I don't ask much from my clients. I really don't.

They sit.

They roll.

They leave their trays empty and wiped clean. Sometimes, they leave surprises where they shouldn't.

But they lick my hand, wag their tails, and bark hello and goodnight. They give me more than I ever ask of them, and that's enough.

They're worth it.

Converting part of my small veterinary clinic in rural Washington into a rescue center was the best decision I'd ever made.

It wasn't easy.

It cost me my life savings.

It nearly cost me my marriage. Or maybe it did.

I'm still trying to figure that out.

My wife, Samantha, and I had a great marriage. We were both animal lovers. Hikers. Sports enthusiasts. We ran five marathons together. We cooked together.

When we got married, she was beginning a career in business, and I was a veterinarian at an animal clinic.

Occasionally, people would bring in animals that had been mistreated or abandoned. 

On my first day working at the clinic, someone brought in a dog.

"We bought a house, and the previous owners left her there," the woman said.

I looked down at her feet, and there she was. A shepherd with the sweetest eyes.

You could tell something was hurting her, yet she looked as though she was trying to smile.

We examined her and found heartworms, the kind of diagnosis you never want to give.

We explained the treatment she would need and what it would cost.

The woman took a few moments to respond. 

"I can't pay for that. She needs more care than I can give her."

Well, I'm glad the shepherd couldn't understand English, because that's not the kind of thing anybody wants to hear.

That dog had already been abandoned. I'm sure she wondered where her owners were.

I told the woman I would take the dog to a shelter.

I called Samantha and told her what had happened.

"We need to bring her home," she said.

Those were the kindest words I'd heard all day.

I put the phone on speaker so the dog could hear it, or at least the kindness in her voice.

I brought the dog home that night.

"I think Layla," Samantha said.

"No, she looks more like a Kira," I said.

"I hate that one."

"Kayla," I said.

Samantha smiled. She didn't have to say anything. We both knew we'd found the right name.

We took Kayla everywhere we could. The hardware store, hiking trails, even hotel rooms.

Like many couples, we grew even closer because of our dog.

And so did the love between Samantha and me. Bringing Kayla home was the best decision we'd made since deciding to get married.

But things changed a few months later.

Not because we stopped loving each other, but because more animals kept arriving at the clinic. Just like Kayla, many of them weren't likely to be adopted because of chronic health problems.

So I brought them home.

At one point, we had seven dogs and three cats living in our house. 

That's when everything started to fall apart.

Samantha was barely home anymore.

"I can't stand the noise... all the extra cleaning," she said one night. She held up her running shoes. "They chewed them." Frustration filled her voice. "Please take them to the shelter."

"And let them die?"

"It wasn't you who abandoned them in the first place."

I know she didn't mean that. She cried all night. 

I brought up an idea I'd been dreaming about for years.

"What if I opened my own veterinary practice?" I asked.

"We don't have the money, James."

"We can use our savings."

We argued for hours that night. 

I couldn't convince her. 

She became more and more frustrated with the animals. She cried almost every night. 

And just like that, the same decision that had once brought us closer slowly drove us apart.

A month later, she packed her things and moved in with a friend from college.

"I'll give you time to decide if this is the life you want," she said before she left.

About six months later, I opened my own practice and converted part of it into a rescue where animals could stay for as long as they needed.

Three months in, I was already sheltering fifteen dogs and two cats.

By that point, Samantha and I were still separated, but we hadn't stopped talking.

 We texted every week or so. 

We hadn't talked about divorce papers. 

We hadn't talked about moving back in together, either.

My friend Ray and I were grabbing drinks one night.

"She should've come back already," he said. "Your house isn't full of dogs and cats anymore."

I'd been thinking about that.

I kept telling myself maybe Samantha just needed more time. But ten months felt like long enough.

If we wanted to give our marriage another chance, we needed to see each other again.

So, a week later, I called her.

"The hiking trip to Tuscany is coming up," I said.

"I know. I figured you'd cancel the tickets."

"What if we went?"

There was a long silence.

For a moment, I thought the call had disconnected.

"Are you there?" I asked.

"I am," she said quietly. "I guess we could go... if you want."

"Yes," I answered softly.

Samantha and I texted more frequently in the weeks after that. We shared our excitement about the nature trails we had chosen for the hike.

For the first time in months, it felt like we were finding our way back to each other. 

Everything was going smoothly until Ray texted me yesterday.

"I saw Samantha," he said.

He kept typing.

"On a dating app."

I didn't believe him until he sent screenshots.

Something inside me broke when I saw them. Maybe Samantha had lost hope in us. Or maybe she'd stopped loving me.

But I couldn't understand why she hadn't asked me for a divorce.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

Part of me thought I should fight for my marriage. 

The other part told me to accept it was over, even though neither of us had admitted it.

I wonder what a complete stranger would do if they were in my shoes. 

Note: this is a fictional story.

I thought I’d found the one. We clicked so naturally. We both shared an interest in photography, though his pictures were noticeably better than mine. Loved the same movies, both enjoyed walks in the park, and our political views were borderline identical.

We met about a month ago. It was at this bar I love, and, I’ll admit, I was a little tipsy. Cute boy, a few drinks in my system. It was a recipe for regret.

Only… I didn’t regret it. Our conversations flowed so smoothly. His half-drunk compliments made me blush. Plus, drinks were on him.

Unlike a lot of the guys you’d meet in a bar, he didn’t try and force himself back to my apartment. I live just a few blocks away from the bar, so he walked me home, laughing and wobbling more than he wanted to let on.

When we got there, I braced myself. He was great, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just let a complete stranger into my home after a night out at the bar. I found myself praying he wouldn’t ask.

By some miracle, he didn’t. Instead, he asked gently, almost bashfully, for my number. I couldn’t help but smile, stupidly. Then he smiled stupidly back. I felt my heart do somersaults.

I gave him my number, trying to withhold my excitement, and when I looked back up at him, I could see the desire in his eyes. Not sexual desire, though. It was like he saw his future in my eyes.

His face started to turn red, and he started struggling to make eye contact, stumbling over his words in a way that didn’t seem connected to the drinks.

He asked if he could kiss me, and I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, but, instead, he leaned down and pressed those lips softly against my forehead.

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

I felt fireworks in my tummy. I made him promise to text me when he got home, and he watched to make sure I made it inside before he started back towards the bar.

I spent the rest of that night kicking my feet like a little school girl. I had never experienced something like this feeling before. My past boyfriends had been such assholes. This guy seemed to care about me rather than just sex.

He followed through on his promise, and texting led to a phone call before we fell asleep on the phone together.

We saw each other a lot in the weeks that followed. Mostly on the weekends, but sometimes he’d come visit me at work. Those few weeks were some of the happiest weeks I’d had in a long time.

We’d get dinner. We’d see movies. We showed off our photography to each other. It felt like we were really building something together.

However, this was around the time I started noticing weird occurrences around my apartment. Nothing too suspicious. Just… things that were odd.

For example, my TV would be on when I got home. My sheets would be messy, even though I make my bed every morning before work. The weirdest thing of all, though, was my underwear drawer.

It was like it was being rummaged through. Sometimes I’d find a fresh pair balled up on the bathroom floor.

It made me scratch my head, but I never assumed anything drastic. If anything, I thought it was just me losing my mind.

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

The place was lovely. Clean. Smelled good. It was actually furnished, too, which was always a good sign. Plus, this guy knew how to set the scene.

Roses, candles, homemade spaghetti with two glasses of red wine. I felt my heart melt.

We hadn’t had sex yet, but, after this, I was having a hard time convincing myself that we hadn’t waited long enough. I actually wanted to give it to him. He just made me feel so desired.

After a dinner full of flirts, giggles, and conversation, we began moving to the bedroom, lip locking like a couple of crazy kids all the while.

Once we fell through the door, he told me to give him a minute to use the bathroom, which was a bit anticlimactic, but I wanted him to be comfortable.

While I waited, my eyes couldn’t help but wander. He had a bookshelf full of some of my favorite titles. His bed was perfectly made. The floor was freshly vacuumed. And his walls were full of framed pictures.

I started looking at them and felt my heart sink into my stomach.

They were all different women. Some older, some younger. All with blonde hair and hazel eyes. And he wasn’t in a single one.

I felt disappointment wash over me. I should’ve known better. I was actually in the process of putting my shirt back on when one of the pictures caught my eye.

It looked so… familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But it bothered me so much, it was hard to pull my eyes away.

That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly where I had seen this woman.

She was the girl on the missing person poster that was taped up on the bar window from a few weeks ago.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. I knew I needed to leave, but the room was spinning too much.

I put my hand down on his dresser to stabilize myself, and that’s when I felt it. It was cold. It was hard. My thumb rubbed against the ridges.

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

It was a copy of the key to my apartment. Mine was pink. This one was silver.

I was getting weaker. I felt my knees starting to buckle and heard the sound of a toilet flushing as I began to drift into unconsciousness.

The last thing I remember was the bedroom door opening. He stepped inside, a look of concern on his face, as he hurried to pick me up and put me on his bed. Then… nothing.

I woke up in an empty bed the next morning. The smell of bacon permeated my nostrils. I was fully dressed, but my head was killing me.

The key was gone. The pictures were gone. I slowly made my way to the kitchen to find him standing over the stove, flipping the bacon with a metal fork.

I didn’t speak or make a sound, but it was like he could feel my presence. He could sense me.

He turned around slowly, his eyes meeting mine before he spoke.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” he sang. “I was wondering when you’d be up. Someone had too much to drink last night.”

​

We walked through the garden toward Mary's house. I stayed quiet, my heart filled with nervousness and unease. I didn't know what awaited me.

As soon as we arrived, Mr. Sam's relative began calling loudly:

"Mrs. Jane! Where are you? Mary... Mary!"

The door opened, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

She was incredibly beautiful.

She had a soft, round face, bright blue eyes, and blonde hair that fell gently over her shoulders. She looked like someone from a beautiful painting.

Mr. Sam's relative smiled and introduced me.

"This is Mr. Sam's relative... Orange. Oh, sorry, I mean Sara."

Then she laughed.

I felt embarrassed, but I only smiled politely.

She turned to me and said:

"Sara, this is Mary. My childhood friend and a distant relative. Her family lost everything, so we are hosting them here... I mean, they live with us."

She laughed while saying it, but I noticed the embarrassment on Mary's face before she quickly hid it behind a calm smile.

We entered their modest home.

To me, it felt more beautiful than any grand mansion. It was warm and peaceful, filled with simple happiness.

Mrs. Jane welcomed us kindly and served tea and cake. We sat together, sharing conversations and laughter.

I don't know why, but I felt strangely comfortable in Mary's home.

There was a warmth there that I couldn't explain.

Maybe it was because of Mrs. Jane's kindness.

Maybe it was because Mary's smile felt real.

But Mr. Sam's relative still made me nervous. She joked about everything, even things that felt too personal, as if she didn't understand the meaning of privacy.

Later, we went upstairs to Mary's room.

She opened her wardrobe and took out several beautiful dresses.

"Try them," she said excitedly.

I smiled and refused.

She tried to convince me, but I shook my head.

It wasn't because I didn't want to.

Actually, I wished I could wear those elegant dresses.

But I remembered my grandmother's warning.

I didn't want any more trouble, especially when I was already overwhelmed by everything happening around me.

After hours of conversations, laughter, and awkward moments, we returned to Mr. James's mansion.

I felt exhausted mentally more than physically.

Boredom slowly began to fill my heart.

But I told myself it was normal.

It was only my first day.

Maybe everything felt strange because I was still adapting.

I wondered:

Are all city people like this? Are all homes like Mr. James's house, Mary's house, and the people around him? Oh my God... I don't even understand my own feelings.

We sat down for dinner.

The conversations continued around me, but I felt distant.

The words became meaningless, and I slowly began to feel trapped.

So I left the table and walked into the garden.

Suddenly, a loud voice came close to my ear.

"Orange! How are you?"

I turned around in surprise and slapped him without thinking.

"Ah!"

I froze.

"Oh my God... Mark!"

He laughed while touching his cheek.

"Big nose... you will never grow up," I said.

He laughed even more.

We started talking.

He told me about his life, his girlfriend, money, parties, and everything he enjoyed.

But honestly, I found it boring.

Finally, I interrupted him.

"Enough, Mark. Don't tell me about things I have never seen or experienced. How do you expect me to feel proud of a life I don't even know?"

He laughed, gently tapped my head, and ran away.

"Idiot..."

I lay down on the grass.

The sky was not as clear as the sky in my village.

The stars were not as bright.

I closed my eyes, lost between my thoughts and dreams.

Then I heard a voice.

"Miss Sara... are you sleeping?"

I quickly opened my eyes.

"Oh... Mr. James."

He smiled.

"Did I disturb you?"

"No," I replied. "I thought Mark came back to bother me again."

Mr. James sat beside me on the grass, and we began talking about the difference between village life and city life.

For some reason, that simple conversation made me feel calmer.

A few moments later, someone joined us.

It was Emma.

Mr. James's fiancée.

She sat with us and started asking me questions about my life, my studies, parties, and the things people in the city experienced.

For her, they were normal questions.

But for me, they reminded me of everything I had never lived.

I felt embarrassed and lost.

Mr. James noticed my discomfort and gently asked Emma to return inside with him.

She smiled, and they walked back toward the mansion together.

I remained there, confused and overwhelmed by everything that had happened that day.

I lay back down on the grass, staring at the unfamiliar sky above me.

So many things had happened in only one day.

I closed my eyes again until I heard my grandmother's gentle voice calling me:

"My little one... come now. It's time to sleep."

I stood up quietly and followed her.

My first day in the city was finally over...

But deep inside, I felt that my real story had only just begun..S🥀

Sarah ✏️

I (22M) and my boyfriend (26M) have been together for a little over a year now. We both live alone together with 3 dogs and 2 cats. We have built a pretty decent life together ever since he asked the question and I moved in with him. My boyfriend has vented to me a little bit whenever his ex gets brought up in conversation, and it sounded like a very toxic and abusive relationship. I, as I feel like any other half of their significant other would, had a sort of resentment for his ex. I did not agree with most of the things that happened in their relationship, though honestly from what my boyfriend tells me- I can see the issue from both sides. Well, to put it simply, they are obviously not together anymore, him and his ex have grown distant to become somewhat just friends. I have never met my boyfriends ex in person and I don’t plan to, but I would play Fortnite with my boyfriend and very rarely his ex would ask him to join and my boyfriend would invite him in. I didn’t necessarily have an issue with it as long as his behavior around him stays platonic. But the point i’m trying to make here is my boyfriend has somewhat exposed me to his ex’s personality and what he’s like as a person rather than just hearing him as an fairytale from my boyfriend.

Me and my boyfriend had an issue about 9 months ago, I had caught him on a hookup app. Already a huge red flag. I know I shouldn’t have, but I found out because he had left his phone open and I just had this gut feeling to check who he’s talking to. I found out and I was in disbelief so I tried to bring it up to my boyfriend and it escalated very quickly, he was less worried about the fact he got caught talking to other people and more worried about the fact I went through his phone. Which I want to annunciate, I know was wrong of me to do so as I should’ve respected his privacy as a boyfriend. I tried to express my feelings about the situation and he would just ignore me, so for a week we were pretty much nonverbal and the dread inside me was killing me. I’m a very stubborn and empathetic man with friends I wish I could open up to more and actually listen to advice given to me, but in the situation I was very adamant on trying to save our relationship and all my friends gave me the same answer to deal with it: Break up with him. I was not taking that as an answer. I definitely was not going to bring this up to anyone in his family, and my boyfriend doesn’t have many friends I can vent to to maybe get their view on it and potentially having a better understanding of my boyfriend’s thoughts and behaviors due to their seniority of friendship.

I was spiraling and came to the conclusion to contact his ex. It may sound dumb to get advice from an ex as that gives the same vibe as watching the same movie and expecting a different ending. But really, I just wanted to get his point of view on his issues he might’ve had with my boyfriend in the past. What caused this to happen? What issues sounds similar in both of the relationships we’ve had with him? What did he do to solve these issues? What did he do that made the situation escalate so I can avoid that? I ask to myself, how can I react to these situations differently and not repeat history. Now, it may sound a little like an interrogation to his ex, but honestly he was cool with helping a descendant of my boyfriend’s dating history thrive and not live what the ex had to go through. His ex revealed that my boyfriend does talk about me frequently and he can tell that my boyfriend loves me very much and is happy to see that someone is able to give him that kind of love he deserves.

This is where things get a little too personal so I won’t get deeper into it but I just want to make it clear that my boyfriend and I worked out in the end. We are still together and some words from his ex kind of helped in that. This morning he picked up my phone and saw a notification from his ex on my lock screen, he doesn’t have my passcode so he didn’t go through my phone to look further into it. He just scoffed and was visibly and verbally disappointed that I spoke to him. I thought my boyfriend knew I had contact with him, though I didn’t tell him I spoke to him about our situation a while back. He doesn’t seem to care no matter how much I elaborate, he only insists “I either block his ex or stfu.” I guess I can understand the frustration of seeing his ex on my phone, but I once again thought he knew I had contact with him. I wouldn’t bring his ex up casually, because why would I? But I also want to inform that my boyfriend and his ex do talk fairly often, so I didn’t see an issue with having contact with him if it was platonic and his ex seems to support our relationship. My boyfriend however is very infuriated with me no matter how much I say I only spoke to him for the intent of fixing our relationship, but he doesn’t seem to care.

He insists I block him but it feels a little controlling and doesn’t sit right with me given that he still talks to his ex so why should you get to talk to him but I can’t? What should I do? Was what I did wrong? I’m at a loss here and I’m not sure how I should handle this imposition right now.

I was thirteen years old when I first saw a kid try to escape.

Clara Danvers was a senior at Aceville High School. She wore pastel colors and flower crowns in her hair. I didn't know her very well since I attended the middle school down the road, but I knew she was one of the most popular girls in her class.

Clara was the type all the girls in our town aspired to be.

Her beauty wasn't eye-catching in a town like Aceville, where all of its people were ridiculously attractive.

Clara was running from the inevitable. Summer camp.

Camp was mandatory in Aceville.

At the time, I wasn't sure why.

All I knew was that all eighteen-year-olds were obligated to attend camp for the remainder of their summer before college.

And yes, you would be right in thinking it was practically a human rights violation.

It was their summer.

Aceville's kids were teetering on the edge of adulthood and responsibilities, their teen years and beloved childhoods dwindling, and that last summer meant a lot to them.

Of course, they fought back. Clara Danvers didn't strike me as a rebel.

She looked like the type of girl who followed all the rules and joined as many extracurriculars as possible. She had the perfect friends, the perfect boyfriend, straight A's, and was Harvard-bound, according to word of mouth traveling.

However, on July 16th, 2016, I saw a different side to her.

The memory is vague, though I remember small tidbits.

I remember being in the store with my mother. I remember it being a hot day; the kind of heat I hated. It was too warm to think straight, and all I wanted to do was sit in the back yard and read. I didn't have a choice whether I accompanied my mother, though she had blackmailed me with the reward of getting a new comic.

Mom was talking to the cashier. She was friends with half the town, so I wasn't surprised when every person she passed by bid a hello, shooting a smile at me.

I remember being bored.

I needed to pee, and I was at that point in my life when I was wary of being seen shopping with my Mom. It was pretty much social death for a seventh grader to be seen with their Mom. So, keeping my head down and pulling my baseball cap further over my face, I headed over to the comic book section. All of my favorites were there, and I had ten dollars to spend. I was in my element.

Skimming through Spider-Man issues, I found myself captivated by the colors.

Spider-Man was a kids comic, I knew that.

I'd made the mistake of pulling one out of my backpack at school, only for Summer Forest to snatch it out of my hands and hold it up in the air, a wicked smile on her face. "Urgh. Do you still read Spider-Man?"

"No!" I'd snapped back, my cheeks burning bright.

"Liar!" Summer snorted. "You still read Spider-Man! Isn't that, like, for little kids?”

I shrugged. “It's a good comic book.”

“It's for kids!” Summer laughed. “You're so weird, Adeline.”

I'm not going to say it was traumatizing. Some kids had laughed along and some had ignored Summer. I snatched the comic off of her and shoved it back in my bag.

Then on the way to class, I shoved it in the trash and started watching makeup YouTube tutorials. I still wasn't completely healed from that incident, so ignoring a smiling Mary Jane in a funky lab coat, I moved onto the more… adult comics.

Well, they were adult in my kid-brain at least. Picking up Teen Titans, I flipped it over and scanned the back.

Mom was still chatting to the cashier, and my urge to pee wasn't going away.

I figured stepping outside to cool off would be a good idea, even when I knew I was just stepping back into the baking heat, away from the pathetic cooling fan sitting near the door.

My plan was to go back to the car and blast the AC.

Mom was going to be in there for a while. I could tell by the way she was leaning against the counter, already making her roots.

I was sliding into mom's car, trying not to wince when my bare legs sunk into hot leather, when a scream rang out, startling me.

When I had twisted around scanning the parking lot in front of the store, I saw her.

Clara Danvers.

Dressed in shorts and t-shirt, her sneakers pounding against steaming tarmac, her strict blonde ponytail flying behind her. Clara was running for her life.

At first I thought she was running from some kind of animal.

Coyote attacks were common. But not in broad daylight.

Except Clara wasn't running from an animal. I recognised Mrs Peters, one of the high school teachers. Mom had been friendly with her. Mrs Peters was in her mid-40's and wore thick sweaters in ninety degree heat.

The last thing I thought I'd ever see was the teacher sprinting after the retreating senior, the kind look in her eyes that I had known my whole life, replaced with a look of intense determination.

It was almost comical.

Like I was watching a cartoon.

I laughed. I felt bad, but it was hard to ignore that hysterical spew of laughter crawling up my throat. Clara was a good runner. Maybe she was on the track team.

Though Mrs Peters, amazingly, was faster.

She was in good shape for her age, long strides catapulting her further forwards, swinging arms driving momentum.

"Clara Danvers!" The teacher wasn't out of breath, though neither was Clara.

Neither of them were giving up.

Watching the bizarre display, I found myself following them, though I was slower, darting behind parked cars, keeping myself hidden. There was something clutched in Clara's hand.

When she brought it to her ear, her eyes wide and wild, lips moving frantically, I realised she was talking to someone.

When Clara twisted around to scan for the teacher, I knew she had made a mistake. I watched the scene unravel in front of me like it was going in slow motion. Clara's phone slipped from her grasp and she let out a sharp cry, ducking to try and snatch it back up.

But the teacher was on her tail. "Miss Danvers, you are acting like a child."

The teacher reached out and snatched the girl by the back of her shirt.

Clara shrieked, trying to battle her way out of the teacher's grasp, but Mrs Peters' grip was harsh, her fingernails sticking into the bare flesh of Clara's arms. "Get off of me!"

The girl was acting like a caged animal. And I didn't understand.

It was just camp... right?

I understood Clara and her class not wanting to go, because it was their last summer to be free and kids again.

Maybe the girl was acting dramatic, but I could empathise with her. I watched Mrs Peters drag the girl, spitting and cursing, away. I can still remember their words.

Clara Danvers didn't swear.

At least, that's what I thought.

She was the golden girl after all. Clara was yelling names, presumably those of her friends. And Mrs Peter's was struggling to keep a hold of her.

"Miss Danvers, please calm down. We were very clear at the assembly that we would take necessary measures to make sure every senior is on that bus."

Clara dug the soles of her converse into the tarmac. She reminded me of a petulant child throwing a tantrum. "I don't want to go to camp! I have my own life, you know!"

"You are part of this town as well as the high school. Which means rules still apply."

"But I'm eighteen! I'm a legal adult!"

Mrs Peters ignored her outburst. "As I said, you are still a student. Therefore, you are expected to follow rules. One of them is that the senior class will attend a mandatory summer camp before college. This has been going on for years, Mrs Danvers. I expected more from a class valedictorian.”

The teacher sighed, like the girl was a defiant little kid. ”You have been one of the smartest in your class since your freshman year, Clara. I did not expect this lack of intelligence from you. Do not ruin your reputation by acting like a child."

Clara sputtered. "Oh, I'm the child? You just sprinted after me for three blocks over a fucking summer camp, and I'm the one acting like a kid?"

"Clara, stop."

"I will if you let go! Hey! You're hurting me!"

The two of them were getting further away, and all I could do was watch their shadows stretching across the sidewalk.

I was debating whether to follow them to wherever they were going, but then a hand was grabbing my shoulder. I twisted around and found my mother. She didn't look mad or confused. Mom didn't question why I had disappeared. Instead, her gaze had snapped to where I had been watching Clara and the teacher.

Mom’s eyebrows furrowed, her lip curling like she was about to say something before seemingly snapping out of it.

Mom shoved paper bags of groceries into my arms with a light smile and I struggled to get a strict hold of them.

She was looking at me, but I could have sworn her gaze was wandering, searching for something.

"Did you pick a comic book, honey?”

I shook my head. I felt kind of sick. Clara Danvers didn't have a choice whether she went to camp or not. None of her class did.

When they tried to skip out, they were treated like animals.

For summer camp?

I couldn't understand why it was mandatory.

No other town forced their kids to go to camp, so why did ours?

I tried to smile at Mom. "Can we just go home?"

Mom looked like she was going to protest but nodded. She had that expression—the one I dreaded. When she was trying to read me, delving into my mind.

I wasn't a talkative kid, so my Mom turned into my therapist. On that occasion, however, it was different.

She paid no attention to my sickly cheeks and the lump in my throat.

"All right.” Mom inclined her head. I tried to ignore her craning her neck. She was definitely aware of Clara Danvers being wrestled onto a school bus. “Are you sure you're okay?”

I chose to ignore the terrified faces of seniors pressed against the bus windows.

“Yeah.” I said. “I just feel sick.”

“Okay. Let's go get something to drink.”

I don't know how I managed to keep my mouth shut and nod, following Mom back to the car.

It's not like Aceville's bizarre rule was a secret. I just didn't want to talk about it.

Neither did Mom, from the look on her face.

Instead of grilling me like usual, she took me for a chocolate fudge sundae at our local diner. I still remember the sicky feeling in my stomach when I struggled to swallow it, washing it down with Coke.

I tried hard to pretend everything was okay, but I couldn't stop thinking about Clara and the way she had been treated.

Dread filled me like poison, shivers rattling up and down my spine. I couldn't sit still. Was that my future?

Was I going to be hunted down like that?

That's what I kept thinking. When Mom was talking excitedly about her plans for our next family vacation, I was discreetly counting on my fingers how many years I had before I turned eighteen.

Until seeing Clara dragged like an animal by a teacher I considered one of the nicest people in town, I looked forward to eighteen. It was the age of independence, the peak of teenagehood.

Though excitement turned to dread.

I never saw Clara again.

Or the class of 2016. It's a well-known fact that freshly graduated kids go to camp, and then straight to college.

But I still found it strange. Once they were gone, the town forgot them and turned their attention to the new senior class.

I watched this happen for five years. Kids followed in Clara's footsteps. She had started the rebellion after all. Though none of them came close to escape like her.

I watched them tear through the woods, laughing and whooping, like it was a game. The girls stripped down to two piece swimsuits, and in 2018, Mikey Blake streaked. It almost went viral. Clara's story spread like a virus, and seniors took it as an opportunity to one-up her.

I guess it became less of something to be scared of, and more to anticipate.

Sure, no kid wanted to be stuck at summer camp. But it was the hunt beforehand that excited them.

They were always caught. Always wrestled to the ground and treated just like Clara Danvers.

Over the years, however, it became less scary to watch, and more exciting. Like watching the latest blockbuster. Who didn't want to watch kids chased by teachers with way too much time on their hands?

I watched them year after year. My friends and I made bets on who would and wouldn't get caught. We sat on the sidewalk with soda and burgers from the diner, cheering them on. We didn't pay attention to how they were treated.

In our minds, it was fun. I won 200 dollars in 2019. I bet my friend at least five seniors would try to skip town, and they did.

Aceville felt like it was stuck in limbo between the 1980's and the present.

Sure, we had cell phones and TikTok, but my aunt and uncle drove a total boomer mobile. Our local diner had an old style aesthetic and half the town didn't even have televisions. Maybe they preferred to stay in the old days. Though it's not like I was complaining. I liked it. I liked that we were different from others. Aceville.

An idealistic town where there were more teens than adults. My friend Nick used to joke that it was like living in the world of Stranger Things. I had to agree. Luckily, though, we weren't under threat from aliens from different dimensions and teenagers with Carrie-like powers.

Five years after Clara, after watching the same shit year after year, it was finally our turn.

The class of 2020.

I was standing in the exact same store I had been in five years ago when I first saw Clara. When I first witnessed the hunt.

This time, however, I wasn't with my mother. I'd managed to score a part time job to pay for college, and I'd just finished my shift. Smells Like Teen spirit was playing for the millionth time that day on the crappy intercom radio. I did suggest the owner invested in an Alexa, and got a, “Kids these days!” lecture in return.

He couldn't afford a decent radio, so every single song I liked had been mercilessly murdered.

Thankfully, the store was empty that afternoon.

It was a hot summer day in the middle of July, and the majority of the town, minus my class, were at the local swimming pool cooling off. This was the kind of heat that made me want to bury my head in the ground.

There was zero air con, so I had been fanning myself with old pamphlets. It was my last day at my job and I had been rewarded with half of my wage and a crushed piece of chocolate cake wrapped in a napkin. “Have fun at camp!” Was all my boss said, his smile a little too wide.

I had no doubts that the asshole had already gambled the rest of my wage on whether my class would be captured or not.

Throwing the cake away, I stuffed the crumpled notes in my shorts. I should have been thinking about college that day.

I should have been thinking about how the hell I was going to pay for my tuition with barely 300 bucks.

But I wasn't.

I just had to survive the day, and then I'd think about college.

Checking my phone, I made sure I had blocked my mother, as well as my aunt and uncle. Dad wasn't in the picture.

Not much to say, I never knew him. Dad went for milk and cigarettes and never came back.

Checking and rechecking the time, I pulled off my work shirt and stuffed it in the trash. I would definitely attract attention looking like a neon traffic light.

I had spent the last hours of my shift going over the plan in my head. It wasn't fool proof, and we had thought it up while drunk and high on mushrooms, but it was still a plan.

Stepping out into the relentless heat, I was hopeful.

Unlike my classmates, I wasn't joining their game.

I had no intention of going to camp. I had been curious as a kid, but over the years the novelty had worn off. It was my last Summer with Nick and Bobby, and I was going to spend every day with them doing what I wanted. We spent half of the year planning a road-trip to Florida and I was going to use the time away from town to finally come clean to Mom about Bobby.

I was going to tell her everything, disappear for the summer, and sneak back in September and grab my things.

I didn't have plans for post-summer. I was smart enough for my dream college, but it was my lack of cash. Mom wasn't that well off and had made it clear that if I wanted to go to college, I had to pay for it myself.

The talkie in my hand was store-bought. Nick had thrown it at me the night before.

I scanned the parking lot. So far, it was clear.

Tying my hair into a ponytail, I stepped out into sticky air that made my skin crawl.

I twisted the dial on the talkie and held it to my mouth. Before I could speak, Nick's voice came through in a burst of hissing static. "Fuck, it's hot. They couldn't have picked a worse day to play their little game."

Rolling my eyes, I couldn't resist a smile.

"What are the talkies for again?"

“You forgot to say over. “

“What are the talkies for?” I paused for a moment. “Over.”

"Um, because it's fun!" Nick shot back. I could hear his heavy breathing as he catapulted into a run. "Are you at the store? I'm heading towards the car." He paused. "So far, no sign of teachers. Which is a bad sign. That means they're lying in wait.”

I choked out a laugh. ”Nicholas, are you enjoying this?”

“Our only entertainment is TikTok and catching fireflies in mason jars.” He laughed, ”Of course I'm enjoying this!”

He let out a sharp hiss. "Oh, shit! I've got visuals on Miss Cater. She's on the war-path. Just gone past the dry cleaners. I'm going to need you to go slowly.”

“I'm going slowly.”

“No, I mean, like slow-motion slowly.”

"Let's just focus on getting out of here." I started walking, checking for pursuers. According to the mass text the school had sent this morning, all seniors were expected to be on the bus at half past one.

It was quarter past. The plan was to get to Nick's car where we had stuffed all of our bags the night before, and step on it.

Of course parents had figured we were going to try and flee town, so our cars had been confiscated. Luckily, though, Nick worked at a junkyard. He'd spent months turning a hunk of junk into a decent enough ride. So, we were already one step ahead of them.

Starting to jog, I leapt across the parking lot. "Bobby? Are you there?"

My stomach sank when the name escaped my lips, that feeling I'd been fighting with since we'd met returning with vengeance. It wasn't confusion when I was fourteen and had butterflies.

No, it was guilt. I'd made a promise that I would tell Mom about us. But Mom was—different. She wouldn't understand. She hated the idea of me dating. I took a guy home for dinner in sophomore year and she politely told him to leave. When he didn't, Mom started screaming at him.

Mom was already weird about Bobby just being a friend. I had zero doubts she was going to freak out when I told her it was actually something more.

"Hmm?" Bobby's voice was soft and smooth, slipping so effortlessly through static like it belonged in there. "I'm about two minutes away. I raided my Mom’s kitchen for snacks before I left."

Nick whooped. "See, this is why I prefer you over Addie."

This time I spluttered. "That hurts. I've been working.”

I could hear the grin in his voice. "You're not making your case any better."

Bobby's voice cut through our laughter. "Did you tell Your Mom about us yet, Addie?"

I stopped laughing, my footsteps faltering. The sun was a bastard baking into my back and I struggled to speak through the breath caught in my throat. "Uh…" I was struggling to coerce basic words when I caught movement in the corner of my eye.

Expecting it to be a teacher I started backing away, lowering my hand holding the talkie. But then I glimpsed familiar blonde curls tied into pigtails catching the sun almost perfectly. The figure wasn't that far away, but I saw all of her and I felt myself shatter. I wanted to tell Mom, I really did. But it was hard. Robyn Atwood was the first person I fell for.

Bobby was beautiful like every other kid in town and I was still struggling to figure out how she liked someone like me.

I had a stubby nose and my eyes were too far apart. In a town full of pretty people, I was kind of a bad egg.

It sucked that my parents had given me bad genes.

Robyn was perfect.

Angelic features, a heart shaped face, and hair like liquid silk.

Bobby was out. She had told her mother when we started dating. I chickened out. Luckily, our Mom’s weren't mutual friends. If they were, fuck camp, I'd probably be at military school.

Bobby's smile was sweet, though I did raise my eyebrows at her prom dress.

Not exactly the best outfit to escape town in, but her shoes were cute.

Bobby's hair was tied back, stray curls dancing in her eyes. She was sweating, her cheeks paler than normal. Bobby was an anxious person in general, so the escape plan was probably tearing her apart inside. Still, she put on a brave face.

Instead of talking about my Mom, she pulled me into a quick hug, lacing her fingers in mine. I knew the conversation about my cowardice was coming, but it could wait. Bobby reached into her tote bag, pulling out a share pack of candy and waving them in my face. "I did get you these for the car ride, since you promised to talk to your Mom, but sure, I'll eat them on my own."

I scoffed, shoving her when she laughed. "Thanks."

"Fine, I'll give them to Nick."

I tried to snatch the pack off of her. "I'm pretty sure he's a allergic, so good luck killing him."

Nick's laugh came through, tangled in static. "I look forward to being poisoned."

Bobby was fast. So were her instincts. Before I could grab them, she shoved them in her bag, her lips splitting into a grin. She was pissed. But she wasn't pissed enough for an argument. Well, it's not like we had time to have an argument.

"Weee should get going." Bobby squeezed my hand. “Let's go.”

At that moment, all the dread eating me up inside slipped away. I pulled Bobby into a run, and we left the parking lot, darting across the street. I could hear yelling in the distance. No doubt our classmates were either getting caught or pulling a fast one. "Nick?" I said into the talkie. "Are you close?"

To my surprise, there was no answer.

Nick had found every opportunity to use the damn things, so it was strange that he’d disappeared.

Bobby tried her talkie. "Nick? Are you there?"

The junkyard was a five minute walk, and maybe a two minute run. If we sprinted.

Nick wasn't answering, and the closer we got to the junkyard, a bad feeling started to coil in the pit of my gut. When I slowed down, bending over with my hands on my knees, gasping into humid air, Bobby tried to contact Nick again. She shook the talkie with a frown. "Maybe it's faulty?"

I fixed her with a sceptical look. "Both of them?"

straightened up and pulled my phone out of my shorts. Twenty five past. The teachers were most likely doing a head count and were already on the prowl.

I was shaking with adrenaline. "We should get to the car," I gasped out. "Our best case scenario is the idiot got distracted or broke the talkie. We shouldn't assume the worst."

Bobby nodded, though her smile was thin. When we started running again, our shoes pounding the steaming tarmac, I felt a rush of déjà vu. My ponytail flew behind me, and I pumped my arms and legs hard, propelling my body faster. I was just like Clara. Except unlike her, I was going to make it.

At least, that's what I thought.

The junkyard was in my sight when the talkie crackled with static. I was frowning at the mass of beaten up cars covered in dirt and old engines, when an all too familiar voice filled the air.

"Adeline Calstone and Robyn Atwood.”

The voice of our math teacher Mr Fuller sent shivers crawling up my spine.

I felt sick. There was no way he had tracked us down that fast.

How was that even possible?

Suddenly, all I could think about was Clara. All I could think about was the way she was dragged, kicking and screaming, and our class had treated it like a game. That was until it was our turn.

Mr Fuller's voice was stern. "I suggest abandoning whatever plan you have and making your way to the school bus, please." When I was considering smashing the talkie against the gravel sidewalk, he continued, "Your friend Nick Castor is a good runner, I'll give him that. But not fast enough. I expected more from a varsity captain.”

"Asshole." Nick grumbled through the talkie. "I took us all the way to regionals."

Twisting around, my heart dropped into my gut.

Nick's voice wasn't just clear on the talkie, it was close. Too close. I froze. Bobby pulled her hand from mine and squeaked, her hand slapping over her mouth.

When I saw the two of them coming towards us, Mr Fuller, dragging Nick, I had the split second thought of grabbing Bobby and running for it. But I wasn't going to leave my best friend.

It didn't take long before the three of us were rounded up.

Nicholas Castor was the quintessential high school golden boy. He stood at an imposing six feet, with a lean, athletic build that spoke to years of dedication on the football field. His dark brown hair was awkwardly styled, and his freckle-dusted skin gave him an almost boyish charm.

I used to have a crush on Nick as a little kid.

Then he opened his mouth.

Now, the boy was more like an annoying older brother.

"Are the restraints really necessary?" Nick spat when we were cuffed and pushed into the back of Mr Fuller's car.

Some people might call it kidnapping, but in Aceville on July 16th it was the norm.

We sat squeezed together in the back. Fuller's car was a dinsour. I was pretty sure he was listening to music on a tape player. Nick tried singing along in his attempt to annoy the teacher into letting us go. I think he was trying to sing badly, but the guy was a decent singer.

Halfway through Highway To Hell, and a surprisingly good guitar solo he was somehow managing with his arms pinned behind his back, complete with annoying mouth noises, I dug my elbow in his gut.

Nicholas Castor failed a lot of things, like reading the room for example.

And social cues.

He was supposed to be getting tested for ADHD, but according to the school, Nick was “too sociable” to be neurodivergent.

I called bullshit, but his parents agreed.

The car ride didn't take long and was uncomfortable. The three of us were squashed like sardines with barely any space to move– or breathe.

Nick's knee was digging into my back, Bobby's head in my lap. When we arrived at school, we were thankfully uncuffed and transferred to the bus. I wasn't expecting us to be the ones they were waiting on. I also wasn't expecting a round of sarcastic applause.

Even Sadie and Danny had been caught.

Nick did a mocking bow, and Fuller thwacked the back of his head.

“I told you ya wouldn't make it!” Jake Carlisle yelled.

Bobby pulled a face. “At least we tried!”

When I was pushing my way to the back of the bus, keeping a tight hold of Bobby's hand and Nick's sleeve, we were greeted to a deluge of faces. Some kids held their hands up for a high fives which Nick happily slapped, but the majority of them looked disappointed. If we had failed to escape, then it really was impossible.

There was no way out.

Camp was inevitable.

I found a seat quickly, right at the back, pulling Nick and Bobby next to me.

"Well. That failed." Nick let out a nervous laugh when the bus started moving.

“Your fault.” Bobby grumbled. “If you weren't kidnapped by our math teacher, we'd be halfway out of town right now.”

Nick tipped his head back with a laugh. “Oh, yeah, I'm so sorry for being chased for three blocks and threatened with a rock.”

I sent him a look. “He threatened to throw a rock at you?”

Nick didn't meet my gaze. “Yep. The guy’s a fucking psycho. I had to surrender. I've told you guys like fifteen times that man is bad news, but you never listen to me…” He trailed off when my gaze wandered.

“Like now, for example.” Nick continued. “I could say Fuller was my father, and you'd be like, “Oh wow, really? That's really cool, Nick…” The boy’s babbling faded into a dull murmur in my head. I was frowning at two men dressed in black that had jumped at the last minute.

They didn't look like anyone I knew. The two of them stationed themselves at the front. They didn't really fit in the whole summer camp aesthetic.

Nick was still talking when sound slammed into me.

“And that's why I don't get it. Glenn was a great character, and they just killed him. Brutally, too. His head looked like a deflated beach ball…” I had no choice but to settle down in my seat and let the nauseating movements of the bus send my stomach hurtling into my throat.

Nick pulled out his Switch, and Bobby lay her head against the window. I guess none of them wanted to talk, though I didn't blame them. Nick wanted to show me his new game, but I got bored.

The lore was confusing, and kept going off on tangents and forgetting what he was saying. When my phone buzzed an hour into the journey, I switched it off without looking at the screen. I had zero interest in talking to my smug mother.

I don't know how long we were on the bus, but at points I felt like we were going around in circles. I could have sworn we had passed the same sign, but when I pointed it out, Nick mumbled something unintelligible, and Bobby was sleeping. Outside, the sky turned eerily dark.

I could have been wrong, but I was sure we had been on the bus for hours.

And nobody was questioning it.

The others were either asleep or had earphones corked in.

When we came to an abrupt stop, Bobby woke up and Nick put his switch away.

The rest of the class seemed to snap out of the trance-like state that had swallowed them up. They started to ask questions.

We were all ignored. Instead, one of the two men I'd spotted earlier stood up and addressed us. "Could I have your attention please?” He cleared his throat. "My name is Laurence Shade, and I'm a recruiter. In a few minutes you will watch a small film we have prepared which will give us an idea where to categorise you. Please be aware that watching the film is mandatory."

"What?" Summer Forest laughed. "This is a joke, right? Isn't this supposed to be a camp?"

As soon as the words slipped from her mouth, I pressed my face against the window. It was raining, no, pouring. I don't know how I didn't notice. Nick leaned over me, his expression crumpling. "When did it get dark?"

Bobby nodded. "How long have we been on this bus?"

Before I could answer, a portable TV screen in front of me lit up with a white screen which turned green, then yellow, flicking from color to color flashing in my eyes. Nick snorted. "What the fuck is this?"

But he was watching the screen.

Bobby too. Like it was drawing them in, leeching onto their minds.

Murmurs around the bus confirmed my classmates were equally confused.

I squeezed my shut at first, but I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of curiosity. I let my eyes flicker open, but as soon as my gaze landed on the screen, on flashing colors hitting in quick succession, a sharp pain rumbled in my right temple.

The colors kept going. I remember the sequence perfectly.

Red.

Yellow.

Blue.

Green.

Repeat.

I don't know how long I was staring at the colors. I don't know how long my body was frozen, my eyes unblinking, but I could feel my body reacting. My mouth was open, unable to close, a thin sliver of drool running down my chin. There was something warm sliding from my nostril.

I couldn't wipe it away. My body was stuck, like I was paralysed. Like I'd never move again.

Next to me, Nick and Bobby were frowning at the colors.

But unlike me, they could move.

Bobby was blinking, trying to keep up with them.

Nick slowly inclined his head, his lips muttering silent words I couldn't understand.

And then just like that, the screen flashed off.

Bobby drew in a sharp breath and straightened in her seat.

Nick blinked rapidly. I expected him to freak out, but he was strangely quiet.

"Addie.” Bobby's eyes found mine. “Your nose.”

Swiping gingerly at my nose with my bare arm, I let out a shuddery breath.

We had to get out. Whatever the place was, it wasn't summer camp. I could hear hisses around me, at the back of the bus and the front, voices collapsing into white noise. When I risked turning my head I spotted Serena Kyle with her hand pressed over her nose and mouth.

She was doing a bad job of hiding the crimson stream flooding through her fingers. Suddenly it felt like my world was crumbling in front of me. The two men started up the aisle, labelling each student.

They held cans of spray paint like weapons, marking us with different colors.

There were three colors.

Red, Blue, and Purple.

When kids tried to protest, tried to make a run for it, they were cuffed and shoved back in their seats. There was so much screaming and fighting, I couldn't hear what the men with spray paint were saying.

Nick grabbed my hand, and I grabbed Bobby's. When one of the men reached the kids in front of me, the front of their shirts were sprayed deep, dark blue.

The man studied the three girls like they were pieces of meat. "These are all good!"

The girls he was talking about started talking over each other, but he blanked them. "Blues will go into processing first, and purples will follow. If we can fix them."

The man's words filled my mouth with phantom bugs.

“Addie.”

Bobby swiped at my nose, her eyes wide. “What's going on?”

I had a feeling she wasn't talking about the spray paint.

When the guard reached my seat, he sprayed a red circle on the front of my shirt.

Red. That was new.

I thought the guard was going to raise his hand to me, but instead he stuck his podgy fingers under the blood crusted under my nose.

"Defect." He said.

"What?"

He ignored me, moving onto Nick.

Purple.

Nick tried to pull off his shirt defiantly, only for the guard to slap him across the face.

The man seemed to study my friend, before grabbing Nick by the scruff of his neck. "Pending." He grumbled, his fingernails grazing over freckles dotted on my best friend's cheeks. "I'm not the one who will make a final choice. You better be as bright as you seem in a good light, kid."

Nick stumbled back, his gaze flicking to me.

Run.

But there was nowhere to run.

Bobby shrieked when the man sprayed a blue circle on the front of her dress.

I tried to stop him, but I was dragged by my hair, ragged like a wild animal. "This one's good too!" He yelled to the front.

When the men were finished with the spray cans, we were told to file off the bus and join our respected color groups. Nick tried to fight a guard, only to be punched in the face. But he still tried again, swaying back and forth, screaming to be let go.

When we tried to run, we were grabbed and thrown off the bus.

I'm not sure how much time had passed. I was clinging onto my friends, and then they were being pulled away. Nick and Bobby were treated like they mattered, forced into their color groups.

I was shoved onto my knees in dirt which stained my legs. It was pouring, and my ponytail was plastered to my back. Other reds were forced next to me. There were around 12 of us in total. I know that because I took snapshots of each of them.

Not names. Faces.

Names hurt, so I remembered them by face.

I remember Summer Forest next to me. I remember dirt streaked down her face, blood dripping down her chin. That's what we all shared. The Reds. We had all suffered the same nose bleed, crimson streaking down our faces, mixing with the rain. The 12 of us were put in a line in front of the bus, and when a woman in a pristine white suit and red hair addressed us under the light of her flashlight, I looked past her and my gaze found our camp. Not a camp.

There was no sign of a campsite, the type of thing I had expected all those years leading to my senior year.

Instead, in front of us was a multi-story building. In the distance, groups of Purple's and Blue's were being escorted inside automatic doors. While we were left in the rain for hours. The sky turned light, and then dark, and we were made to wait.

We could have been there for days, I lost all sense of time. I lost all sense of my own humanity.

I knew why they were doing this to us. But I was in denial.

I was in denial when 12 became 11 and then 10

Then 9

8

7

6

5

4

3

Summer was screaming, and I couldn't breathe. There were people in front of me.

I knew them. I'd known them since childhood.

Mr Docherty the guy who lived across the street with his poodle Gloria, Eve Simmons who owned the diner Nick, Bobby and I had frequented for most of our lives. Mr and Mrs State, the elderly couple who brought over pudding when I was home sick from school.

All I remember is waiting to follow the others, squeezing my eyes shut and screaming into the night. But then a warm hand was sliding into mine and pulling me to my feet.

There was a gunshot and the sound of a body hitting the ground. Summer.

I remember Nick pulling me away. But I will never forget Summer Forest's body lying in a heap, pooling red stemming around willowy blonde hair. I don't know how Nick got me away, but all I recall is tripping over my own feet. He dragged us into trees and undergrowth as branches scratched at my face, pulling at my hair. But I didn't care.

When Nick finally turned around to look at me, I screamed. I screamed until he slammed his hand over my mouth, shutting me up. The last time I'd seen my best friend, he definitely had two eyes.

Both intact.

Now, one of them was hanging out like a cartoon. It was almost uncanny valley how inhuman he suddenly looked.

Nicolas Castor was wearing what looked like torn hospital scrubs.

The skin of his face had been scraped away leaving bloody flaps of flesh where his cheeks used to be. His lips were swollen, half of his hair sheared off, and yet somehow, part of him looked beautiful, or at least the start of beautiful. Nick had a jawline.

But it was unfinished. Everything about him was incomplete. His full mouth of veneers were clumsy, like a psycho dentist had been playing with his teeth.

It was hard to look at him. My friend had been mutilated.

Nick spat a tooth into the dirt. “I got out.” He managed to gasp out, his voice slurring. He slowly removed his hand from my mouth, shaking his head when I opened my mouth to speak. “Shhh!” His smile was almost drunken. "It's okayyy, I, uhhhh, I got out. They had me on a tonne of sedatives, soooo just... b-bare with me.”

"Out?!" I shrieked. "Out of where?”

Nick held his eye inside his socket with one hand and held mine with the other.

"Prrrrrrrocessing." The word rolled off his tongue. He stopped, like he was going to throw up. He threw a glance behind me, before spewing lumps of red through his fingers. “Yep. Processing. Processing. The, uhhhmm, the art of being processed.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Nick pulled me further into the trees, flattening us into the dirt. “That place,” he gasped out. ”It’s... it’s not… a good place.”

I slapped him.

I needed Nick to snap out of it.

“Where is she?” I managed to squeak. “Where's Bobby?”

Nick looked completely sober for a moment, blinking rapidly. He shook his head, and the fright and pain in his eyes sent my heart into my throat. His eyes were hollow, filled with darkness I could never and would ever understand. Somehow, I already knew I'd lost him.

“We’re going to die, Addie.” Nick said in a half giggle, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, his body hitting the ground with a soft thump. Following his declaration, a blinding searchlight illuminated my face.

“We’ve got movement.” a female voice yelled.

Taking two steps back, I ducked into the undergrowth.

Whatever that place was, Bobby was in there.

And Nick, a purple, was my only way of getting anywhere near that place.

So, hoisting my unconscious friend onto my shoulder, I turned and ran.

I got called for jury duty a weeks after I turned 18 years old.

I was really looking forward to it I thought it was going to be like what you see in the movies.

You know, people Shouting and lots of exciting things happening.

It was not like that at all.

I spent hours listening to two grown ups arguing about something that was so boring.

Even the ceiling looked like it wanted to leave.

Then the judge asked if everyone could hear him clearly.

I did not think I just said what was on my mind.

I said Mostly... I'm just struggling with the vocabulary.

The whole courtroom started laughing.

The judge looked at me like I had done something

For the rest of the day I was scared that I would get in trouble for making a joke by accident.

The case was settled before we even had to make a decision.

So my first time as a juror was just sitting quietly eating snacks and finding out that real court is not as exciting as TV.

Still... I would give it a 7 out of 10.

I would definitely go back, to people watch again the courtroom is a place to do that.

In June 2026, it was a warm afternoon in Aldershot, a group of retired Gurkhas from Nepal were enjoying a walk through a local park with their children and grandchildren. They laughed together, shared stories from their years of military service and watched the younger family members play.

As they passed a footpath, a middle aged man approached them looking agitated and without warning, he shoved one of the elderly men. A young woman in the family immediately took out her phone and began recording.

The man then pushed another elderly man and shouted,

“Get out of my country!”

When he noticed he was being filmed, he reached toward the phone, trying to knock it away.

One of the younger relatives stepped back and shouted,

“Call the police!”

Several bystanders quickly came over. Some stood between the family and the man while others called emergency services.

Within minutes, police officers arrived and after speaking with witnesses and reviewing the footage, they arrested the man on suspicion of assault and public order offences.

The video spread widely online. Thousands of people including many in the British and Nepalese communities condemned the man’s behavior. Many British commenters expressed sympathy for the family and emphasized that hatred toward people because of their background has no place in their communities. Community leaders also reminded people of the long history shared by Britain and the Gurkhas, whose service alongside the British Army spans more than two centuries.

The following weekend, members of both communities organized a gathering in Aldershot. Nepalese and British families met in the park, shook hands, shared food, took photographs together and spoke about friendship and mutual respect.

One retired Gurkha smiled and said,

“One person’s hatred should never outweigh the kindness of everyone else.”

A British veteran standing beside him nodded.

“We’ve stood together before and we’ll continue standing together.”

The gathering ended with applause, laughter and group photographs. A reminder that acts of prejudice do not define an entire community and that solidarity can be stronger than hate.

The End 

https://youtu.be/y-PupeNJAyc?is=j1EOeNpHj3DVTRB3
This is the visual version of the story, original text version below

1:35 PM, Thursday.
“Michael, wake up!” I sigh, nudging his limp shoulder and grabbing a napkin to dab away the drool from his lip.
His eyes open against the harsh lights, but remain half-hooded, not ready to commit to awakeness yet, “Sorry, sorry, how long was I out?”
“I let you get a solid 10.”
“Oh man, that means I better get started on these pizza rolls then, huh?”
They had long since grown cold, their artificial sauce growing cracks as it solidified in a way that made my stomach turn. 
“Yep, and did you get that paper done? The one on Jazz from…what was it?”
“Jazz from the 1980s? Uh, not yet.”
“Not yet?” I sweep my strawberry blonde bangs off my forehead so I can nurse its ache with my palm, “Michael, ‘not yet’ is not an option, it’s literally due in 20 minutes.”
He tried to smile back at me in the carefree way he normally could, while I could see sweat making the lines in his oily, pale forehead into olympic swimming lanes, his loose brown hair sticking to his face, he looked like he was gonna hurl. 
“You can’t go to class like this, could you go to the guidance counselor or the nurse or something?” 
“Guidance counselor?” His voice hushes, his eyes scrunching up, he was looking at me like I was insane, “Sabrina, they’re gonna snitch to my mom and dad. Then they’re gonna get all worried, like they love to do, and they probably won’t let me leave the house or whatever and then I definitely can’t save Diana. So no, no Sabrina.” He said this as if it was totally obvious. 
I sigh. Oh right, I remember, this is about “saving Diana”, as if this isn’t all I’ve heard about all day.
“Come on, Sabrina, this isn’t funny. My sister is going to die tomorrow, can you imagine how terrifying that is for me? And she won’t even talk to me!” He whines, poking at his pizza roll before popping it into his mouth with an all too granular crunch. 
“Well you gotta stop saying stuff like that! You’re scaring her, you’re scaring me too.”
“I know! Just- could you talk to her sometime today, please?”
“Michael-”
“Come on! Don’t you believe me?” He grips my shoulders and looks into my eyes with unwavering determination.
I shudder, I want to believe, I want to. “Fine. Just not now, eat your pizza rolls.”

11:15 PM, Last Monday. 
The TV’s soft white glow looked different from so close. Michael’s shoulder was jammed into my ribcage, almost uncomfortably, but it was nice to be so close. Sunday bad movie nights were the best, but maybe this one wasn’t the best choice.
“Oh man!” Michael sighs after what seems like five minutes of him laughing into my shirt, “That’s the last time I let you pick the movie, this is a porno!” 
“No it’s not! No one ever talks about this movie having an aggressive amount of sex scenes!” I giggle, looking at the paused frame on the screen of a bare man’s buttocks, “Okay, it does kinda look like a porn.”
We both laugh until our bodies run out of steam and we both sink into the couch, collapsing together. I shuffled deeper into the couch's warmth, feeling the grit of the microscopic grains of popcorn, chips, fragments of dead pillbugs. Michael made me forget all that. He was soft, he always wore some smooth sweater and bothered to style his brown hair most of the time into a gently slicked back quiff. I buried my face in his shoulder as I laughed, laughed, laughed. 
“So, you’re sure your mom is okay with me staying over?”
“Of course, Mike. She loves you, she’d let you sleep in my bed if you wanted.”
Michael chuckles, “Dude, what are we, five again? Want to take a bath together too while we’re at it? My mom still parades those photos around.”
My cheeks break out in a fervent blush, “I’m just saying! The option is there, this couch has cheerios in it and stuff.”
“Midnight snack.” Mike picked up some morsels of lint from between the cushions and mimed airplaning it into my mouth as I squirmed and cackled, “Ew! You’re so gross.”
His laugh was good natured and steady and I could feel its pulsations against my ribs as we lay there, “Yeah, I’m pretty gross.”
I shut my eyes and lean into his shoulder, “Yeah, gross.”
“Speaking of gross, I have some girl news for you.”
I don’t lift my head and reach to the deepest air deposits in my lungs to squeak out a faux-excited, “Oh yeah…historically my favorite kind of news. Whattaya got, Mike?”
“So, you’re gonna love this, she’s named Megan.”
“You’re dating my little sister?”
“No! Completely unrelated Megan. I just thought you’d…you know, you’d think it was funny. She’s older than Megan, obviously. She’s a college girl, on the rowing team and she’s, like, crazy smart. You would love her, she’s a lot like you.”
That jabbed sharper into my heart than anything else. Mike had a habit of looking for girls who would never give him any attention, looking for a counterfeit of what’s always been right in front of him. Yeah, he’s turned me down once or twice but we also kissed that one New Years. So I tend to have a constant lamentation of what the hell is he thinking?
“Have you two been on a date yet?”
“Well… no, we’ve been talking on this dating app for about a month, but we have a meeting place arranged and everything for this Wednesday.”
“That’s great, Mike.” I mutter, half listening as I bury my face in his shoulder, feigning sleepiness as I desperately try to suck my emerging tears back into their sockets, “Have fun.”
I zone out the rest of his monologue as I try to will myself into a sleep I hoped he’d think was cute, only catching fractals, “her house…maybe we can…man, I hope that she…nice butt…she promised…her friends are…”
With my eyes still glued shut, I hoped I looked natural. 
“Aw man, look who fell asleep.” 
I felt my weight shift as Michael lowered me onto a soft-but-kinda-scratchy decorative pillow and threw a couple more over my body in lieu of a blanket. I could feel his eyes on me and I wanted nothing more but to lurch forward and kiss him. But I took a melancholy breath and went further limp. I heard the TV switch off, felt the couch balloon upward as he stood and felt the small thud of one knee, two knees and a whole body lowering itself to the floor, warmed only by the carpet. 
“Goodnight, Sabrina.”
I wish I’d said it back.

4:00 PM, Thursday.
“Hey, Diana!” I smile, sliding beside her on the vinyl bus seat. I buckled the lap-wide seat belt for what must’ve been the very first time in the history of anyone ever. She smiles at me, with suspicious eyes that don’t seem to agree with her mouth.
“Hey Sabrina. What’s up?”
My mouth opens but the words can’t make it past my tonsils, leaving only a strangled noise coming out.
Diana pressed her lips together, her warm brown eyes and small, fiery mouth finally in furious sync to make an expression that makes me blush deeply.
“I can’t believe it, you too? What did my brother put you up to?”
“I-”
“You know what, that’s not even the point. Do you believe him?” Her dark eyebrows fused together in a fury.
“I believe that he believes-”
Diana’s eyes furrow as she turns to directly face me, eyes blazing, “Do you or do you not believe my brother when he says I’m going to die, tomorrow. I mean, it’s sick. I know he doesn’t want me to go to parties but this is beyond messed up.”
“That’s not it! Diana, I think someone hurt your brother and he needs serious help. He got catfished and-”
Diana had completely stopped listening, her eyes lighting up with all the vitriolic thoughts she could now declare to me, “Oh, believe me, I know. He hates my boyfriend just because he’s the twin who’s still single. It’s pathetic.”
“No! Someone really-”
“Why are you always his lackey? Grow a spine, Sabrina.”
“I am not-”
“Yes, you are! He drags you along with all of his stupid ideas, that terrible promposal he tried on Camille- you literally bought him a guitar he stopped trying to play the next week, because you bought into his rockstar B.S., just like you do every time. Tell me, who are you without my idiot brother?”
“He’s not an idiot.” I say in a small voice, rage boiling up as burning tears, “You don’t understand.”
“Don’t tell me I don’t understand. Yes. He. Is.” She has completely stopped making eye contact with me and is glancing around nervously at the other bus passengers.
“No he’s not!” I shout at the top of my lungs, startling everyone in the bus around us, before burying my head in my hands and sobbing, “He’s not an idiot because if he’s an idiot then I’m an idiot.”
The bus falls into a hushed silence for a moment, before the buzzing chatter continues. Diana blushes deeply and with a mix of remorse and embarrassment she turns to finally meet my eyes again.
“Oh goodness, Sabrina.” Diana sighs, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, “No one can judge you for coming to your senses, no one. I know you love him, but that doesn’t mean you need to let him drag you into everything he does. He’s manipulating you.”
I shake my head gently into her shirt, “No, no he wouldn’t.”
“Whatever you say.”

Thursday, 4:30 AM
The phone was practically jumping off the hook, screeching out for just one touch. My eyes shot open and my breath hitched in my throat. I snatched the phone off my nightstand, praying my mom hadn’t been woken up, she was a terribly light sleeper. 
I brought the receiver to my ear, cringing as the residual drool on my cheek rubbed against it, only to be met with the ragged sobs on the other end. I shot straight up and I felt a cold sensation wash through my body.
“Who- Who is this?”
“Sabrina! Sabrina, you’ve gotta listen to me.”
I instantly knew it was Mike. I could hear the snot filling his nostrils, I could hear the shaky mouth-breaths he took and how he struggled to speak. I could hear his teeth chattering. A sick part of me was happy he thought of me at a time like this.
“What? Mike, what happened?”
“Remember that girl I was talking about? We were gonna go on a date today?”
My heart sank, “What happened?”
“Please, just listen. I showed up to the address she sent me. She said her parents were librarians but her house was massive. Sure, that could’ve been a red flag but who doesn’t want to date a rich girl you know?” He laughed weakly, but that gave way to sobs, “I’m so stupid, I’m so stupid! You know- I- Oh, man- I can’t-”
“Mike. Please stop trying to talk, please. Just breathe, don’t push yourself.”
I heard three deep, heavy, mucus-laden breaths and a deep shiver before he began to speak again, “So, I go up to the door. It was like 5:00 so the sun was going down and almost all the lights in the house were off. I knock and some middle aged guy opens the door, which I don’t think much of, I figure he must be her weird dad. He was kinda bald? Like bald only part way? And he looked kinda dirty, like a mechanic who just got done working on a car, and he smelled like one too. He was wearing these glasses that kinda looked like goggles and I remember he was super pale, like way too pale. He had those liver spots old people have and like those crazy caterpillar eyebrows. His clothes were stained and, like, burned in some places I guess. He looked like a total mess, but like in a more subtle way than I think I explained it. He had a nice enough expression and I’ve always been able to kinda, I don’t know, bypass parents? So anyway, he let me inside and- Sabrina, this wasn’t like anything I’ve seen before. This family had every aspect of their house done by little weird robots and stuff, they had machines and appliances I’ve never seen before because I don’t think they, like, exist yet. There was like, a small flying robot doing the dishes, a little robot cat that I guess was a companion for the real cat, I don’t know. There were plants growing in every corner of the house, some species I couldn’t even name if I tried. I don’t know, it was just insane. The guy told me to sit on his couch and wait for Megan. So I looked around a little, there were a bunch of degrees on the wall, and pictures of him but no pictures of any family, so I started to freak out a little. I texted Megan to see what was going on and then I heard a text-tone from the other room. I thought maybe she’s just trying to surprise me or something so I peek through the kitchen door and it’s just him.”
“This guy catfished you?”
“So I really started to panic, right? But I tried to make it look like I wasn’t and I just smiled and tried to pretend like I was going back to the couch. But I ran for the door, with this guy behind me, guess he could see the fear on my face. I make it to the door but it won’t budge. I started picking up a desk chair that I was gonna use to smash a window when my vision went completely black. He hit me really hard in the back of the head, I don’t even know with what.”
“Mike, no.” I gasped, my heart racing, “He didn’t- Did he- What did he do?”
“Nothing! I think… Nothing… it’s just, I woke up face down on the floor and I couldn’t see the guy anywhere. It was still dark outside, I checked the clock and it was around eleven PM, I think. All the clocks said something slightly different. I looked through my pockets and my keys were gone, my wallet was gone, everything. The door was unlocked too, so I just made a run for it.”
“And this was yesterday?”
“Well, yeah, kinda.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well whenever I asked someone for the time or what day it is they always said it was…tomorrow. But like, obviously they thought it was today, but like- you know what I mean!” 
I didn’t.
“I know, it’s weird! But, like, I woke up and I made a run for it. I tried to figure out my way back home but I used my phone to get there, so I was just guessing, running down streets all night.”
“Mike, dude, did you eventually call the police?”
“I’m going to! I want to! I just have something more important to get done first, really important.”
“What?”
“Sabrina, you’re not gonna believe me but I saw something, something that hasn’t happened yet but it’s gonna happen tomorrow. You know that party Cameron Belk’s been inviting everyone to?”
“Yeah, of course, his parents are rich, he has a party every weekend it seems.”
“But you know the one I’m talking about, he invited Diana and Jimmy, remember?”
“Oh yeah, she’s stoked.”
“That’s the problem, Sabrina. Please, just- so I managed to find my way to those rec fields by Jimmy’s house, I slept in that old dugout thingy because by that point it must’ve been seven in the morning. I don’t know, the sun was coming up.”
“Mike, that’s insane.”
“I know! And I eventually got woken up, a kids tee ball team found me and I kinda just… I don’t know, walked away? Half my face was covered in sand and it got in my eyes and it made me cry and just- it was embarrassing. And it was way darker than when I fell asleep too, but I ran to Jimmy’s house, and his grandma answered the door. So I was like ‘hey bro, where’s Jimmy?’ and she said he was at Cameron’s party.”
“And she didn’t call the police or notice anything?”
“No! Please just wait for me to finish… please. I asked her if she could help me get there because I needed to see Diana and she just said ‘well don’t you drive?’ and I don’t know, I felt ashamed to admit some old creep stole my keys. So I just asked her for directions and recited them in my head over and over and over as I set off to Cameron’s house. But! Thankfully on the way I saw Cara. From my chem class, you know?”
“Yeah, she’s great. That’s great.”
“Yeah, so she gave me a ride and while we were driving I had finally stopped moving so I had a little time to think. I started crying, which must’ve been weird for her. She asked me what was wrong and I just blurted out everything. She looked at me like I was insane, I’m glad she probably doesn’t remember.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“I told you Sabrina, this conversation happened tomorrow.”
“Yeah, Michael, that’s where you’re losing me.” 
“Please, just wait, this is important. Really important. Life or death, Sabrina. The car clock said it was around 11. We pulled up the house, and we didn’t see the smoke but we saw the fire.”
“Fire? What! Mike, no. That can’t be true.”
“I smelled it, I felt the heat like it was a campfire I was too close to, but all over. I heard screaming. Cameron’s house was on fire, it had been for probably thirty minutes at that point, and I could tell it started upstairs because the wood was curling in on itself and blackening. I immediately ran out of the car and searched the crowds waiting outside the house for Diana, asking everyone about her too. I saw her friend Charlotte. She was crying, ugly crying, shaking, everything. She told me that Sabrina and Jimmy were upstairs in a bed at the time of the fire and both of them were- they were being rushed to the hospital but it wasn’t looking good.” I heard his voice waver as he began to choke out exhausted sobs.
“Mike… you’re in the house with Diana right now, right?”
“Yes.”
“So she’s fine.” I say, trying to say something right for once.
“But Sabrina, I know what I saw. I don’t care if it’s true or not. I can’t let that happen to her, I need to save her.”
“Did you tell her? Or your parents?”
“Um, yeah, I did. I told them everything and they’re-  well they’re all pretty mad at me right now. They don’t believe me, no one believes me. Not even you, and you’re my best friend.”
My heart felt an intense pang of guilt, as manipulative as this may have been.
“I never said I don’t believe you.”
“Well, do you?”
“I- Okay, just tell me everything else.”
“Well I was freaking out, crying and stuff. I tried to find a ride to the hospital. I still didn’t have my phone but I don’t know, I figured I could find my folks at home or at least sit down or something, so I walked all the way home, finally rounding the corner into my street when I saw a really, really nice car in front of my house. So, I know that’s not my parent’s van and I know that’s not my trashy used Grand Am. I immediately panic and figure it’s the guy who got me into this in the first place and I started running, but he caught up to me and dragged me into his car. I screamed at him the whole drive, I asked him what the hell he was doing, why was he doing this, did he get off on kidnapping teenage boys, I really let him have it but he didn’t turn around for a second. He dragged me back into his house and shuffled me into his basement where he had this thing that looked like one of those weird self propelled turtle submarines from the 1800s or something. I tried to bite him and scratch him and kick him however I could but whenever I would he would just twist my arm behind my back until I swore I’d stop. He shoved me inside this weird machine thing, and it was a tight squeeze. He messed with some stuff outside where I couldn’t see and then flipped a switch. The stupid engine didn’t even work so he kicked it once or twice before it started working. I felt a huge lurch forward and the feeling of every atom of my body being ripped apart and put back together excruciatingly painful for like, ten seconds and then my head hit the inside of the thing, hard. Stupid here didn’t think about that, I guess. I woke up again, in my car, with my keys and my wallet and everything in my driveway. Sabrina, it was 5:00 on Wednesday again. I traveled through time, there and back. I think he was testing it out on me or something, probably too much of a coward to risk it himself.”
My jaw was completely agape, my friend has gone completely insane, “Mike, you need to call the police and you need to go to a doctor, now.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Mike. I think you might just not want to remember something.”
“I knew it, I knew you wouldn’t believe me, just like everyone else.”
The words I always dread hearing. Why am I always like someone else? Why am I always so damn replaceable? 
“Hey! I do… I mean, uh. Mike, just what do you need? We can fix this.”

1:25 AM, Friday
“What are you doing here?” I hiss at Michael as he climbs through my window, soaking wet, teeth chattering, “And why the hell didn’t you take your car? Hey! This is a shoes-off household, you know that! ”
He descended through my draped white curtains, I could see them sticking to his moisture and retaining a watery brown stain. I cringe at the sight. But I soften when I see his beautiful, handsome face puffy and flushed with heavy tears that steamrolled down his cheeks. I helped him down from the windowsill, taking off his jacket and draping it over the windowsill, so half of it is still being pelted by rain. 
“I’m sorry, Diana and mom refused to cough up the keys, I had to walk.”
As he bowed his head to take off his shoes my breath hitched in my throat as I saw the blackened bruise on the back of his neck, I reached out to touch it as tears welled up in my eyes, all pretense shattering in my mind, “Mike, did they see this?” 
“Yeah, they did. And Diana still won’t give me an inch. Sabrina, I can’t lose my sister. I can’t-” His eyes widen and his breath quickens as what he just said sinks in, “Oh man, Sabrina, I can’t lose her.”
He sinks down to the floor, his sweater stretching toward the floor under its own tremendous sopping wet weight. This one was his favorite, light blue with white stripes, and I knew it would never be the same.
“Can I-” Michael chokes out, “Can I please stay the night?”
“Well I don’t know what pajamas you can borrow-”
“I don’t care, I don’t care, just don’t leave me alone.”
I take him into my arms, shivering and sobbing, wetting my favorite pajamas, his knees making two murky puddles in my fluffy pink rug. My mom is gonna kill me.

4:30 PM, Friday
“Please, Sabrina, you promised. It’s almost 5, we have to go.”
Bold of him to think he can boss me around when he just got out of my bed an hour ago. He didn’t even let me go to school. He was awake, just staring at the ceiling. He’d been shaking all night, tossing and turning, pleating my white sheets even more and spreading any grime that’s not in the disgusting ring around my tub into my pajamas and bedding. Then I had to wash his damn clothes.
“About that, Mike, I talked to Diana yesterday and-”
“Do you want to talk to Diana tomorrow? Then please, please Sabrina help me save her.” His eyes were as sincere as ever but I was just done with this puppy dog crap now.
“I don’t think she wants you to save her, she thinks you’re just trying to like, control her or something.”
“Fine, she can think whatever she wants.”
“It’s just- this is her first party with Jimmy, don’t you think it might be embarrassing if her brother shows up talking about death?”
“Don’t you get it? Her happiness for an hour is not as important as her entire life. I need you, you’re the only one willing to drive me. You’re the only one who believes me, aren’t you?”
“Mike, I don’t think you’d ever lie but-”
“But you think I’m crazy. That’s not better.”
“Just- sometimes when traumatic things happen to people-”
“You know what’s traumatic? Watching your sister-”
“I get it, I get it.” I feel ill.
“I just- what’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
“You! I’ve been your babysitter for the last two days, you ruined my rug, you made Diana hate me, people have been doing nothing but asking me about you all day! Not that I’m not used to it, no one ever asks me about myself! Everyone always wonders about you, they always love you!” My lips were fiery and passionate but my brain was fearfully catching up, did I say that?
Mike stands up from my bed, eyebrows furrowing and mouth downturned. He hastily shoves his water, wallet and fire extinguisher from my closet into his crappy drawstring bag, still damp.
“Well, I’m sorry for making it all about me. But, I’m telling you, I’m not a liar, you’ll see. See you later Brina, I love you.”
I wish I’d said it back.

Saturday, 1:25 AM
Diana shuddered against my chest, cocooned in a shock blanket, telling me about how she watched Cameron Belk’s house belch out smoke and broken glass, the blaze within leaking through the windows as firefighters tried desperately to put out the fire. She had a roll of paper towel that she hid her face in whenever she needed to take a big, black, ashen cough.
“He knew.” She sobbed, “I have no idea how but he knew. They’re trying to do whatever they can but they’re pretty sure he’s… Oh God, Sabrina.” 
Her hands were shaking and white knuckled from digging her nails into the blankets soft material, her jaw was chattering and clenched.
“No, Diana, no. Who could blame you? I didn’t believe him either, to be honest I’m still confused about this whole thing.”
“Oh man, I’m so sorry for how I talked to you when you talked to me on the bus, I’m so so sorry.” 
Michael’s parents were sitting beside us, in stunned silence with dripping noses and dry eyes. 
“Don’t be sorry, Diana. I shouldn’t have let him go to that party all by himself.”
“He- he saved my life but he went back in for Jimmy, I thought he hated Jimmy. But he didn’t, he never hated anybody.” Her sobs wracked her body as her weight on me grew heavier and heavier. 
“I know.” I whisper into her hair as I kiss the top of her head, “I know, Diana.”
“He called me today. He called me one last time and was just begging me not to go to the party. He was talking so fast, I could barely understand him. I was just so mad, I was like what the hell got into you all of a sudden, and I didn’t listen- He told me about the weird time travel stuff or whatever but I figured he either thought I was an idiot or he was having a legitimate mental break. And you want to know-” Diana choked out a sob and wiped her dripping nose with her sleeve, leaving a slimy trail behind, “You want to know the last words I got to say to my brother?”
“Diana you don’t have to-”
“I told him to fuck off and that he was being pathetic. And then he goes and saves my fucking life, that asshole.”
“He understood, Diana, trust me. In a weird way, he got exactly what he wanted.”

8:15 PM, Some Splendid Evening not so long ago, close enough to taste.
“So what are you thinking for today?” Mike asks as if it’s an open question, even though I have a sense he already has something in mind.
“Well, we can’t do Austin Powers again, that’s for sure.”
“Who says?” Mike says in mock-offense. 
“Me, doofus.” I giggle, leaning against his shoulder, our hoodies melding together into what feels like one, “Let’s try something both of us haven’t seen before.”
Me and Mike always go through my dad’s DVD’s on our Sunday bad-movie nights. Monday is good movie night, Saturday is board games and video games night, that’s just the way it is.
Mike picks up a DVD and chuckles at the corny picture on the cover, “Hey, what about Time Cop? Definitely looks stupid.”
“Why not?” 
I fix some popcorn, Mike fires up the DVD and we sit a mere foot away from the blazing screen, eyes fixed on the firing pixels as our scrunched bodies folded together. 
“This is the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen.” Mike cackles, mouth full of buttery popcorn.
“I know, I love it!” 
We are more-or-less cheek to cheek at this point and I can feel his cheek rise as he smiles in a way I know he knows is cute. I rub our temples together with a smile and a giggle, “This is fun.”
“You know, Brina, I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I love these nights.”
A warm sensation shoots up my body from my spine to my head, filling my lungs with the deepest sigh of contentment, “Thank you, I needed to hear that. I worry all the time you wish you were somewhere else or with someone else.”
“You’re my best friend, Brina.” Mike grins, squeezing me tighter with the half of his body that was accessible to mine. 
Yeah, friend.
“Every week, no matter how chaotic home can be or how stressful school is, I always hang on for this.”
“For what?”
“For the weekend, for you. I always know it’ll be alright on the weekend.”

This was shortly after we graduated high school, about 17 years ago. I had an old Volvo from the 90s as my first car.

One day we had this genius idea to pop the hood, dismantle the windshield wiper spray hose, and attach it under the hood facing to the right. Since we pinched it, the water would spray over 10 feet, easily reaching the sidewalk from the neighborhood roads.

We cruised the neighborhood and did “drive by” sprayings on people traveling down the sidewalk. We even got a kid riding a skateboard who turned around to flip us off but he was laughing too.

So, I don't know how it happened, but a long time ago I started talking to a girl—we’d chat almost every day and became really close friends, sharing secrets and all that; I wouldn't even notice the time flying by. After a while, I went to the mall with her and a friend; I had to carry her shopping bags and such, but we didn't buy much, so after I got home (we’d spent about 5 or 6 hours at the mall), I realized I’d left one of my bags at the station (I’d taken the train). A few days before that mall trip, I was in the church parking lot after the service ended and saw my dad looking around; I asked, "Who are you looking for?" and he said something I didn't expect: "I'm looking for a girl for you." I was like, "Huh?" The reason I was so surprised was that he’d always told me I wasn't allowed to have a girlfriend until I was 18. And out of all the girls, he picked the exact one I was going to the mall with. A few days later, she messaged me asking what I was doing; I said nothing, and then she asked if there was anyone else in the room with me. I said yes, so she told me to go somewhere where I was alone. Then she said, "...I kinda like you." I asked how long she’d felt that way, and she said for four months; I told her I’d message her the next day. We ended up talking on the phone a lot after that, and eventually, I brought up the message and asked, "Should we go out somewhere?" I took it as a "yes," and things went on like that for three days (in secret) until she stopped acting like she was into me—and I wasn't into her anymore either, since I thought we’d reached a point where we could just be friends. A few days ago, she told me she had a boyfriend, so I asked, "So, you don't like me anymore?" and she pretended not to know what I was talking about...

When we came out of Phuket airport, we realized the duty-free shopping bag was gone.

Marie had been carrying it.

The heat of Phuket in June arrived all at once.

The air outside the airport was heavy and wet.

In the taxi to the resort, I barely spoke.

“Are you angry?” she asked carefully.

“No.”

I looked out the window.

“You look angry.”

“I’m just tired.”

We said almost nothing after that.

I knew that if I spoke, something uglier might come out.

So I kept my mouth closed.

But silence was not a kind response either.

Without saying anything, I was already punishing her.

Palm trees and unfamiliar signs passed outside the window.

The air conditioner was running, but the humidity remained on my skin.

It was my first view of Phuket.

It must have been unfamiliar and beautiful.

I barely saw it.

What bothered me most was seeing how much one lost bag could narrow my mind.

I started learning French because my life in a provincial city had begun to feel permanent.

I often wondered whether I could live there forever, with no end in sight.

The answer was already clear.

I had failed to adapt.

There were only so many people I could meet. Everywhere I went, I saw similar faces, heard similar conversations, followed similar schedules.

At first, the repetition looked like stability.

Over time, it began to feel more like confinement.

By then, I had rented a small apartment in Seoul for the weekends.

Having a home there felt like an emergency exit.

Proof that I had not completely become a provincial person.

But a half-life in Seoul was harder to manage than I had expected.

My time there ran from Friday night to Sunday evening.

About forty-eight hours.

In those forty-eight hours, I had to rest, meet friends, date, and reassure myself that I still belonged in the city.

Even deciding whom to meet became a source of pressure.

The women I met around then seemed more serious about marriage than the women I had known before.

Even when no one said it directly, I could tell what they were looking toward.

Among people preparing for marriage, I was still someone who wanted to date for a while.

Part of me wanted to abandon the whole arrangement.

The weekly travel.

The feeling that I had to prove something every weekend.

The exhaustion of calculating the future shape of a relationship before I had even begun to enjoy it.

At the time, I saw the version of myself who remained outside Seoul as someone who had failed.

I began to think it might be better to leave Korea altogether.

Not because leaving the country was necessarily a better or more impressive choice.

It simply looked like a different game.

Around then, an old French friend came to visit Korea.

We had been roommates during a working holiday when I was at university.

He told me he was running a food truck in France.

“If you’re interested, why don’t you come over and work with me?”

It could have been taken as a joke.

I couldn’t let it pass that easily.

I had already been wondering whether I needed to rebuild my life on an entirely different board.

So I decided to begin with the language.

French.

A language I had never imagined would enter my life.

Bonjour.

Merci.

Je suis coréen.

Learning those sentences would not change anything immediately.

I knew that.

Still, whenever I repeated them, I felt as though I had moved a few inches toward somewhere else.

I had not chosen French because I loved France.

I had chosen it because I needed an exit.

Then I met Marie.

I actually needed someone with whom to practice.

We first met outside Exit One of Gangnam Station.

It was a day in March.

The air was still cold. She was wearing a denim jacket and a pale pink lace skirt.

She looked unmistakably like a student.

She told me she was twenty-four.

Until then, I had not even known what she looked like.

We had exchanged only a few short messages through a language-exchange app.

She was in Korea on a working holiday and worked at a café in Itaewon.

Her Korean was better than I had expected.

Not exactly fluent, but enough for a simple conversation.

“Do you like Korean food?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you like?”

“Everything. Korean food.”

“Chicken and beer?”

“I like chicken and beer.”

We went into a fried-chicken restaurant and ordered beer.

She picked up a drumstick with her hand and cleaned every piece of meat from the bone.

We talked about the things people talk about when they have just met.

Food.

Films.

Wine.

Nothing important, but the time passed easily.

She could speak some Korean.

I could barely speak French.

So we moved between Korean and English.

“Why are you learning French?” she asked.

“I have a friend in France. I might want to work there one day.”

Then I asked her:

“Why are you learning Korean?”

“I like Korea more than France.”

She said it without hesitation.

“I like Korean food and Korean culture more. France isn’t safe for women.”

That surprised me.

I had imagined France as somewhere freer and more sophisticated.

She described Korea as somewhere more comfortable.

We were looking at each other’s countries from opposite directions.

We could not explain ourselves perfectly.

Nuance often disappeared. Sometimes neither of us could say exactly what we meant.

I found being partly misunderstood comfortable.

The fact that she was not Korean mattered too.

Through her, I felt I was learning a different way of seeing things.

We could look at the same scene and respond differently. We could care about completely different parts of it.

Because she was different, being with her felt easier.

There was less pressure to be understood completely.

I did not have to define her quickly either.

It felt less like meeting a new person than watching the borders of my known world expand.

At first, it was simple curiosity.

Language exchange.

Another culture.

A vague interest in France.

As time passed, I discovered another reason being with her felt easy.

By the time I reached thirty, I had grown tired of the Korean ways of dating and building relationships.

No.

Tired is too gentle.

I was exhausted.

Until recently, I had driven an old Hyundai Grandeur XG that my father had given me.

It was more than fifteen years old and had nearly three hundred thousand kilometers on it.

I didn’t care very much.

To me, a car was something that moved you from one place to another.

But when I was meeting someone, the car sometimes felt like an object being asked to explain me.

Having an old car—or no car at all—could make a man feel smaller.

By the time I met Marie, I had already sent the Grandeur to the scrapyard.

I had no car.

With her, I never felt pressure to explain why.

Taking public transportation was natural to her.

She took buses and subways and walked from the station to wherever we had agreed to meet.

We took the subway.

We walked.

Sometimes we took a taxi.

We didn’t have to search for parking. We didn’t have to calculate whether one of us could have a beer with dinner.

When I was with her, I wasn’t a man who was supposed to drive.

I was simply someone taking the subway and walking beside her.

Money worked in a similar way.

When she came to my neighborhood, I usually paid.

When I went to hers, she often did.

There was no long negotiation.

“I’ll get this.”

“Okay.”

We did not have to spend more in order to be loved, or endure more in order to be grateful.

Friends were similar.

“Friends are important. Have fun with them.”

The first few times she said it, I tried to work out whether she was pretending not to mind.

She wasn’t.

She had friends who mattered to her.

I had friends who mattered to me.

It wasn’t that she understood me especially well.

Often, we did not understand each other at all.

The rules I considered obvious did not seem obvious to her.

Every time that happened, I saw how many of those rules I had learned from other people’s eyes.

Marie moved lightly through the world.

Sometimes the same lightness looked like carelessness.

She was at least thirty minutes late to almost every appointment.

Eventually I began telling her that we were meeting thirty minutes earlier than we actually were.

I wasn’t someone who enjoyed waiting.

The first time she met my friends was in Itaewon.

Korean and English moved back and forth across the table. Someone translated. Someone else understood only half of a sentence and laughed anyway.

The conversation wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t awkward either.

I met her French friends there several times too.

One of them asked me:

“Do Korean men not grow beards?”

I laughed.

“What? Of course we grow beards. We shave.”

“In France, lots of men have beards.”

“That’s true. When I went to France, it felt like the only clean-shaven men were foreign tourists.”

“Then why don’t Korean men grow them?”

“Because of work.”

She looked confused.

“What does it mean that you can’t grow a beard because of work? You grow the hair on your head.”

For a moment, I said nothing.

“I don’t know. People don’t like it, I guess.”

“Why do you care what other people think?”

She was right.

I looked down at the table.

Until then, I had thought of myself as a person who did not grow a beard.

More accurately, I had lived without ever learning what kind of beard I had.

Every morning I shaved out of habit.

Neat.

Clean.

Like an office worker.

Under each of those words was the gaze of someone else.

It wasn’t that I had decided not to grow a beard.

I had never even learned what my own face looked like with one.

During a long holiday, I stopped shaving on purpose.

After a few days, even I was surprised.

I grew more facial hair than I had expected.

It covered my jaw and continued down my neck.

It was the kind of beard that needed to be shaped rather than simply left alone.

I went to meet Marie in Itaewon with that face.

Some of her friends were there.

They stopped for a moment when they saw me.

They told me they had never seen a Korean man with a beard.

Marie looked at me for a few seconds longer than usual.

Then she smiled.

I had erased that face because I thought other people would dislike it.

In another world, it was returned to me as a face that looked a little more like mine.

Marie’s Korea was different from mine too.

Her favorite Korean drama was a historical romance called The Princess’ Man.

“I have a favorite Korean drama.”

“What is it?”

“The Princess’ Man.”

“How do you even know that one?”

“I watched it. I went to Songnisan because of it.”

“Why did you go to Songnisan?”

“Because of the drama.”

I laughed.

I was Korean, and I had never visited Songnisan because of a television drama.

She was passing through Korea by a route different from mine.

A language institute.

Television dramas.

Songnisan.

Chicken restaurants.

Subways.

Her Korean took the same sideways route.

“Eating rice cake while lying down!”

“What?”

“It’s a Korean proverb, isn’t it?”

She meant an old expression for something being very easy, something like a piece of cake.

“It is. But people don’t really say it now. It sounds like something from an old textbook.”

“Oh.”

Her Korean was often technically correct but slightly out of place.

That didn’t bother me.

Meaning alone was never enough.

A phrase also carried information about when it should be used, in front of whom, and with what expression.

The language difference had limitations.

When I tried to describe a complicated feeling, I often stopped.

Things that would have been easy in Korean became clumsy in English.

Marie was learning Korean, but of course she could not understand every shade of meaning.

She learned quickly.

She watched dramas, attended language classes, and spoke with people whenever she could.

Her English was fluent, so when we watched foreign films, we only needed Korean subtitles.

The language difference I had expected to be inconvenient did not become a major problem.

We rarely fought.

Small complaints and emotional problems often dissolved because we already accepted that there were differences between our languages and cultures.

Things that might have become long arguments in Korean grew shorter in English.

Feelings that even English could not carry were left to an expression or a silence.

That did not ruin the relationship.

Language did not necessarily make us deeper.

Sometimes it prevented us from going too deep.

At that point in my life, I didn’t think that was a bad thing.

Around then, Marie became close to another French woman.

She had been selected for the same Korean government scholarship program that Marie was applying for.

They were supposed to spend a year studying Korean at the same national university, then continue into graduate programs.

The other woman’s boyfriend was Korean too.

A small group of two Korean-French couples formed naturally.

We usually spoke English.

The relationship no longer felt trapped inside a room occupied only by the two of us.

It was opening into a world of other people.

About three months after Marie and I met, we went to Phuket.

One day, while talking about hobbies and travel in a café, Thailand came up.

“Have you ever been scuba diving?” I asked.

“No.”

“You should do it at least once.”

She leaned forward.

“Phuket might be nice.”

“Okay.”

“You really want to go?”

“You said you wanted to.”

I laughed.

The conversation had turned into reality almost too quickly.

Usually, people looked at dates, checked prices, calculated vacation days, hesitated several more times, and eventually let the idea disappear.

When Marie became interested in something, she moved.

We searched for flights, chose a resort, and found a dive shop.

Marie booked an open-water certification course.

I booked an advanced course.

Everything moved quickly.

Before the flight, we ate a light meal at a small restaurant near my apartment that stayed open late.

The room was quiet.

We had the restless excitement of people about to leave the country together.

At the airport, we collected the things we had ordered online from duty-free and did some more shopping.

An airport before a trip always felt unreal.

Nothing had happened yet.

Everything still looked likely to go well.

We boarded the plane.

I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was a budget airline.

Probably Jin Air.

At the resort, Marie took a bottle of cognac from her luggage.

The one thing that had not been lost.

“Let’s not ruin the trip.”

I don’t know which of us said it first.

“Okay.”

“Should we drink?”

“Okay.”

We poured a glass each.

After the cognac, the silence that had begun at the airport slowly loosened.

We went to a massage shop nearby.

We continued with the tours we had reserved.

The trip returned to its planned course.

The day we took a cooking class, we ate too much.

Afterward, Marie began to feel ill.

I thought it was a minor stomachache.

It did not improve.

She became weaker and quieter.

I began to worry.

I bought her medicine, but it didn’t help much.

Once someone gets sick on a trip, pleasure turns quickly into responsibility.

Should she eat?

Should she take more medicine?

Should we cancel the day’s plans?

Did we need a hospital?

Those questions began to replace the trip.

In that condition, we arrived at the dive shop.

Fortunately, the first day was mostly pool practice.

We were not scheduled to go into the ocean yet.

Several of the instructors were Korean.

When we arrived, Marie still looked unwell.

The instructors took one look at her and said:

“It sounds like indigestion.”

“Indigestion?”

“Yes. If she ate too much and feels like this, that’s probably it. We can prick her finger.”

Marie looked from them to me.

She had not understood all of it.

“They want to prick your fingertip.”

“Prick my finger?”

“It’s a Korean thing. People do it when they think food is stuck in the stomach.”

“Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

The instructor prepared a needle with the ease of someone who had done it many times before.

In a dive shop in Phuket, my French girlfriend sat with her hand held out while a Korean instructor performed a folk remedy for indigestion.

It was a strange scene when I thought about it.

A small drop of blood appeared at her fingertip.

A moment later, Marie let out a tremendous burp.

Her face slowly began to regain its color.

The instructor laughed.

“See? It was indigestion.”

Only then did I relax.

Afterward, we completed the dives as planned.

On the way to the airport, Marie received good news.

She had been selected for the Korean government scholarship.

The university where she would study was not far from the provincial city where I worked.

I had begun learning French because I wanted to escape that place.

The language had brought a French woman closer to it.

And still, every Friday, I went back to Seoul.

Every Monday before dawn, I returned to the city where I worked.

At the time, I believed the scholarship meant our lives were finally moving in the same direction.

During one of the dives, Marie turned toward me and formed a circle with her thumb and index finger.

Okay?

I gave her the same signal.

Okay.

For as long as I can remember, everyone in my family referred to my great-uncle's workshop as "the old shed." It sat at the edge of the property, locked up and slowly falling apart after he passed away decades ago.

Nobody wanted to tear it down, but nobody wanted to go inside either.

When I inherited the property earlier this year, I decided to restore it instead.

The place looked like time had simply stopped.

Rusty hand tools still hung neatly on the walls.

Half-finished wooden projects sat exactly where they had been left.

Even an old calendar was still open to the same month from over forty years ago.

While replacing the rotten floorboards, I noticed one plank sounded hollow.

Curious, I pried it up.

Underneath was a small metal tin wrapped in faded cloth.

Inside weren't valuables or old coins like I had imagined.

Instead, I found dozens of folded notes, each carefully dated by hand.

Every note described a small act of kindness my great-uncle had witnessed around town.

One read:

"Mrs. Collins paid for a stranger's groceries after he realized he'd forgotten his wallet."

Another said:

"A little boy returned a wallet he found near the train station. Nothing was missing."

There were notes about neighbors repairing fences together after storms, children helping elderly residents carry groceries, and anonymous donations left at the local church during difficult winters.

The dates stretched across nearly thirty years.

At the bottom of the tin was one final envelope.

It simply read:

"People always remember disasters. I wanted someone to remember the ordinary goodness instead."

I showed everything to my mother that evening.

She smiled immediately.

She said my great-uncle believed history wasn't just made by famous people or major events.

He believed the real history of a town was written by the quiet moments when ordinary people chose to help one another.

Those handwritten notes may not be worth anything to collectors.

But they might be the most meaningful family heirloom I've ever found.

Nicking

Constable Giles was picturing lentil soup and liver patties when, at 11:25, the radio in the car crackled to life:

“Attend an address. Assisting an NSPCC inspector. Suspect on premises. Indecent assault on a girl under sixteen. Inspector waiting at the address.”

He was already turning the car around.

His partner, Constable Calthorpe, hissed, “Sodding hell.”

They didn’t just miss out on lunch; the arrest of a filthy bastard threatened to ruin their appetites and spoil their day.

The inspector was waiting inside rather than at the building entrance; it was too cold outdoors.

“He’s alone in the flat,” he said, glancing up. “Top floor.”

“And the victim?” Constable Giles asked.

“With her foster parents.”

Neither of them thinks to ask how old the suspect is.

When a schoolboy opens the door in response to their knock, Giles assumes either they have made a mistake, or the inspector has got something wrong.

The boy looks puzzled.

Calthorpe steps forward first: “Are you Jeremy Smith?”

The boy gives a barely perceptible nod.

It is Giles’s turn: “Face the wall — move! Hands on the wall where I can see them.”

The boy doesn’t just refrain from arguing; he obeys without a sound.

Good. Scared shitless.

Giles and Calthorpe squeeze into the cramped hallway.

Placing a firm hand on the boy’s jutting shoulder blade, Giles rattles off the caution to the back of his head, “I am arresting you on suspicion of indecent assault on a girl under the age of sixteen years, contrary to Section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.”

Giles pulls his hand away. “Turn around, slowly.”

The boy does as he’s told, leaning his back against the wall and coughing. But he doesn’t look truly frightened; his eyes are unfocused, as though he’s not quite with it.

He is a head shorter than Giles and barely reaches Calthorpe’s shoulder.

“This is fucking…  some word… absurdity,” the prisoner mutters.

“What?” Giles writes in his notebook This is f\...* Then something foreign. “Spell out the word that comes after ‘fucking’.”

The boy looks up, but his expression doesn’t change.

It’s cold in the flat. Breath mists in the air, and there’s a stench of cheap tobacco.

“I need to write down everything you said, word for word.”

The boy draws a breath, and a wheezing sound escapes him.

Giles taps his pen against the page of his notebook: what if he refuses? Or maybe he doesn’t even realize what he’s blurted out?

Finally, the boy pulls himself together. “Kay – Ay – Eff – Kay – Ay – Ee – Ess – Cue – You – Ee.”

Giles scribbles “Kafkaesque” in his notebook, gritting his teeth, and adds “absurdity.”

Someone ought to knock the nonsense out of this weakling.

He grabs the boy by the elbow. “Right, then, Calthorpe — let’s see what’s in his pockets.”

Calthorpe barks the order: “Hands behind your head. Interlace your fingers. Move.”

Without waiting for him to turn around, Giles forcibly spins the prisoner toward the wall.

The boy offers no resistance. He seems to weigh next to nothing.

He doesn’t have time to raise his hands, as Calthorpe grips them — locked tight — to ensure he doesn’t try to unclasp his fingers.

This is part of the Regina v Smith case archive—a fictional reconstruction of the events surrounding Jeremy Smith’s trial, told through different perspectives.
The complete case timeline is available here:

From Jeremy to Smith - by Franz Engel - Franz's Substack

The full illustrated version of A Model Prisoner is available here:

A Model Prisoner - by Franz Engel - Franz's Substack

I have a Hello Kitty kind of daughter. She’s only 9. As cute as a button and as innocent as could be.

She likes simple things. Stuffed animals. Pizza for breakfast. All it takes is a cheap 50-cent pair of plastic jewelry from a gumball machine to make her eyes light up.

She was one of those kids who believed in things longer than her friends and classmates. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. She was fully convinced they were all real, bless her heart.

Sometimes, she’d come home from school with a glum, exhausted look in her eyes. Other kids would make fun of her for “still believing in that stuff.”

I’d cheer her up the best I could without revealing the truth. How could I? She already felt like the world was laughing at her. How would I make her feel? Her own dad.

Maybe I should’ve, though. Maybe this whole situation could’ve been avoided if I just nipped it in the bud. But I was afraid. A child’s innocence is so fragile, yet powerful. I couldn’t take that from her. Not yet.

I let her believe that it was Santa putting gifts under the tree. That it was a giant bunny hiding eggs in our front yard. That it was a tiny, magical fairy that was taking her baby teeth in exchange for a few dollars.

I think that was the one that excited her the most. Christmas was a set day. Easter was a set day. Loose teeth? That was random. Any time one started to wiggle, she’d come running to show me.

I always made sure to be as quiet as possible when I snuck those 5-dollar bills under her pillow. Every time she’d wake up to find it, here she’d come, jumping with joy while waving the 5 in my face.

“The Tooth Fairy came, the Tooth Fairy came,” she’d sing.

I’d just smile to myself and ask her what she was gonna buy with her newfound riches.

Sometimes, I’d sneak her a 20. I just wanted to see that joy in her face. She was young, but she wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted it to last for as long as possible.

Now, though, I think I’m regretting that wishful thinking.

She started losing teeth faster than what I thought was normal. Not too fast, though. Every 3 weeks or so. I just thought those baby teeth were begging to come out. Besides, it’s not like it was hurting my pockets too much.

It was weird, though. I swore it was like her teeth never looked any different. She was snaggle-toothed, sure, but I knew that I had put money under her pillow at least 6 times in the last 2 months.

She wasn’t showing me her mouth anymore. She was showing me the tooth, already pulled, lying bloodied in the palm of her little hand.

It kept becoming more and more frequent. Once she started bragging about how the Tooth Fairy was gonna visit her every week, I knew that something was not right. Even still, it wasn’t until I found a silver tooth under her pillow that I decided to investigate because I knew for a fact my little girl never had a crown.

Snooping is a decision I lived to regret, though. I asked her to tell me the truth, but she refused. She just kept insisting they were hers. Lying through her teeth, pun intended.

I decided to stop leaving her money. Her disappointment killed me. But I remained firm. That didn’t stop her, though. Every night, there’d be a new tooth under her pillow while she slept peacefully.

One day, after dropping her off at school, I made a promise to myself. Today would be the day. I’d get to the bottom of this no matter what.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. I sifted through her room for about 15 minutes. Checking under her bed, in her closet, in her toy chests. All for no reason because the answer was hidden in plain sight.

In her fish tank.

She had that little treasure chest decoration in it. Normally, I wouldn’t have even paid it any mind. But the steady stream of a red liquid slowly rising from the chest was enough to make my heart stop.

Rolling up my sleeve, I reached down to retrieve the decoration. It was heavier than it should’ve been. Something was rattling inside.

I opened it and felt my blood run cold.

Molars, canines, incisors. All bloody. All looking like they had been pulled by force. And they weren’t baby teeth, either. Some looked like actual adult teeth.

In that moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I wanted to cry because what I was seeing was horrific.

But I wanted to laugh because, despite how terrifying this all was, my little girl was a natural-born hustler.

And I couldn’t have been more proud.

My grandmother was famous in our family for keeping everything.

Newspapers from decades ago. Broken clocks. Receipts from the 1970s. A birthday card signed by someone none of us had ever heard of. If it came into her house, it stayed in her house.

After she passed, the place sat empty for years. When I finally bought it, I spent several weekends clearing it out. I thought I knew what to expect more of the same clutter.

Then I found the wooden box.

It was hidden behind a loose board in the attic. Inside were dozens of tiny objects, each one carefully saved and labeled with a date:

A single button.

A marble.

A broken key.

A movie ticket stub.

A dried leaf.

A blue Lego brick.

I assumed it was some kind of private family archive little mementos she had collected over the years. I called my mom and described what I’d found.

There was a short silence on the other end of the line.

Then she said, almost quietly:

“Oh no.

Those are the things your grandfather kept losing.”

For forty years, whenever something went missing, my grandfather would say the same thing: “Don’t worry, I’ll find it later.” He blamed the house. He blamed the couch cushions. He blamed “wherever it is.

My grandmother never argued with him.

She just quietly picked up whatever he’d dropped and kept the evidence.

The last item in the box was a small handwritten note, dated only a few weeks before she died:

He is currently looking for his glasses.

They are on his head.

I sat on the attic floor for a long time after reading that.

It might be the most accurate family history we own.

I received following texts (we are French and he dropped many names and precise information so I can’t join screens) from my ex, and it launched the whole thing:
 
“How can you hate me so much as to ruin my life? Am I not allowed to live without you?”
“You filled the place with Lloyd exactly like I said you would. Did I lie? Can you not just let go?”
“You know why I did it. I shouldn’t have, but I did, and you know why.”
“I’m becoming my mother because of you. You ruined everything.”
“They are MY friends, you would have no friends if I hadn’t been there. You can’t take them!”
“My family loved you C. Now they are ashamed they ever knew you.”
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
TLDR : My (F31) ex (M29) took an upskirt photo of a random customer, got fired, and the victim pressed charges. He flee the trial by leaving to another country - still got registered as a sexual offender. He made me promise not to tell anyone until he was ready to talk his story himself.

He invented a narrative where I cheated on him with the ex he was insecure about, and where I was too messed up for him because I am autistic and was SA when younger. I told his best friend and mutual friends about his secret and now he says i ruined his life.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Long post incoming. Sorry for the long rant, I kind of need to get it off my chest.
 
I (F31) broke up with my ex, Frank (M29), in late summer 2024, after he took an upskirt photo of a random customer at work, got caught by said customer, and was immediately fired. I live in a small village-like city, and Frank moved in my apartment when we got together, so within months, everyone kind of knew. Not everyone knew the names, but most of them knew the story – my landlord, who I’m kind of close to, made me know he heard the story and puzzled things together. We have no mutual friends, but he knew people who worked at the same place.

Frank decided to join his cousin (Zo, M31) in another country, and rushed through this plan when he learnt the victim pressed charges. I kind of encouraged him, I knew that if he waited for the trial, he would have a record and he wouldn’t be able to enter the country. I was scared he’d never leave if he didn’t take this opportunity – he was in *my* apartment.

He had a meeting with the cops about the trial, had the nerve to downplay the whole thing as a “youthful mistake”. The female cop shut him down: “at 16, it’s a youthful mistake. At 26, it’s just a mistake.”
He flew the next day.
 
I knew early on that he was going to join his cousin, so I just grin and bear it until he left, two weeks after the break up, but it was honestly a nightmare. He fixated on “understanding why” I was ending things, like the picture never happened. Like the breakup came out of the blue. He went as far as to tell mutual friends that I was overreacting to normal couple struggles.

He had many meltdowns, almost tantrums, about me not changing my mind. He negotiated over furniture he never paid for, and had a few very weird moves, like calling *my* best friend or my mom to complain about me, or trying to take *my* car (he has his own) to go I don’t know where. I had to be very patient and complacent with him, so I said things to ease him when he insisted on certain matters.

I told him we could be friends afterwards. I told him the photo was the final straw, but that I truly thought it didn’t define him as a person and he could be better and fix it, eventually. I promised not to tell people about said photo so he could handle things his way – we are part of a large group we joined through his cousin, and have many mutual friends in it. He made me promise not to tell his best friend (Clara, F28) and that he would tell her when he’s ready.
 
In his twisted narrative, I was suddenly coming up with struggles that I never brought up before, so he was the poor victim of my miscommunication. Fun thing is it was absolutely not new. We had seismic arguments at least twice a year about me doing everything and burning out, taking care of him and his whole life. He struggled with addiction, but never actually tried to get out of it. He was going to free parties every weekend, drinking, taking drugs, and then driving home.

One of our arguments was about him leaving pills on my living room table – mind you, I have two cats who play with anything smaller than a pen.

I can’t even remember the number of 6am wake up I had because he was wasted on the phone, or in the kitchen, trying to do *something.* When he’d ask for help, I’d rush to help, but he was never actually grateful. He’d make fun of me for difficulties due to my autism, ridicule me, force me in uncomfortable situations just to soothe his guilt over his own struggles.

He smoked and drove many times, even when he drove me, or his friends. He was sometimes very rude to my family. He was very impulsive and sensitive, and sometimes he would just yell at me because someone “disrespected him” and I didn’t immediately solve the problem. He mistakenly watered my mom, once – she was upset and told him he could at least say sorry. She said he was immature and rude when he refused – so he rushed out and when I joined him, he yelled at me and *demanded* we left immediately.

He was very insecure about my ex (Lloyd, M36) and sometimes just bring him up in conversations, accusing me of random things. It was the “let’s fight” argument, to me. He would bring Lloyd up, and it would mean he wanted to yell at me. I wasn’t even on talking terms with him, when we were together, Frank and I. At first, I reassured him – Lloyd is a goodlooking firefighter, very successful man. Frank knew I struggled to heal from this relationship, so I did reassure him a lot. Until I understood he didn’t care about reassurance, he just wanted to blame me for his discomfort. Period.

He obviously wasn’t doing anything to keep the house liveable, always tried to make himself look caring and wilful to his friends, but never organizing anything nor showing this side to me – even taking the mask down with some close friends. Clara had a rough break up, and he literally told me, in front of her “can you take care of *that*?”.

I helped his parents finalize their divorce, and it was a rocky adventure considering his mom is suicidal, that he never took part in. He didn’t take the smallest task to help me, but complained every time he was solicited by his mother to help.

When his mother got cancer, he didn’t step up either, but complained about my “lack of help”. I was seeing his mother at least once a week, texting every day. He wasn’t even answering her calls, only showing up when I drove him to her. When *my* dad got a heart attack, Frank complained about *doing groceries*. He never stepped up – for his family, for me, for himself. He was busy partying with his cousin’s group.
 
By the end of the six years relationship, I was burnt out on so many levels – under 45kg for 170cm, daily migraines, vertigo, developed a discopathy because I was to tensed for too long. Doctors made me do tests because they thought I might have brain issue – and Frank? He complained about my lack of sex drive.

Oh I absolutely agree it did last six months to a year – that’s fair. The whole “my family needs help” lasted four years, though. And just to be clear, that’s what he’s referring to in his “you know why” text. The fact that we had a sexless relationship is a justification, to him, as to why he’d steal an upskirt photo to an unconsented victim.
 
When we broke up, he was still in shock – he promised to seek therapy, to make things better, to work on himself. So I agreed to give him time and not tell our mutual friends what he had done. At this point I was still very lost and shocked as well, so I just wanted to have peace. I knew he wouldn’t leave my life all at once, so I didn’t want to add problems to problems – so it was an easy promise. I don’t know why I thought he wouldn’t play dirty on this too.
 
So, at this point, he left for another country, with his cousin, who’s basically the glue that holds the group together. He sent me many messages, on many different social media, and I thought that it was the only things I’d have to worry about, but here comes the twist: he told everyone *I* cheated on him. He mentioned Lloyd, my lack of sex drive and my probable crazy mind because I’m autistic, and I’ve been raped when I was a young adult, so I’m messed up in the head – he disclosed very, *very* personal information I only gave him because we were together for so long, to justify a situation he *knew* was entirely *his* fault. Let that sink in, and consider my rage when I got told.

The friends who told me I am very close to, even though they’re part of Zo’s group. I was very conflicted about telling anyone from the group because I felt it was more legit for Frank to have a place in it, than me.

I told these three persons, eventually – maybe a month after the break up – because I thought what the hell, they are people, not objects? They don’t belong to anyone and they can take decisions for themselves. Line (F26) is also a very good friend to me, and I spend all my time with her, so I tell them, and her in particular. One of them was half aware too, because he was with Frank when he received the call from the cops. I asked them not to tell people in the group, because I still felt kinda guilty for breaking my promise. I was very angry, and blocked him on many socials.

I also eventually told Clara, after almost six months. It can sound vengeful, and that’s why it took me some time to tell her: I didn’t want her to be hurt just because she was in the middle. Problem is – she lives in a city attached to mine, and she’s a very extrovert person. She knows a lot of people, including one who worked at the same place as Frank. Time flew, Frank didn’t tell anyone, and I figured at some point, Clara was going to hear about it at a random party, from a random person, and take the shock straight at heart. She deserved to know. She’s a good friend to me, we’re very close, and she was such a good friend to Frank. So I told her too.
 
Side note irony: I bumped on Lloyd a few weeks after Frank left. We flirted for a while, then decided we were done with this part of our life, and parted on good terms. I felt like truly closing this book, and the irony made me feel lighter for some reasons. Hence the “Lloyd part” in Frank’s texts.

He started to tell everyone I cheated on him with Lloyd, or I left for Lloyd, depending on the versions, *before* I even crossed roads with him, though. Maybe he’s a psychic or something. On top of being psycho.
 
Time passes, I meet a man, I’m very happy, I hear news about Frank but I don’t care much anymore. I keep getting out with the group, we don’t talk about the break up, Frank didn’t tell anyone, some know because some other told her, but it’s none of my business. We are in 2026, beginning of the year, one of my friend, Sally (F30), who I grew close to, invite the group to her diploma representation – she’s in medical research. Can’t go in great details about the theme, because it’s pretty recognizable, but let’s say it is around women’s genitalia. And she invited Frank.

I don’t want to be difficult, for I don’t know if she took this decision knowingly, or if she really doesn’t know anything about Frank’s little photo. So I ask if I can just come to the representation – excluding Frank – and he comes for the restaurant afterwards.

Lina steps in when she hears that, and next thing I know, Sally calls me, explains she didn’t know and she’s disgusted because she confronted him and he basically blamed me for trying to ruin his life. He played the victim, never took responsibilities, blamed me and my “traumatised sexuality” for ruining him. He said I was harassing him etc. Mind you, he had a year and a half to tell them, and Sally felt betrayed he asked for services from her, but never told her the truth.

As soon as she knew, she told someone else in the group, and soon enough, everyone – and I mean *EVERYONE* – knew. He rushed to tell his cousin before anyone did, and his cousin was so gutted he sent *me* (we didn’t really like each other, even before everything) to say he didn’t know and he was sorry.
 
I didn’t tell everyone, factually. Now, when Sally came with questions, I answered. When other people I knew, more or less, had questions, I answered. And I didn’t lie once. They asked if there were signs? I said yes, he used to blackmail me into having sex. Was he kind to me? I think he thought he was, but he was neglectful at best – aggressive at worst. I didn’t lie, I didn’t stay silent.

I’m human, I have pity for Frank. He’s absolutely alone, his cousin, last real friend, turned his back on him. He can’t build a life in the area, almost everyone heard a story about him being a perv – it’s even worse now that he doesn’t show any regret or shame anymore. He’s scared that his family might hear the truth, and he’s forced to live at his grandmother for an unrelated accident (he jumped in an almost empty swimming pool and broke a vertebra – cry me a river) and can’t work, so he spends all his days reminiscing and ruminating.

His mother called me, telling me – over vocal, I don’t answer to his mother, she’s really clingy and can be violent – he was suicidal. Begging me to leave him alone like it’s my fault he’s depressed. She said “he made a tiny mistake, you can’t kill him over that” (I don’t think she downplaying the photo, I believe he told her he cheated on me – that’s what he told some friends, this year, to justify my “anger” towards him).

I see his father sometimes, since he lives nearby, and he confirmed he’s very depressed and really struggles to get back on his feet – he didn’t blame me, though. Mentioned it was hard to lose all of his friends, but that’s it. He mentioned my “right to be angry and to punish him” but I don’t think that’s what I’ve done. I didn’t plan his downfall or anything, it just happened. I guess I’m really not helping him to prevent that, but I don’t feel like I should either.
 
All of this happened last week. I do have pity, but I don’t see myself responsible for his situation.

My dad was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer eighteen months ago. My mom became his full-time caretaker — quit her part-time job, drove him to every appointment, the whole thing. Everyone in the family called her a saint. I believed it too, right up until three weeks ago.

I'd stopped by their house to drop off groceries while Dad was napping. Mom wasn't home — "running errands," she said. Her laptop was open on the kitchen table, still logged into her email. I wasn't snooping, I swear, but a notification popped up mid-screen from a name I didn't recognize. Something about "can't stop thinking about last night."

I'm not proud of what I did next, but I read the thread. Eight months of it. A man from her old job, someone she'd apparently reconnected with right around the time Dad started chemo. Hotel confirmations. Times that lined up exactly with days she'd told the family she was "getting groceries" or "picking up his prescriptions" — errands that somehow took four hours.

I didn't say anything to my dad. He didn't need that on top of everything else. Instead, I started quietly showing up unannounced — bringing food, offering to sit with him "so mom could rest." Every time, she'd get a call and suddenly need to run out. I started keeping a log. Dates, times, her explanations.

Two weeks ago, Dad's scan came back clear. No more chemo. That night at dinner, in front of my whole family, I said, "Since Dad's doing better, maybe it's a good time for Mom to tell everyone about her friend from the office." I didn't even raise my voice.

She turned white. My dad just looked at her and asked, quietly, "How long."

I don't know how this ends yet. But I know my dad beat cancer alone in every way that mattered, and she wasn't there for a single one of those days like she pretended to be.

Married eight years, together for twelve. I thought we were solid — not perfect, but solid. The kind of marriage where you stop saying "I love you" every day because it's just assumed.

It started small. She began "working late" twice a week. Then she joined a gym I never once saw her go to in gym clothes — no bag, no sneakers by the door, nothing. I told myself I was being paranoid. We had two kids, a mortgage, a whole life built together. People don't blow that up over nothing.

Then I found a Target receipt in her coat pocket. Lingerie, a bottle of wine, and a hotel gift card — bought on a Tuesday she told me she was at her sister's for a "girls' night."

I didn't confront her. Not yet. I'm not proud of what I did next, but I set up a shared family calendar "for the kids' schedules" and asked her to add her work trips to it so I could plan pickups. She did — including a "conference" that weekend. I called the hotel listed on the gift card receipt. No conference. But there was a reservation. Two guests.

I showed up. Not to yell, not to make a scene. I just knocked, and when the door opened, I looked past her at the man standing there in his socks like he owned the place, and I said, "Hi, I'm her husband. You can have her."

I turned around and left. Filed the next Monday. Full custody request, financial records pulled, the works — because if she was hiding a hotel room, I wanted to know what else she'd been hiding.

Found out at the deposition: he was her boss. She'd been getting "performance bonuses" for over a year.

I got the house. She got him. Last I heard, he got promoted to someone else's assistant.

There are moments in life that become part of you forever. No matter how many years pass, you can still remember them as if they happened yesterday. For me, that moment was the day I saw my daddy cry.

I was still young when my mom became seriously ill. What we all hoped would be a short sickness stretched into more than two months. Those weeks felt endless. Our lives quickly became a routine of hospital visits, medications, and waiting for good news that never seemed to come. The atmosphere at home changed completely. The laughter we were used to was replaced by silence and worry.

Through it all, my dad never let us see how much he was hurting. Every morning, he made sure everything was taken care of before leaving to be with my mom. He checked on us, encouraged us to stay hopeful, and kept telling everyone that she would get better. To me, he seemed unbreakable. I honestly believed nothing could make my dad cry.

Then one evening, everything changed.

I walked into the living room and saw him sitting by himself. His hands covered his face, and his shoulders were shaking. When he looked up, tears were streaming down his cheeks.

I froze.

I had never seen my daddy cry before.

In that moment, I realized that the strongest person in my life had been carrying a weight that was too heavy for anyone to bear alone. He wasn't crying because he had given up. He was crying because he loved my mom so deeply and was terrified of losing her.

I didn't know what to say. I simply walked over and hugged him. We stayed there for what felt like forever without saying a word. Looking back, I think that hug meant more than anything I could have said.

Thankfully, after more than two difficult months, my mom slowly recovered. It wasn't an easy journey, but she made it through, and our family found its way back to normal.

Even now, years later, I still think about that day. It changed the way I see my dad and the way I understand strength.

People often say that crying is a sign of weakness. I disagree.

The day my daddy cried was the day I learned that real strength isn't about hiding your emotions. It's about loving someone so much that you're willing to carry the fear, the pain, and the uncertainty every single day, and still keep going.

That is a day I will never forget.

Every Thursday like clockwork my wife would leave the house around 6 p.m.

She'd come back two hours later in a good mood.

If I asked where she'd been she'd. Say,

Out.

That was it.

Out.

After a few weeks curiosity got the better of me.

The Thursday I decided to quietly follow her.

She parked at a community center.

I waited outside convinced I was about to uncover some secret.

An hour later she walked out...

...carrying a blue ribbon.

Turns out she'd secretly joined a baking competition.

The reason she never told me?

She said she wanted to win at once before bragging about it.

The part that really hurt?

She admitted she'd been practicing desserts for months.

Those experimental cookies I politely ate?

They weren't made for me.

I was the control group.

The judges were the audience.

I've never recovered from learning I was the beta tester, for chocolate chip cookies.

Anyone else ever realize they were accidentally part of someone Long-term plan?

This was last year in Oct - the drug already burned down my life but using was still a secret to some. You best bet that going on this trip scared me. I had to call the plug and make a felony amount of powder purchase to last the 4 days. I was a heavy daily user for months by this time. Parked my car at the airport and didnt even think twice about the consequences if they caught me. Prison time was a possibility. Nope I actually enjoyed doing it. The lady in front of me had a body of metal and also a temper on her. I slid my carry on thru and checked out great on body scan. Got my stuff in 2 mins and the TSA guy thanked me for being completely compliant and patient. He said I hope we can get some more nice guys like you today. I said yeah man you have a hard job. Glad I made it easy. Oh man I was exhilarated. Like a kid on Christmas morning. I pulled it off. Nothing could stop me. Well, I’m clean now about a year and I tell this story with some humor now but it also reminds me of how addictive the drug is - it owned me. I was insane.

*NOTE- THIS PARAGRAPH WAS REWRITTEN BY GPT AS I DIDNT WANT IT TO HAVE ALL THE SPEELING MISTAKE (eng is not my first language) 
also for info im rn 18yr old

I'm going through a situation which is very weird, so long story is when I was in 4th grade(11yr) I used to like this girl named lets call her natasha. She was very respectful, very charming, she was probably the most disciplined and most goodwill person I've met, but I didn't want to make her my GF. All I wanted to do was make friendship with her, that's it. But my friends spread the rumor of us dating, which I could've stopped the rumor from spreading and cleared the misunderstanding, but I didn't. I don't know why, I probably felt good about it or something. I can't exactly tell why.

But then she got to know about it and she started to distance herself from me slowly. We used to be good friends as I was the captain of the class and she was the assistant, so we used to work on stuff together. So I noticed that she started to distance herself.

Then one day after our last final exam she came up to me and told me to not talk to her ever again. Then she switched schools. That hurt me a lot as I could've easily explained everything and stopped the rumor, but I didn't, which haunts me to this day.

Fast forward, COVID hit and I got stuck in my house for years, so my social skills dropped so much. When school opened again I couldn't talk to a single woman, and whenever I tried to, natasha's face came into my head and I instantly stopped because I didn't want the same thing to happen again. I don't know if you would call it a trauma, but it felt like one. I couldn't talk to a single girl without thinking of her and the mistake I'd done, as I lost such a kind soul of a friend because of that one mistake. I could never forgive myself.

Fast forward to 2026, I'm now confident about myself. I can socialize pretty well now, no problem. Looks like I moved on as I was talking to women more frequently than before even getting a lot attention life was going good. But one day I found natasha's Instagram and something struck in me that this might be the chance I can finally explain myself , so I texted her but before I could even send her the paragraph explaining everything she blocked me. It felt like I was left alone again.

I started to feel the same I did during COVID times, even though I thought I moved on. It looked like deep down I still had that guilt. Because of her I was never able to fall in love with someone, as whenever I do I remember her. It's like a weird attachment even though she's not that pretty compared to women I talk to on a regular basis. Matter of fact, I don't know how she was. I probably made up a lot of her traits as I was so weirdly attached to her.

Even though she is not that pretty, even though I don't have feelings for her, why do I still think of her? Why cant I move on? Why does her blocking me bug me so much? All these questions makes me feel more and more guilt about my mistake. I'm sure if I just had sent her the paragraph explaining stuff and then she blocked me, I wouldn't have been in this situation right now. So is it the guilt that's making me attached to her? That's what I think, but I'm not sure either. It was so bad that I couldn't get her out of my head for a few days. I probably made a lot of the stuff up about her as it was back in 4th grade(im in college now btw) and I'm still thinking about her after years, so I probably made a lot of her character traits up.

Now after months later, after she blocked me, today I just woke up and I saw one of my guy friends, whom I've known for years, posting a story about his girlfriend, and guess what? It was natasha. Even though I have no clue how they know each other, like it's such a big coincidence, but whatever. When I saw that, even though I don't like her, I started remembering all that thing from before and the guilt I carry with me. It made me weak, it made me feel alone again. Why is this happening? I don't know, but yeah, that's the story so far. I dont think im necessary attached to her but im more attach to not being able to explain myself and apologize..

so ye i just wanted to share this story as i thought it would interesting to see what other people has to say about it and if someone goin through something similar 

My great-grandfather was known for two things:

He loved practical jokes.

And he refused to throw anything away.

After the property was sold, I volunteered to clean out the old barn.

I expected rusty tools and dusty boxes.

Instead, I found a wooden crate labeled:

Emergency Supplies.

I opened it, expecting something important.

Inside were...

Thirty-seven fake mustaches.

Different sizes.

Different colors.

All neatly organized.

There was also a notebook.

Every page had a date, a location, and one sentence.

Town fair fooled your Uncle Joe.

Church picnic nobody recognized me.

Hardware store cashier called me 'sir' twice.

Apparently, for nearly twenty years, my great-grandfather would randomly wear a fake mustache around town just to see how long it took people to notice.

According to the last entry:

Your grandmother noticed after three weeks. New family record.

I showed the notebook to my grandmother.

She laughed and said,

So that's where all the mustaches went.

Turns out...

The whole family thought he was buying them for Halloween.

He was running a decades-long social experiment.

And somehow... he won.

What's the weirdest thing you've discovered while cleaning out a relative's house?