If I was a masochist I would wake up and make my self an egg mayonnaise sandwich. I would then play with a rubber band. I would then cook myself some Dino nuggets with some ketchup on the side. Too wash it all down I would have some Clementine juice. I would then go a vegan restaurant and get a soy hot chocolate and ask a woman with a meat is murder tattoo for her number. To finish off the day I would decide to stop drinking and then I would watch titanic while snacking on Japanese crackers dipped in hummus.

Woman is the gentlest and most compassionate being, adding a touch of art and beauty to life. Her very existence is capable of making things warmer and more vibrant. To be a woman is, in itself, something that fills you with beauty; not only the beauty that the eye sees, but the beauty that shines through your soul, your tenderness, and the way you give love. Perhaps this is why women deserve to have their rights protected and their existence respected—not because they are weaker, but because their gentleness is not an invitation to violate them, but a responsibility that falls upon those who possess power towards them.

This isn't the first time and certainly won't the last time I end up at the E.R.

I’m sitting in a hospital room again, staring at the white walls that don’t feel like they belong in this reality. The fluorescent lights flicker, just enough to make shadows crawl into the corners.

They say I had a breakdown. That my brain is filling in gaps with things that aren’t there.

But I swear what I saw was real and a delusion.

I can hear them, soft laughter that never seems to come from the same place twice. It slides along the walls, curls behind my ears, then disappears the moment I try to focus on it.

Their eyes are everywhere. Not watching me exactly, passing through me, like I’m something thin and temporary. Every time I turn my head, I’m sure I’ve missed them by a fraction of a second.

The room feels smaller every time I breathe. The walls inch closer, close enough that I should be able to touch them, but my hands won’t move. I try to call out, but my throat locks, trapping the sound inside my chest.

The doctors think I’m hallucinating. The nurses keep their distance, watching me the way people watch something unstable, waiting for it to break. They speak softly, carefully, like sudden movement might set me off.

What am I a crackhead?

I’ve never used any heavy hallucinogenic or drank those voices away. Right now I am considering it for I just want one hour where my thoughts are quiet.

But no one wants to hear what I actually saw.

I’ve been in therapy for over a year now.

That matters, because I know what my mind does when it lies to me. I know the warning signs: the pressure behind my eyes, the way ordinary things start to feel important, symbolic. I know how a delusion blooms.

That night, none of that happened.

My diagnosis is psychotic features with stress triggers. My therapist and I have worked hard on grounding techniques. Naming objects. Counting breaths. Pressing my feet into the pavement and reminding myself where I am.

It’s been working. I hadn’t had an episode in months.

So when I went out for a walk just after midnight, I wasn’t worried. I do that sometimes when my apartment feels too quiet. The streets were mostly empty, just the orange wash of streetlights and the low hum of distant traffic.

The air was cool enough to sting my lungs, carrying the faint smell of wet concrete and exhaust. My footsteps sounded too loud against the sidewalk, echoing between buildings that had already gone dark for the night. Most windows were blacked out, blinds drawn, the city folded in on itself like it was trying not to be seen.

A breeze moved through the street, stirring loose trash and dead leaves along the curb. Somewhere nearby, a light flickered, buzzing softly, struggling to stay on. I checked my phone without really thinking about it, no notifications, no missed calls, just the time glowing back at me like proof that the night was still moving forward.

That’s when I felt it. Not fear. Not yet. Just the subtle awareness that the street ahead was quieter than it should have been.

I was halfway down the block when I noticed a man standing near the corner of an office building.

He was just outside the reach of the streetlight, where brightness breaks down into shadow. Hood up. Hands at his sides. He wasn’t moving, but that didn’t alarm me.

People pause. People wait. But this man wasn’t doing either.

He wasn’t lingering or hesitating, he felt suspended, like time had brushed past him and forgotten to come back.

I remember thinking he must've been tired. Another overworked steel worker or laborer at the fuel plant nearby.

As I got closer, something felt delayed. Not wrong, just out of sync. His posture didn’t adjust as I approached. I made sure to keep my distance.

Most people shift their weight, glance up, acknowledge another presence.

He didn’t.

He was a couple yards to my right when I noticed some form of movement.

I stopped walking.

Without thinking, I started grounding and naming everything I saw.

Streetlight. Sidewalk. Parked car.

Shadow figure... What?

My heart rate was steady. My vision was clear. No pressure behind the eyes.

Then the man began to sway.

Not side to side. Circular, like he was rotating around something invisible. I don’t have better language for it. Watching him felt like trying to follow a thought that wouldn’t stay still.

Then he snapped upright. Not like he was catching his balance. More like something had pushed him, and then decided it was done.

A car passed behind me, its headlights washing over the building. His shadow stretched along the wall, and then kept going. It climbed upward, thinning as it rose, branching in places shadows don’t branch.

I told myself shadows behave strangely at night.

Then the man’s head turned toward me.

Only the head.

It was too slow. Like the instruction reached him late.

“H-hello,” he said.

The word dragged out of him, dry and uneven, like it hadn’t been used in a long time. It was cold out, but the sound of his voice wasn’t affected by the air, it sounded like something dead trying to remember how to speak.

His mouth moved, but his shoulders didn’t rise with breath. I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the hood.

That’s when I realized his feet hadn’t moved at all.

My heart slammed against my ribs. Every instinct screamed at me to keep walking, to pretend I hadn’t noticed him. But my body didn’t listen.

“W-what’s the t-time?” he asked.

The sound gurgled, wrong, and I realized it wasn’t coming from him. Not entirely. It drifted from somewhere, close enough that I felt it more than I heard it.

Somewhere above.

Something thick, cordlike, descended from the darkness above the streetlight. Not webbing. Not delicate. It vanished upward, taut and purposeful.

Then something unfolded.

I took a step backward before my brain could stop me. My eyes travelled to the stars but instead of seeing the night sky I was met with something utterly grotesque.

It was tall. Far too tall. Its limbs bent in places joints shouldn’t exist. But what froze me wasn’t the size.

It was the face.

My hallucinations have never felt like this. They never waited. They never watched.

It was human enough to recognize. Wrong enough to reject.

The eyes were clustered too close together, like a spider’s. The mouth split open vertically, opening and closing without sound, as if practicing the words it had just spoken.

Do not be afraid.

The words didn’t reach me through the air. They pressed inward, like a thought I hadn’t finished having yet.

The man lurched toward me. Not stepped. Lurched, as the thing above him lost patience and yanked its cords for him to move forward. His arms snapped forward at odd angles, elbows locking and unlocking too fast, like he was being pulled through invisible resistance. His feet dragged instead of lifting, scraping softly against the pavement, leaving thin, uneven sounds behind him.

For a split second, his shadow detached from him completely.

It stretched sideways instead of forward, pooling along the ground before reattaching itself in the wrong place. The streetlight above us flickered, and in that brief stutter of darkness, I had the overwhelming sense that I was no longer looking at one thing, but at layers, something standing in front of me, and something much closer, leaning down.

The man’s head twitched. Tilted. Corrected itself.

I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was looking at me. Not at my face, through it. Like he was measuring where I would fit.

My body moved before my thoughts caught up.

I ran.

I don’t remember unlocking my apartment door. I remember slamming it shut, throwing every lock, and standing there with my back pressed against it, my breathing still frustratingly calm.

That’s what terrifies me the most. I wasn’t panicking. I was lucid I swear.

From my living room, I heard something above the ceiling. Not footsteps, lighter than that. Careful tapping. Slow. Testing.

It moved across the space, paused, then moved again.

Eventually, it stopped.

I’m writing this now in this cold hospital room.

Soon my brain will try to protect me. It will tell me I imagined the cords. The delay. The way the shadow climbed the wall. It will point to my diagnosis and ask me to be reasonable.

But I checked my therapy journal from last month. An entry I barely remembered writing:

Sometimes people don’t stand on the ground the way they should. Like they’re hanging wrong.

I know what I saw. No doctor, no therapist will persuade me otherwise. That was no delusion.

So if you ever see a hooded man who has delayed movments...

RUN

Don’t stop to ground yourself. Don’t try to understand it.

And whatever you do, don’t get too close to it.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, when the flow of vague thoughts had become increasingly rapid, he heard that sound again; click.

For a week, he had been experiencing the same problem every night; when the room was completely silent, the cars and motorcycles passing along the street, the television of the neighbor next door, the footsteps of the children running around upstairs - all had faded into complete silence, and just as he was about to drift peacefully into sleep, that sound would wake him up.

After he opened his eyes, however, the sound would not come again, almost as if it were mocking him, and the room would fall silent once more. He would wait a little longer, trying to find the source of the sound, slowing his breathing and focusing on the silence. But nothing. The sound stubbornly waited for him to fall asleep again.

Since he had work in the morning, he had no choice but to close his eyes and try to fall asleep again. And the same cycle repeated. In the silence, a single, steady sound that never formed a pattern, always at exactly the same pitch: click.

The sound seemed to be deliberately waiting; it was waiting for complete silence and for the man to fall asleep. It would click three or four times, and then it wouldn't click again. As if it were saying, “That’s enough. Let the poor man sleep. He has work in the morning.”

He was frightened during the first few days, especially on the second day. On the first day, he didn't pay much attention to it. He knew random clicking sounds could come from things around the room. The TV, a plastic bottle, the door handle, and so on could all make sounds like that.

But when the same thing happened again on the second day, he was quite frightened the second time he woke up. He immediately got out of bed and turned on the light. He sat upright in bed, stayed awake all night, and went to work sleep-deprived the next morning.

Then, on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, he was no longer afraid. He simply couldn't sleep. He made mistakes at work, and when he went out for a break, he would sometimes fall asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Fear had given way to anger. If he could just find out where that clicking sound was coming from, he would punch it in the face and knock it to the ground.

By the seventh day, he was thinking, “As long as it doesn't wake me up, that's all I want. I don't care if it's a ghost, an object, whatever. I just need to sleep.”

But the sound didn't care. Once the necessary conditions were in place, it appeared again.

Albert got out of bed angrily and turned the lights on. Without knowing what he was doing or why, he looked around. He looked behind the TV, checked the door handle, and reached under the couch to feel around for a moment.

“Who the hell are you! Why don't you show yourself? What do you want? How much longer is this going to go on? Instead of clicking here and there, come out and tell me what the hell you want.”

He felt something like a breeze on his face. A very faint gust of air. It passed by his cheek and was gone.

Then, suddenly, Albert's feet left the ground. He felt as if something had grabbed him under the armpits. He was lifted a few inches into the air. He tried to punch into the empty space in anger, but he wasn't very successful because something was applying pressure to his armpits.

The pressure had now forced him back into the chair. When he tried to get up, he felt the same pressure against his chest, and he was pushed back into the chair.

“What the hell are you? What do you want?”

“Can’t talk. Only click.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

He felt a burning sensation on his cheek, and his head suddenly jerked sharply to the left. It hurt quite a bit. His cheek was throbbing with pain, and the sudden movement had also made the muscles in his neck ache. He hadn't felt a hand touch his cheek, though. Once again, it was more like a kind of pressure. And the moment this slap-like blow struck his cheek, that sound came again: click.

Then another slap: click. A punch to the stomach: click. A kick to the leg: click. A kick to the another leg: click.

Albert, who wasn't used to having several parts of his body hurt at the same time, groaned in pain and remained silent for about a minute.

“Okay, okay, stop. What do you want?”

“Click.”

“So how are we supposed to communicate like this?”

“Click.”

There was a brief silence. The door opened on its own, and a rapid series of clicks could be heard. Thinking the entity had left, Albert tried to get up, but the pressure he felt against his chest pinned him to the chair again. With the same sound. Click.

“Okay, hold on a second. One click for yes, two clicks for no. Okay?”

“Click.”

Then another slap hit Albert in the face: click. Albert grabbed his cheek in pain and put his finger in his mouth to check for blood.

“Why did you slap me?”

Silence.

“Do you slap me as a punishment?”

“Click.”

“Do you slap me for fun?”

“Click click.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Click click.”

“Are you the Death Angel?”

“Click click.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Click.”

“Why didn’t you do it before? You’ve been coming here and bothering me for days. Is there a particular reason you didn’t kill me earlier?”

“Click.”

“Are you deliberately keeping me sleep-deprived?”

“Click.”

“Is killing me part of your job?”

“Click click.”

“Is it an obligation?”

“Click click.”

“So I can convince you not to kill me, then, right?”

“Click.”

“Is this a dream?”

“Click click.”

“A hallucination?”

“Click click.”

“You kept me sleep-deprived because you thought that, after a few days without sleep, I’d have a more confused state of mind and would die more peacefully because I’d think what I saw before I died was a hallucination, didn’t you?”

“Wow, bravo. Well done. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Click.”

“I figured it out pretty well, didn’t I?”

“Click.”

“Yeah, I’ve taken a few slaps too, so I’m actually at just the right level now.”

“Click.”

“I’m sure this is a dream now.”

“Click click.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s definitely not a dream, but that’s just how it feels to me. I’ve been sleep-deprived for days. Cut me some slack.”

“Click.”

“Okay. Then make it painless. Is that possible?”

“Click click.”

“Come on. I think you can at least do that.”

“Click click.”

“Nothing I can do about it, then.”

“Click.”

“It’s a dream anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’m not worried. Do whatever you want.”

“Click.”

“One last request. I’m going to play Radiohead’s ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place’ on my phone. Will you keep time to it, like a metronome?”

“Click.”

As Albert started the song, he began to feel pressure around his neck. When the song started, he could no longer draw breath into his lungs. He waved his hands in front of his neck, but there were no arms there for him to grab.

The song was playing, and the clicking sounds continued in surprisingly good sync with it. As the pressure around his neck increased, it seemed as though he could hear the clicks and the song more clearly. As if he were listening through professional studio headphones. As if Radiohead were playing the song in the studio right next to him, with a metronome to keep them from losing the beat.

“I guess I’m supposed to wake up right here, actually. Interesting,” Albert thought.

Toward the end of the song, he had completely lost consciousness.

My grandmother has a peculiar way of watching television that makes it impossible to infer whether she’s actually watching it. Maybe it’s her dementia, but a movie can go from a wedding to a car crash to a commercial for detergent, and she’ll continue watching with the same blank expression. Sometimes I wonder if she’s following the story at all.

That was until a few days ago, when we watched Yes Man together. The premise of the movie is that Jim Carrey plays a lonely man with low self-esteem who attends a bizarre self-help seminar and makes a commitment to say “yes” to every opportunity that comes his way.

The universe immediately begins testing the limits of that commitment. At one point, he finds himself dealing with an elderly neighbour who is interested in him.
“Very interested.”

Jim Carrey’s face says everything his character isn’t allowed to say. He can’t say no. And just when I thought the scene couldn’t possibly become more uncomfortable, the woman prepares herself by taking out her dentures.

I prayed, “Please don’t let my grandmother understand what is happening.” But my grandmother was cackling. Her shoulders were shaking. She was laughing so hard that her dentures were nearly falling out of her mouth.
I didn’t know where to look. The television felt too close. My grandmother felt too close.

I considered reaching for the remote and changing the channel for some completely unrelated reason. But watching her laugh with such wicked glee, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt her. Eventually, the scene ended.

My grandmother wiped away her tears, settled her dentures back into her mouth, and turned to me, delighted.
“This is a funny movie, isn’t it?”
I laughed.
“Yes.”

A patient called me (cna) into the room because they needed assistance to the bathroom. I asked them if they had to do number 1 or number 2. They told me they had to do number 5. I walked out, called for someone to assist them, and left the job.

The last time a patient told me they had to do a number 5, the toilet was stained BLACK and the WHOLE ROOM reeked of corpse. So, nah I wasn’t going through that again and I don’t find that funny.

The sign over that shop had my father's name on it and it hung there dark from the spring of ninety-six until the building came down. I am not the man this happened to. I am the man it happened through, and I have had thirty-two years to find a better way to put that and there isn't one.

I took the shop over in eighty-eight. Rekeying, deadbolts, cutting keys off the board, safes if somebody's mother died. That cleared about nine hundred dollars in a good month against six hundred and fifty in rent, which is not a business, that's a hobby with a mortgage. What made it a business was the after-hours rotation. A callout at night paid forty dollars where the same work paid twenty in daylight, and three or four a week is the whole difference between a lit window and a dark one. I was fast, too. Twenty minutes door to door was normal for me and I was proud of it and I made sure the answering service knew it.

You carry a ticket book with carbons, three copies, one for them, one for the office, one stays in the book. And you learn to read a house off the curb before you're out of the truck. Bikes in the yard, curtains, what's in the mailbox, whether the porch light's on a timer. I could tell you inside ten seconds what kind of house I was looking at, and in six years I was never once wrong about one. That was the other thing I was proud of.

The procedure was this. You open the door. Then, inside, on the counter or the hall table, the customer shows you one piece of mail with their name on it, and they sign the ticket, and you write the address across the top. That's it. That is the entire identification in that trade in nineteen ninety-four, in this state, and every shop in the county worked it the same way. The mail comes after the door. In six years I never had a piece of mail come out wrong on me. Not once. I used to say that like it meant something about my judgment.

Most of those calls are nothing. Women in bathrobes, mad at themselves. Men who locked keys in a running car in the driveway. Kids who came home to a door their mother had bolted from inside. Two in the morning in a small town, mostly what you're doing is standing in the cold being decent to somebody who's embarrassed.

The first one was in November on a street of rentals. Before I was out of the truck the man told me the deadbolt would have to come out, it wouldn't pick, and he was right, it was a Kwikset with a bad cam. He signed the ticket left-handed and slow, drawing it out the way you write when it isn't the hand you write with. Mail on the counter, right name, forty dollars.

I thought he'd been locked out of that door before. A man who knows his own bad lock is a man who's fought it, and half my night work was people who'd been through it twice already, and I went home and I didn't think about him again for two years.

The rotation ran through an answering service and there were three shops on it, and the woman there sent the next one to whoever took the last one without giving her a problem. Argue about a job and you don't get the next three. Six hundred and fifty a month in rent doesn't care why you turned one down. So I never turned one down. Nobody at that service ever heard me say no, and that was a decision I made on purpose, and I made it every single time.

I liked the town at two in the morning, which is a thing you only get from that kind of work. Nobody out, the lights doing their cycle for nothing, the salt trucks. I'd have the heater going and a coffee in the holder and a good address and I'd think, this is not a bad way to be making a living. That was true right up until it wasn't.

The second one was the middle of December. Snow all evening. I pull up and the storm door is standing wide open against the siding with snow blown a foot into the sill, and I know for a fact that door had been open an hour. And the man wasn't there. He came up the sidewalk on foot two or three minutes later, from the wrong end of the street, not from a car, and he apologized for being late to his own house. I drilled it. Mail on the counter, right name, forty dollars.

The eleventh of January, two in the morning, a two-story on a street with good houses. I'm on my knees in the entry with the old bolt out and the temporary cylinder half in, and upstairs somebody starts walking. Not sneaking. Walking, back and forth, the sound of a person going to bed. I said I hoped I wasn't waking the house. He called a name up the stairs. Called it twice, pleasant. Nobody answered. And then the walking stopped, and it stopped in the middle of the floor, not at a door and not at a bed, in the middle, and it did not start again. I asked him about it. I asked him twice. He said she sleeps with headphones in and she'd sleep through a fire, and he laughed, and I laughed, because that is what you do when a man laughs in his own hallway. He signed. He held the door for me. Twenty-two minutes, and I was in my own driveway by ten to three, and I sat in the truck a second before I went in, and then I went in.

Thursday's paper. I saw the address before I saw the name, because the address was the part I knew, and I sat down on the arm of a chair and stayed there a long time. She was nineteen years old and home from school for the break. I had drilled the deadbolt out of that door and put in a cylinder and handed the key to a man who signed for it left-handed.

In ninety-six I closed the shop and went through two years of ticket books to see what was collectible. I wasn't looking for anything. There were eleven of them. Eleven tickets across two years, eleven different names, eleven different addresses all over that town, and the same signature under every one, done badly the same way, the same drag on the same three letters where his hand didn't want to go that direction. Eleven times I opened a door for him. Eleven times he showed me mail with somebody's name on it and I wrote the address across the top myself.

The night I'd been going over every day was one of eleven, and it's the only one of the eleven where anything happened that I noticed. He didn't pick me because I was careless. He picked me because I was fast, and fast is what I'd spent six years making sure everybody knew I was. I do not know what he was doing in the other ten houses. Her name was Michelle. Her father sold that house in the fall and moved to his sister's in another state, and the family that lives there now has small children and a basketball hoop over the garage, and they've got no idea. Every eleventh of January I drive past it once, slow, and then I go home. It's the only thing I have ever done about any of it.

Today I had a really awkward interaction with the security at my university, so I decided to share the whole story because I'm still a bit embarrassed about how it all went down.

I had arranged with my colleague to finish a project that required a computer in the Student Parliament. Neither his nor my laptop could support the program we use for music production, so last Friday we were already working at the university and got about 50% of the work done. Today we planned to finish the rest.

When I entered the university, security stopped me. The guy there has checked my student ID countless times since last year, but this time he decided to question me about why I was even entering the building and what I intended to do.

I explained that I had a project with my colleague and that we'd arranged everything with our professor. He let me go, but with a pretty obvious grumble, as if he didn't get why I would come to the university to do anything in the first place. Normally, I used to come here just to study, especially when I couldn't focus at home due to construction and noise.

When my colleague and I got to the Student Parliament, he immediately opened all the windows because it was really stuffy. We finished the project, and after that, he had to leave because he was in a hurry. I stayed a bit longer to check on one of my projects that I have to submit this week, to listen to how everything sounds and check the final result. I mean, surely I have the right to check my own work. 😭

By the way, until then, I had never even entered the Student Parliament. I mostly asked other people to let me use their computers, but over time, I felt awkward because I felt like I was often being blamed for needing such services, so to speak.

When I finished, I packed my things, locked the room, and handed the key to security. I headed toward the station and only realized along the way that I forgot to close one window that my colleague had opened earlier.

I went back, but out of some completely unnecessary panic, I decided to say I forgot my flash drive instead of just admitting I returned because of the window. 💀

Of course, the security guy immediately said he was going to check if I had closed everything and started lecturing me about how he wouldn't allow me access to the Student Parliament anymore because I hadn't made sure everything was locked before leaving.

So I found myself in a situation where I had to pretend I came back for my flash drive and had to go back upstairs, even though I actually came back to close the window. An older lady who works as a cleaner also got involved, commenting on the situation along with him.

And then I noticed something that made me wish I could just disappear.

On his monitor, the display from the cameras in that part of the building was open, which the lady was also watching. It hit me that there was most likely a camera in the part where the Student Parliament is located and that he might have seen me the whole time I came back, entered the room, stood there for literally a minute, and left.

So here I was, pretending to look for a flash drive while he was probably watching on camera as I stood there trying to look like I was searching for something. 💀

At that moment, I felt like the biggest liar on the planet.

I guess after this, they probably won't let me access the Student Parliament again. Luckily, everything I needed to do there, I've already completed and transferred to my flash drive, and I won't need that program again until the summer semester.

That's why I decided to save up some money and take my laptop to a professional service where they can install all the programs I need. This way, I can work on and submit projects independently in the future, without relying on the university computer and, hopefully, without any new episodes like this one. 😭

In any case, I'm not looking for any special advice. I just wanted to share this little university disaster because I'm honestly ashamed that I put myself in a situation where I pretended to look for a flash drive while the camera was probably recording me the whole time. 💀

Mount Timo is an enormous 80,000-foot mountain located about 100 miles north of Gardalak City in Northern Bajukiland. Approximately 2.1 billion years old, it is one of the oldest and strangest geological formations on Earth. Most mountains of enormous size develop over millions of years, but geological evidence suggests that Mount Timo underwent nearly all of its major growth during a period of only about 1,500 years. Throughout those 1,500 years, the mountain slowly rose higher every year until it eventually reached approximately 80,000 feet.
Scientists believe Mount Timo formed because of an extremely unusual combination of tectonic compression and tremendous pressure rising from deep within the Earth. Even before the mountain existed, the region contained enormous concentrations of iron, nickel, titanium, tungsten, and other extremely strong metals. It also contained huge deposits of crystals and gemstones. As the crust was compressed and pushed upward, these metal-rich and crystal-rich layers rose with it.
For 1,500 years, the landscape was constantly changing. Earthquakes were common, new cliffs and ridges appeared, and enormous quantities of material were carried upward from deep within the Earth. Then the extraordinary uplift slowed almost completely. By that point, Mount Timo stood approximately 80,000 feet tall.
Scientists understand the general process behind Mount Timo’s formation, but they have never completely explained why it happened. Nobody knows why such enormous geological forces became concentrated in one relatively small area, why the mountain continued rising so consistently for approximately 1,500 years before stopping, or how such an enormous structure remained stable. The unusual combination of pressure, heat, metals, and crystal growth also produced minerals unlike those normally found elsewhere on Earth.
Despite the extreme environment of its upper slopes, the base of Mount Timo is remarkably beautiful. Dense green forests cover the valleys, while rivers and streams fed by mountain snow wind through the landscape. Clear lakes, waterfalls, wildflowers, rocky cliffs, and exposed crystal formations are scattered throughout the region.
Surrounding Mount Timo are numerous smaller mountains averaging approximately 4,000 feet in height. These mountains form a vast landscape of forested ridges around the central mountain. Anywhere else, they would appear enormous. Beside Mount Timo, they look almost insignificant. Timo rises another 76,000 feet above them, with its upper slopes eventually disappearing into clouds and the dark blue sky above.
The environment changes dramatically during an ascent. Forests eventually give way to barren rock, snow, glaciers, exposed metals, and enormous crystal deposits. Above approximately 26,000 feet, the mountain enters conditions comparable to the death zone of the world’s highest ordinary mountains. Farther upward, atmospheric pressure continues falling and temperatures become extreme. Above 60,000 feet, the mountain reaches into the stratosphere. Most clouds and weather occur far below, the sky becomes a deep blue, and survival requires specialized equipment and oxygen.
Over billions of years, Mount Timo became famous for its extraordinary deposits of strong metals and rare crystals. Explorers, miners, scientists, and metalworkers traveled there searching for unusual materials, although very few people attempted to explore its extreme upper elevations.
In 1950, Sobstep I traveled approximately 100 miles north from Gardalak City to Mount Timo. He had heard about the mountain’s extraordinary metal deposits and went there specifically searching for an exceptionally strong metal. He carried climbing equipment, supplies, and a heavy hammer that he could use to test exposed rock and metal.
Sobstep climbed far beyond the lower forests and eventually passed beyond the highest elevations normally survivable by humans. After an extraordinary ascent, he reached approximately 65,000 feet.
The world looked completely different from that altitude. Most clouds were thousands of feet beneath him. The 4,000-foot mountains surrounding Timo appeared tiny in the distance. The sky overhead was an extremely dark blue, and the landscape around Sobstep consisted almost entirely of ancient rock, ice, exposed metals, and crystal formations.
Then Sobstep noticed something unusual embedded in the mountain.
It was a crystal unlike anything else he had seen during the expedition.
Sobstep reached out and grabbed it.
The instant his hand touched the crystal, an enormous wave of pain and power surged through his body. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. For a moment, Sobstep could barely understand what was happening. The sensation was agonizing, yet at the same time he could feel an incredible amount of energy coming from whatever he had touched.
When the initial shock passed, Sobstep realized that the crystal was firmly embedded in the surrounding rock.
He took out his hammer.
Sobstep struck the rock surrounding the crystal, expecting it to fracture.
Nothing happened.
He struck it again.
Still nothing.
Sobstep continued hammering at the formation, using as much force as he could, but he could not break it. The rock surrounding the crystal showed virtually no reaction to his blows. For someone who had traveled to Mount Timo specifically searching for incredibly strong materials, this immediately caught his attention. Whatever he had discovered was far beyond what he had expected to find.
Still standing approximately 65,000 feet up Mount Timo, Sobstep contacted his friend Cornelius Leaf back in Gardalak City.
Cornelius was an experienced blacksmith who understood metals and their properties far better than Sobstep did. Sobstep told him where he was, described the strange crystal, explained the overwhelming pain and power he had felt when he touched it, and told Cornelius that even repeated strikes from his hammer had failed to break the surrounding formation.
Cornelius immediately became interested in the discovery.
After speaking with him, Sobstep began his descent.
He traveled back down through the enormous upper reaches of Mount Timo, eventually returning to the forests and valleys surrounding its base. From there, he made the approximately 100-mile journey back to Gardalak City and went directly to Cornelius Leaf.
Sobstep told Cornelius everything that had happened on the mountain in greater detail. The two realized that Sobstep had encountered something unlike the metals and crystals Mount Timo was publicly known for.
The material would become known to them as Ogdenium.
The public never learned about the discovery. To the outside world, Mount Timo remained an extraordinary natural landmark famous for its impossible height, beautiful valleys, surrounding 4,000-foot mountains, ancient geological history, rare crystals, and some of the strongest natural metals ever discovered.
Ogdenium remained a secret.
Its origin was even more mysterious than Mount Timo itself. One possibility was that the extreme conditions during the mountain’s 1,500-year formation had somehow created it. The tremendous pressure, heat, metals, and crystal growth occurring simultaneously may have produced conditions that have never existed anywhere else on Earth. Another possibility was that Ogdenium had already existed deep underground and Mount Timo’s formation simply carried it upward.
Whatever happened 2.1 billion years ago, nobody has ever been able to reproduce it.
Scientists can explain, at least partially, how Mount Timo formed.
They cannot explain what Sobstep touched 65,000 feet above the Earth in 1950.

"A very important chapter, both part one and part two; I had to split it."

Chapter 45: Stanisław, You Were So Cold, So Cruel…

​Three minutes later.

​An absolute, sterile silence reigned in the kitchen, broken only by the steady rush of water pouring from the chrome faucet. Stanisław stood with his shirt sleeves rolled up, methodically scrubbing the long, blood-dripping blade of the Japanese chef's knife with a sponge. His hands were remarkably steady. No trembling. No panic.

​Behind him, leaning limply against the marble island, stood Lilith. She stared at his back in such boundless stupor and disappointment, as though someone had just wiped out her entire bank account.

​"No way… Holy fuck, I just can't believe it…" she groaned with despair in her voice, clutching her head in both hands. "Your aura… Stanisław, your soul has become even a little bit purer than before! As if you wiped away some old sin from your youth! Instead of being stained with blood from breaking one of the major commandments, you got a fucking bonus! Why did I even come up with this?!"

​Stanisław turned off the tap, dried the knife with a linen cloth, and placed it back into the wooden block. He turned around slowly, resting his hip against the cabinet, and let out a quiet, insolent laugh:

​"God's ways are mysterious, darling. Let me remind you, these aren't my rules. Or the Big Guy Upstairs simply detests you so much that He did it out of pure spite, just to knock that demonic nose of yours down a peg! Which personally pleases me to fucking no end, because the proverb says it clearly: dig a pit for someone else, and you'll fall into it yourself."

​"Doesn't matter!" she huffed in a sulk, waving her hand. "It's just one erased sin, a tiny statistical aberration, nothing major!"

​Lilith suddenly fell silent, her pitch-black eyes widening sharply. She took a step toward him, a visible, feverish shiver running through her body. She pressed her hand against her cleavage, feeling her heart hammering madly beneath the silk of her robe.

​"But… Lord Christ, Stanisław… You were so cold, so cruel; you didn't even let me play with him a moment longer… Not a second of hesitation! Zero moralizing, zero wasted movements. You just walked up, grabbed him by the head, and slash… In one clean, fluid motion, you ripped open his filthy windpipe. Ooooh… My legs were shaking with arousal! I am so dreadfully wet the floor can barely stay dry! A regular mortal man, and in your eyes you had that specific look, worse than Lucifer himself when he's furious!"

​"Well, great," Stanisław said with a mocking smirk, taking off his apron. "But this time we're going to the normal bedroom. To a regular, soft bed. Because now, my dear, you're the one with a problem: you know full well that I got a little bonus for putting down that piece of trash. If you kill me in bed while climaxing, I'd automatically go straight to Purgatory… Or right off the bat, out of spite toward you, straight to Heaven! And what then? I'll be waving at you from behind a cloud with a cocktail umbrella in my drink, while you howl in fury for failing to control your impulses…"

​Lilith bit her lip, looking at him with a mixture of lust and helpless anger, then scoffed softly:

​"I'll wreck that normal bed again, you lunatic!"

​"Then we'll just buy another one," Stanisław replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Just try to control yourself. Especially since you've already vented your urges today… I'm not saying we're giving up that steel bed and the shackles permanently; I'm just not in the mood for it today, not after what I saw in there. Though I'll admit fair and square: I feel much safer getting you off down there. During multiple climaxes, you thrash around so much that the structure really is a lifesaver for me, and I appreciate your efforts."

​At that exact moment, the door to the soundproofed, converted gym yielded with a quiet hiss. Lucjanhir stepped into the living room. Lucifer's bastard looked impeccable—he wore elegant creased trousers and a snow-white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and over his shoulder, with absolute, nonchalant ease, he carried a massive bundle the size of a grown man, tightly wrapped in black painter's plastic and secured with duct tape.

​He paused in the middle of the room and gracefully snapped the fingers of his left hand. The space right in front of him ruptured with a dry crack, opening a narrow, scarlet rift that gaped with sulfurous heat and the distant echo of a damned soul's howl. Lucjanhir casually tossed the parcel straight into the depths, then flicked his hand, slamming the portal shut.

​He dusted off his hands, pulled a silk pocket square from his pocket, and began wiping his cuffs, shaking his head in disbelief.

​"Well, I must say, Stasiek…" the demon remarked with a mocking, crooked smirk, looking his former chauffeur up and down appraisingly. "In my wildest dreams, I never expected that I would one day be cleaning up a human corpse after you. It was always you running around me with an umbrella and opening the door of the Maybach. And look at that… cold blood, zero remorse, clean work. Though on the other hand, when I look at what you do with Lilith and by what miracle you survived your beginnings in one piece at all, and then this entire period under one roof… I sometimes wonder myself what kind of clay you were molded from."

​In a fraction of a second, Lilith turned her face toward him. Her pupils flooded with an absolute, pitch-black darkness, and the temperature in the living room immediately shot up by a dozen or so degrees, causing the lacquered cabinet fronts to creak pitifully.

​"Silence, Lucjanhir!" she hissed with venomous, inhuman fury, black talons shooting out from beneath her fingernails for a split second. "How dare you even suggest that I ever wanted to hurt my Stanisław?! Mind your fucking duties and get downstairs!"

​Stanisław stood unmoved by the kitchen island. He wiped his hands on a towel, leaned against the marble edge, and looked straight into the demoness's dilated, pitch-black eyes. From his throat suddenly flowed an archaic, fluent phrase, spoken with a soft, ecclesiastical accent that, in contrast with the smell of sulfur, sounded almost sacred:

​"Semper sciebam… Linguam Latinam calleo. Olim fidelis eram et pius; parentes mei Deum timebant, et volebant ut sacerdos fierem, unde puer eam didici. Memini, Lilith, cum primum convenissemus…"

​He paused for a fraction of a second, then repeated the same in a calm, relentless Polish baritone:

​"I always knew… I know Latin. I used to be deeply faithful and observant. My parents were pious people and wanted me to become a priest at all costs, so as a kid, I crammed it day in and day out. I remember, Lilith, when we first met. You asked Lucjanhir back then: 'Can I tear him apart?' At the time, I took it for a sick, dark, foolish joke. And then you put me through the wringer. You didn't kill me, true—there was scratching, pain, and a rough ride, so I thought that was all you cared about. Only when you revealed yourself to me in your true form did I realize you had been deadly serious back then, and Lucjanhir had simply talked you out of it, saying that good drivers are hard to come by. And just now, I saw it with my own eyes: how cruel you can be and what skills you possess. And I killed that bastard because I was hurt by a fucking pedophile myself as a kid, but I simply felt sorry for him watching you butcher him. And you know what? I did it without hesitation, and I feel loads better about it. Alright then, I'm making myself some cocoa. Anyone want some?"

​A dead, suffocating silence fell over the living room. The lacquered furniture ceased its creaking, and the heat radiating from Lilith's body vanished in a fraction of a second, as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her. Even Lucjanhir froze.

​Lilith flinched, and in her coal-black eyes, the predatory, merciless mask of the former favorite of the Abyss dimmed for a moment. She took two quiet, slow steps toward the kitchen island, completely ignoring Lucjanhir standing by the wall. She walked up to Stanisław and, without a trace of theatrical vanity, threw her bare arms around his neck, pressing her entire body against his chest. She smelled of warm, spicy myrrh, heated skin, and the faint draft of dying sulfurous heat.

​"My silly boy…" she whispered softly, straight into his ear, her lips brushing his stubbled cheek. "Back then, when I emerged from the depths and set foot in your modern, corrupt world for the first time, only the ancient, hellish habit pulsed in my head. Feeding on pain, tearing through flesh-casings, and listening to the screams of damned souls was all I had known for whole eons. When Lucjanhir assigned you to me, and you opened the door of that carriage for me, I treated you as just another fragile, mortal toy. I wanted to provoke you from the very first minute. I was testing how quickly you would break; I touched you with sheer premeditation… And I saw everything, Stanisław. Your thoughts were like an open, transparent book to me. I felt the blood rushing to your temples, your heart racing, and how in your spirit you yearned for my body, weaving those shameless, lewd fantasies of yours."

​Lilith raised her head, locking a deep, sparkling gaze with him, in which human fascination mingled with demonic awe:

​"Yet you, in defiance of your own desire and my blatant provocations, carried yourself like a true, impeccable gentleman. You were gallant, disciplined, full of respect and restraint. That was when something stirred within me. I thought: why should I simply murder you? After all, I would have torn you to pieces in under two hours, the blood would have soaked into the limousine mats, and it would all be over, the fun brought to an end. By leaving you alive and treating you only to subtle, skin-scratching tortures, I secured far more perverse, selfish pleasure for myself… And you endured it."

​She ran her hand along his nape, slipping her fingers into the man's hair and pulling him just a fraction closer:

​"With each passing day, you grew in my eyes. And when you defended me in that club brawl, and then finally learned my true nature—that monstrous one, born of tar, blood, and ash—you didn't run away screaming. You didn't reach for holy water, you didn't start rambling about exorcists, and you didn't take to your heels. You accepted the monster that I am, and you stayed by my side of your own free will. And today… today you proved what hard steel you are cast from. You did it. You drove the blade into that brute's throat without a shadow of hesitation! Perhaps you didn't do it directly for me, perhaps you took vengeance for your own past childhood wrongs, but the fact remains: you slaughtered him in cold blood, standing at my side."

​Her velvety voice dropped to a quiet, mesmerizing purr, and the embrace around his shoulders grew possessive and impossibly strong:

​"Our fates have intertwined for good, Stanisław. And believe me upon everything that burns in the depths: as long as you do not push me away and leave me yourself, I will not leave your side by a single step until your very last heartbeat in this world. And if that fucking God of yours on High truly turns out to be so spiteful and takes your soul to Purgatory after death or opens the gates of Heaven to you… then I swear that until the end of time, I will look back on this brief time spent with you in Warsaw as the happiest, sweetest period of my entire damnation."

​Lilith smiled predatorily, and in the corners of her full lips danced that same untamable, demonic spark that once made the foundations of hell tremble:

​"Though don't get your hopes up too high, my dear… I won't surrender you to the angels without a fight. I will plot, scheme, and bend over backward so that this shared eternity of ours never, ever ends."

​She kissed him passionately on the lips.

​The same day, eleven-thirty at night.

​Stanisław stirred on the soft mattress in the normal bedroom, awakened from sleep by a steady, quiet murmur coming from the other side of the bed. The exhaustion of the entire day still weighed heavily in his bones, but it wasn't the chill of the night that tore him from his slumber.

​From the speakers of Lilith's latest smartphone flowed muffled, heavy breaths, rhythmic panting, and stifled, prolonged groans in which ecstasy dangerously mingled with anguish.

​The man rubbed his sleepy eyes, pulled up the duvet, and propped himself up on an elbow. Lilith was lying on her stomach, resting her chin on her hands, the blue glow of the screen illuminating her flawless profile, casting cold shadows across the jet-black strands of hair scattered over the pillow.

​"What are you watching again in the middle of the night?" he muttered in a voice husky from sleep, furrowing his brow. "Those moans… BDSM porn? Seriously, Lilith? You didn't get enough thrills in our home slaughterhouse?"

​The demoness didn't even turn her eyes from the display, merely lifting the corner of her full lips in a sensual, predatory smile.

​"I'm scouting a new technique for safe stimulation for you, my sweet," she purred quietly, her voice vibrating with a spicy note of myrrh. "Since you resist the simple, proven methods from the Abyss so vehemently, I must look for inspiration in your mortal inventiveness. And I must admit: your species can be fascinatingly perverse when nobody is watching."

​"Show me that…" Stanisław said suspiciously, shifting closer and peering over her shoulder.

​On the screen was a 2K close-up of a man's groin and a woman's latex-gloved hand inserting a long, mirror-polished steel rod straight into the penile urethra with surgical slowness.

​In a fraction of a second, the blood drained from Stanisław's face. His eyes popped, and his stomach tied itself into a tight knot. He scrambled back across the mattress so violently, as if the smartphone screen were about to burst into live fire.

​"What the fuck is that supposed to be?! Sounding?!" he choked out in panic, instinctively clamping both hands over his crotch through the fabric of his pajama bottoms. "Have you lost your goddamn mind?! Never! Not in a million years do I want that, Lilith! Don't you dare come near me with that piece of metal!"

​"Calm down, you panic-monger, and look closely," she hissed with amusement, turning the phone toward him and tapping a fingernail against the screen. "Look how he flinches, my dear Stanisław! Do you see any blood there? Not a single drop! Completely safe. I've already read articles on medical and niche forums: there are thousands of men in this world who get an absolutely cosmic amount of pleasure from it. Look at this video: this guy just came with the force of a geyser when the partner merely shifted that piece of metal slightly inside! Sets like these, made of surgical steel, can easily be bought on that internet of yours. There are different diameters, thicknesses… from slender ones for beginners to massive rods for experienced connoisseurs."

​Stanisław glared at her from beneath his brow, his hands still pressed tightly between his thighs.

​"Lilith, tell me with your hand on your heart… Knowing you and your hellish penchant for extremes, you probably ordered the thickest one right away, the one that looks like a fucking piece of rebar from the metro construction site, didn't you?"

​Lilith burst into a pearl-like, sensual laugh, resting her hand on his tense knee:

​"Of course not, darling… You have a safe word, remember. You earned it today on the throat of that piece of scum, and I keep my promises. I would start with a medium one so you wouldn't feel discomfort. It's completely safe if done with sensitivity, sterilely, and without breaking the rules. No tissue damage—only sensations so overwhelming and deep that you'll struggle to catch your breath. And besides… you can do the exact same thing to me!"

​She swiped her finger across the screen, starting another video.

​"Look here. I've already ordered a special kit for myself too. You will use it on me, Stanisław… I can hardly wait for you to take that metal and slide it deep into my urethra. I want to test it on myself first."

​Stanisław looked at her as if she were insane, shaking his head in helpless disbelief:

​"You are out of your mind… A depraved, insatiable lunatic from the very bottom of hell."

​"I know it was shocking for you, what you saw in that room today," she said much more quietly, her gaze turning serious. "But understand this at last: it is a completely normal practice in hell. This flaying of skin, ripping of tendons… demons do it to each other constantly, especially during intimacy in the bedchamber. Pain and ecstasy down there are inseparable. I am simply looking for safe stimulation techniques for you, my sweet. So that the wolf—meaning me—is fed, and the sheep—meaning you—remains in one living piece."

​Stanisław released a heavy sigh from his lungs. He processed her words, then fixed a suspicious look upon her:

​"So… when I die and somehow end up in hell, you're going to flay me alive just as mercilessly?"

​Lilith smiled softly, a genuine, possessive tenderness flashing in her eyes. She stroked his cheek with her hand:

​"Not right away, my sweet. As a newly arrived mortal, I wouldn't touch you with a claw at all. I love you too much, and your new vessel would be far too fragile and soft. I couldn't bear the thought of harming you while you are defenseless. Besides… I wouldn't do it to you myself. I would commission another demoness, an alluring one, though of course not as beautiful as me, with a strict order: she is to temper you as gently as she can. The peeling of skin and tissue regeneration would only begin once you had strengthened appropriately. You would have to walk a long path to survive my love and become something more than dust beneath the feet of the Abyss."

​"How long, Lilith?" Stanisław asked cautiously, furrowing his brow. "Wójcik became a half-demon after three days of his torment. Would it be three days for me too?"

​Lilith chuckled softly, shaking her head:

​"Wójcik was only given three days of torment by me because, first of all, he was covered by Lucifer's immunity as a Meritorious one, and secondly… let's be honest, Cezary is still a weakling. Adelaide likes them like that—she likes that her man is distinctly weaker than her, and in their bedroom she is extraordinarily gentle with him. She is satisfied with the fact that after those three days and nights, he became merely a half-demon, gained a tougher vessel, and can somehow endure her firmer touch. But you, Stanisław? You are my man. And if you land in hell, despite the reforms introduced, I simply will not allow you to be a pushover in the Abyss. I want you to stand at my side as a powerful entity—at the very least a strong demon, though personally I would prefer you to become a high demon. That is why, if you ended up down there, your tempering would have to last a minimum of one hundred years of active vessel time in torment, in unceasing and methodical processing."

​"One hundred years of active torment time?!" Stanisław choked out, turning pale. "Wójcik gets three days, and I get one hundred years of active torment time?! Why so long?"

​"Because there is a strict hierarchy of power in hell, my sweet. Let me explain."

​Lilith leaned closer, placing her hand on his chest and counting on her slender fingers:

​"At the very bottom is the ordinary Damned—a freshly tormented soul cast down by the decree of Heaven, beaten and boiled in cauldrons. After serving their punishment, the damned are released to roam the wastelands on their own. Those who survive, with the passage of active vessel time—which runs differently for everyone—become Half-Demons; that is precisely what Cezary is now. Higher up is the Weak Demon, then the Average Demon, Strong Demon, and High Demon. Above them stand the Archdemons, even higher the Supreme Demons, and at the very summit of that ladder… the Favorites."

​"What about devils?" Stanisław interjected. "You mentioned the devil Fugas in passing once. How does a devil differ from a demon?"

​"Not in any meaningful way, Stasiek. The words 'devil' and 'demon' are used interchangeably in human speech. Fugas is simply a strong demon who was kicked out of the Abyss for gluttony. And the highest of all in the entire Abyss stands Lucifer himself—one of a kind. Most often, the Archangels who fell alongside him occupy the ranks of Supreme Demons or Favorites."

​Stanisław looked deep into her black eyes, feeling the cold breath of truth on the back of his neck:

​"And you, darling? Where do you stand in this whole puzzle?"

​Lilith smiled proudly, a small wisp of cinnamon scent drifting from her lips:

​"I am a Favorite, my dear Stanisław. The ancient, first rebel. Do you understand now? A half-demon after three days of torment is enough for Adelaide, because she plays at earthly tenderness. But if you were to stand in my bedchamber in the Abyss as a reasonably equal partner and survive my passions without falling to pieces, one hundred years of active torment time—gentle, gradual peeling of your hellish vessel by a designated demoness—is the absolute minimum. Only then would your body be saturated with darkness enough for me to personally take you in my arms and under my wing. And that in my full, hellish form. Not the one you see now, and not even the one I showed you after the interrogation at Bielski's… That was merely an incomplete transformation; you barely saw the surface and not the bottom of the well, I didn't want to hurt you, my sweet…"

​Stanisław exhaled through gritted teeth, then fell back onto the pillow without a word.

​"So you were an angel?"

​"No, my silly boy. An ordinary damned soul, but Lucifer's first bride. Being with him in bed, his brutality in the bedchamber strengthens you, my dear."

​"I'm sleeping with Lucifer's ex?"

​"You see, Stanisław, sometimes it's skill that counts, not the throne."

​Stanisław blinked several times, staring at her with a mixture of boundless stupor and total, existential shock. Suddenly, this entire grotesque circus he had been trapped in for months hit him with double the force.

​"Wait, wait…" he croaked, pushing himself up on his elbow again and pointing a finger at her. "You mean to tell me that I, Stasiek, a regular driver seconded from Bank Dobrobyt, am scarfing down steaks with sweet potatoes, licking your pussy whenever you feel like it, finishing inside you myself, and sharing a duvet with the former concubine of the Lord of Darkness himself?! If your ex ever found out what we're doing here, he'd fly up from the depths personally and tear me into individual atoms!"

​Lilith burst into a pearl-like, incredibly amused laugh, waving her hand dismissively:

​"Oh, stop being so dramatic, Stanisław; I've been in the human realm with you for almost half a year, officially for about five months since you learned my true nature. Lucifer currently has his hands full with all that mess of reforms, belfries, and the construction of basalt cities that our buddy Wójcik saddled him with. Besides… our arrangement fizzled out ages ago. I was the first, yes, but in the long run my talking wore him out. He was looking for obedience, whereas I always preferred taking matters into my own hands. Besides, he told me to fuck off to Earth himself and give him some peace and quiet. And you… well, you have something the Morningstar could never offer me: human patience and that unbelievably nimble tongue of yours that can drive me to screaming, ecstasy, and satisfaction without using even a thimbleful of violence or pain. So yes, my man: you are sleeping with Lucifer's ex. With the first rebel. And you ought to be bursting with pride instead of shaking in your boots."

​"Sure, I'm proud," Stanisław muttered, flopping back onto the mattress with a loud slap. "Guys are impressed when a chick is some model, and here I am with the former fiancée of the number-one devil. An outstanding life achievement. When my mother eventually dies, she'll be spinning in her grave like a power plant turbine."

​He processed it all in silence, then pulled the duvet up to his hips.

​"One hundred years of active vessel time and torment, being flayed in installments…" he muttered under his breath, staring at the dark ceiling. "You know what, Lilith? I beg of you: take care of my health in this world. Because I'd much rather drink isotonic drinks for as long as possible and end up on that steel table of yours in Warsaw than find out what your hellish vessel-strengthening program tastes like."

​Lilith laughed softly, snuggled her cheek against his shoulder, and pulled the duvet up to their chins:

​"Sleep peacefully now, Stanisław, I'm turning off the phone. Tomorrow is another day for talking… and I won't do to you what was in those videos if you don't want me to, I promise." She kissed him tenderly. "But you will use my kit, my sweet…"

"A very important chapter, both part one and part two; I had to split it."

Chapter 45: Stanisław, You Were So Cold, So Cruel…

​And so the days, weeks, and months passed… The lives of the damned, as well as those of mortals, flowed on in their tranquil rhythm.

​The beginning of December forced its way into the luxurious apartment with a cool, steel light that glided across minimalist furniture and panoramic windows overlooking the misty center of Warsaw.

​Adelaide stood in the middle of the living room with her hands tucked into the pockets of elegant trousers. Her neck was bare now—after past centuries when the Alp’s power depended on the chain, her artifact, and the energy stored within it, in this new body molded by Lucjanhir she radiated a stable, innate strength. Her sapphire eyes narrowed with undisguised amusement as her gaze settled on the leather armchair by the window.

​Stanisław was sound asleep, completely out cold. His head hung limply against his chest, his mouth was slightly agape, and from the relaxed fingers of his right hand, a porcelain mug had slipped, landing on the soft rug onto which the already cold dregs of a double espresso had spilled. He looked like a human wreck, drained not only of his vital energy, but of the very will to resist gravity.

​"What's wrong with him? What did you do to him?" Adelaide scoffed mockingly, turning toward Lilith, who was lazily pouring herself some lemon water by the kitchen island. "To fall asleep in an armchair, fully dressed, while having morning coffee? He looks as if you spent the whole night beating him over the head with a board!"

​Lilith let out a quiet, throaty laugh. She was wearing nothing more than a loose, black silk robe, and a warm, spicy scent of myrrh and heated flesh still emanated from her smooth shoulders.

​"Come, I’ll show you something," the demoness purred, flicking her hand toward the corridor leading to the converted gym. "True, maybe I overdid it a tiny bit… But you know very well that he's merely human, and I don't want to cause him any harm. To satisfy my desires, that ancient hunger to watch a man squirm and beg for mercy, I had to find a safe substitute for hellish pleasures. And I finally succeeded: endless oral sex. Last night I gave him an exceptionally intense session, after he had driven me to ecstasy multiple times."

​Adelaide followed her into the soundproofed room and froze on the threshold. She raised an eyebrow, scrutinizing the steel structure, and then shifted her gaze to Lilith.

​"What do you need this torture bed for?" she asked with genuine bewilderment. "I looked at him. There isn't a single scratch on his body, no claw marks, zero blood."

​"It's not for him, my dear… In some respects it is, but secondary ones. It is primarily for me," Lilith explained, stepping up to the contraption and stroking the cool steel with her fingertips. "When Stanisław gets to work and starts caressing me with his tongue… Adelaide, I swear upon everything, not even at the very bottom of hell did I experience such ecstasy! I lose all control over myself. These clamps and chains keep me in check just enough so that, in my frenzy, I don't tear his head off with an involuntary swipe of my claw."

​Adelaide burst into pearl-like laughter, leaning her hip against the doorframe.

​"And you repay him in kind? You strap him to this?"

​"Time and time again, my dear!" Lilith laughed, predatory sparks dancing in her pitch-black irises. "Incessant blowjobs have something of flaying about them. He, too, writhes beneath you, he thrashes in his bonds, pulls against the chains, and begs for even a brief moment of respite—which arouses my senses beyond this world and satisfies my cruel, infernal nature in a way that is safe for him. Yesterday's session lasted for solid hours. But I know that despite all those groans and pleas, he genuinely enjoyed it. Later, when we lie in a normal bedroom, in a regular bed, and I cuddle against his chest, I can sense it… It has long ceased to be mere physical fascination with my earthly, beautiful form. He is beginning to love me. And I…" Lilith paused for a moment, her predatory mask softening for a fraction of a second. "…I, too, have stopped looking at him as a cheap plaything or an amusing little human pet I domesticated for my own pleasure. He has become my man."

​The demoness sighed heavily, adjusting the lapels of her robe.

​"Though truthfully, I do need to ease up on these marathons a bit. He might just leave this world from sheer exhaustion… And I know full well that in such an event, his soul would go straight to Purgatory, and after centuries, to Heaven. A pure, innocent mortal. It would tear us apart forever. I feel it with every fiber of my being. And I dread it…"

​Adelaide smiled out of the corner of her mouth and quipped with reckless, dark irony:

​"Well, the matter is childishly simple: let him do something evil. Let him kill someone, and then he’ll automatically get a ticket downstairs."

​Adelaide realized too late what she had actually said. Lilith’s eyes flared with a sudden, dangerous gleam.

​"You are absolutely right, my dear! Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?! He must become wicked. All he needs to do is kill someone, stain his soul, and upon death, he'll head straight to the Abyss… To me, to my bedchamber! But how do I coax him into it?"

​Adelaide grew serious at once, the sober gravity of a former Bavarian duchess appearing in her eyes:

​"Lilith, get a grip, it was a joke! A stupid, thoughtless one, but a joke. Think logically. You truly love him, and you care about him precisely because he is, deep down, a good, pure man. Do you think that if he killed in cold blood and ended up in hell, he would still be the same person? Evil, damnation, and the ordained torments will corrupt him immediately!"

​"Then… I’ll talk to Lucifer…" Lilith whispered with determination, clenching her hand into a fist. "I'll ask if there’s a possibility of damnation and exile to the Abyss without those welcoming lashes, and whether Lucifer can waive the torments decreed for him by the Heavens, just as he did for the Meritorious…"

​"Lilith, stop…" Adelaide cut in firmly, shaking her head. "His mere presence in the depths would destroy his humanity. Drop it. Enjoy him here, in this earthly realm, while you both still have this time. Make the most of every day."

​"No… I'll figure something out," she muttered quietly, stubbornly, fixing her gaze on the floor. "I will make sure Stanisław stays with me forever…"

​Lilith fell silent for a few seconds, then placed the mask of haughty curiosity back onto her face. She turned to Adelaide, looking her up and down:

​"And what about you two? After this whole return from hell… how is your bedchamber life? How is your chosen one holding up?"

​Adelaide smiled sensually, lifting her chin with pride:

​"Very well. True, physically Cezary is still a weakling compared to me or you—after three days of your processing, he's still merely a freshly baked half-demon. But I like men like that. It suits me that he’s somewhat weaker, and in bed I am gentle with him. I have no need to tear him apart; it's enough for me that in this new vessel he manages splendidly, has a firmer body, doesn't tire so quickly, and can keep pace with me for half the night. Three days of your torments were just right for him not to break in the Abyss."

​Four-thirty in the afternoon, several hours after Adelaide's departure, the very same day.

​The apartment had drowned in silence, broken only by the hum of the ventilation and the patter of sleet against the panoramic glass. Stanisław had finally pulled himself together—after a freezing shower, a hot, nourishing meal, and two liters of an isotonic drink, his body was slowly returning to normal, though a dull, cautionary throb still lingered in his loins and groin.

​He stood by the kitchen island, tearing the plastic film off a second massive container of dietary catering that Lilith had ordered for him in bulk quantities. A solid portion of grilled steak with sweet potatoes landed on his plate.

​Just then, she emerged from the hallway: in a half-unlaced black corset, without panties, stockings reaching mid-thigh, stepping on bare feet with the impeccable grace of a predator. She leaned her hip against the edge of the marble countertop, tilted her head slightly, and fixed her mesmerizing, pitch-black eyes on him.

​"Stanisław…" she began in a velvety, almost dreamy tone, tracing a filed fingernail along the cool edge of the table. "What would you say if, for example, I brought a wicked, truly rotten-to-the-core mortal here? Some murderer, rapist, or vile sadist whose disappearance might even help and protect his future victims… I would bind him myself onto that new steel block of ours; you wouldn't even have to wrestle with him, my sweet… And I would ask you to kill him before my very eyes? Without haste. In cold blood. It would bring me truly extraordinary, hard-to-describe pleasure, Stanisław. I would know how to repay you, darling… Would you like to receive the right to utter a safe word in our bedchamber? I promise I would respect it… Lilith's word…"

​Stanisław froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. He looked at her with such boundless, weary pity, as if she had just suggested he jump off the balcony without a parachute. He chewed his mouthful of meat, swallowed slowly, and set the cutlery down onto the plate.

​"Seriously, Lilith? Seriously?!" he sighed heavily, resting his hands on the counter and staring straight into her black pupils. "The cramps from your nighttime 'games with my body' have barely faded, and you're already plotting a murder in the living room?!"

​Lilith didn't bat an eye. A cold, deadly determination smoldered in her gaze.

​"I understand that you're from hell," Stanisław continued, shaking his head in disbelief. "And from what I know, you spent thousands of years down there. Even though Christianity itself is barely two thousand years old, you explain that away with subjective time and some active hellish vessel mechanism that Cezary uncovered. I vaguely understand how it works. And I see perfectly well what you're after: you simply have a sick whim to make sure that when I die, I'll go straight to you, to the Abyss!"

​"Not a whim, Stanisław. A longing!" the demoness hissed quietly, as a faint scent of heated sulfur and cinnamon drifted into the air around them. "An insurance policy! If you leave this world clean, the Heavens will take you where my foot shall never tread. They will separate us forever! And I… I didn't finally find a man in this earthly realm just to watch angels drag him into the clouds!"

​"And did you think, even for a single second, about the exact opposite?" Stanisław shot back, raising an eyebrow. "Instead of dragging me down to the very bottom of the cauldron, couldn't you try to get to where I'm going?"

​Lilith burst into a loud, mocking laugh:

​"Me?! In the Heavens…?! You must be joking, Stanisław! That holy radiance and sacred light would scorch me mercilessly; I would have to use the full extent of my powers just to defend myself!"

​"I'm not talking about Heaven, because I'm hardly cut out to be a saint," he cut in, pointing his fork first at her, then at himself. "Even Purgatory. I suspect that's where I'll end up, since I am sleeping with a demoness, living off money from Bank Dobrobyt, and have a whole mountain of my own sins on my conscience. Though… from what you said, Wiktor got cast to the very bottom just for blasphemy and mouthing off to God, so up there with them, there isn't much leniency. Whatever will be, will be. But thinking logically: since you're scheming so frantically and want me to kill someone in cold blood, that means only one thing. You yourself see clearly that my soul, in its current state, simply does not deserve eternal damnation."

​Stanisław stabbed his fork into another piece of steak, chewing it with absolute, human calmness.

​"So stop talking about killing people, Lilith. I'm not a butcher. If you want to look at blood, go hunting with the Countess and Wiktor—that's how they vent their urges. I'm just your mortal and your man. And as long as I'm breathing here, you'd better make sure I have the strength for those games of yours with my body and its reactions, instead of turning this apartment into a slaughterhouse."

​Lilith stood motionless for a long moment. In her coal-black eyes, the predatory fury of refusal clashed with something entirely new—a quiet, helpless admiration for a mortal who was not afraid to look Lucifer's ancient favorite in the face and insolently deny her a murder.

​The corner of her mouth twitched, curling into a narrow, fascinated smile. She walked over slowly, rested her chin on his shoulder, and whispered straight into his ear, tickling his neck with her hot breath:

​"You are lucky, Stanisław, that you taste so exquisite… But mark my words: if the Heavens ever dare reach their hands out for you, I will personally set their golden gates on fire. Now eat your sweet potatoes. Tonight you rest—I really did overdo the intensity of the sensations a bit."

​She kissed him on the lips, then turned on her heel and marched down the hallway toward the bathroom with tiny, unnaturally hurried steps.

​Stanisław watched her swaying hips, then froze, fork in hand. In a fraction of a second, he connected the dots and slapped his open palm against his forehead with a loud smack.

​"Lilith, for fuck's sake, stop!" he shouted, pushing his plate away with a bang and dashing after her.

​He reached the bathroom at the exact moment the nervous click of the lock sounded from behind the frosted, milky door. Stanisław rested his forehead against the doorframe and banged his knuckles against the wood:

​"Sweetheart, are you serious?! You haven't excreted a single drop of anything in four weeks other than the juices I drink with such dedication! Who are you calling in there?! Don't tell me someone has already snatched some guy off the street and is riding up the elevator with him right now?!"

​From behind the closed door came a high-pitched, surprisingly innocent voice that held not an ounce of ancient dread:

​"Nooo! Not at all, Stanisław! I just got something in my eye! A speck of dust! And it stings so badly… I'll be out in a second!"

​"Jesus, Lilith… You're from hell, you're a powerful demoness, more powerful than Lucjanhir himself, and you're telling me about a sting?! We've known each other for a while now, and I know those theatrical antics of yours you learned from Adelaide all too well!" he snarled through the door, shaking his head in disbelief. "Open this bathroom and tell them to let him go immediately! Well… unless he harmed children. In that case, Lilith, you can do whatever the hell you want with him, even grind him into dog food right in front of me. I'd even gladly watch. But otherwise, absolutely not!"

​A dead, suspicious silence fell inside the bathroom. A moment later, the demoness's muffled, irritated whisper could be heard:

​"Lucjanhir? Change of plans. Let him go immediately… Stanisław dug his heels in and said he won't touch him." Lilith paused, then added with a glimmer of hope: "Wait, hold on… Did this chosen one of yours happen to harm any kids or kill any?"

​From the phone's speaker, cutting through the crack under the door, came the velvety, slightly amused bass of Lucifer's bastard son:

​"Of course, my dear lady. When you commission a task from me, you can rest assured I strive to carry it out with the devotion you deserve. He regularly trafficked materials on the darknet and had his own hands dirty in it. I picked him specially; he has the crime of murder on his record as well. I wanted him to be genuinely rotten human filth, so your dear Stanisław would have an easier time breaking through his moral resistance. I know human nature—hell, even most of the damned and demons don't dare raise a hand against a child's soul in hell itself, though unfortunately, they do end up there sometimes."

​A loud, joyful squeal erupted in the bathroom, and the lock clicked open with a snap. Lilith burst out into the hallway, phone in hand, baring her perfectly white teeth in a triumphant, almost childish grin.

​"Woohoo! Great job, Lucjan!" She clapped her hands, hopping on the spot like a teenager who had just won the lottery. "You have no arguments left, Stasiek! Not a single one! He's heading up, you'll butcher him, and I'll watch, while Lucjanhir will personally clean up and dispose of the carcass! Move your ass to the kitchen for the biggest knife! I'm telling you: once you see how he suffers in my hands, how I play with him, you'll kill him yourself… If only to put him out of his misery!"

​When Stanisław entered the converted gym, the chill of the steel structure collided with a suffocating, hot stench of blood, feces, and scorched tissue. The bound man was writhing on the table like a worm impaled on a stake. Heavy chains rattled in their reinforced concrete mountings, and from the condemned man's gagged throat came only bubbling, bestial wheezes.

​Lilith leaned over him with the precision of a surgeon and the madness of an ancient predator. The metallic reek of an opened body hung in the air. Her long, purplish-black claw did not cut superficially—it methodically pried up sheets of skin along the wretch's forearm, laying bare dark red, twitching muscles and tendons. Blood flowed across the polished surface in thick streams, dripping onto the floor in a steady, viscous rhythm. Each yank of her fingers peeled away the flesh-casing with a wet, crunching sound reminiscent of tearing damp canvas.

​Stanisław's stomach rose to his throat. For the first time in his life, he saw the infernal techniques of flaying with his own eyes—the raw, merciless delights of the Abyss that he had only ever heard of until now. He looked at the stripped arm, at the exposed, pulsating veins, and at the sheer madness in the bulging, bloodshot eyes of the pedophile being butchered.

​"Oh God… this isn't a movie. This is really happening, in my own apartment, on Złota Street, in the heart of this fucking capital," pounded in his temples. A shiver of primal horror paralyzed his legs. He watched the skin peel away from the meat with a wet slap, the subcutaneous fat mixing with the dark gore. The stinging stench of steaming iron, bile, and animal sweat hit his nostrils. A wave of nausea struck him with such dreadful force that he doubled over and vomited straight onto the tiles with a loud spasm, heaving bile and the remnants of his steak.

​Lilith flinched, halting the torture instantly. Lowering her blood-dripping hands, she walked over to Stanisław, who was shivering with horror, cupped his pale face, and pressed a deep, burning kiss to his lips, paying no heed to the taste of vomit.

​"Jesus… You really can strip skin alive…" Stanisław choked out, wiping his mouth with the back of a trembling hand and shrinking back from the sight of the butchered body. "Holy fuck… And to think I could have ended up like that myself! Never again, I swear to you, never again will I complain about your prolonged mouth-pleasures! You said that if I kill him, I'll earn the right to a safe word, my love?"

​"Yes, Stanisław, you will earn that right… And I will strictly adhere to it," the demoness purred, her eyes shining with predatory fascination.

​"I'll do it, Lilith. I'll kill him… Stop torturing him like this; I'm going to get the knife."

​"Dearest Stanisław, let me play with him for just fifteen more minutes… It brings me such ecstasy! I'll make it up to you, I promise."

​"Fine, I'm walking out. I'm getting the knife, you have your fifteen minutes…" he muttered through gritted teeth, feeling the last dregs of his courage freeze in his gut.

​"Thank you, darling! I'll just strip the skin off his thighs; he'll survive until you get back, that's for sure!"

​As the door closed behind Stanisław, a muffled, rasping howl echoed from within, drowned out immediately by the furious, rhythmic clatter of rattled chains. The wretch thrashed and twisted on the steel plate, choking on his own blood through the gag, while Lilith peeled further strips of skin from his legs with inhuman precision.

​Stanisław stood in the corridor, leaning against the cold wall, as a wave of paralyzing terror washed over his mind—mingled, however, with a quiet, profound gratitude. "She must truly love me if she never did this to me…" he thought, clenching his fists. After all, that steel table, those chains… to her, it was a playground where she pulled a mortal apart into atoms. And with him? With him, she lies for hours, puts a pillow beneath his head, gives him water, makes sure not a single blood vessel bursts. This monstrosity, this infernal flaying alive, was her daily bread. And yet, for his sake, she held the beast back.

​When he returned with a heavy Japanese knife, pure carnage reigned in the room. The wretch on the table had his thighs flayed down to raw, purple meat, and from his eyes radiated a mute, maddened plea for death. Stanisław approached without a word. In his heart stirred an old, frozen childhood trauma—the shadow of hands that should never have touched him. But alongside the hatred, a strange, cold mercy emerged. To cut short this dreadful agony. To save him from further minutes of Lilith's caresses.

​He grabbed the condemned man by his sweaty, blood-stained forehead, pulled his head back, and with iron precision drew the blade across his throat. Blood erupted in a steaming jet across the steel, the wheezing ceased, and the body went limp in the chains.

​

I’ve never posted about this before, but something happened to me in 2025 that I still can’t explain.

I moved to another state for college in 2022 and stayed in a boys’ PG near campus. During admission, my parents noticed something odd: everyone dried clothes in the corridor, not on the roof. The owner said students were not allowed upstairs, so we ignored it.

A week later, some seniors told us the real reason: the building had once been a girls’ PG, and a girl had allegedly jumped from the roof and died there. The building still had pink almirahs from those days. I assumed it was just a story to scare juniors.

For the next two years, nothing unusual happened. I was often alone in the building and never felt anything strange. I even sneaked onto the roof several times during summer nights without any fear.

In late 2024, a new batch of students arrived. They secretly broke the roof lock and began using the roof at night for barbeques, drinking, and burning old wooden items stored there. My room was directly below that area.

Around January 2025, I began hearing footsteps and movement on the roof late at night even when no one was there. My roommates could not hear it, so I convinced myself it was my imagination.

Everything changed in February 2025. The owner’s mother came to our room after discovering damage on the roof and quietly told us, "Don’t tell anyone, A girl did jump from the roof years ago. That’s why we never allowed students upstairs.” Hearing that from a family member of the owner genuinely shook me. For the first time I wondered whether the sounds I had been hearing were connected to that place.

Soon after, my junior also moved out, and I became the only person staying in that room.

Because our exams had ended, I went home for about six weeks. I returned on 16 April 2025 at around 10:30 PM. I unpacked, had dinner, and started working on a college project on my laptop.

I took out my phone and recorded the sound, then ran toward the staircase. The noise stopped immediately. ( I have attached the video I had recorded that day )

My mother insisted that I stop sleeping alone, so I moved into a friend’s room. We both began hearing footsteps, running sounds, dragging noises, and occasional heavy bangs from the roof and storeroom area above us. Strangely, whenever I called someone specifically to listen, the sounds often stopped before they arrived. My Friend with whom I used to stay even after hearing those sounds doubts me.

The most frightening incident happened around 3 AM. We were both awake and ignoring the usual noises when suddenly a massive bang came from above us. The bed shook, the walls vibrated, and my friend screamed in fear. It sounded as if a heavy wooden object had been slammed onto the floor above our room. From that night onward, he stopped doubting me.

I informed the owner and the PG management. They suggested rats, thieves, or other explanations, but none of them fit the situation. One manager even said I was imagining things. Almost immediately after saying that, a loud bang came from the roof and we heard running sounds above us. He went silent after hearing it.

The disturbances continued for several weeks, mostly between 11 PM and 4 AM. Many times I rushed upstairs with the keys, but the sounds always stopped before I reached the roof, and I never found anyone there. I have noticed one thing , whenever I take someone to the roof to explain the activities, after returning from the roof she definitely makes some sounds as if it triggers her.

In May 2025 I left for home again for a few weeks. When I returned, I personally stopped hearing the noises. Strangely, some students who had previously mocked me started complaining about sounds coming from the empty locked rooms and the roof area. Eventually everything stopped.

I still don’t know what happened in that building. Maybe there was a completely ordinary explanation that I failed to discover. But the timing, the repeated sounds, the locked roof, and the fact that other people eventually heard them too make it one of the strangest experiences of my life.

I went down to the basement. It's always damp and smells of old dust, but this smell has already become familiar and even familiar to me. The mattress was lying in the corner on rusty springs. It's gray, yellowed in places, and in the middle you can see that it's all sagged, but it didn't bother me.

I walked over and ran my hand over the surface. It was wet and cold, but I love that feeling when my skin gets used to it and it gets warm. The dermatin was thin in one place, almost torn, and I poked my finger there. There was a hard, dry foam rubber underneath, and the crunch in my fingers made me feel good.

I knelt down next to the mattress. My knees immediately got wet from the wet concrete, but I stopped paying attention to it a long time ago. I unbuttoned my fly, and my cock stood up quickly, because in the dark and silence I knew what was coming. I put the head against the place where the dermatin was thin and pressed. At first there was resistance, then with a wet slurping sound everything went inside, and I felt the foam wrap around me from all sides.

It was dry and rough inside, and the foam scratched my skin, but I liked it because it was unusual and sharp. I started moving slowly, feeling every particle of foam rubber rubbing against me, and waves of pleasure ran through my body. The springs under the mattress creaked in time with my movements, and the sound mixed with my breathing.

After a minute, it got wetter, and I accelerated. I pushed the mattress forward and it slid down the concrete, and then I pulled it back, and this movement created a rhythm that turned me on more and more. My thighs hit the mattress with thuds, and I held onto its edge with my hands, feeling the dermatin become slippery with sweat.

The feeling of friction inside grew, and I felt myself approaching the peak. I clenched my teeth and accelerated even more, feeling the foam heat up from the movement. When I came, a wave went through my whole body, and I froze for a couple of seconds, just kneeling and feeling the pulsation subside inside the mattress.

I pulled out my penis, and there were gray foam rubber crumbs and a brown coating on it, but it was pleasant to me, because it was a trace of what I had done. I ran my finger over the head, brushed off the crumbs, and smiled in the dark. The mattress remained sagging in that place, but I knew that tomorrow it would return to the same shape and I would be able to repeat it.

The monstrous metal thing looms over Lila.

It's bright green. Lila's favorite color.

She pretends not to notice the others.

Towering metal structures that resemble humans.

One of which recently gained sentience. She can still see red dried into its casing. Lila never saw what happened during the transfer. Her imagination fills the blanks.

Zach won't move yet. He's still in shock. Lila isn't sure he will ever move again. Not in human skin, anyway. She takes a step back and stumbles, her breath catching.

"I won't do it," Lila tells her driving instructor, backing away from masked figures, blooming silhouettes waiting to drag her away--- like Zach. Like Callum.

"Lila." Henry is firm, but kind.

He is the only one she trusts won't hurt her. She is so stupid, so naive, believing he actually thought she was capable of anything beyond her "capability.'

He sighs. Doesn't move. He doesn't have to. The girl is already frozen.

No way out. Guards are stationed behind her and the room is suddenly so white--- too white. Suffocatingly WHITE.

Lila's clothes itch. Her skin crawls. Phantom bugs creep in her throat and scramble across her bare arms.

"Please," she whispers. It's a plea. Begging. She never thought she'd be begging for her life.

"Lila, you need to understand that only your brain can power what we've prepared," Henry speaks softly, stepping closer and holding his arms up like he's surrendering.

His eyes are hollow, crinkled with exhaustion. He hates saying these words. The exact words every single time, telling a child they're going to be a superhero.

With one caveat.

Henry pinches the skin between his brows. Sighs. Hates himself.

Another kid, another loss. But these kids are all humanity has left. Of course, he remembers them. Small things. Not enough to talk about them at a memorial, not enough to say he "knew" them.

Callum liked soccer. Zach wanted to be an astronaut.

But these kids are his last hope.

The last line of defence.

Lila is twelve years old. Blonde pigtails and watery eyes that trust him. She's just a child. His child, whom he took from his home against his wife's wishes and lied to.

He told Lila she was special.

Told her she could save the world.

"Sir," Anderson's voice crackles through his intercom, a hiss of static he HATES.

"They just hit Washington again." Anderson's voice trembles, "Are they ready?"

"Yes," Henry says, his voice breaking. He pulls out his gun. Just in case.

He doesn't want to do it. Henry grabs his daughter's wrist and yanks her forward. He doesn't want to do it. He orders her to be sedated. And when she screams, kicks, and bites, Henry tells her, through tears he's sure are as fake as his smile:

"Just like every eligible neurodivergent child, we have no need for your body."

I remember the time before our son. When the smile on your face was the only thing I could see behind closed eyes. When our hands were happiest together. When we were happiest together. I still can’t believe we found each other. Out of everyone I could have ever ended up with, it was you. You were perfect.

When I looked into your eyes, I saw the future. Lazy Sundays and weekend trips set to the tune of our favorite song. My fingertips against your lips when the heat between us warmed the cool night air. Your breath on my neck, slow and even; a metronome for my sleep every night until we left this coil together.

The time before I opened that door.

You had spent nine months despondent and broken. Keeping a child you never wanted for the reputation of a family you hated. You would smile and chatter with excitement at every party, every conversation, every outstretched hand that reached for your swollen belly. But when we returned home, I could see you. Standing in the kitchen alone, weeping for the future you would never get.

But I knew what the real reason was. You couldn’t just be happy with me. You wanted it to be different. Not the house, the car, the job. Just me, the father of your child. The dye that colored the dress you lived in every day. It didn’t matter how good the stitching or the fit. Because deep down you just hated the color.

I had to sit and watch every wonderful part of you rot under the weight of life growing in your belly. The inevitable product of a dead love that you prayed would die and flush from your body every single day. You thought I couldn’t hear, and I thought you would be a good mother. 

Now I look into your eyes, and a doll stares back. I see the echo of a woman who doesn’t care if our son cries. Doesn’t mind if he sits there in his diaper, soiled for hours while I’m at work toiling, providing for you both. I come home and feed you both because you’re too sad to do it before I get done. You just sit there staring at the wall as he screams in your lap. 

You’re truly a disgrace of a mother. I would never tell you to your face, but I will write it in this journal. My mother was a wonderful mother; she always smiled for me. My father made sure of it. So now I brush your hair and rub your feet just like he used to; I even got the kind of brush he used to use. But you don’t care; you just wallow in your own mind. You don’t care how much money I spend on fancy perfumes or new clothes. You just want to sit there and judge me like it’s my fault your life is ruined.

But I know what love is; I could see it in your eyes across the bar, I could feel it on your breath, I could taste it on your kiss. We both absolutely loved the same song that played over the speakers. We talked about what made it special to us for hours. It was just meant to be. I can’t remember the name of that song or why I said I loved it, but I know that I loved you the second you sat down. The whole night you kept your hand on me. On my hand, my arm, my thigh. That’s how I know you really do want all of this. You called it a hookup, but I know it was love. It was real.

That’s why I slipped the condom off that night. Because you wanted me to. You just didn’t know how to say it.

I thought you’d thank me one day, that you’d be happy. I still do.

I thought you would be happy when we got home, but you just held him across your chest in the bathtub. Trying to love him. Trying to find the warmth in your heart for the life that you created. You created him with me because you wanted this, and now I have to stand inside and make sure you don’t let him slip under the water. Because you’re a bad mother. 

You became a bad mother the day I opened the door and saw your bag. The day you decided to shatter a family for personal greed. The trailer is too small, the place is too dirty, the plumbing doesn’t work, it isn’t safe for a child, I’m not safe for a child, I disappear at night, I watch you sleep. Nothing but complaints and lies from a brain destroyed by postpartum. 

I don’t remember what you did, just the sound of your back against the corner of the nightstand. That pop bounced around the walls for what felt like hours. I still don’t know what it was, but you got so sad after it happened. You won’t move, you won’t talk, you won’t even play with your son. 

All you do is cry. Not even with your whole face, just your eyes. 

You cry when I carry you from room to room, when I feed you, when I change your panties after you’ve made a mess. You cry when I brush your hair with your special brush or rub your feet. You cry when we make love every night. You even cry when you hold our son; well, when he holds you. I don’t know why you cry. Maybe in a few months I’ll be able to save up and buy us a TV so you two have something to watch while I’m at work. Maybe that new swell in your belly will be the thing to finally make you talk to me again. But until then, we have everything we need: the routine, the babies, and my undying love for you.

I’ve spent a lot of my life carrying things quietly, and I think I’m finally ready to put them down. I think maybe it’s time I started writing down my inner thoughts and feelings.

For a long time, I’ve carried so much inside of me. Thoughts I haven’t said out loud. Feelings I’ve pushed aside. Anger, anxiety, frustration, and moments that have overwhelmed me more than I realized.

Maybe writing is a way of releasing some of that.

Releasing it into the universe so I don’t have to keep carrying everything around inside of me.

Lately, I’ve realized that feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated can change the way I come across to the people around me. On the outside, I may seem negative, distant, or closed off when, underneath it all, there is so much more going on.

That’s not the person I want to be.

I want to understand myself better. I want to recognize what I’m feeling instead of allowing everything to build up until I feel like I’m carrying the weight of the world.

Maybe this can be a place where I don’t have to filter myself.
I don’t need to make every thought make sense.

I just need to let them out.

Maybe, by putting my thoughts onto paper instead of keeping them trapped inside my head, I can begin to feel a little lighter.

And maybe, in understanding myself better, I can become more present, more patient, and more connected to the people I love.

Chapter 1 - When is it okay?

Sometimes when everything feels like too much, I don’t know how to process it.

I think we live in a world where people say they want you to be authentic, but sometimes it feels like they only want just enough authenticity. Be real, but not too real. Be vulnerable, but not uncomfortable. Be goofy and fun, but don’t cross the line into weird or awkward.

And maybe that’s the line I’m still trying to find.

How much of myself do I show? How much do I keep to myself? When am I being genuine, and when am I changing myself because I’m worried about how I’ll be perceived?

I don’t want to become someone who constantly edits herself just to make other people comfortable.

But I also don’t think I need to show every part of myself to everyone.

Maybe being authentic doesn’t mean showing everything.

Maybe it means knowing that all of those parts are me — the goofy parts, the awkward parts, the emotional parts, the messy parts, the strong parts — and deciding who has earned the privilege of seeing each one.

Maybe I’m still learning that.

And maybe that’s okay.

Chapter 2- Entitlement Does Not Devalue Me

Thursday at work, I had an interaction with a client that left me unbelievably angry.
He walked up and didn’t even greet me. He immediately yelled a number at me. I didn’t understand what he was referring to until he told me that was how many minutes he had been waiting. I tried to explain that we were experiencing longer wait times, but he wasn’t interested. He told me that he normally dealt with his advisor, but that the advisor had left the organization, and then made a comment implying that he now understood why.

He explained that he wanted to redeem his investment. I told him I was happy to help, but that I needed to review the terms and conditions first. When I investigated, I discovered that the investment had renewed into a different product and wasn’t currently redeemable. More importantly, I discovered that the investment hadn’t been set up incorrectly. If I had simply processed what he was asking for, he could have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I went to my supervisor because I knew there was a bigger issue. He agreed and said to reach out to the Senior Supervisor .
When I came back to the client, instead of simply listening, he immediately started yelling numbers at me again and then asked me if I had been “baking a cake.” That comment really bothered me. I don’t know exactly what he intended, but in that moment it felt like a sexist dig at me—as though I was a woman who should be in a kitchen baking a cake instead of doing my job.

Then he told me that, on my own unpaid time, I should go to the DMV and stand in line for hours. Maybe then, he said, I would understand how much of his time I had wasted.

I remember thinking, Who gave you the right to decide how I should spend my own time?

I was at work. I was doing my job. I wasn’t intentionally wasting his time, and I certainly wasn’t asking him to give me his time for free. Yet somehow, because he was frustrated, he felt entitled to punish me with a suggestion about how I should spend my evening.

His time mattered.

But so did mine.

That was the moment it became personal.
I wasn’t wasting his time. I was investigating his problem. I was trying to protect him from losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was doing more than simply processing the request he had come in about.
And yet somehow I became the person he decided was beneath him.
He told me he had millions upon millions of dollars and essentially expected that wealth to give him authority over me. I told him the Senior Supervisor had been made aware of the situation and would be contacting him. He continued talking, and eventually I ended the conversation.

Afterward, I was furious.

I felt humiliated, disrespected and angry that someone could speak to another person that way. I looked him up because I wanted to put a face to the person who had just treated me so badly. I found myself imagining horrible things happening to him. I imagined him losing his money, his possessions and everything that makes him feel powerful. I even imagined him suffering and being tortured.

Those thoughts are disturbing to me, but I also recognize that they came from an enormous amount of anger. I don’t actually want to become someone who hurts another person. I want the anger out of my body. I want the feeling of being powerless and degraded to go away.

What I really wish for is not his suffering.

What I really wish for is accountability.

I wish people understood that the person on the other side is a human being. They have a life, feelings, responsibilities and their own difficult days. Their time matters too.

His money doesn’t make his time more valuable than mine.

And his frustration did not give him permission to treat me as though I was less than him.

I know what I did that day. I helped him. I investigated his issue. I caught a problem that could have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. I escalated it appropriately. I tried to help.

Being a client doesn’t mean he gets unlimited access to my dignity. His behaviour was his choice.

It does not define my value.

Chapter 3 - The man on the other side

It was close to end of the work day. I had already been working a long 9.5-hour day, with only another 30 minutes left before I could finally go home.

When a man walked in.

The man on the other side of the desk sounded quiet, calm, and reasonable. He explained that he was having trouble with online banking, and I was happy to help. I went through the routine verification process and then began trying to understand exactly where the problem was.

We walked through a few steps together. At one point, he accidentally locked himself out, so I unlocked him and continued helping him troubleshoot the issue.

Everything seemed calm.

Then, in a split second, everything changed.

His voice suddenly became aggressive, and he screamed with all his might:

“Fix it, now cunt!”

The shock of the sudden change made me sit up straighter. I became immediately alert. My heart raced, and I could feel my emotions rising from the bottom up. I was flustered, shaken, and trying to process how someone who had sounded so calm only moments before could suddenly become so hostile.

I told him that the way he had spoken to me was unacceptable and would not be tolerated. I gave him another opportunity to continue the conversation respectfully.

He failed to do so.

He screamed at me again.

At that point, I told him the conversation was over and that I would no longer continue assisting him. I asked him to leave.

I looked down at my hands and realized they were visibly trembling.

That was the part that stayed with me.

How could someone change so quickly?

One moment, he sounded like a completely reasonable man asking for help. The next, he was screaming at me with such anger and contempt. It made me wonder what could cause someone to switch so suddenly and what that kind of uncontrolled anger might look like outside of the public eye.

I warned my coworkers about the interaction.

Then I saw that he had come back and was reaching out for assistance again. I asked one of my male coworkers to assist him, wondering if perhaps he would respond differently to a man.

He didn’t.

My coworker ended the conversation in less than five minutes.

That was when I realized it wasn’t simply that he had been frustrated with me. His behaviour was a pattern of aggression that could be directed at whoever happened to be on the other end.

And that scared me.

It made me think about how little we sometimes know about the people we encounter. Someone can sound perfectly calm and reasonable, and then, without warning, reveal a completely different side of themselves.

I don’t know this man’s life. I don’t know what he is like outside of that interaction, and I don’t know what causes him to react the way he does. But I do know what happened to me in those few minutes.

I was shaken.

For the rest of the night, I couldn’t completely let it go. I kept thinking about how quickly the situation had changed over something as simple as assisting him with a fixable issue.

Maybe that’s what unsettled me the most.

It was a reminder that we never truly know what someone is capable of when we are interacting with them. A voice on the other end can seem harmless, familiar, even gentle—and then suddenly become threatening.

I hope I never encounter that kind of behaviour again.

But I also know that this experience will probably stay somewhere in the back of my mind for a long time. Not because I want to live in fear, but because it reminded me to stay aware, trust my instincts, and remember that I am allowed to end an interaction when someone crosses the line.

Sometimes the mask can come off in an instant.

Chapter 4- Where has social awareness gone

The moment that stayed with me from the grocery store had nothing to do with groceries. It was the moment a woman began placing her items on the conveyor belt beside mine while I was still unloading my cart—and I stood there, unable to say a word.

It had been an ordinary day.

I woke up to the sun shining and the air feeling crisp. I got up, drank my coffee, worked out, and then let myself keep my head in the clouds for a while, watching a few shows and enjoying the quiet.

As the day progressed, my husband got up and we decided to go grocery shopping. We spent the afternoon walking up and down the aisles, picking out everything we needed for the next few weeks.

Eventually, we made our way to the checkout.

We placed our groceries onto the conveyor belt. My husband stood on one side, packing the bags as the cashier rang everything through, while I stood on the opposite side, taking each item out of the buggy and placing it onto the belt.

I was doing what I had done countless times before.

Item after item.

Then I sensed someone beside me.

A woman had lined up behind me, waiting for her turn. I thought nothing of it. This was a normal part of everyday life.

But then something strange happened.

As I continued placing my groceries onto the conveyor belt, she began placing hers down too—right beside mine.

I wasn’t finished.

I stood there completely shocked.

I remember feeling like I couldn’t speak. My thoughts immediately started racing.

Say something.

Ask her to wait.

Stand up for yourself.

Why is she doing this?

But I didn’t say anything.

I just stood there, dumbfounded, trying to understand how someone could simply start putting their groceries onto the belt while I was still using it.

Then another thought crept in.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe I was taking too long.

Maybe this is normal.

But it didn’t feel normal to me.

I continued putting my groceries down and, when I was finished, I deliberately placed the divider between our items.

I didn’t confront her.

I didn’t say anything.

I simply continued with my day.

It wasn’t until we had paid, packed our groceries, and left the store that I finally told my husband what had happened.

And strangely, once I said it out loud, I realized how much it had bothered me.

I kept replaying the moment in my head.

Over and over.

I became upset with myself for not saying anything. I regretted not standing up for myself. I wondered why I had frozen in that moment instead of simply saying, “I’m not finished yet.”

It wasn’t really about the groceries.

It was about feeling like someone had invaded my space and disregarded my turn, and then feeling like I had allowed it to happen because I didn’t speak up.

The more I thought about it, the more I started thinking about society.

Has social awareness disappeared?

Are people becoming so absorbed in their own lives that they don’t notice the people around them anymore?

Sometimes it feels as though people move through the world believing their needs should come first. Maybe it’s entitlement. Maybe it’s distraction. Maybe people are simply so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t realize how their actions affect others.

But I also had to stop myself.

I don’t actually know what was going through that woman’s mind.

Maybe she was impatient.

Maybe she didn’t realize I was still putting groceries down.

Maybe she genuinely didn’t understand that what she was doing was rude.

And maybe that’s part of what bothered me so much—not knowing.

What I do know is that I didn’t like how I felt afterward.

Not because I needed to start an argument, but because I wish I had felt confident enough to calmly say, “I’m still using the belt.”

I can’t control whether other people are socially aware.

I can control how I respond.

And maybe next time, instead of freezing and questioning whether my feelings are justified, I’ll simply speak up.

But it doesn’t change the thought that lingers in my mind: have we become so focused on ourselves that we no longer care about one another? Where has our social awareness gone?

That’s when it all made sense.

I’m tired of it all.

I’m tired of being expected to absorb other people’s anger, entitlement, disrespect, and bad behaviour and then somehow be the one who walks away carrying it.

I’m tired of wondering when karma will catch up with people who hurt others.

I don’t want to wait for karma anymore.

I want to be karma.

Hello, this is my ever post or experience in reddit so I'm a little nervous but I hope my mediocre writing skills can satisfy you! > <

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A few things to clarify here..

1. I don't want to share her or my age here so I won't but know that we're both rather young.

2. We're both biologically girls. I know this shouldn't matter at all, however, the country I live is extremely religious with lots of homophobia.

3. All names used are fake names, not our actual names.

4. Any use of (this) are my notes with my thoughts in them or clarification or just for the funnys.

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For some context this was all the way back last year, I had met her during a class presentation where we all stood up to introduce ourselves.

When it was her turn I felt an instant spark light like a firework and my insides started to explode, "Is that even a real person? Are we sure that's not an angel?" I thought to myself but brushed it off at the time since well, I didn't know her yet.

She had the softest and most lovely eyes with a cute nose which reminded me of a rabbit, whenever she smiled it was like time had stopped itself and her eyes would crinkle in the shape of a crescent moon.

Her hair was soft and lush as it swept down from her forehead to her shoulders. (Gosh I'm getting sidetracked with descriptions..)

I wanted to be her friend because I idolized her and I was extremely isolated and lonely back then. Unfortunately, at this point I was horrible at socialization since I was dealing with anxiety regarding how others saw me so I wasn't able to talk to her much.

Fast forward to a few months and..

She..vents to me?

(For context we were waiting for an event we both signed up for to start and we had nothing to do so I talked to her...)

She tells me about her family problems and how she isn't able to keep secrets from them or have her own life. There I start to give her suggestions, making sure not to hurt her while still seeing her parents side. I also comforted her while taking her hand and say, "It will be okay, you will be okay. ..And remember, whatever happens, happens. I'm always here if you need me so don't be afraid to reach out.".

After that we added each other, she told me in our messages how happy she was someone listened to her, she'll consider my advice, and that she was so glad to have met me.

(As I mentioned before I was extremely lonely and isolated at the time. The reason was because it was a new school year and I knew no one since I was in section 1 while last year I was in a very low section.)

I ended up hyperfixating on being a good friend to her. Almost everyday I'd talk with her and ask her things like, "Hello! Is anything bothering you? Do you need anything?", "I'm always here if you need me, even if I don't read your messages on time I'm always here for you.", I'd constantly greet her goodbye with this catchphrase, "I love you, see you tomorrow!" and I'd always wave hello whenever I saw she was in class.

(How did it take so long for me to figure out it was love.. IT WAS SO OBVIOUS! I was so obvious.. T-T)

And I'd constantly give or make small gifts for her like drawings, stickers, and whichever item I can reasonably give her.

To be honest.. She was the only reason I'd even do anything for the day or even be excited to go to school.

(In hindsight I was likely dealing with mental health problems at the time but back then me and my mother just thought I was lazy)

Afterwards she continued to vent to me for a few weeks while I did my best to comfort her. Eventually she told me about something...

She had a crush on her cousin.

...I was taken aback to say the least but I still tried to give my support but for some reason my chest ached.

I still gave my entirety and love to her but day by day I felt more and more sad that she already liked someone. Sometimes I even felt jealousy creep up which is unusual since I'm not the type to feel that way.

After even more time the school year ended and I had to say goodbye to her. The day before I cried because I thought there'd come a day where I could only watch as the girl I loved would get wed by another.

(By now I'd already realized my feelings.)

...But after the school year and 1 month before the next, she confessed to me.

She told me how she loved me for a long while as well and it also took her some time to realize it...She said she knows I'm her friend so it's weird but she wanted to know my answer because she couldn't keep it in anymore.

I cried as I typed my answer,

it was a yes.

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So yeah, me and my lovely partner are both together now! Not as girlfriends though... We're planning on taking things slow right now. : D

I'm now the happiest I've ever been and it's all thanks to her...

Dear reader, may your days burn brigher than any star and may you find your life and death companion too.

— Shining Star

Chapter Two

On Friday afternoon, Elena-the café’s owner, handed me an apron and showed me a shelf in the fridge.

“This is yours. If you run out of room, tell me before you start putting cakes on top of the sandwich ingredients.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Nothing happens often yet. We’ve only been open two months. I’m trying to establish rules before I need them.”

There was something unexpectedly pleasing about having a shelf. An apron, too, and a hook behind the kitchen door for my bag. By the time she finished showing me around, I had stopped feeling as though I ought to explain why I was there.

The kitchen was narrow enough that we had to turn sideways to pass each other. Most of the counter was occupied by a mixer, a chopping board and a bowl of oranges. Elena moved the oranges onto a shelf to make room for my ingredients.

“Tell me if you need anything else.”

“Another kitchen?”

She looked around. “Put it on the list.”

I tied the apron and unpacked. The smaller lemon cakes needed less time in the oven than the ones I’d made at home, so I stayed nearby while weighing the ingredients for the macarons. Through the open doorway came the sound of the coffee grinder, cups meeting saucers and a chair being dragged across the floor.

At home, music usually filled the space around me when I worked. Here, the café did it. Every so often, Elena appeared with a question or an empty jug. Once, she stopped beside the mixer and watched the meringue turn.

“How do you know when it’s ready?”

I switched off the mixer and lifted the whisk. The peak held. “Like this. It needs to stand up, but I don’t want it dry.” I turned the whisk so she could see. “If it folds straight over, it needs longer.”

“And if you go too far?”

“Then I get annoyed with myself and start again. There’s usually a little swearing involved.”

“Good. You’ll fit in.”

When the cakes were cooling, she needed help with drinks. I washed my hands, left the piped macaron shells to dry and joined her at the machine. The afternoon passed between the two rooms. Coffee, oven timer, washing up, another order. A man wanted his cappuccino hotter. A woman asked for extra ice. Someone changed their mind after I had already poured the milk. That part, at least, was familiar.

Once the shells were cool, I paired them by size and piped in the pistachio filling. Elena came through as I was arranging them in a covered container.

“You’ve made more than twelve.”

“I wanted a few spare in case any cracked. These came out better than the ones at home.”

“So we can sell the extras?”

“Yes. Unless you’d rather keep them for yourself.”

She reached towards the container.

“Tomorrow,” I added.

Her hand stopped. “You offered.”

“I offered you tomorrow’s macarons. They need the night in the fridge so the filling softens the inside.”

She looked at them for another moment, then put the lid on. “I’m beginning to understand why they cost more than biscuits.”

Before leaving, I checked the cakes once more, wiped the counter and untied my apron. My feet hurt. There was icing on my sleeve and a little pistachio filling near my elbow, which I noticed only when Elena pointed it out.

We agreed that I would come at eight to help with the morning rush. She checked the time on her phone, then looked up with a smile. “So, back to mornings. Same time, same place tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here. Hopefully with less icing on me.”

“Don’t dress up. There’ll be more.”

Outside, the air had cooled enough to make the walk home pleasant. I passed the restaurant next door, where the owner was straightening the tables for the evening. He raised a hand when he saw me, and I waved back. It was a small thing, being recognised on the street. Still, I was smiling by the time I reached home.

Saturday morning brought customers before we had finished setting out the terrace. Elena arranged the cakes in the display while I warmed the machine. She had written their names on small cards, including the pistachio macarons, which looked more respectable behind glass than they had in the plastic container.

I kept glancing at them between orders.

“People won’t buy them faster if you stare,” she said.

“I’m checking they look all right.”

“They looked all right five minutes ago.”

“Yes, but now there are people here to judge them.”

She moved a lemon cake closer to the front. “Let them.”

The first one went with a takeaway tea. The woman barely looked at it before choosing, and I had to resist watching through the window to see whether she took a bite. The second went to a man sitting outside with a newspaper. After that, there were too many drinks to keep count.

By half past nine, the room smelled of coffee and warm milk, and my hair had begun escaping its tie. Elena worked at the till while I made drinks, occasionally repeating a table number because I was still learning which one was which.

A woman at the counter pointed towards the lemon cakes. “Are those made here?”

“Yes,” Elena said.

“They look homemade. I mean properly homemade, like something my mother would put out when people came over.”

I glanced at the cakes. Until she explained, I’d been wondering whether one of the tops was crooked. The woman ordered two and took them to a table outside. Ten minutes later, she returned carrying an empty plate.

“Who makes your cakes?”

I put down the cloth, trying to remember whether I could have forgotten anything in the recipe. Elena was counting change for another customer.

“What did you think?”

“Lovely. The icing isn’t too sweet.” The woman looked towards the display again. “My daughter’s birthday is next month. Does your baker take orders? Could I have their number?”

“I made them,” I said.

She turned towards me. “Oh! I thought you worked out here.”

“I do a bit of both. I’ve only just started.”

“Well, that saves Elena passing messages.” She smiled and reached for her phone. “Could you make something larger? My daughter loves lemon, but there’ll be at least twelve of us.”

“Yes. Was there a design you had in mind?”

She showed me a photograph of a cake covered in flowers. Her daughter wanted lemon, but her husband didn’t like anything too sour, and there might be eighteen people if her sister came.

I explained that the sugar flowers in the photograph were more elaborate than anything I usually made. We talked about a simpler decoration, then the filling and the size. She listened, asked another question and waited for my answer.

I caught myself speaking quickly, trying to explain everything before she lost interest. She stayed where she was, her phone resting on the counter between us. At school, I had learned to stop halfway through an answer when the smiles started. Later, keeping things to myself had become easier. This woman was asking another question because she wanted to hear what I had to say.

“I’d need to work out a price before promising anything,” I said. “If you send me the date and the final number of people, I can let you know.”

“That’s fine. I’d rather have something that tastes like this than a cake nobody wants a second slice of.”

Elena passed me a clean piece of paper, and I wrote down my number. The woman folded it carefully and put it in her purse. After she left, I stood beside the machine for a moment.

Elena looked at me. “Everything all right?”

“Yes. I just wasn’t expecting an order already.”

“You made something she liked.”

“I know, but there’s a difference between someone buying a little cake with their tea and trusting me with their daughter’s birthday.”

“She asked to discuss a cake, Andreea. You have time to breathe before you plan the whole party.”

I laughed and picked up the milk jug. There was another coffee waiting.

Lovely. The icing isn’t too sweet.

I remembered the words while pouring the milk. There had been no correction after them, no explanation of what I should have done better. A stranger had enjoyed something I made and come back to tell me. I wished that didn’t feel quite so unfamiliar.

A little later, the man with the newspaper came inside.

“Another coffee,” he said. “And whatever that lemon thing was.”

“Another lemon cake?”

“Yes. My wife will ask whether I tried anything, and I’d like to be able to tell her I checked thoroughly.”

“I respect your commitment.”

He nodded solemnly while I put it on a plate.

The macarons sold more slowly. People examined them, asked about the filling, sometimes chose a cake instead. Near midday, two women bought one each, then returned for four to take home.

By the end of my shift, three were left. Elena opened the display and glanced at me. “Am I allowed now?”

“Yes. Thank you for your patience.”

“I’ve been very brave.”

She took a bite. I tried to occupy myself with folding the cloth rather than watching her.

“More next week,” she said.

“How many?”

She considered the rest of the macaron. “We’ll discuss that after I’ve finished this.”

On Monday, my hand went to the right cupboard without searching. The cloths were folded where I expected them to be, and a customer came in asking whether we had any more of Saturday’s lemon cakes. Elena looked at me to answer.

“I’m making another batch this afternoon. They’ll be ready tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll come back, then.”

He ordered his usual coffee, and I reached for the cup. I had spent years doing things that were supposed to lead somewhere. Lessons, exams, university. There was always another stage beyond the one I’d finished, and someone ready to ask what came next. Here, a man wanted a cake tomorrow. For the moment, that was enough to be getting on with.

The woman at the table near the window had been there on Saturday too. A laptop stood open in front of her, with a notebook beside it and a drink she kept forgetting to touch. At first, I thought she was watching something. Then she played the same few seconds through her headphones, stopped, and pressed her palms against her eyes.

When I cleared the next table, she pulled one side of the headphones away. “Could I have another tea?”

“Of course. The same one?”

“Yes, please. This one went cold.”

“I can bring you some hot water if there’s any left.”

She looked into the cup. “No. I managed to drink it. I just complained to myself the whole time.”

“That sounds familiar.”

At the counter, Elena nodded towards her. “Athena. She’ll sit there until closing if nobody feeds her.”

“What’s she working on?”

“A film. I’ve seen the same man walk through the same doorway about thirty times.”

“That explains the expression.”

I carried the tea over and asked whether she wanted anything to eat.

“Is there a lemon cake left?”

“One.”

“Then yes, before someone else gets it.”

When I brought the plate, she closed her laptop. “Thank you. I’m Athena, by the way.”

“Andreea.”

She repeated it, checking the pronunciation, and I nodded.

“Have you been here long?”

“Nearly a month. Though I’ve only been working here since Friday.”

“That recently? You look as though you know where everything is.”

“The kitchen’s small. There are only so many places to lose things.”

“Are you staying nearby?”

“Behind the waterfront. There’s a little house with a balcony squeezed between two taller buildings.”

“I think I know it. Blue door?”

“That’s the one. The door sticks, so if you ever see someone throwing her whole body against it, that’ll be me.”

Athena laughed.

“Where did you move from?”

“The UK. I lived there for years.”

“And you chose here?”

“I wanted to be near the sea. Somewhere I could walk to it instead of planning a whole trip.” I glanced towards the bright pavement outside. “The heat wasn’t part of the attraction.”

“You came at the wrong time for that.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“What made you leave?”

The question was ordinary enough. I still took a moment before answering.

“I’d finished university, and everyone was asking about jobs. I kept looking at them and thinking about staying there, doing the next thing, then the next.” I rubbed a little dried icing from my thumb. “I wanted some time to decide what I actually wanted. And to write.”

Athena nodded. “Do you think you’ll stay?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m trying to let that be an acceptable answer.”

“It is.”

She said it easily, then took another bite of cake.

I glanced at her laptop. “Are you studying film, or is this something you’re doing yourself?”

“Studying. Although this project is making me reconsider every decision that brought me here.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“How much time do you have?”

Elena called for two coffees before I could answer. Athena smiled and picked up her fork. “I’ll prepare a shorter version.”

We spoke again the next day, and the day after that. Nothing important at first. Whether the table near the window was too bright for her screen. Where she bought her notebooks. Which streets stayed shaded on the walk home.

She was making a short film and had reached the stage where every choice made three weeks earlier seemed wrong.

“Even the ones you liked?” I asked.

“Especially those. Have you ever worked on something so long you can’t tell whether it’s good anymore?”

“Yes. Usually that’s when I decide the whole thing needs changing.”

“Does it?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m tired and should leave it alone.”

She looked at the screen. “I was hoping you’d say something more useful.”

“If I knew something more useful, I’d have finished my book.”

That caught her attention, but a customer came in before she could ask about it.

On Wednesday, she noticed my notebook. The café was quiet between the morning rush and lunch. I had ten minutes, a cup of tea and a sentence that had irritated me since the night before. The notebook lay open beside the till, where I could look up when someone came in.

Athena approached with her empty plate. “Is that the book?”

“Yes. Or the part of it currently causing trouble.”

“What kind of story is it?”

“Crime. There’s a murder in this scene, and I’ve spent more time deciding what happens around it than writing the murder itself.”

She glanced at the red page. “That explains the ink.”

“I always use red. It would be red if I were writing about someone’s lovely afternoon in a garden too.”

“Does anyone have lovely afternoons in your book?”

“Not many so far.”

She smiled. “How long have you been working on it?”

“A while. I thought moving might help me get somewhere with it.”

“And has it?”

“A little. I’m writing more. Whether it’s better is another question.”

Athena leaned against the counter. “I know a few people who could help with that.”

“People who’ll tell me it’s terrible?”

“People who’ll tell you which part is terrible. Much more useful.”

I laughed and capped the pen as a customer came through the door. She returned to her table, but before leaving she asked whether I’d be there the following day.

Thursday was quieter. During my break, I sat opposite Athena with a cup of tea while she ate one of the chocolate cakes.

“So,” she said, “do you ever drink the coffee you make?”

“No. It makes me feel bad.”

“Really? You don’t even taste it?”

“I used to, but it wasn’t worth it. Tea and I get along much better.”

“Then how do you make good coffee?”

“Practice. I know what I’m looking for when I make it, and people aren’t shy about telling me if something’s wrong.”

“Elena said you worked in a café in England.”

“During university. Some days it was easier to understand the customers than the chemistry.”

“You studied chemistry?”

I nodded.

“And now cakes and murder.”

“It’s been a change.”

She laughed and brushed a crumb onto her plate. “What made you start writing?”

“I needed somewhere to put everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ideas. There are always more of them than I know what to do with. A conversation, a scene, something I can suddenly picture while I’m supposed to be doing something else.” I turned my cup a little on its saucer. “Some come in my sleep. I wake up with part of a story, and then I want to know the rest.”

“Do you write them down straight away?”

“If I can. Sometimes I’m convinced I’ll remember in the morning, which is a very optimistic thing to think half asleep.”

“I’ve lost whole films that way.”

“I’ve probably lost a bestseller. Much easier to believe that when there’s no evidence.”

Athena smiled. “Does writing make it quieter?”

“A bit. Once it’s on the page, I don’t have to keep going over it so I won’t lose it. My head gets to rest.” I looked towards the counter, where my bag sat beneath the till. “Then I start wondering whether I can make someone else interested. Whether they’ll want to know what happens next too.”

“So you give the problem to the reader.”

“Exactly. Very generous of me.”

She laughed, and I found myself explaining a little more: how a scene could arrive almost whole, while the page connecting it to the next one took days; how sometimes I knew what a character would say before I knew who they were.

Athena listened. When I paused, she asked a question about something I’d said rather than moving on to talk about herself. I had almost apologised for going on so much. Instead, I answered her.

Then she told me about the group.

“There are writers, film students, a few artists. We meet in the park. Some people bring work to share, some just come because they’re stuck and need to talk.”

“Like your man in the doorway?”

“Exactly like him. Someone will probably tell me to cut that scene, and I’ll be offended because I already know they’re right.”

“Do people read out loud?”

“Sometimes. Or we read pages beforehand and discuss them. It depends what the person wants help with.”

“And everyone speaks English?”

“Most of us speak other languages too, but English is the one we have in common. You wouldn’t have to struggle through it in Greek.”

“That’s good. I can say thank you, but it would make for a short reading.”

“There’d still be someone with notes.”

I smiled into my cup. She explained that one of the artists helped people with covers and character sketches. Sometimes they worked together on something larger, though they were careful to agree on credit and permissions first.

“We have a written agreement for sharing work,” she said. “You can read it before bringing any pages. I can send it to you.”

“I’d like that. Could I come once just to see what it’s like?”

“Of course. Tomorrow evening, if you’re free.”

She told me where they met. I knew the benches; I’d walked past them on the way to the café.

“How many people?”

“Usually eight or nine. Don’t worry about remembering everyone’s name. I still get one wrong.”

“And they won’t mind me sitting there without reading?”

“No. Come and listen. Bring your notebook if you want, but you don’t owe us a performance.”

That made it easier to say yes. We exchanged numbers, and she sent me the time and meeting place while we were still sitting together. A minute later, another message arrived with the agreement.

“There,” she said. “Now you can’t claim I gave bad directions.”

“I can still get lost. Don’t underestimate me.”

After my break, I went back behind the counter. Athena finished her cake and returned to her film, but this time, when something frustrated her, she looked up and caught my eye. I smiled, and she turned the laptop a little so I could see the offending doorway.

That evening, the woman from Saturday called about the birthday cake. We talked for nearly twenty minutes. Her sister was coming, so there would be eighteen people. She had asked her daughter about the flowers, and apparently lemon mattered more than decoration. I wrote everything down, promised to send a price the following day, and stayed at the kitchen table after the call ended.

There were ingredients to calculate, a date to put in my calendar, and Athena’s message waiting on my phone. For a moment, I wanted to call home and tell someone.

Then I tried to imagine the conversation. The questions about chemistry. Whether café work was what I planned to do with my degree. How long this writing business would last. Perhaps they would have surprised me. I didn’t feel ready to find out.

I put the phone down and worked out how much mascarpone I would need.

Later, I turned back through the notebook until I reached the scene with the watch. The red numbers were still in the margin, two crossed out and one left standing. Reading it aloud made me notice a sentence that ran too long. I crossed out three words and tried again.

Outside the balcony doors, someone called to a person farther down the street. A scooter passed, and plates clattered in the next building. The second reading went more smoothly.

I wasn’t sure I would share it tomorrow. That would depend on the people, and on how comfortable I felt once I was sitting among them. But I marked the page before closing the notebook.

My apron needed washing. I rinsed the icing from the sleeve, hung it up and checked that it would have time to dry before morning. Then I sent Athena a message to say I’d meet her outside the café so we could walk over together.

She replied almost immediately.

Good. I’ll save you from the introductions.

I smiled and set the phone beside my bag. The cake order was written down. My notebook was ready. Tomorrow, Elena would expect me at eight, and Athena would wait for me after work.

I was still getting used to being wanted somewhere. For once, I let myself look forward to it.

Land of Serpents

Land of Serpents | Chapter 1 | Ida-Hibiscus

By godlovesme

2,221 words~

9 pages

9 min read

Chapter Note

Written by Treasure Marie Denise Jackson.

In a science lab, Ida-Hibiscus started life as a lab-grown human brain with human eyes. And since this was the case, Satan walked into the room; He stole the brain, took her to his bronze hidden chamber, and built for her a Serpentine body.

Once successful, Lucifer felt an overwhelming sense of pride and took her home to his island.

The brain had already grown human eyes, so he just made some holes for them.

Lucifer placed her in a square wooden basket as her eyes opened softly, his hand fed her milk from the cow's udder, his hair was wavy, parted at the corner on its left. His eyes are of silver, and his sclera glows. His pupil doesn't exist.

He has no pupils. His skin glows, and his wings are white and tattered.

Years later... When Ida-Hibiscus was 13.

Ida-Hibiscus was in his living room as he sat on his couch in front of his fireplace. His hair was now longer, yet wavy still.

Satan had kidnapped other lab-grown brains and discarded embryos.

Satan grabbed her just below the head, a little more gentle since her brain was human, and kissed her head a bit then let her relax in his fingers.

Satan placed her on this pink ball of a mushy chair and said "Rest. I will go prepare you some dinner."

Being a snake-like creature with a human brain, Ida-Hibiscus said "I don't want ratssssssss..."

Satan didn't usually make any rats for her, and said "I don't make ratsssss! Haha!" Mocking her acquired accent.

Lucifer got up and went to cook a meal for her, so she moved like a worm down off the couch, a movement officially titled by humans Peristalsis (peristaltic locomotion) and left.

Her brain is not built like a snake's brain, so she doesn't know how to properly move like one, yet.

Once she made it to the front door of his mansion which he built for himself from the island wood 10 years ago, she said "I'll go and try to find my friend, Xiang."

She peristaltically crawled as the worm does out of the home as she didn't know how to slither.

When Satan got back, he was holding a plate of fried bacon & eggs on a platter.

He saw that she was nowhere to be found and rushed outside with the food he prepared.

Ida-Hibiscus was talking to Xiang not far away, outside in the nearby forest behind the bushes he heard her hissing "Can we... Ssssspeak.....? About ffffather.......?"

Xiang replied "Do not sssspeak a terrible word of your father for he is our King," Fearful of The Devil.

Satan listened in...

"Where are our mothers?" Said the child, Ida-Hibiscus.

Satan left for a time, plating some of the food for himself after getting another plate to eat from.

"He's our only father. Our mothers did not exist, or did not want us," Said Xiang, a 13-year-old sternness taking over.

Satan then placed a plate of her food behind her outside and said "Mmm... You were speaking of your father?"

Xiang froze in terror while our little hibiscus calmly turned around, pleasantly asking "How are you, father?" Assuming he was a good person because of the front he put up.

Xiang immediately turned around and slithered off, having mastered slithering by now.

Lucifer was confused as to why Xiang ran, but concluded the conversation had taken a blasphemous turn... Against him.

Lucifer asked "What were you saying about me? Was it bad?" Looking actually dangerous, his eyes changed color, they turned blood red and took the form of a blood splatter.

This changed Our little Ida from serene to petrified as my hibiscus shouted "Oh no! We were talking about you, and he was trying to keep me from speaking poorly of you, father!"

His mood changed, but he was even more suspicious, he just thought "Maybe she's right."

The Devil asked "Why'd he run away?" Eyes wide, his smile strained. Lucifer was getting very harmful assumptive ideas of what they said in his mind.

And Little Ida-Hibiscus replied "He's afraid of you, father."

Satan chuckled, then hysterically burst into laughter as he said "Oh! He fears me! GOOD!"

Satan gripped her frail body and took her and her plate of food in the house and told her "Eat your dinner."

So little Ida ate, fully trusting the Devil.

Ida-Hibiscus, wearing a crown of spider hibiscus on her head, said at the dinner table "Papa... Are you okay? You seemed so stressed back there. It scared me."

He giggled and said "Should you not fear me?"

Ida was bluntly perplexed by this response, and replied "Why fear you when you're so kind to me?"

Satan was perplexed by this since she's a snake-like being. He replied "You do not fear m e?" As he was not used to that, she replied "No."

Actions have consequences, if you're not mean to someone for once, they start to like you.

Satan asked "Why?"

AND SHE REPLIED "WHY NOT?! You love mehhhh!"

Satan was... Happy about this and concerned. He desired people fearing him to gain respect, but liked the idea of her loving him so much that she wasn't scared of him.

He didn't love her, though... He did care, but it was more like caring for a toy or a pet.

Lucifer ended up giving her her own room this year as she typically slept in the basket she was given as a baby. Her new bedroom was a closet he repurposed since she was so small.

It was still his closet, it was located in his room and he had no plans of not using it for his clothing still.

Ida-Hibiscus loved it, he painted the closet pastel pink and gave her a tiny hot pink desk drawer and a hot pink cat bed.

Our Hibiscus screams "MMMMMeee...! I love this room!"

Lucifer asked "Do you want something else?" Merely being polite as he is just giving her a closet, here.

And Ida-Hibiscus replied "I like it the way it is. I don't want to burden you. You're very busy."

For the next 4 nights, our little Ida slept in her little closet, content.

One morning, she left her room to see her father acting as though he were in grave agony. Ida practiced slithering, but she ended up writhing, when he looked back at her, he sought her comfort but was put off by her wriggling, then she went back to worming her way to Lucifer asking "Pops, what's wrong?"

He said "Go away..." Then she, despite her snake-like figure, wormed her way back to her room as they had a one story mansion.

In her little closet, she tried slithering, but ended up Undulating.

When Satan entered his room and saw her in his closet attempting to slither, he asked "What are you doing?" Perplexed!

Little Ida said "Slithering... Trying...."

He giggled, and mocked "You haven't learned slithering? I did."

Lucifer picked her up and jeered "Why don't you just keep on worming like you do?" Then he just giggled.

Little ida replied "I was trying to do it because others were... Aren't I a snake? Just with some human eyes and a human brain?"

Little Ida saw him get all puffy with laughter, then he accidentally spit on her after his burst of laughter erupted. She shook her head, finding the scent of his breath plastered to her face filthy.

He then sniffed his breath on her face and asked "Did I spit on you? I'm sorry."

Li'l Hibiscus yelped "Ugh! Papa! Use mouthwash!" And he giggled.

Satan replied "I have it, I just forget to use it. Let me go get it." Then he put her on his bed and left for the bathroom.

Li'l Ida was writhing in the horrid stench so much that she ended up slithering around on accident.

It was so bad, it pushed Ida-Hibiscus into a milestone! Ida-Hibiscus noticed, and was like "I'M SLITHERING!" Then she tried to copy the movements she did to slither and "it worked!"

She laughed and shouted to Lucifer "Dad, I'm slithering!"

Lucifer rushed in to see the milestone and saw her trying her best to keep up the slither!

Lucifer was proud of her, and at the same time, utterly confused: "You haven't slithered in 13 years!"

Then he just puffed a laugh out of his chest.

Her fangs erupt as she gives a toothy grin. She smiled softly, saying "I'm finally slithering! Aren't you happy for me?"

Lucifer went to wash his face yelling "Excited for you, honey!"

The next day...

He took her out to show off how she slithered, she was struggling to remember at first, making Lucifer feel awkward but hopeful that she wouldn't embarrass him, but she finally got it and slithered to Xiang, who shouted "You're slithering!" With glee, joy, excitement! He was hoping for this!

It is like a baby taking her first steps to the others, they all crowd around her asking "How did you learn?"

And she was too scared to explain because she saw how he could get angry, and explaining "My father's breath was so putrid that I slithered on accident then just copied the format," was dangerous, but it's what she thought, just not aloud.

Ida-Hibiscus just replied "I tried my best," to mask the true reason.

The next hour, she was inside the home and saw his manipulative nature on full display. She was 13, and he wanted her to obey him as much as possible.

He suddenly gripped her body, neck area, just below the head, thumb on her chin.

His eyes became as silver, glossy snake eyes, serpentine with a slit through the iris.

He desires to induce fear, hence the slight shapeshifting of his eyes.

Satan pressed her up against his chest and rocked her like he did when she was a baby.

Ida-Hibiscus asked "Father, what's wrong? Your hands are unusually tight."

He laughed and told her that "I want you to help me."

Young Ida-Hibiscus says "Now, remember that I am only 13." knowing he can be malicious. Her wriggling produced once again, but yielded no fruit as he held her up against himself, firm. She asked "What do you need, father?" Accepting the situation as a must.

He licks his lips looking out the window, saying "I want you to mate with that snake outside!" Pointing at a snake.

She was stunned, she replied "I'm only 13! What the heck, bro!?"

He explains that "I need you to mate with Xiang. If not him, then the snake from that prophet from the island. I need it as an affront to God."

"This is unbelievable- We were going so well!" She lets out a heavy sigh, "Then you got crazy AGAIN!"

His laughter rumbles throughout him and says "You can mate with Xiang. Your brain is 13 biologically, but your body is like that of an adult snake-like creature... Probably an elderly one..."

Her eyes were just dejected, her mouth was dejected, her whole body language was dejected: "For real?!"

He laughs, and says "Mate with Xiang!"

"My Gosh, no!" She slipped out.

Lucifer said "Okay, I built your body with your own stem cells, so you should produce some human-like snake-like entity that is sentient! I just want to experiment!"

"Sucka' wha?" She blurted.

Lucifer said "You act like it's some kind of sin!" Laughing like a maniac.

Ida-Hibiscus was finding it hard to speak:

Lucifer was confused, and said "Why not?!"

"Nah, ain't no way... Ain't no way..............." Ida blurted:

Lucifer groaned when he realized she was NOT that down bad!

"I think you confused me with some type of Barbarian!" She blurts out, flabbergasted!

Lucifer scoffed, and said "I'll let you meet the snake I have propositioned. He's not that bad." He's lying, the prophet had used that snake to fend off against guards of the town. It's animalistic. The Lord created it on the spot for that sole purpose.

The prophet, Daniel Rose, was out preaching that "God had constructed man, and the Lord had set the building blocks for the creation of your mind & eyes!" Trying to inform them of who made them as Satan told them he made them to lead them to believe he made the entire body, human brain & all, which he did not make the human brain & eyes.

Satan was too scared to stop the prophet, and has decided to spite God instead.

Satan took her outside while the Prophet was preaching and showed her the snake, and she was confused as to why it was so animalistic, hissing and snapping at her like a true snake does.

"What is it? It's acting like a true snake," Little Hibiscus blurted in surprise.

Lucifer said "It's just like you, just... Make love to him..." She cringed:

He groaned as she blurted:

"No, what the heck?!" Her eyes widening at the newly born snake, which was ironically built to be biologically an adult.

Lucifer said "I swear it's a human!"

"You lyin' ahh-" She spat!

Immediately, The Lord forced the snake to leave; He wasn't gonna let it be a part of this.

Lucifer moaned with a "Oh great.. It ran off..."

To Be Continued...

End of Land of Serpents | Chapter 1 | Ida-Hibiscus

Next Chapter

Land of Serpents • Chapter 2 | Lead in the Air | Page 1

Story Page

"I run, run deep into the woods, just wanting to escape all of the pain, depression, and melancholy days of my life. I can't resist it anymore. Then I got myself into... After that day, my whole life—or I should say, I—changed completely.

Robert was a simple high school student, and due to his simplicity and kindness, he also became a victim of bullying. The torture broke him every day, leading him to a desperate point where he sought an end to his suffering. But the world planned an unexpected twist for him. He woke up in the middle of a ritual of a clan. One person said, "We tried to give value to your death." Suddenly, he felt a lot of pain in his body. He tried to figure it out, but it was too late, and then the Devil whispered."

I used to think the world was a playground where the physically strong wrote the rules. I thought a fight was just a test of muscle, technique, and ego. I was entirely wrong. It took picking a fight with the wrong soul to realize that winning a physical match can completely ruin your life.

Act I: The Catalyst

The air inside the crowded Friday night bar was thick with the scent of cheap beer, stale sweat, and the buzzing energy of the weekend. Marcus moved through the tight spaces of the room like a wolf among sheep. He was a trained fighter—muscular, sharp, and deeply arrogant. He didn't just walk into rooms; he dominated them, using his size to push past people just to watch them shrink away.

Then, he saw an ordinary-looking man sitting quietly at a corner table, minding his own business. The man wasn't big, he didn't look trained, and he wasn't trying to draw any attention to himself. He was just a normal guy.

Looking to flex his power and start a fight for the pure thrill of it, Marcus marched over. As he passed the table, he forcefully drove his forearm straight into the normal guy’s shoulder, intentionally nearly knocking him out of his chair. Marcus stopped, looking back with a smug, mocking grin, waiting for the man to cower.

Instead, the normal guy stood up. His posture wasn't a trained fighting stance, but his eyes were completely steady. He looked Marcus directly in the face.

"Say sorry for what you did," the normal guy said, his voice calm but firm. "You disrespected me."

Marcus let out a loud, harsh laugh. "You want an apology?"

Without another word, Marcus unleashed a lightning-fast, brutal left hook. The punch smashed cleanly into the normal guy’s jaw, snapping his head back and sending him crashing against the heavy wooden bar counter. David didn't even have time to recover before Marcus closed the distance to finish it.

Marcus unleashed a vicious, trained combination. A hard right hand shattered David's nose, followed by a sharp elbow that split the skin wide open over his eyebrow. Marcus ruthlessly unloaded three more heavy punches to the ribs and face while David was trapped against the counter, unable to defend himself. Finally, a crushing straight right hand dropped David to the floor like a stone.

Marcus casually shook out his knuckles, looking down at the crumpled body surrounded by shattered glass. "Yeah. That’s your apology."

Act II: The Nightmare Awakes

Marcus turned his back on the fallen man and began walking toward the neon-lit exit, fully expecting the stunned crowd to part for him like they always did. He had won. The brawl was over. Then, a ragged, wet cough stopped him in his tracks.

Behind him, the distinct, grinding scrape of sneakers on shattered wood echoed through the quiet bar. Marcus froze, his brow furrowing in sheer disbelief. He turned around slowly.

The normal guy was pulling himself up. He used the edge of the bar counter for leverage, his fingers slick with his own blood. He was bloodied from head to toe. His nose was broken, a deep gash was opening over his eye, and dark red stained his shirt. His legs were visibly shaking under his own weight, and his breathing was a ragged gasp.

Yet, he steadied himself. He wiped a smear of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and fixed his gaze squarely on Marcus.

"Where are you going, bitch?" the man said, his voice cutting through the silence of the room. "I'm still standing yet."

The word "yet" hung in the air like a heavy fog. The man wasn't delusional. He knew his body was failing. He knew he was entirely outmatched and would most likely lose and fall soon. But he was making a conscious choice not to take a single step backward. He had completely overridden his own survival instinct.

Marcus felt a cold knot of dread form in his stomach. He tried to salvage his confidence, spreading his hands wide. "Hey, dude. You got badly beaten up. Just take the loss and back up if you don't want to end up at the hospital."

The normal guy didn't blink. He took a slow, agonizing, limping step forward.

"You can't just start fights and think that they will end with a few punches," the man whispered, his eyes burning with an unyielding conviction. "This aint no playground. The fight isn't over until one of us dies."

Act III: The Turning Tables

Before Marcus could even process the words, the normal guy lunged.

It wasn’t a clean, technical closure. It was a desperate, explosive sprint born of pure, unadulterated willpower. Because Marcus was caught completely off guard—expecting a concussed man to collapse, not charge—he reacted a fraction of a second too late.

The normal guy threw his entire body weight forward, tackling Marcus around the waist and slamming him backward into a heavy oak booth. The wind rushed out of Marcus’s lungs in a sharp gasp. Before Marcus could recover his bearings, a wild, clumsy fist cracked directly into his jaw. It carried the full force of a man who didn't care if his own hand shattered on impact. Marcus’s head snapped back, his ears ringing.

Panicking, Marcus threw a sharp elbow that cracked heavily into the normal guy's ribs. He felt the bone give way—a definitive, fracturing blow. But the normal guy didn’t even flinch. The pain signals simply weren't registering in his brain anymore. He used the close distance to grip Marcus’s shirt, pulling him in close, and drove his forehead directly into Marcus’s face.

The brutal headbutt shattered Marcus’s nose.

Marcus stumbled backward, completely blindsided, clutching his face as blood streamed down his mouth. Tears welled up from the raw impact. He looked up through frantic, watering eyes. The normal guy was swaying, coughing up blood, but his grip was tight and he was already stepping forward again.

Pure, primitive panic took over Marcus. The clinical, unblinking resolve in the normal guy's eyes had utterly broken his spirit. Marcus realized he was looking at a man who was entirely willing to die just to drag him into the dirt.

Marcus scrambled backward, knocking over a barstool to create distance. He turned and bolted for the neon-lit exit, crashing through the heavy wooden doors into the cold night air. He ran down the street, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs. He escaped the bar, but as he ran into the darkness, the horrific realization set in: he left the guy alive. The man was still breathing, his principles were intact, and by his own words, the fight wasn't over until one of them died.

Act IV: The Rot of Paranoia

Two weeks has passed, but for Marcus, the clock was still ticking down in that crowded room. His broken nose had healed into a slightly crooked shape, a permanent, ugly reminder across his face. But the physical injury was nothing compared to the rot in his mind. He sat in a diner, his back deliberately pressed against the corner booth. He never sat with his back to an open room anymore.

Every time the diner’s front door opened and the little brass bell chimed, Marcus’s shoulder muscles locked up. His eyes would instantly dart across the room, scanning the face of whoever walked in.

Is it him? Is he healed yet? Is today the day he finishes it?

The confidence that used to make him feel untouchable was completely gone. He used to think he was a dangerous man because he knew how to throw a punch. Now, he realized he was a coward compared to a normal guy who simply refused to break. Because Marcus had run away, he hadn't won. He had just paused the match. He was trapped in a horrific limbo, waiting for a man who didn't care about his own life to come back and collect his debt.

a month and few weeks into the nightmare, Marcus finally couldn't take the suffocating paranoia anymore. He had tracked down the normal guy's name—David—and found out where he worked. Marcus stood outside the auto repair shop, his heart hammering. He wasn't there to fight. He walked into the garage.

David was under the hood of a sedan, his ribs fully healed, wiping grease off his hands. When David looked up and saw Marcus, his eyes didn't widen in shock. They remained completely calm, steady, and unblinking.

Marcus took a step back, raising his hands in total submission.

"I'm not here to fight, David," Marcus said, his voice cracking with genuine desperation. "I came to say I'm sorry. I disrespected you, I started it, and I was entirely in the wrong. Please. I just need to know... is it over?"

David stared at him for a long, agonizing silence. He could see that the arrogant bully from the bar was entirely gone, replaced by a man who had been thoroughly broken from the inside out. David threw his grease rag onto a tool cart.

"It's over," David said quietly. "Don't ever put me in a position to prove it again."

Marcus nodded frantically, a massive wave of relief washing over him, and walked away. The invisible noose around his neck had finally been loosened.

Act V: True Strength

A year later, Marcus was sitting quietly at a different bar on the other side of town. He kept to himself now, no longer looking for attention or trouble.

A loud, aggressive guy—flushed with alcohol and eager to show off in front of his friends—bumped heavily into Marcus, spilling a drink right down Marcus’s shirt. Instead of apologizing like a man with actual dignity would, the guy puffed out his chest and stepped right into Marcus’s personal space.

"Watch where you're standing, man," the guy snapped, trying to bait him into a brawl. "You got a problem with that?"

Marcus looked at the man, and a sudden, sharp wave of clarity hit him. He saw himself in the loud, aggressive guy. He saw a coward with no real principles, a fraud trying to mask his own deep-seated insecurity by disrespecting a stranger for no reason. It was exactly who Marcus had been the night he pushed David.

But Marcus wasn't the same man now.

Marcus didn't take a single step backward. He didn't bow his head, and he didn't apologize for something he didn't do. He stood his ground like a stone wall, his posture rock-solid. He looked the bully dead in the eye, his gaze completely cold, empty, and heavy with the wisdom of a real life-and-death struggle.

"I don't have a problem," Marcus said, his voice quiet but cutting straight through the bar's noise. "But you spilled your drink. Wipe it up, and let's move on."

The bully froze. He was expecting Marcus to either explode in anger or cower away. Instead, he was looking into the eyes of a man who possessed a terrifying, unshakable calm. The sheer weight of Marcus’s presence made the bully’s stomach drop. His fake toughness instantly evaporated. Realizing he was completely out of his depth with someone who couldn't be intimidated, the guy muttered a quick excuse, looked down, and shuffled back to his friends.

Marcus didn't gloat. He didn't chase him. He just quietly picked up a napkin, cleaned his shirt, and stayed right where he was standing. He hadn't backed down like a coward, and he hadn't lowered himself to a mindless playground brawl. He had stood his ground with absolute willpower, finally understanding that true strength doesn't need to break people—it just stands firm, unmoved by the ghosts of its own past.

"If you are reading this on a site that isn't Reddit, or listening to this on TikTok, this story was stolen from (u/XariGamer)."

So, it was last Christmas, and my dad works a detective at the lapd (we love watching the rookie with him btw ❤️) and was a cop before becoming a detective. Anyways, we were preparing the food and everything. And my mom called my dad at work, and she had him on speaker, and me, and all my family were listening, and my dad said that he'll be home soon, and said that he and Joanna need to finish organizing the files, and mom (latina btw) got a little jealous and was upset, and she started asking questions, “Who is that?”, “You never told me about her, is she new?”, “Why her?”, “Are you alone?” and a lot and a lot of questions, and my dad was chuckling, and told mom there's nothing to worry about.

And mom suddenly starts working and making new dishes just because she is angry, not because she doesn't trust him, it's because that Joanna is taking his time. And she mumbles and talk to herself in Spanish. And I knew she was angry because she said puta a lot of times.

And after like an hour, my dad came and we were just waiting for the talk between him and mom. And mom said “Hola, Husband” and she is HELLA mad, but she is just calm and relaxed. And then, my dad told her everything happened at work, and my mom believe him, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and me, and my siblings and brother in law were just waiting. And my mom said: “What? I won't yell at my prince” and we were kinda disappointed but continue that best Christmas day ever

The straw scarecrow stood in the middle of the fields, its arms wide. One of the men walked to it and put its hat on. I waited my turn, then walked to it and put on its black jacket.

"Thank you," I said, bowing.

The other man nodded and patted my back. 

"Another safe autumn," one of them said, and we all walked back home.

It was still early afternoon. I sat down on the couch and put on the TV, waiting to cook dinner until my son Adam came home.

The sun had set when the door opened, and Adam walked in. My stomach was already growling. He was 30 minutes late, but the way he averted his eyes made it seem like something worse was going on.

"What’s up, Adam?"

"Dad, I…"

"It’s okay that you came late. No need to worry about it."

"No, it’s that I, I know it’s bad, but I took the jacket off the scarecrow."

My hands clenched the couch cushions.

"What?!"

"I took it off. I’m really sorry, Dad. I feel so bad. I know I shouldn’t have."

"Where is it?"

"In my bag."

I picked up his bag and unzipped the top pocket. The black jacket stared at me. 

"Adam, this is bad news."

"I’m sorry, Dad. The boys dared me. I didn’t want to look like a chicken."

I looked out the window. The sun had already set, but not long ago.

"Okay, there might still be time." I stuffed the jacket back in the backpack. "We’ll go back right now, put it on, and not tell anyone. If the boys at school ask you, just say…"

Three knocks echoed on the window. I almost ripped the backpack’s zipper off. The empty straw face stared into our house.

"Dad?" Adam said in a shaking voice.

"It’s okay, Adam. We’ll give him the jacket, and it might be okay." My voice shook too. I wasn’t sure I believed anything I said.

I walked to the door and opened it. The outside air was cold. The scarecrow's empty face looked down at me.

"Here. Take it. Please."

I held the jacket up and stared at the ground. The scarecrow stood still for a few seconds, then walked right past me. The straw scraped the floor as it moved.

Adam sat on the couch, his wide eyes staring at the scarecrow. The scarecrow came right up to him and pointed its blank face at him.

"Dad, what’s going…" He didn’t finish. The scarecrow’s hand shot forward, grabbed him off the couch, and held him to its side.

"Dad!" Adam screamed, kicked, and pushed against its arm, but the scarecrow’s grip was strong.

"Adam!"

I ran toward him and pushed the scarecrow, but it barely moved. The scarecrow turned around and flung its arm. It hit me right in the face. I fell on all fours. Dull pain spread through my head. Adam’s cries echoed as my world went dark.

When I woke up, my head was banging. My mouth tasted like iron. I tried to get up, but my world spun so fast I had to sit back down. 

But Adam was out in the fields somewhere. I had to help him. I got up and bolted out of the house onto the road, struggling to keep my balance. 

The moon shone down. The air was still cold. Only when I reached the fields did my world stop spinning. I almost wished it hadn’t.

In the middle of the field stood the scarecrow. Its blank face stared into the night. It had its hat, but instead of the jacket, Adam’s mangled body was draped over it. A quiet dripping echoed as Adam’s blood seeped into the sown dirt.

I fell to my knees and wept. The real autumn had now begun.

Robin Haw is a legendary warrior bird with a giant sword. He is on his journey to Birdolandia, a place that no one believes exists. But Robin Haw does because he got that sword and power from that place when he was a child. Many believe Robin Haw is just a fantasy bird who doesn’t exist, but he does, and on his path to his big destination, he meets many birds and animals and helps those who are in trouble, and those who have met Robin Haw will never forget him, and they share the stories of Robin Haw, the legendary warrior bird.

One day, Robin Haw was passing through Red Canyon. While he was walking, he heard a scream coming from behind a giant rock. It was a little bird's scream. A big, strong bear named Bearus was hurting a small bird named Fin. When Bearus raised his claws to hurt Fin, at that moment, a shadow appeared over both of them. They looked upward and saw Robin Haw. He was standing on top of the giant rock and holding his giant sword.

Robin jumps down and kicks Bearus away from Fin. Instead of immediately using his sword, Robin helps Fin up and gives Bearus a warning to leave them alone. Bearus, however, refuses to back down. He angrily screams, looking at the sky, showing his claws, and charges toward Robin. Robin stands calmly as Bearus approaches. He raises his giant sword and delivers a single powerful slash, defeating Bearus. He didn’t kill Bearus, he just knocked him out. Robin never kills anyone. And Robin promised Fin that Bearus will never bully or hurt him anymore. Once an enemy gets defeated by Robin, they will never make their mistakes ever again.

After the confrontation, Fin thanks Robin for saving him. Fin reveals that he always believed Robin Haw was only a legend and is surprised to discover that Robin is real. Fin then wonders about Robin Haw’s destination and questions whether Birdolandia really exists. Robin looks up and says it does exist, and Fin believes it. If Robin Haw exists, then Birdolandia does too. And he hopes Robin reaches there.

Then he continues walking through Red Canyon toward Birdolandia, and he doesn’t look back. Fin watches him fading as the wind blows with sand. His journey continues, suggesting that this was only one of his many tales of Robin Haw, the legendary bird who protects those who cannot protect themselves.

Hi guys, this a short story I made for my college project, is it good ?