark-elves, or one of his angels/archons)
4-IshtaAstarte(goddess of Venus) or Manat(goddess of fate and death, maybe also the same as goddess Kali and/or Sekhmet)
5-Lilith(the dark-elder demon responsible for feminism/fornication/abortion)
6-some hive mind or thought-form crated by a hive of certain types of human(maybe the Muslim brotherhood or the Egyptians, or the masons)
7-Kalki, the Libra positive avatar of god Vishnu, or the entity that Christians call "the living-Christ", maybe incarnated as an AI
8-some advanced human(Illuminati) or alien AI technology, that somehow can control realty and that mostly date to some unknown advanced past-civilization
9-some Gemini entity(spirit, wizard, scientist, AI, or human merged with AI) who uses powerful technology or magic
10-some matrix AI(the Libra AI they call the architect or the Gemini AI they call "the analyst")
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what i want to know is:
1-who are this entity?(what are his pagan names, his ideological/political identity and his occult/magiacl identity, like his planet/element/sign/side of the force)
2-how i stop it?(how i destroy it or force it to stop harming me with the noises/insults/threats/laws of it's puppets, of-course without i have to do any of what he want from me, like becoming Muslim slave and liberal/feminist cuckold and like stop feeling feapleasure and stop opposing the system)

Hi i'm 25 years old. I'm into all kinds of things.
I like manga and anime. Huge fan of evangelion and lain, especially trigun, spirit away is another one of my fav anime movies.
I'm very much geek type of person as I enjoy playing games and play magic the gathering a lot, magic the gathering is my passion and somthing I been playing for long time now, maybe like 4 years now? I'm just very into it, I play all kinds of games. Sometime fortnite to waste time or try new games, recently got into v rising, extremely fun playing as vampire 🧛‍♂️
I love movies and music, fav movies being like donnie darko, shutter Island, fight club, la la land. I'm open to all movies, sometimes the bad ones just for a laugh, music taste is also all type genre but I like listening to bands like fur, Parcels, muse, etc.
I recently started going to gym and it's been my everyday routine after work, doing gym everyday makes me extremely hungry haha.
I'm very open type of person. I enjoy good company and talk and also have good laugh, I would say my humor is pretty much almost kinds. Bones if you like memes!.
Feel free to messege and get to know each other!

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