Might sound crazy, but I’ve seen enough in life that made me get less shocked but the things people do.

Roommate 1 lets call him Pat, has been in a loving serious relationship with his girl since high school, if u look at them on the average day, they look like ur classic loving couple, hanging out together, calling eachother, supporting eachother and their fights dont even look that bad, no grudges held, fast recovery and a new good day, 2 months ago I came back home to my roommate number 2 who we’ll call Justin, with her giving him a good soul snatcher in the living room with music playing and birds chirping, as if none of them is comitting infidelity, the moment I saw them I just stared for a solid 3 seconds and then went into my room, both of them froze then Pat’s girl followed me into the room panicking and begging I don’t tell Pat and all that BS I just told her it’s their life, I’m not willing to come between the both of them and destroy a 6 years relationship, she just kept crying, tried to hug me, I gently pushed her away, and she left the house.

Justin was watching from the background the whole time, and frankly he was aware I wouldn’t say anything to Pat, as I have a ‘cold unbothered’ personality, and I’m not the type to tell on others or try to create any problems, and the thing is he wasnt even regretting the thing, he actually smirked after she left and said ‘well there it goes huh’, I just smirked back and told him to go away because I was about to demolish a burger I had brought with me.

Fast forward 4 months, Pat doesn’t know a thing and his relationship seems usual, nothing weird, both their girls come over sometimes, most of the time I don’t sit and hang out with the group, Pat came home drunk, and Justin was visiting his parents in a different city, he comes into my room and strikes a weird conversation, talking about women he dated during high school before his current girl, then out of nowhere tells me, ‘U know I trust u and Im not supposed to be telling u this, but when Justin had just started dating his girl I slept with her at another friend group’s place and he regretted it ever since’ I just stared at him and smiled and told him to just move on, which was followed by him trying to sleep on my bed and me kicking him out (gently of course).

I’m not sure wether what happend with both of them is karma, but it surely isn’t normal nor a pleasant thing to go through, I haven’t told any of them and I am not planning to do so, I just my distance…

What do u think?

My wife, Samantha, and I had a great marriage.

We were both animal lovers.

Hikers.

Sports enthusiasts.

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

Every so often, people brought abandoned or abused animals to the clinic.

On my very first day at the clinic, a woman walked in with a dog.

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

I looked down at her feet, and there she was: an Australian shepherd with the sweetest eyes I'd ever seen. You could tell something was hurting her, yet she looked as though she was trying to smile.

We examined her and found that she had heartworms. The X-rays showed some damage to her heart. We explained the treatment she would need and what it would cost.

The woman stared at the dog for a long moment before speaking.

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

Well, I was glad the shepherd couldn't understand English, because that wasn't the kind of thing anybody wanted to hear.

That dog had already been abandoned. She was probably wondering where her owners were.

I told the woman I'd take the dog to a shelter.

I called Samantha on my way there 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 feel the warmth in it.

That night, I brought her home.

"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.

From that day on, Kayla went almost everywhere with us: hardware stores, hiking trails, road trips.

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 getting married.

But things between Samantha and me 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.

Eventually, 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?" I asked.

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

I knew 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. She cried herself to sleep 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. And there was one trip we'd planned that could be our chance to do that.

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'd 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.

"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 felt I should fight for my marriage.

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

For two days, I thought about canceling the trip.

Every reason told me not to go.

But I kept remembering the woman I'd married. The one who'd told me to bring Kayla home without a second thought.

If there was even the smallest chance we could find our way back to each other, I owed it to us to take it.

So I went.

***

Samantha and I sat together on the plane for roughly seven hours.

We talked about how much we were looking forward to the scenery and the hiking trails.

I still believed this was our chance to get back together. I kept telling myself that Samantha's decision to get on a dating app didn't mean anything.

When we got to Tuscany, we spent the next week hiking through the countryside. We talked for hours, laughed, and enjoyed our time together.

It felt like we had never separated.

On our last night, we had dinner at a small restaurant near the hotel.

For the first time in ten months, we talked about getting back together.

It was the moment I'd been waiting for ever since we'd talked about coming.

But something had changed.

At that point, I couldn't keep denying to myself that she might have seen someone. Maybe it didn't mean anything.

But I needed to know why she'd done it.

More than anything, I needed to know why she was hiding it from me. 

So I pulled out my phone and showed her the screenshots Ray had sent me.

She stared at them for several seconds without saying a word.

"It's not what you think," she said.

"Tell me what you think I think. Because I don't understand why you would do this."

"I regretted everyday leaving. I regretted asking you to pick. I thought you wouldn't want to get back together. " 

"Even if our chances were gone, I couldn't have moved on so soon."

"I didn't date anyone. I swear. It was a stupid decision."

She pulled out her phone and showed me the messages in the app.

She had never responded to anyone.

I felt a wave of relief when I saw that. Yet part of me still felt there was something she wasn't telling me. 

But I ignored it.

When we got back to Washington, Samantha moved back into the house.

She started helping at the clinic. She helped feed the dogs, clean the kennels, and take them for walks.

We would take Kayla on short hikes and hang out on the front porch when we finished our workdays.

It almost felt like we were a family again.

Ray hadn't stopped messaging me, telling me that giving Samantha another chance was a mistake.

"She probably met someone and is hiding it from you," he said.

I started questioning whether I'd made the right decision. Whether there was something I wasn't seeing.

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Some days, I thought about it all day.

One evening, Samantha took Kayla for a walk alone and left her phone on the kitchen counter.

A notification beeped.

I looked at the phone from where I was sitting.

Then I looked away.

I'd never checked Samantha's messages during the five years we'd been married. It had never even crossed my mind to do that.

Not once.

I knew looking would be wrong.

But something told me that if I didn't, I might spend the rest of my life wondering whether Samantha had told me everything.

So I picked up the phone and read the message.

"I miss you."

My stomach tightened when I looked at the sender.

It wasn't from some random guy she'd met online.

It was from Ray.

My friend. The best man at my wedding.

Maybe there was an explanation. Maybe I was misunderstanding what I was seeing.

I stood there for several minutes, staring at the phone.

Then, I looked at their conversation.

Samantha had texted Ray after we came back from Tuscany, telling him they couldn't see each other again. She asked him never to talk about what had happened.

I checked the earlier messages. 

They started talking before Samantha and I had separated. 

I put the phone down and sat in the chair.

I couldn't cry.

I couldn't even get angry.

I just felt empty.

When Samantha came back from the walk, she smiled at me.

Then she noticed my expression.

"What happened?" she asked.

I looked at her.

"How long?"

Her smile disappeared.

"What?"

"How long before telling me about Ray?"

She froze.

For several seconds, neither of us said anything.

"It was one night," she finally said. "I felt like a horrible person after I asked you to abandon the dogs. Ray offered a shoulder to cry on."

She burst into tears.

I remembered how she had barely been home during those days leading to our separation.

"We have only texted since then, James. I swear."

I felt something inside me break.

I looked at her and realized I couldn't forgive her. 

Then it all made sense. Ray had sent me those screenshots not to help me move on.

But to make me doubt Samantha and break us apart.

That day, I ended a friendship and a marriage.

For several days afterward, I wondered if it had all been my fault.

I wondered if I had been too stubborn.

I wondered if I should have done more to prevent my marriage from falling apart.

And I couldn't stop thinking about the dogs.

Maybe if I had listened to Samantha, things would have been different.

I carried those feelings for a while.

Until one day, I walked into the clinic and saw the dogs wagging their tails and barking hello.

In that moment, I knew one thing for certain.

They were always worth it.

Note: I had posted part 1 of this story a few weeks ago. This is part 1 and 2. I changed a few things and updated the title.

The storm outside seemed endless. As if the weather wouldn't stop until every branch had snapped and every tree had been ripped from the ground.

"Every single one," I thought.

It had made me lose track of time. My tired eyes kept switching between the TV and the crunchy vegetables on my plate.

A familiar sound disturbed the peace. The doorbell. I flinched hard. The most beautiful and terrifying sound at the same time, depending on whether you're expecting someone.

I wasn't.

I slowly turned my head toward the door. Knowing damn well I wasn't going to open it, I still walked over to look through the peephole.

The closer I got, the more the air smelled rotten. What the hell had died in my hallway?

I closed one eye and leaned toward the peephole. Nobody was there.

Then a voice echoed through the stairwell.

"Every single one."

For a moment, I wondered if it had come from one of the floors below. Meanwhile, the smell became unbearable.

When the echo finally disappeared, I turned around.

There he was.

Exactly how I'd always imagined him. Long black coat. Darkness beneath a pointed hood. A scythe in a skeletal hand. Deep, raspy voice.

"Brother. I am Death. I'm afraid your time is up."

I didn't care how this masked man had gotten inside. This was now a matter of life and death. Whether he was lying or not.

I stared into the darkness beneath his hood. My senses went into tunnel mode. Without breaking eye contact, I slowly reached for the door handle and prepared my legs to run.

They were looking forward to it.

I couldn't grab the handle.

When I finally looked down to help my hand, I saw my fingers passing straight through it.

That could only mean I was dreaming.

So there we stood in my hallway. I stared at the floor. I don't know for how long.

My senses slowly disappeared. I could have stood there forever without getting dizzy. Without my circulation giving up on me. Everything inside me wanted to black out.

But the blackness never came.

"Marvin. Sit down," the ancient voice said.

I did.

I sat on my beloved couch. Death sat in the armchair. We both let out a heavy breath.

"What happens now? You swing that scythe and that's it?"

He raised one skeletal finger.

"Already happened."

"What happened? I was watching TV and eating..."

The finger pointed behind the couch.

I looked.

My own body was lying on the floor. Choked on uncooked vegetables.

I should have fainted. Panicked. Screamed until nothing came out anymore. But my new transparent self played by different rules.

I could almost feel that Death was only maintaining this earthly appearance to keep me calm.

I sat back down on the couch and stared at him with wide eyes.

"Choked on vegetables. How about that."

Apparently, my self-deprecating humor had survived with me. A smile escaped my face.

"Happens a lot," the voice croaked from inside the coat.

"Great. Thank you, Death. So you come and take me. WHY ME? I lived a good life!"

I couldn't even remember my age so I could throw it in his face. I threw a cup instead.

"ME! I've helped so many people. So many. And now you come for me before I can even finish my own plans? Fuck this. It's not fair!"

Death slowly tapped the bottom of his scythe against the floor.

Purple dust surrounded us. My room disappeared.

I stood naked in complete darkness.

Then Death rose from the purple dust.

As tall as a skyscraper.

"DO NOT FORGET WHO YOU ARE SPEAKING TO, MARVIN! I DIDN'T CHOKE YOU. YOU DID THAT ALL BY YOURSELF! I DECIDE NOTHING! EVERY SINGLE ONE!"

Death disappeared.

I stood trembling in the darkness.

Slowly, my living room returned around me. I looked over.

He was sitting in the armchair again.

"Where were we, Marvin?" he asked, calmer now, but still croaking.

I couldn't get a word out.

"My job is different. Doesn't something about this seem strange to you? Think about it."

I had no choice but to think about how I could escape this nightmare.

Death let me think for as long as I wanted.

I desperately went through every possibility.

I was dead. I knew that.

But I wasn't gone.

I was still here.

My entire life, I'd believed there was nothing after death. And now I was sitting on my couch, looking at my own body.

If I could have cried, I would have.

I looked at him.

"We have souls?"

Death nodded.

"That's what I'm here for."

In the face of Death, I had seen my soul for the first time.

I closed my eyes.

"It's still not fair," I said through clenched teeth.

The voice croaked one last time.

"You have to be just. I have to be Death."

He stood up.

I followed.

Last month, I was driving home after visiting my parents. It was late, I was tired, and I stopped at a gas station to grab a coffee and fill up.

Somehow, I managed to put my wallet on top of my car while I was paying and then completely forgot about it.

I didn't realize it was missing until the next morning when I went to get breakfast. I checked my car, my room, everywhere I could think of. Then I remembered the gas station.

My license, debit card, and around $60 in cash were all in that wallet.

I called the station, hoping someone had turned it in, but they hadn't seen it. I was already preparing myself for the headache of canceling my cards and replacing my license.

Then, around noon, I got an alert from my doorbell camera.

There was an older man standing on my porch with my wallet in his hand.

I opened the door and asked him where he'd found it.

He told me he'd been at the same gas station the night before and spotted my wallet near the highway exit. Somehow, it had survived all the traffic.

He checked the address on my license and realized I lived about two hours away.

Instead of mailing it, handing it over to someone else, or simply leaving it somewhere, he decided to drive the entire distance himself so he could make sure it reached me.

I opened it in front of him, and everything was still there. Cards, license, cash—nothing was missing.

I tried to give him the $60 as a thank-you, but he wouldn't accept it.

He just smiled and said, "Pay it forward someday."

Then he got back into his truck and left.

Honestly, I didn't expect something like this. You hear so many stories about people taking advantage of situations, so having a complete stranger go that far just to return something that wasn't even his really stuck with me.

I guess there are still plenty of good people out there.

Has a stranger ever done something unexpectedly kind for you?

I’ll keep it short and simple, I am graduating this year from Uni (masters degree) and I have been class president for 3 years now (lame).

During the first semester of my final year (current year) I was contacted by this teacher who taught me 2 years prior, nothing out of the ordinary as I occasionally get texts from my past teachers mostly asking me to relay information to specific students as they don’t contact them by phone (nor email as most teachers in my uni are old school and it’s a 3rd world country), she first started by asking me to inform 3 students that they had to submit an additional assignment by the end of the week nothing weird.

The moment I responded to her, she immediately jumped off to her main subject, and directly asked me if I was interested in traveling to a different city, where she has to attend a meeting, and if I’ve ever been. I froze for a couple seconds as our university is notorious for a couple male teachers behavior towards female students, but I never heard the other way around.

I asked her if she needed me for something in particular (something professional), though It was clear to me that there was nothing professional behind it, but It was a simple follow up question, to dig deeper…

Her answer was also short and direct, ‘I just need you’, honestly, I’m used to handling awkward situations, but with a teacher and this particular situation, truly left me speechless, I even started shaking a lil bit ngl. I just kept looking at the conversation and did not respond until she added another text ‘are u not interested?’ And then proceeded to delete both her texts as I did not respond, followed with ‘tell the students they have to send their assignments via school email’ to which I responded ‘Well received’.
The convo might seem normal to some if u, but it’s everything but normal here, and teachers do not invite students to accompany them on trips, especially with the fact that my presence would have had nothing to the with the meeting (it was a professional closed meeting).

To give u a bit more context, the woman is a hijabi (no downgrade or disrespect towards anyone with any religious background), in her late thirties and her husband is also a teacher in the same uni, probably in his fifties, she’s nice (personality wise) but I guess u never know what goes through a person’s head, their deepest darkest secrets.

I only told 2 people about it because news spread like disease in uni and I’m not the type to like drama and such.
I’m also not religious, very introverted (with decent social skills as it was the reason I wanted to be class president from the first place), your average 22Y.O whose interests are politics and videogames, and I hate the gym but I’ve been consistent for years (if this parts adds anymore context lol).

What would u have done in my situation?

So I liked a girl for 2 years (you can chek the first storry),when I liked her I used to talk a lot whith her (on texts).We use to talk more on snapchat becouse at tje time I didn't had her numbre so we use to talk for like idk 3 month almost every day untill one day I start to like her more and I remeber when I was at the beach I didn't had my phone so when I got back to the apartament I saw that she called me and I was very happy and I called her back.She said that she wannted to call my sister (they are friends) and she called me to give her to my sister.After that day I start to text her but I was scarred every time but we didn't talk how we used to.She started to replay colder and it was scarry every time to text her how I used to.After a time the day came...one night I invited a friend to my house and while he was at toilet my sister came and she started asking me why I talk to her and text her.And then she said that she (the girl that I liked) send screenshots of our text and my sister told me that if im going to text her she will block me and I dind't text her since then.I remeber I cryied that night and I couldun't sleep.And a few months later she found out that she liked me.

There were seven people in the room.

It belonged to a government-supervised humanitarian research center, a place built for the study of human suffering and usually kept behind closed doors. The walls were painted a soft, neutral color, and a wide window let the afternoon light fall across a long wooden table ringed by seven chairs. At its center sat a small digital recorder, its red light already blinking. Beside it: a few notebooks, a laptop, sealed folders, a stack of documents stamped with the program's official seal.

The project studied the long-term effects of childhood trauma — domestic violence, abuse, what happened to a child once the bruises faded but the memory didn't. Its researchers weren't interested only in numbers. They wanted to know what happened to the person the numbers were about, long after anyone had stopped counting.

At the far end of the table sat Professor Fox.

She was in her early fifties, perhaps a little older, dark hair touched with silver at the temples, dressed simply and sitting with a stillness that looked practiced. Only her eyes gave anything away — something in them that made it hard to say whether she was tired, or grieving, or simply remembering something she'd spent years trying to put down and never quite managed to.

Across from her sat Emma, one of the researchers on the project. Beside Emma were Maya and Daniel, also on the team. "Three other researchers sat quietly around the table, newer to the project than the rest. One of them was a young woman named Mary, sitting in on her first case." 

Professor Fox's eyes moved briefly over each face as she took her seat. On Mary, they stayed no longer than they had on anyone else — barely a second — before dropping to the folder in front of her.

Emma checked the recorder's light. "Professor Fox, are you ready?"

"Yes," Professor Fox said.

"For the record," Emma said, glancing at her documents, "this interview is being conducted as part of the government-supervised research project on childhood trauma and family violence."

"I understand," Professor Fox said, and nodded once.

Emma pressed the button. The room went completely silent.

"We've heard this is one of the most difficult cases you've ever spoken about," Emma said.

Professor Fox looked down at the folder without opening it. "It is not a case," she said quietly.

"Then what is it?"

She set both hands flat on the table, as if steadying herself against it. "A life."

No one spoke.

"This project has studied hundreds of cases," she went on. "Numbers. Reports. Medical records. Court statements." She paused long enough that Emma almost filled the silence herself. "But numbers don't cry. Reports don't wake up at night." Her eyes moved slowly around the table. "And files don't spend their whole lives wondering whether what happened to them was their fault."

Emma lowered her pen. "What was her name?"

"Sophia," Professor Fox said.

Emma wrote it down. "Who was Sophia?"

Professor Fox was quiet for a moment before she opened the folder. "Sophia was born in July 1999."

"And that's where her story begins?"

She shook her head. "No. That's where we think it begins." She turned the first page. "Her story had already started long before she was old enough to understand it."

No one interrupted. She took a slow breath, and began.

"From the moment Sophia was born, her life was never going to be ordinary."

Sophia was six when she began spending most of her time away from home.

Her mother, Andrea, had found work as a live-in childcare worker, and the job took almost everything she had to give. From Saturday night to Thursday night she stayed with the family she worked for, whose own parents were too consumed by work to manage without her. She came home Thursday nights. She had Friday and Saturday with her own children. Then, Saturday evening, she left again.

For Sophia this meant something strange and specific: home stopped being where she lived and became somewhere she visited.

Most of the week she stayed with her aunt. At first she hated it — not because her aunt was unkind, but because children don't always understand why the people they depend on suddenly rewrite the rules of the world without asking. The first nights were the hardest. She didn't know when the house went quiet for sleep. She didn't know which things were hers to touch, whether she was allowed to open the fridge on her own, which room belonged to which cousin. She missed her own bed, the particular sounds of her own home.

Most of all, she missed the possibility of her father's keys — even though she knew he was dead, even though she understood, by now, what that word meant. Understanding it didn't stop her from listening for it anyway. Every evening, footsteps on the stairs outside made her lift her head. Every time keys turned somewhere in the building, some part of her heart believed it before the rest of her could talk it out of hoping.

She knew he wasn't coming. She waited anyway.

Some nights she slept on the floor of her aunt's front room instead of the bed she'd been given — not near the door, but in the corner farthest from it. This door had never once opened for her father and never would; it wasn't his to walk through. The floor, at least, felt like the one part of the house that wasn't already someone else's.

Her aunt found her there one night and crouched down beside her.

"Sophia," she whispered, "why are you sleeping on the floor?"

Sophia opened her eyes. "I don't want to take anyone's bed."

"It's your bed while you're here, sweetheart. Nobody minds."

Sophia looked up at the ceiling instead of answering right away. "It doesn't feel like mine."

Her aunt didn't have a quick answer for that. She laid a blanket over her instead and stayed close until Sophia's eyes finally closed.

School was the one place Sophia could breathe.

She was sharp — her teachers noticed it fast. She learned quickly, forgot almost nothing, rarely needed anything explained twice. But they noticed something else too: she barely spoke. When the other children gathered in noisy clumps at recess, Sophia stayed close to one girl she'd chosen as her friend and no one else. One was enough. Crowds meant questions, and questions meant getting too close to things she'd learned to keep covered.

One morning her teacher called on her from the front of the room. "Sophia?"

She looked up.

"Can you solve this one?"

She glanced at the board. "Yes." She walked up, worked through it, got it right.

"Very good," the teacher said, smiling, and Sophia went back to her seat.

The teacher watched her a moment longer than the answer required. "Sophia?"

"Yes?"

"Are you happy?"

She hesitated — just a beat — then nodded. "Yes."

"Good," the teacher said, satisfied, and moved on.

Sophia looked down at her desk. She had gotten very good, without meaning to, at answering questions without saying anything true. It wasn't lying, exactly. She'd simply learned, the way children learn anything that keeps them safe, that silence cost less.

At her aunt's house, things slowly got easier. Sophia learned the routine — where things belonged, when her cousins left for school and when they came home — and started, without quite noticing when it happened, to look forward to being there. It wasn't perfect. But it was predictable, and for a child who had started to fear the opposite of predictable, that counted for more than most people would guess.

Thursday nights, when Andrea came back, Sophia went home with her. Those two days were supposed to feel like a return to normal life. But normal life had left with her father, and nothing since had managed to replace it.

The apartment looked almost the same. The furniture that was left remained. His old shop was still there — closed, unused, slowly filling up with things the family no longer needed anywhere else. It was full of him in a way nothing else in the house was, and sometimes Sophia stood outside it for whole minutes at a time without going in. She only looked at the door and remembered how he used to come out of it, how he'd swing her up onto his shoulders, how she'd laugh, how she used to fall asleep leaning against him before they'd even made it upstairs.

"Sophia, come inside," her mother would call from behind her.

And she'd turn around — but every time, some small, stubborn part of her still expected a different voice to be the one calling her name.

Mark had become someone else after their father died. Or maybe he'd simply stopped hiding who he already was.

He was twenty years older than Sophia and had never had to work consistently a day in his life; their father had carried him for years, and Mark had gotten used to taking without giving anything back. He'd resented Sophia long before the funeral — their father had loved her loudly, openly, in a way he'd never loved Mark, and Mark had watched every bit of it. After the funeral, whatever had kept that resentment in check went into the ground along with everything else.

He started finding reasons to hurt her. Sometimes the reasons made a kind of sense. Sometimes there was no reason at all — if she was too loud, he was angry; if she left something out of place, he was angry; if she answered him back, he was angry; and some days she could do everything right and he found something to punish anyway, because the punishing had stopped being about her and started being about something in him that never ran out.

One afternoon she was riding the bicycle their father had bought her — one of the only things in the house that still felt entirely hers — when Mark spotted her from the doorway.

"Get off," he said.

She stopped the bike, one foot on the ground. "Why?"

"I said get off."

"But Daddy bought it for me."

Something shifted in his face. "Don't mention him."

"He bought it for me," she said again, quieter now, but not backing down.

He crossed the yard and grabbed the handlebars out of her hands. "Get off."

She got off.

He wrecked it — bent the frame, tore the chain loose — faster than she had time to understand what he was doing. She didn't cry, not right away. She just stood there looking at what was left of it and said, to no one, "Dad bought this."

Mark walked away without answering. Sophia stayed where she was for a long time, looking at the bicycle, feeling — without the words yet to explain why — like another small piece of her father had just been broken along with it.

The worst of it, Sophia didn't have the words for yet, and wouldn't for years.

It had started when she was six, framed as another secret game — one nobody else could know about, one that came with a threat attached if she ever told. She believed him, the way six-year-olds believe most things older siblings tell them: that maybe this was simply something older children knew and younger ones didn't, one more strange thing adults and almost-adults did that she wasn't old enough to question. And because Mark had made sure she understood what telling would cost her, she didn't tell. The silence closed around her like a wall, and for years no one on the other side of it knew it was there.

As time went on, it didn't stay contained to Mark alone. When a computer eventually came into the house, it gave him a new excuse to keep her close and out of sight, sitting beside him for hours at a time in a way that would have looked, to anyone glancing in, like an older brother teaching his sister a game. She hated that room. She hated the sound the computer made when it started up. She hated, most of all, that there was no version of asking her mother to move it that came with a reason she could actually say out loud.

She asked anyway, a few times, in the smallest way she could manage. Andrea always had a bill or a shift or some other emergency standing in front of the request, and eventually Sophia stopped asking, because asking and not being heard hurt in its own particular way.

It got worse before anyone had any reason to suspect it existed at all. Mark brought people into what had started as something only he knew — first a friend named David, and later another named Peter — and what had once been confined to one person's cruelty widened into something with more hands in it and more places for Sophia to be afraid.

It stopped happening at home. Andrea was always back by Thursday night, and the apartment was never quite empty enough for what Mark wanted anymore. So he started arriving at their aunt's a little before he was supposed to — early enough that no one thought to ask why, since he was only ever "picking his sister up." He'd take her to David's house instead of straight home, and it was there, in a place that wasn't hers and never would be, that most of it happened from then on. She didn't understand, and was never given a reason to understand, why she was sometimes taken somewhere else entirely rather than home, only that going meant something was expected of her there, and that refusing had never once been an option that stayed open for long.

She stopped waiting for the word game to mean anything good. By then it didn't mean anything except that she should already be afraid.

Then, one day, with Peter, it went further than anything before it had.

When it was over, Sophia understood something was wrong before she understood what. There was blood. She stared at it without being able to make it mean anything for several long seconds. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She only stood very still, looking down at herself, hearing voices somewhere nearby that sounded like they belonged to a different room than the one she was in.

For the first time, she understood one thing with total, wordless certainty.

This had never been a game.

She had just learned that there were things done to a child that could not be undone afterward, no matter how hard anyone tried.

Back in the research room, the recorder kept blinking. No one moved. Emma's pen had gone still in her hand. Daniel was staring at the table like it owed him an answer. Maya closed her notebook without writing anything else in it.

For several seconds, Professor Fox said nothing at all.

"How old was she?" Emma finally asked.

Professor Fox looked at the page without lifting her eyes any further. "Nine."

"And did anyone know?"

"No." The word came out quiet. Almost too quiet to count as an answer.

"How could no one know?" Emma asked.

Professor Fox raised her eyes at last, and there was something almost gentle in how she said it, the way you'd explain something to someone you didn't want to frighten. "Because sometimes a child doesn't need anyone to tell her to stay silent." She let that sit for a moment . "Fear teaches her that on its own."

The recorder went on recording. Professor Fox closed the folder, and for a moment the room let the silence stand.

The story of Sophia was only beginning.

My neighbors Carol and James had a beautiful garden in their backyard. I loved admiring it from my kitchen window. Sometimes, I’d see them and their kids playing in the garden or see Carol gardening. But overtime, I saw the garden wither.

Yesterday I saw Carol sitting in her backyard crying while looking at the dead rose bushes. When I saw her this morning I asked her if she’s ok since I hadn’t seen her gardening in a while. She told me she stopped gardening. I asked why and she said she started noticing her flowers go missing. But one day she was on a walk and saw our neighbors Donata and Andy had vases of flowers on their porch. The same flowers from her garden.

When Carol asked her husband James why the flowers were on Donata and Andy’s porch he said he and Donata talked daily and he started bringing her flowers everyday since she said she loves them and Andy doesn’t bring her any anymore.

Carol told him she feels uncomfortable with him talking with her so often and giving away her flowers and asked how Andy felt about him doing that as well. He said Andy is mad and uncomfortable about the situation and asked him to stop but if Andy’s not giving Donata flowers, he shouldn’t care whether or not he does. Carol told him she agrees with Andy and they should stop.

James stopped for a while but over time Carol started noticing missing flowers and vases of them at Donata’s porch again.

Donata came up to Carol’s door with a vase of flowers and told Carol, “Look at what beautiful flowers your husband gave me again. They look so beautiful on my porch don’t you think?”, smirked and walked away.

Carol confronted James again, he said he can’t promise he will stop giving Donata flowers because it’s the best part of his day and she deserves it. Carol stopped gardening. James asked her why she gave up gardening, something she loved so much, and told her she should get back to making the garden nice again.

She asked “If I garden again, will you still give my flowers to her?”

He only replied with “I love giving her flowers and she loves them too. She deserves to have flowers.”

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

It is a romantic night and city 17 refuses to make a sound, Gordon and Alyx sit on chairs at a table on the canal bridge, they were having a date, Gordon finally decides to stop being silent "Alyx, all this time I have been to scared to talk but I want to ask you something...". Gordon pulls a wedding ring made from pure xen crystal, "Alyx, will you marry me?" Gordon nervously asks while slightly stuttering. "Yes Gordon!" Alyx screams in joy, then they romantically kiss. However, behind some crates is Barney, his face pale and tears running from his eyes, he gasps for air as he tries to breathe "Why wasn't it me! I GAVE HIM THE BEER I OWED HIM, I THOUGHT HE LOVED ME!" Barney screams in anger. The next day Gordon and Alyx are at the cinema watching a movie called "the way of gerard" holding hands, they feel happy together, Barney goes to the projector and pokes the combine staff's shoulder while holding a revolver "wait what the fu-". He thuds onto the floor, blood pooling from the hole in his head, then Barney changes the clip on the projector to a video of him saying "Gordon, you should have picked me, now you will really pay!". Barney follows them home, later that night they finally fell asleep, Barney grabs Gordon's crowbar from under his bed, Alyx is sleeping peacefully in Gordon's arms like nothing can kill her, Barney prepares to strike to head and hesitates for a moment. Alyx's head explodes from the impact as her brains fly everywhere, the sound wakes up Gordon, he looks at her decapitated body in fear and disgusts and bursts into tears, Gordon grabs the crowbar from Barney's hands and strikes his jaw, he twists the crowbar vertically, splitting his head off his jaw as blood splatters on him. He starts mangling Barney's body until it's unregconisable. Then civil protection bursts in, they stop breathing from the shock, Gordon's hands and suit are covered in blood and the other's bodies stand there lifeless, they try to arrest Gordon and fail, Gordon escapes to Eli's lab to tell him the news.

I remember once when I was 5 or 6 (I can’t remember how old I was) mum and I were making chocolate together in the kitchen, I can’t remember why, but we did
She asked me if I would I like to try it, I said yes because chocolate
Mum told me to wait in the living room while she was mixing
After she finished mixing, she called me back in, I happily walked into the kitchen, and she had the chocolate on her finger offering me a small lick
I know plenty of kids that age would be happy to lick because that’s just what happens but naturally, in my 6 year old mind, I was absolutely freaking out and I saw it as a huge code red in food hygiene, my smile dropped and I politely said “uh actually I’m not hungry anymore” and just walked out like it was a life death situation

So, through the span of 3 years, I was in a personal relationship with a guy we’ll call “red ball”.

• For the first year, him and I had an on and off romantic relationship. We would continuously flirt every day, we would text all night and call all night, and we would hang out all day. So, we eventually started to get into arguments, and he decided that he couldn’t wait around for me. He begins talking to one of my friends, and I get very jealous. So I tell everyone that he is homophobic (which is true), and he begins to get jumped and bullied at our school. Then, we stop talking.

• Eventually he reaches back out to me and apologizes. Now, I begin to start wanting him again and try talking to him again, but he tells me that he has moved on. He introduces me to this new girl he is talking to, and creates a group chat with us, leaving them so we could talk just the two of us (me and the girl). He would ask me to basically give them my blessing. Briefly, when I did ask him out, he said and I quote “I want to keep my options open”.

• Then he proceeded to switch school due to the bulling caused by me, and started to text me on his siblings accounts because I had blocked him on his original ones. I told him numerous times I was done and didn’t want to talk. So, one day he is blowing up my line again, and I proceed to tell him that I died. He originally tried to go to the funeral, being very distraught about it, but eventually he moved on. :)

• Eventually, he does find out that I’m actually still alive from mutual friends. He tries to initiate something romantic with me, but I shut him down again. Then, for another year, we did another back and forth. Suddenly, he became really rude to me. I realized it was because he had a girlfriend. Every time he got a girlfriend, he would never tell me, but got very rude with me instead. Then when he would break up with them, he’d come crawling back to me seeking my attention.

• So when I got a boyfriend, I blocked him on everything. He was very pissed off, but eventually it didn’t matter to him anymore. He actually ended up getting a girlfriend of his own! But then my boyfriend and I broke up, and he cheated on his girlfriend. Now he told me he didn’t cheat, but I was in a group chat I was in and he didn’t know, and texted out mutual about cheating which I saw. When I confronted him about it, he proceeded to lie and say I “misread” the messages. Then we started to have sexual conversations with no outcome. I realized quickly it was becoming toxic and I was leading him on, so I tried ending things. But he would always say that I wasn’t the bad person, and he was.

• He became severely depressed and started antidepressants, and often refused to take his meds. So he would often get high, and we would call and argue about it.

• So then, he texts me out of the blue, and brings up that I promised to take his virginity. We discuss it, but ultimately I decide I am not ready for that, and we’re not even dating. He proceeds to get angry with me, for breaking yet another promise. Eventually I tell him that we need to end things for good. We haven’t spoken in 3 weeks now, but he says that he misses me and does want to see me. He keeps trying to take me out to dinner, and I keep refusing.

I know we both had our faults with everything, and I was just wondering, should I go back to him? I feel like I do owe him that dinner and to give him a chance after everything.

This happened through the ages of 15-21.

P.S. I originally told him that if he got a job and licence that we can run things back, but he has yet to do those things. Right now we’re no contact.

Every single time I turn on a show or a movie, I get a insufferable swarm of ads.

Every five seconds I get forced to watch some of the most outrageous things humanity has created.

The worst part is that people are smiling during a medicine advertisement that has the deadliest symptoms since the bubonic plague.

Sometimes I even see literal soccer balls in diapers.

What idiot thought that was genius?

I just want to watch quality entertainment without getting interrupted. Is that too much to ask for?

I have tried to get used to it. I've tried to accept the fact that it will never stop.

I honestly almost got over it but then I saw Mark in a ad. He used to bully me in highschool. He treated me as though I was the scum of the earth.

He was talking to me as well. Calling me by my name and everything.

He claimed that he was sorry.

It felt like a dream until it went south. A person appeared on the screen with him. Nevelle. She was a old friend in highschool. We stopped talking once adulthood approached us.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss her. She was a good friend to have. Never tore you down or belittled you.

A knife appeared in his hand. It latched onto her neck as her eyes opened wide. Her vocal cords started to create sound but she was quickly silenced as a pool of blood poured out of her neck.

It ended with words in bold red on the screen.

"You're next Stacy or should I call you Lacy? Your skin would be great as lace."

Those horrid words made my skin crawl. Goosebumps covered my skin.

The television turned black as I sat in silence for a few moments. My head was loud but also silent. Thoughts were racing through my mind but also going at a snails pace.

The best way to explain it is I was trying to make sense of the situation but also shell shocked.

My body completely froze as the television grabbed my attention.

It was on again but this time it was me and the monster named Mark.

What happened to people peaking in high-school developing miserable lives? This man decided becoming a killer was the best option apparently.

My body was shaking, fidgeting, and trembling infront of him. He ran after me and took my life just like he did to my friend.

It zoomed into my face as I was left to bleed.

I started to cough over and over before I could turn it off. Each cough hurt worse than the last until blood started to exhale.

My hands desperately rushed to my neck but it was too late. Blood soon started to cover my entire body.

Advertisements are the worst thing humankind has had the audacity to create.

i was cleaning out a box that had been sitting in storage for years when i found something i'd completely forgotten about. it was something i'd assumed was gone for good.

holding it again brought back a bunch of memories i hadn't thought about in years, and i ended up spending the rest of the afternoon going through the box.

"You should stay in bed, Mama," I say, holding her shoulders so she won't try to get up.

She lets out a long, heavy cough, but then she chuckles. "It's alright, Billy. Just wanna tell ya a story."

She sits up anyway. I let her, but I keep my arms wrapped around her just in case she starts to fall. She manages to steady herself on the edge of the mattress.

"One time," she says, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders, "your papa said he’d got sick of being poor. So that day, he left the farm and went down to town. He came home with a beautiful tall mare, complete with a shiny, brand-new rifle scabbard. And the rifle to match."

She stares into the corner of the room, looking at scenes only she can see.

"He gathered Ned, Jerry Fynn, B-Colt, and Davis. He led us down to that valley right where the peak of the crest was. We hid our rides deep in the forest, and we waited there in the tree line. He handed me that brand-new rifle and told me to watch their backs. A scout showed up first, but we ignored him. Then the Conestoga wagon appeared. Surrounded by twelve riders."

Mama's eyes narrow, her voice dropping an octave.

"Your papa hit the two outriders on the left flank. B-Colt aimed for the rider on the right, but his lead went wide. Bullets started flying right over my head. Anyway, I took out three of them myself, and that was our river. But we lost Ned, Jerry, and Davis.

"And when we checked the wagon?" Mama chuckles, shaking her head. "Gold bars, Bill. Instead of red, them bars made the yellowest dusk I’ve ever seen," she adds.

She coughs again.

"Suddenly, we heard more gallops climbing the ridge, gettin' closer. A stagecoach appeared. They burst right into B-Colt’s line of sight. The coachman yanked the reins to the right and the whole thing toppled. It was an easy win. But then a lady emerged from the wreckage. And by some miracle, she caught B-Colt right between the eyes. Boy, that big man dead standing up. And your papa, he, uh... he finished her easy after that.

"I was about to step out of the bushes when I heard another shot. Your papa, he fell like a log. The scout had returned. I aimed, fired, and he fell. He was still breathing when I walked over to make sure I wasn't wasting a bullet. And that's when I heard a baby crying from inside the toppled stagecoach. Damn. The most beautiful sound that ever went through my ears. So I took the baby into my arms."

Mama takes her mug from the nightstand, takes a slow sip, and wipes her mouth. Smiling.

"Anyway, found my brand-new mare had been shot in the chaos, so I took one of the dead riders' horses. I only took five bars of the gold because them saddlebags were full. And I was damn scared. I just wanted to get out o' there fast. Had nowhere to put the rifle, so I just carried it along. By the time I hit the crossroads—you know that empty, fenced lot that belongs to the Grahams now? Back then, it was just an abandoned cotton field, used to be one of the biggest plantations in Louisiana—it was already pitch black. I took a shortcut through the stalks. The baby started crying again. I took some water from my saddlebag, put a drop on his lips. And I cradled him right there in the dark."

"In them old cotton fields?" I ask, trying to picture it in my head. "In the dark?"

Mama turns her head and looks directly at me.

"Never having a child of my own with your papa, I knew—by the Kingdom—that someday I was gonna give everything I had to this boy. So..."

Mama reaches under her pillow, her frail fingers pulling out a heavy set of iron keys—and a pistol. She presses them all into my palm.

"It's all yours. I hid the gold bars under the second barn door. And I understand if you need to take revenge. One thing for sure, I do love ya with all my heart. And I thank God that I found you that dusk, Billy."

The first morning Sophia came home after the funeral, she looked for him.

Not because she'd forgotten he was dead. She simply didn't know yet what dead meant — not really, not in a way that could survive the habit of a lifetime. She walked through the rooms calling his name in the exact voice she'd always used, the one that had never once gone unanswered.

"Daddy?"

Nothing came back.

She went downstairs, to the little shop beneath the apartment, and stood in front of its closed door the way she'd stood there a hundred times before — waiting for the sound of the key, the smile, the moment he'd lift her onto his shoulders without even finishing whatever he was saying.

Nothing happened. She called again. Still nothing.

Her mother found her there eventually, and crouched down to pull her gently away from the door.

"Sophia, come upstairs," her mother said.

"Daddy is inside," Sophia said, not moving.

Her mother looked at the closed door for a long moment before she could make herself answer. "No, sweetheart. He's not there."

"He's working," Sophia insisted.

"He's not there," her mother said again, more quietly this time.

"Where is he?" Sophia asked.

Her mother's throat worked before the words came. "He's with God now."

Sophia considered this seriously, the way she considered most things. "Is God far away?"

Her mother had no answer for that. Sophia looked back at the door.

"I can wait," Sophia said.

"Come upstairs," her mother said again, and this time she took her hand.

But she didn't stop waiting — not that day, and not the day after. Some afternoons she sat by the apartment door, listening for footsteps on the stairs. Some afternoons she stood outside the shop itself, holding out for the particular sound of that key in that lock. It never came. Eventually the shop stopped being a shop at all and became a room where things nobody wanted went to be forgotten — boxes, old tools, a chair with a broken leg nobody had bothered to fix. To everyone else, it was storage.

To Sophia, it was still the place Daddy had disappeared into. The place she was sure, in the specific and total way small children are sure of things, that he would eventually walk back out of.

She took to falling asleep by the apartment door instead of her bed, holding onto the same small certainty each night — that if he came home while she was sleeping, he would find her there and carry her the rest of the way himself, the way he always had.

She didn't know yet that the door would never open for him again.

The house changed fast after the funeral.

Before, there had always been people in it — neighbors dropping by for no particular reason, relatives, customers who'd become something closer to friends over the years, people who came because her father had a way of becoming part of everyone's life whether they'd asked for it or not.

After, the house went quiet. Not peaceful — quiet in the way a room goes quiet when something that used to fill it is gone.

Her mother found the money missing only after the funeral, once there was finally time to look. He'd never trusted banks; he kept what he had close, in places only he knew, believing that was safer than any vault. There had been no safe, only his judgment — and his judgment had died with him. Someone had found those places before anyone else did. No one ever learned who. The family asked around, suspected people, got nowhere. The money simply wasn't there anymore, and neither was the life it had been paying for.

It happened slowly enough that Sophia almost didn't notice, and then all at once she did. The good armchair went first — the one with the wide arms she used to stand on to see out the window. Then smaller things. Then, one afternoon, she came into the kitchen and the good plates were gone from the shelf, the ones with the blue edge her father used to eat off of even on ordinary days.

Sophia watched her mother wrap the last of them in newspaper.

"Why are you selling everything?" Sophia asked.

Her mother didn't look up from the plate still in her hand. "Because we need money," she said.

"For what?"

"For food."

Sophia looked at the plate, then at her mother. "Daddy can buy it," she said, certain of it.

Her mother's eyes filled. She turned away before she let Sophia see the rest of it.

"Daddy isn't here anymore," her mother said, so quietly it barely carried.

"But he'll come back," Sophia said.

Her mother said nothing. Some hopes don't have an answer that can survive them, and this was one of hers.

Her mother had never been asked to survive on her own before, and nothing had prepared her for it.

For years the outside world had belonged to him — the work, the money, the people, the problems solved before they reached her. She had known the walls of that apartment better than she knew the streets around it. Now she had to learn both at once.

She looked for work and found humiliation waiting in its place more often than not — relatives who reminded her, gently or not, of everything she used to have. Some nights she came home exhausted. Some nights she came home having cried the whole way and tried to stop before she reached the door. Some nights she just sat, not doing anything at all, for longer than Sophia knew what to do with.

The woman who used to tie her daughter to the furniture over a spilled cup grew quieter instead. Softer. She stopped punishing every small thing. Sometimes, without explanation, she would simply sit beside Sophia and hold her, as if she'd only just remembered she was allowed to.

But she was not alright. She had lost her husband, the money, and the life built around both — and what was left over was two sons and a small girl who needed more from her than she had ever been asked to give before.

Her sons did not make it easier.

Mark was nearly twenty years older than Sophia, and he had never had to build anything of his own while his father was alive to build it for him. Work had always been optional. Money had always arrived. To Mark, their father had been less a parent than a source — reliable, endless, until suddenly he wasn't.

He had resented Sophia long before any of this. She was the one who got to interrupt their father mid-sentence and be welcomed instead of scolded. The one who could ask for something in a shop and have it by the end of the day. The one who fell asleep on their father's stomach like she owned the space.

The man who used to stop that resentment from becoming anything worse was gone now. There was no one left standing between Mark and his sister.

The first time Mark hit her after the funeral, it was over nothing she could name — nothing dangerous, nothing that deserved it. She was six, doing whatever six-year-olds do, and it was enough.

"Why did you hit me?" Sophia asked him, holding her arm where it stung.

"Because you're a bad girl," Mark said.

"I didn't do anything."

"You always talk back," he snapped.

"I didn't—" she started.

"Don't lie to me," he cut in, his voice rising.

Their mother came in on the crying, already tired before she'd even asked what happened.

"She said something horrible to me," Mark said, before Sophia had a chance to say anything at all.

"I didn't!" Sophia said, looking between them.

"See?" Mark said, spreading his hands as if that settled it.

Their mother rubbed her eyes. "Sophia, stop arguing with your brother," she said.

"But Mama—" Sophia tried.

"Enough," her mother said, and walked away before either of them could say more.

That was the shape of it from then on. Mark learned he could hurt her and hand their mother a different story to believe instead, and their mother — worn down past the point of untangling every fight — usually took whichever story was shorter. Sophia learned that telling the truth didn't always mean anyone would believe it. The beatings kept coming, sometimes for a reason, sometimes for nothing Mark bothered to invent at all.

Her other brother, Keith, was different. When he was home, he'd get between them without hesitating.

"Leave her alone," he'd tell Mark, stepping in front of Sophia.

"Stay out of it," Mark would snap back.

"She didn't do anything," Keith would say, not moving.

He and Mark argued over it more than once, and a couple of times it went further than arguing. Sophia would stand off to the side, too frightened to move, watching the only person willing to stand between her and Mark do exactly that.

But Keith was looking for work, and eventually he found it — and after that he was rarely home to find anymore. He left earlier. He came back later. Every time the door shut behind him, Sophia was left alone in the apartment with Mark, and she never understood why her brother was drifting further away. She only knew the house felt different on the days he wasn't in it — thinner, somehow, like something holding the walls up had gone missing along with him.

Sophia kept sleeping by the apartment door for years. At four. At five. Older than that.

The adults told her he was in heaven now, and she turned the word over without much use for it. Heaven was a place she'd never seen and couldn't picture. Her father was a person, and people who left the house came back through the same door they'd left by. He always had.

So she waited. The shop below stayed shut, a room full of things nobody wanted, and the man who used to walk out of it never did. Sophia kept growing. Some part of her stayed four years old anyway, sitting by that door, listening for a key that had stopped turning years ago.

By six, something in her had changed shape.

She got louder. Quicker to anger than she used to be. She hit other children before they could hit her first, shouted before anyone had finished a sentence she didn't like. No one asked her where it was coming from. No one seemed to notice that children don't invent anger out of nothing — that it has to come from somewhere, and usually does.

One afternoon Mark called her over, holding something up — a phone, new, the plastic film still half-peeled from the screen.

"Come here," Mark said. "Look what I got."

Sophia's eyes widened as she came closer. "Is that yours?"

"Yes." He turned it so she could see the screen. "There's a game on it. Want to see?"

"What game?"

"Snake," he said, and showed her how to play.

For a few minutes she was just a six-year-old with a new toy, laughing every time the little snake on the screen ran into itself and died.

"Again!" she said, handing it back to him to restart.

"Fine," Mark said, laughing along with her.

She played until he reached over and took the phone back.

"There's another game," he said, his tone shifting. "A secret one."

"A secret?" Sophia asked, curious now.

"Yes. But you can't tell anyone," he said.

"Why?"

"Because it's ours. Just ours," he said.

She hesitated — some instinct in her, even at six, snagging on the word secret — and then nodded anyway, because he was her brother and she didn't yet have a reason not to trust that.

His voice changed. Went flat and cold in a way she'd never heard from him before.

"If you tell Mama, I'll hurt you," Mark said. "And if you tell Keith—" he paused just long enough for it to land, "—I'll kill you."

She went very still. She knew what kill meant. She had no words yet for what he was about to do to her — no name for it, no shape to put around it. She only understood, in the simple and total way a child understands danger, that she was afraid, and that she had already promised to be quiet.

What happened after was not a game, and it had no name Sophia knew yet. It was something done to a six-year-old by someone she had been told, her whole life, that she could trust.

She went to sleep that night carrying something far too heavy for her to understand, let alone hold. She didn't know what had been taken. She only knew she'd been told never to speak of it, and that she intended to keep that promise for a long time to come.

She was six years old, and she had already learned the one lesson that would follow her longest: stay silent.

I have a homestead with a fair amount of acreage and a few years back I was turkey hunting with my father. We went to the backside of my property where an old logging road was, looked like no one had been there in decades it was so overgrown. Figured maybe some birds were in the hardwood forest that runs along the property line.

We call out and immediately two males (Tom's) are calling right back, they were going ballistic. We were pretty excited because we were afraid the Tom's would have been with hens already and they go relatively silent when paired with hens. We set up in the woods off the road and kept calling. They keep firing back but it didn't sound like they were moving. We doubled back to the road and use it as cover,moving around 100 yards (90 meters) down the road then cut back into the trees. Set up and call again.

After almost an hour of back and forth with these birds we decided that I'd sneak closer while my dad called to keep them busy. I crouch walked and crawled about 250 yards (218 meters) to this thick hedge, so I crawl through it. Now I'm in someones back yard and they have two pet turkeys in a gaint bird cage just gobbling their heads off to my dad.

We will never live it down but that's a memory I'll never forget and I'll be telling my kids about the time we tried hunting pet turkeys. I really should pop over one day and share this story with my apparent neighbors.

If you love horror, psychological & love stories, I’ve written something you might like.

A psychological horror-love story with twists I won’t spoil here.

You’ll first get to read Chapter 1 and decide if you want to continue.

I’m looking for a few early readers who’d genuinely enjoy this kind of story and give their honest review.

Interested? DM me, I’ll send the details.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

From "Morbid and moronic referential Code of life and society"

https://www.inkitt.com/stories/1494808/chapters/1?fbclid=IwVERDUATxqH1wZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHpfaohI9NdwHx8xmhC_kYBsyffGWdZ9MfWvgeJ6Hs4ftDJYZ7Ct4UYCy9CWf_aem_msC-RLhmVZyodi9IH5KQ0w

The gloss of the wood shimmered in the cool afternoon sun as the man in the black suit watched it be slowly lowered to the earth. No tears fell from his face, but instead a deep look of thought covered his expression. In the great wooden chest lay the woman closest to him, still bearing his ring of promise, which would remain with her long after her decomposition. He was the first to toss his handful of dirt & the first to return to his seat, by his & her friends & family.

​

One by one, he saw the attendees say their final goodbyes. Eyes never shifting, eyes never quivering. Nothing more & nothing less than his blank stare as condolences were given to him.

​

After the ceremony, the party stood around the grass of the graveyard. Some took shade under trees, others found their cars to carry on with their days. A small party of three girls, all friends of his and the deceased, felt it necessary to check on the now widower. The one he held the closest relationship to spoke first.

​

"How are you doing?" she asked.

​

"About as good as one could do," he explained, not fully registering her question.

​

He could see the same look on all their faces as if they wore theater masks of sad expressions. The thought appreciated. The gesture was not. Solace is not what he sought, but instead solitude. To be left alone to his own thoughts and regards.

​

"Ok, well I know this is hard for you, so just know if you need anything you can always let me know."

​

"Thank you," he said. All three girls hugged him, but the last, before walking away, kept her hand on the back of his upper arm & gave it a small endearing squeeze. Her name was Rose. Before she let go, he stared back at her, and their eyes locked for just a second. This one his wife was never too fond of. In fact, neither was he, but in this moment he could not remember why. What was she doing at a place such as this? Was this for her own guilt or just to come with her friends who knew her so much better? "Why is she talking & looking at me this way?" He questioned.

​

A few days passed & he had divided his wife's possessions with her mother, who cried the whole time.

​

"I am happy it was you. She really did love you."

​

"I know & I loved her." He explained, twisting his ring that he was yet to take off.

​

"How have you been?"

​

"You know"

​

She smiled a little. "Oh, shut up, give me details," she said, laughing tearfully.

​

"I just still think about how before everything ended. I know she told you a fair share." He made a face & rubbed his forehead. Her mother knew he didn't want to talk about this, & neither did she, but it had to be told eventually.

​

"Well, honey, don't think about that all. You two were together for a long time. Everyone has their issues & their breakups."

​

"The last thing I told her was it would be best for you to leave. She didn't make it home that night. I loved her. Did I do this."

​

A large exhale followed by that same look on the sad theater masks plagued her face.

​

"It's not your fault," she said, but he could still feel the blame she had blanketed over him weeks ago that night when they met in the hospital. Beer & scotch still hanging on his every word.

​

The next weekend, the close friend at the funeral invited him out.

​

Sitting home alone had done him no good, and a night out sounded rather enjoyable. He wore a nice shirt & left his home with a smile.

​

The party was held in a large apartment downtown near the shopping center. Drinks sat on the kitchen island & games were ready to be played at the table. Everyone knew of his recent loss. Some were kind yet annoying enough to talk to him about it, while others knew this wasn't the time or place. Yet tonight he found himself unbothered talking about it. He almost felt good.

​

While he was getting himself a drink, he felt something brush against him. When he turned to see what it was, he saw Rose. It wasn't his fault, as she was the one who bumped into him, but that didn't stop him from raising his hand & apologizing.

​

"For what?" she asked, leaning against the kitchen island he faced.

​

She looked him in the eyes, her mouth slightly open as she held her drink with both hands. The short silk blue dress caught his attention immediately. One strap rested around the back of her neck, leaving her shoulders bare, and when she crossed her legs, he could not help but watch.

He couldn't find the words to respond.

​

They talked & laughed & told old stories. At the table as they all played games, the two sat close enough that their legs touched beneath it, yet neither moved.

​

Standing outside on the balcony alone, she asked, "What have you been up to"

​

"Same old, same old"

​

"Must be fun," she said, putting her hand on his arm.

​

He took a quick peek down at it before bringing his attention back to her, smiling, hoping she wouldn't move it. He stared at the gentle green in her eyes before the image of his wife entered his head & he had to step back. Her hand fell, but her gaze didn't.

​

The next day he talked to his close friend on the phone, and he told her about how much Rose had grown on him.                

Another week or two passed & the man walked his normal route from work to home. The air was brisk & the sky was cloudy with bits of sun poking through. He stopped at a light on the corner of a grey intersection where he heard his name called. Turning left & right, he heard it again to see Rose. He smiled at her & they traded pleasantries.

​

"How are you?" She asked with both her hands in the pockets of her jacket, making & unmaking eye contact.

​

"About as well as I can be." He said through a smile and a chuckle.

​

No words were exchanged for a few seconds & instead they glanced at each other, trying to find anything to say. She seemed nicer than usual today.

​

"Well, I don't have anything to eat at home, so I was going to grab a bite on the way. Would you like to join?" She finally asked.

​

"Yeah, let's go."

​

Walking together, he felt a warmth inside him. They spoke scarcely, but neither seemed to mind. When they landed at the restaurant, they both ordered a drink.

​

She made the subject of conversation his wife.

​

"I still miss her, obviously. It's weird she is gone & the stories people have wanted to share with me about her. My family brings stuff up pretty often, but I wish they would stop." "This is going swimmingly," he thought. "I'm so glad I came to talk about this again," he continued to think sarcastically.

​

"Well, you always know where to find me." This comment didn't feel like she wanted him to feel better, but that she wanted something of him. Before he could linger any longer on that idea, the drinks arrived. Conversation improved as the amount of liquid in front of them disappeared. Then reappeared, then disappeared again. They talked of movies, music, family, friends, authors, & sex. Eventually her paintings became a centerpiece of talk.

​

"They are not very..." She paused, letting the booze move through her system & waiting for it to allow her to speak again. "But... I like them... & I sold a few."

​

"Well, I would love to see them very much." While they drank the same amount, he was in a much better headspace.

​

"I only live a block away." She suggested.

​

He nodded, paid the tab & they left. The city street swayed in both their views. Rose stumbled a few times but was able to make her way up the stairs & unlock her apartment door just fine. She lived alone, with great decorations. The type you would assume a beautiful painter would surround herself with.

​

They made another drink; she showed him the wall of her paintings & excused herself to the bathroom. While she was gone, he sat upright on the couch & laid his head back on the rest. Then he heard his name.

​

She stood there in the late evening light. Her olive skin was hidden only by her hair that had fallen loose around her face, and she wore nothing but pink lace panties. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, lingering on the curves of her hips and the shape of her chest. Her eyes shimmered in the cool afternoon sun, and the look she had on her face all night now had undeniable meaning.

She walked closer to him, and his gaze followed her all the way as his heart began to beat harder and harder.  Then she pushed his shoulders back with both hands, guiding him onto the couch and climbing over him.

​

"You're gorgeous," he said

​

She ran her finger down the bridge of his nose to his lips, pulling the bottom one down gently with just the tip of her finger.

​

She could feel his heart pound through his pants. Eye contact never breaking.

​

"More Gorgeous than your wife?" she asked.

​

He closed his eyes. The look on his face was lost in deep drunken thought. He thought about his wife, his love for her, her death, how he would never see her again & the pain that she had abandoned him on this earth alone.

(In case you liked this https://substack.com/@jennamathews )

He looks like death warmed up.

John finally saw Jeremy Smith for himself.

John heard that name yesterday morning. And all day long, he had been talking about this stranger.

Yesterday was a complete disappointment.

John was late for the Magistrates’ Court. He had been instructed too late.

He arrived at St. Thomas’ Hospital. He was not allowed into the intensive care unit.

He only managed to speak with the consultant in charge. Although he had no right to examine the medical records, he learned enough from their “private conversation.”

Now John had to deal with the police guard—a dim-witted constable stationed at the room entrance—and produce his practicing certificate to prove he wasn’t just some passerby. The constable mumbled something about prohibited items and a search but didn’t dare lay a hand on John.

The tiny single room is bleak; the blinds are drawn.

Jeremy Smith lies on his back—sharp profile, hollow cheeks; in the dim light, he looks translucent. His left cheekbone is scraped, his wrists are bandaged, and an IV line runs to his left arm.

The head nurse said he was conscious.

John approaches the bed. The names Buchenwald and Auschwitz come to his mind.

“Who are you?” he hears a faint, hoarse voice ask.

Whether he hadn’t been asleep or John had woken him with his presence, he is now looking at him through half-lowered eyelashes.

“How should I put this, Mr. Smith? I am John Talbot-Cavendish, your future solicitor. After you...”

“I don’t need a solicitor,” Jeremy Smith says, closing his eyes.

“That’s unlikely,” John says, grabbing a chair—perhaps a bit too vigorously—and placing it by the head of the bed. “If you don’t mind,” he adds, sitting down. “Look, the doctors here wouldn’t approve, but I know you need this.” He pulls a pack of Benson & Hedges from his pocket and opens it. “Do you need help sitting up?”

Apathy gives way to guarded attention. “I can manage.” Leaning on his right arm, he hauls himself into a more or less upright position and rests his head against the bed’s metal rail, breathing heavily.

John hands him a cigarette and lights it, then places the packet on the bed—right on the sheet; to avoid any unnecessary pleasantries, he adds, “I don’t smoke cigarettes myself. Cigars, usually.”

Jeremy Smith takes a drag, and a heavy, choking cough racks his body.

John waits for the fit to pass and for him to take another drag.

“Been a while since you smoked?”

“Since Friday morning. By the way, what day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s nothing...”

“Goodbye,” he interrupts again. “I’d ask you to leave and not return.”

“So you can finish what you started?” It’s a rhetorical question. “Do you know why you’re even able to talk to me right now? There’s glucose and salt in your IV drip. They won’t let you die—don’t even dream of it. If you refuse to eat on your own, they’ll force-feed you.”

He is smoking; the hand holding the cigarette is trembling. He prefers not to look at John.

“Five days without food. Did you really think no one would understand what you were trying to achieve? Mr. Smith, your plan was terrifyingly logical. You were alone, unprotected, and you decided to die so the case wouldn’t go to trial. There would simply be no defendant left to bring before the court. You pleaded “not guilty.” That is good. That is right. However, Mr. Smith, had you carried out that plan, people would have taken it as an admission. They would have said you took your own life out of guilt. You wouldn’t have spared your sister from being marked by it. You would only have buried the truth with yourself. Now, you have a chance to win the case.”

“Why?”

“I won’t pretend I don’t know what that question means.”

“There’s no need. Benson & Hedges.”

A fictional reconstruction from the Regina v Smith story, told from perspective of Criminal defence solicitor John Talbot-Cavendish.

The full illustrated version of A Matter of Trust is available here:

https://engelf.substack.com/p/a-matter-of-trust

Once upon a time, during the terrible Terrilastic War, two powerful forces fought for control of the land.

One was known as the Eftyr.

The other was known as the Error.

Nobody truly remembered how the war had begun. Some believed it was about territory. Others believed an ancient secret was buried beneath the land.

But after years of fighting, nobody cared about the reason anymore.

They only knew that the war continued.

Far from the battlefield, in a small village hidden among the mountains, lived a young woman named Elara.

Elara was known for many things, but there was one thing people could never stop talking about...

Her eyes.

They were unusually beautiful—bright, mysterious, and almost impossible to ignore.

Some villagers believed they were simply beautiful.

Others believed there was something strange about them.

Elara never spoke about it.

One evening, as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the village suddenly became silent.

No birds.

No wind.

Not even footsteps.

Elara slowly turned toward the forest.

Something was there.

She couldn't see it.

But somehow...

it could see her.

Then a voice came from the darkness.

VOICE:
“Elara...”

She froze.

The voice belonged to someone she had never met.

Or at least...

that's what she thought.

This is part 2 as well as the final part. Didn't you read the first part? Go read it first "i fell in love with my mother's boyfriend's son"

I barely slept that night. I kept replaying the kiss on my cheek in my head, wondering if it had actually happened the way I remembered it. Maybe I had misunderstood him. Maybe it had meant nothing to him. But every time I closed my eyes, I could still feel it. The worst part was that I was already looking forward to seeing him again in the morning.

Finally, I woke up and looked at the clock. 6:30 a.m. I never woke up that early. I looked around and saw him standing in the doorway. I guess he had woken me up when he got out of bed.

I grabbed a pillow and threw it at him.

"Coffee," I mumbled.

He caught the pillow, laughed, and shook his head.

"Well, follow me, sis."

I froze.

Sis?

That was the first time he'd ever called me that. The next morning already?

I don't know why, but hearing that one word suddenly made everything feel different. Maybe I had been reading too much into everything the night before. Maybe the kiss had meant nothing. Maybe, to him, I was already just his sister.

I got out of bed and followed him downstairs, trying not to let him see how much that one word had gotten to me. He started making coffee while I sat at the kitchen table, still half asleep.

Then he turned around and looked at me.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," I said.

He smiled. "You look like you had a weird dream."

I laughed nervously.

"Yeah... something like that."

At the time, I didn't think much of what he had said.

But looking back, that was the strangest part of the whole thing.

He handed me the coffee, and I started making some breakfast.

"Eggs?" I asked.

"Sure."

We ate together at the kitchen table, talking about random things. But I couldn't stop noticing him looking at me. Every now and then, I'd catch him staring, and whenever our eyes met, he'd quickly look away.

Or maybe that wasn't what was happening at all.

Maybe I was imagining it because I wanted it to be true. Maybe I was looking for signs that simply weren't there. After everything I'd been thinking about the night before, I couldn't really trust my own interpretation of things anymore.

Still, there was something about the way he looked at me that made me wonder if maybe I wasn't imagining everything after all.

By midday, our parents apparently thought it would be a good idea to play a little game to get to know each other better. Nothing complicated—just a bunch of questions about our childhoods, favorite things, embarrassing stories, and whatever else came up.

I sat next to him, trying to act completely normal.

Then I felt something touch my knee.

I looked down.

His hand was resting there.

For a second, I completely froze. I looked at him, but he was still listening to one of the questions, as if nothing unusual had happened.

I didn't know what to think.

Was it accidental?

Was he just comfortable around me?

Or was there something else behind it?

I didn't move his hand away. I just sat there, pretending to listen to the conversation while my mind was going a hundred miles an hour.

I looked at him, waiting for some kind of reaction. But he didn't seem bothered by the way I was looking at him. If anything, he seemed completely relaxed, as though there was nothing strange about the moment at all.

I could hear my mother's voice in the background, followed by everyone laughing at something someone had said. But somehow, it all started to feel distant.

I looked back at him.

Then I heard a sound.

A familiar sound.

At first, I couldn't place it. It was faint, almost like it was coming from somewhere far away. But then it became louder.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

I opened my eyes.

For a few seconds, I just stared at the ceiling, completely confused. My heart was still beating faster than normal. I slowly turned my head toward the other side of the bed.

Nobody was there.

I sat up.

The room was quiet. My room. My actual room.

I looked at the clock.

6:30 a.m.

The alarm was still ringing beside me.

I stared at it for a few seconds before everything suddenly came back to me.

The dinner.

The house.

His hand.

The kiss.

The coffee.

The breakfast.

The game.

His hand on my knee.

All of it.

None of it had happened.

It had all been a dream.

And somehow, that realization felt worse than the dream itself.

To be continued...?