22F, 165cm and roughly 55kg ?
Today during an awareness camp, a female student was standing next to me (a teacher) and suddenly fell forwards, I happened to catch her and her head slumped back with eyes rolled and fixated upwards throughout her episode of unconsciousness and she woke up after around 20 seconds. The camp was held in a hall which was nice and airy, not too hot. I don’t want to think like this but could it be that she was pretending to faint because her eyes were weird and it all happened very suddenly, i didn’t notice any pre symptoms before she fell and i never saw someone faint like that. She seemed very normal on waking up too.

I noticed that the dog has this particular knack for bringing things to certain places.
he loves putting his squeaky balls in holes/baskets. He at one time used to move my books back onto the shelf (I had to put them on the floor across the room for cleaning). recently it's the slippers. I like to leave mine on the floor by the bed, he takes offense and will chew on it after a while. but if I leave the slippers at the door, he'll ignore it. for a while now he's insistent that his plushies must stay inside the room never outside. bring one out. he will put it back, not in his toy basket but inside yes.
is it just in my head or has the dog picked up his own way of getting me to put things in their proper place?
could this just be an new indication behavior like he used to destroy stuff a lot as a pup except now he likes to move things around.

i have a just over one year old male german shepherd weighing about 70lbs, located in canada. in the middle of the night last night, he started exhibiting extremely clingy and anxious behaviours. he was jumping on my lap while i was laying down and panting like crazy. this went on for probably about 20 minutes. he then started doing repetitive behaviours and darting his head back and forth over and over.
this is when i called my local emergency vet, they informed me that it sounded like he had ingested cannabis (it’s not necessarily impossible as we had just come back from the park and he may have found some and eaten it) and told me to just let him rest but it didn’t require him to come in.
after i got off the phone with them he stopped doing the repetitive behaviours and again became very clingy and jumped in my lap again, he then started staring intensely at seemingly nothing (usually with his head tilted slightly upwards) and turning his head back and forth while panting and occasionally stiffening his jaw. he did this on and off for hours.
he eventually fell asleep after and was out cold until the morning but i stayed up all night watching him. it seemed like whatever that was happening tired him out.
when he woke up this morning he seemed still pretty sleepy but almost back to his normal self, although he has diarrhea which he didn’t before. i’m hoping to get a bit of help on figuring out if the amount of anxiety i’m feeling towards this situation is warranted or if i’m just being an overprotective first time dog mom and he really did just ingest some cannabis and this is all normal.

I spend all of my daylight hours scared and alone in this musty old cellar.
It’s woeful, and I bet it smelled this bad even before everything around here turned to crap. Great. My second sentence and I’ve already resorted to swearing. When I decided I’d start this diary (five minutes ago when I got a tiny sliver of signal) I thought it would be my poetic and deeply-moving goodbye to the world. Maybe I’d write about love and loss, or maybe the splendour of nature. Then, when all is done and dusted, I’d have left something to be remembered by. As well as my corpse, of course.
This was a bad idea.
*
Okay, I’m an idiot. There’s nothing else I can do down here. I’ve rooted through every cardboard box a hundred times, organised and reorganised my supplies, I’ve even built a fort. So, I’m back. Hello. Again. God, this diary is going badly.
But there’s just enough light coming through the boards I nailed over the cellar’s tiny window to type by. So I may as well type. Stops me staring up at the window just waiting for a shadow to pass by.
Maybe I'll just write and not hit Submit. Right, where to start? Well, my name is – actually, I think I’m going to refer to myself as ‘X’. That sounds mysterious. If you’re reading this and want to know my real name, I still carry my purse. My railcard is in there and, if you really want to know who I am, go find me and fish it out. I won’t bite...
So, my name is X. I live in a little English village in the middle of nowhere. Before all this happened, I had a mum, a dad, a sister and there was a boy I liked, his name was Jonah.
*
I couldn’t think of anything else to write so I waited until I came back from my rounds. That’s the stupid name I have for when I go outside at night scrounging for stuff. Drinks are the hardest. I only trust bottles or cans, or did, and I was running out of places to search for them. But I guess that doesn’t matter now.
My leg is doing alright actually; didn’t hold me up at all. I saw Jonah too. He’s looked better, I have to say. It’s strange because this is only the second time I’ve seen him since we came here. Maybe his ears were burning.
Anyway, I found some tinned pineapple in a creepy old caravan I hadn’t searched yet. Had to bust the door open with Old Trusty – which I thought might attract some unwanted attention – but it was fine. I’m actually eating the pineapple right now, tastes good. I also found a radio in there. I already have three down here, but none of them work. Not that the caravan radio works either, all you get is static. It’s just nice to collect something. You know, to have a hobby.
*
I can tell the sun is rising. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but I woke up after a bad dream. I know some people can remember their dreams, but I never do. I wake up and grasp at them, but I never manage a hold before they fade away. It’s like trying to pinch the corner of a wisp of smoke; the harder you try, the quicker it fades to nothing. I’m just left with a sensation, a kind of imprint which sums up the most intense part of the dream.
And a cold sweat. That’s new.
*
I’ve been through the box of photo albums I found at the back of the cellar again. I’ve looked through them a few times now, but I always notice something new.
There’s a photo of this little girl playing with a pretend guitar. I can tell it’s pretend because it doesn’t have strings, only brightly-coloured plastic dials. Kind of like My First Guitar Hero or something. The girl has dark hair and she looks a tiny bit like my sister did a million years ago. I don’t have a picture of my sister. I suppose I could go and get one from my old house, but it’s right in the middle of the village. I’m lucky I wasn’t torn to shreds the last time I went back. So, what I’ve done is put this girl’s photo in my back pocket as a substitute.
I guess I should probably write something about my real sister now. But I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet.
*
Daylight is starting to fade and I’m getting ready to go out on my rounds. I always take my satchel with me, packed with useful objects. I have Old Trusty (a crowbar) which sticks out of the top for easy access, a small toolbox, a pair of heavy-duty gloves (there’s a good story about how I got those, I might write that one down later) and a hammer. I carry a penknife I found down here in my pocket, my purse and phone, and a torch in my hand.
I don’t like to use the torch because its battery is running out and there’s always the chance it might attract them. I probably shouldn’t have used it last night when I got back. Maybe I’m starting to enjoy this writing malarkey? I need to be careful with luxuries.
*
Okay, that could have gone better.
Picture the scene: I’m using Old Trusty to try and lever a kitchen window open, when one of them just walks right through the garden hedge. Seriously, straight through it. It’s not the mightiest of hedges but, still, it just appeared like it was walking through one of those Japanese paper walls. My satchel was on the ground, but I legged it anyway. I’m not stupid. I know I can go back for it tomorrow. I felt strangely naked without it on the way back here though.
Like I said before, I need to be careful with the torch so I think I’ll try and get some sleep now.
*
I slept pretty well last night; no nightmares or cold sweats. Maybe a midnight chase was just what I needed to blow away the cobwebs.
I actually woke up wondering about you. If you’re reading this, who are you? If you’re like me, living through this village nightmare, how have you managed to go this long without being killed or whatever? Maybe you’re Army or some such. Maybe you’re just some kid who’s played so many videogames that surviving all of this was already second nature to you. Or maybe you’re like me; living on borrowed time and searching for a good place to die. Maybe Future Me was brave enough to tap Submit on my diary and you're currently reading this on your phone or computer.
Here’s an idea. Maybe you can carry on this diary from wherever I left it at. God, I really hope this isn’t my last entry, although I suppose any entry might be. If you do carry the diary forwards, and I'm a corpse, maybe it will become cursed. Spooky.
*
I’ve been preparing for my next excursion.
If I know I’m going somewhere I’ll likely run into an ugly, I like to take extra precautions. And I want my satchel back. It was a present from my dad, and I know it cost him a lot of money.
So, I’m taking a pair of shears from the shelf of old tools down here. That way, if I lose Old Trusty, I’ll have a backup weapon.
If you are local, I wonder how you like to kill them? Pretty morbid question I know, but everyone around here seems to have their preferred method. The last villager I saw alive carried a pair of mini cricket bats and seemed to have bludgeoning down to an art form. He never saw me though, I was watching from a grove of trees as he killed his way along the main road near the village.
That was before I decided to stay inside during the daylight hours. We can at least see a little bit at night; ambient light and everything. They can’t though. I’ve seen them, they bump into things. It’s pretty funny to be honest. If they hear a noise, they walk in the direction of the sound, never trying to avoid any object in their path. They either bash said object out of the way, or, like that hedge, blunder right through it. Obviously bigger things stop them dead (ha!) though. If that happens, they sort of shuffle backwards and then try again a few times. Eventually – and I’ve seen this too – they just give up and stand there, waiting for something else to attract their attention.
That’s not how it works in the daytime though.
*
I think it’s about an hour before the sun sets so it’s nearly time to head out. I’m going to change my bandage. One minute.
Okay, it didn’t look that bad really. The original scratch wasn’t too deep and now the wound seems to be doing that scabbing thing I remember from normal injuries. It just doesn’t smell very good. A bit like when you walk past a bin that needs emptying.
Anyway, I’ve applied more antiseptic and redressed it. Time to go.
*
That was fun. I’m glad I had those shears with me.
I got my satchel back you’ll be happy to know. And I got inside that house I’d been trying to break into as well. More through necessity than choice in the end, but I’m pleased I did. I found more batteries! That means I can justify writing at night a bit more. In fact, the people who used to live there (I think the husband owned the local garage) were pretty well kitted out. There were a lot of tins in their cupboards, and they’d even left a shotgun. It wasn’t loaded though.
Not that I need a shotgun. I didn’t tell you this before, but I have my grandpa’s old service revolver. He always told me and my sister that it was decommissioned, but my dad apparently knew otherwise. I keep it tucked into the back of my jeans at all times. It had three bullets, one of them is gone, so only two left.
I’ll only be needing the one of course.
*
Morning. I’m feeling pretty low today. I think concentrating on getting my satchel back took my mind off things, but now I feel pretty deflated.
Surely that’s understandable? The village I knew and loved has been replaced with this sodding hell. I miss my family, my friends, TV and hot dinners and Instagram. Before all of this I was a pretty positive person. Sure, I had a bit of trouble getting up in the morning, but, once I was up, that was it. I’d meet the day’s challenges head on, try to enjoy myself as much as I could. Not today though.
Maybe if I write about Jonah I’ll cheer up. Not Jonah as he is now of course, Jonah when he was all smooth-skinned, curly-haired and bright-eyed. Now he’s like the anti-Jonah or something. His face looks like it lost a fight with an angry lobster. No, wait, I’m supposed to be writing about Jonah version one here.
He’s one of those people that I can’t remember meeting. My family has always lived around here and so there are lots of people who have just always been, if you get me. I always thought we would drunkenly get it together at a party – that’s what I’d usually do if there was a boy I liked. Classy.
*
I’ve perked up a bit. Out of sheer frustration I went upstairs (naughty, I know) and looked out of a window. Sure, I saw an ugly, wandering aimlessly as they always do, but I saw that the trees are starting to turn too. That means it’s nearly autumn, and I love autumn!
My sister and I always used to go out and kick leaves at each other in the autumn. I don’t know if it was because of her low centre of gravity, but my sister was amazing at it. She could somehow whip up a blazing whirlwind of golden-yellow and fire-red, surrounding us both in a leaf storm that I couldn’t help but flail my arms madly at. Then we’d both fall backwards into the leaves laughing, me wondering how on earth what had happened was possible. She was that good.
God, I let her down in the end.
*
I think I’ll stay away from the house with the shotgun tonight. It usually takes a day or two for a group of uglies to disperse once they’re all riled up. I could use the rest of that tinned food I suppose, but I’ve got plenty to be getting on with for now.
Instead, I think I’ll swing by another farmhouse I was scoping out before I decided to turn nocturnal. I never met the people who used to live there, but I remember Mum telling me they liked their privacy. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me visiting now though.
Also, there’s a woodland between here and there and I might be able to find some leaves to kick about a bit. I think that would make me feel close to my sister again.
I’ll check back in later.
*
I’m still alive, but only just.
I made it through the woods just fine (only the odd leaf on the forest floor at the moment though, sadly), the trouble started at the farmhouse. I couldn’t get in – the doors and windows were barricaded – so I tried one of the outbuildings. Locked. It had a cat flap though.
My first instinct was to leave it, but then I wondered if there might be something useful inside. Lord knows what thinking about it now. I lifted the cat flap with one hand and shone the torch beam through with my other. That’s when an ugly dived at my pinkies. Luckily, it misjudged its leap and got a mouthful of plastic cat flap instead. As for me, I fell backwards onto my bum.
Next, the damn thing started bashing on the door from the inside. I don’t think it could ever have got out, but the noise attracted more uglies from out of nowhere. I only just managed to outmanoeuvre them and hightail it back into the woods.
That’s not the worst of it though. On the way back my leg started to hurt. A lot.
*
I woke up this morning and I’m walking with a limp. It’s funny, Dad had a limp when he and Mum died. He was nailing planks of wood across our windows and doors because there was no signal (as per bloody usual) and we thought that what was happening here was probably happening everywhere. It's only recently that I realised this was an isolated, local outbreak. Anyway, Dad dropped the hammer onto his toe, he always was useless at DIY. I think it was only a couple of hours after that when he and Mum were taken.
It was like a wave of death. No, not like, that’s exactly what it was. A hoard of uglies swept through the village, probably originating from the secret research facility in the woods we're not supposed to know about. My sister and I wouldn’t have had a prayer if Mum and Dad hadn’t charged down the first few that got into our house. They gave us just enough time to escape, to run away and leave them to die. My sister was screaming all the way and I had to drag her like she was four again.
She wouldn’t speak to me for a few days after that. I didn’t blame her, I hated myself too. But I would have hated myself even more if I hadn’t done what I did next. On my own, I snuck back into our house with the crowbar I found here. Then I dispatched my parents. I can’t bring myself to type it any other way. It wasn’t like in the movies, I didn’t pound their skulls into mush whilst sobbing, ‘Why?’ over and over again. I just found them, or what was left of them, forced the crowbar through each of their eye sockets, and came straight back here.
Then came the crying.
*
I haven’t told you about the heavy-duty gloves yet, have I?
After I got back from our old house, my sister started speaking to me again. A shared, day-long cry will do that for sisters. Once we felt up to it, we decided to explore the parts of the farmhouse we hadn’t searched yet. All the bedrooms were empty, only a few belongings flung about the place (I suspect the previous tenants left in a hurry). The problem came when we investigated the attic. Once we’d opened the ceiling panel in the upstairs hallway, once we’d pulled the compact staircase down, I went up. My sister stood at the top of the hatchway shining the torch beam over my shoulder. And that’s when it touched me. Terrified, I fell to my left, screaming as the thing came crashing down on top of me. I was yelling things like, ‘Shoot it!’ and, ‘Run!’ but my sister was just laughing her head off. I soon realised that my attacker was in fact a shop-window mannequin.
I think the people who previously lived here must have been arty (or into some seriously freaky stuff) because the mannequin was dressed in scarves, bandannas, ties, watches – loads of things. The rest of the attic was pretty empty but at least we got the mannequin’s gloves.
*
I’m not feeling good at the moment. I’ve got a sore throat and I’ve coughed up blood a couple of times. My leg pain is getting worse too.
I don’t think I’ll go out tonight. I have enough tins left and one of them is a Full English In A Can. Sounds pretty disgusting, but intriguing at the same time. I’ve been saving it for near the end. A sort of consolation prize.
*
There are two mattresses down here. Obviously one is mine, and the other one was my sister’s. After she died, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. I don’t have a photo of her, only Guitar Girl’s. Her bed is the only thing of hers I have left. And she didn’t even sleep in it that many times.
*
The tinned Full English was vile! You’ve got to laugh though, what else can you do?
*
I’m crying as I write this. Tears of sorrow, shame and regret.
It happened as we were searching a cottage just off of the main road. We’d used Old Trusty to get inside, and I’d rushed straight into the kitchen to find the food. We’d run out more than a day before and I was famished. My sister followed me into the kitchen, a wide grin on her pretty little face because I was sitting there with an open can of beans. Then one of them came at her from behind. I must have walked right past it on my stupid way to the cupboards. It bit into her neck and blood gushed over the tiles in a torrent. As she yelled out in agony, I leapt up and implanted the crowbar right into the thing’s skull. It crumpled to the floor, but the damage was done.
‘Don’t let me lose myself.’ That was the last thing my sister whispered to me before she passed out. Her wound was much more severe than mine is, and much closer to the brain. That seems to make it quicker. I took grandpa’s revolver from behind my back and blew her brains out.
I buried her in the back garden.
*
After my sister died I went kind of crazy. I took Old Trusty out across the fields and pulverised every ugly I could find. I don’t even remember it that well, it was just, find, kill, find, kill…
We’d only been going out in daylight before then but, in my anger, I carried on through the nights. That’s how I learned about their inability to evade in darkness. Eventually, though, one got me. I found three munching on a dead cow and ran straight at them. Took out the first two easily enough, but the third managed to scratch my leg with a bloody fingernail just before I clobbered it into oblivion. Once I realised its nail had broken the skin, it was like a switch had been flicked inside me. That’s it, I’m dead too. I lost my bloodlust and came back here.
*
If none of this had happened, I think my sister would have eventually gone into medicine. I was doing okay at College but she was top of her class at school. And she had a really kind nature too. She’d never squish any bugs that got trapped in our house; she’d get a glass, scoop the little critter up and seal it inside with a book. Then she’d take it outside and release it, even if it was a wasp.
*
I’ve decided that here’s not the place. I'll hit Submit and then I’m going to do it in those woods I wrote about; consider this diary as my Note. I’ll be able to find a nice spot to sit and look at the trees, some place that's calm and peaceful. I’m going to leave the picture of Guitar Girl in this cellar, she belongs in this house. The tree leaves will remind me of my sister more than any photo ever could anyway.
I guess all that’s left to say is thank you for listening.
I know it’s possible that no one will ever read this, but that’s not really the point is it?
Love,
X

I spend all of my daylight hours scared and alone in this musty old cellar.
It’s woeful, and I bet it smelled this bad even before everything around here turned to crap. Great. My second sentence and I’ve already resorted to swearing. When I decided I’d start this diary (five minutes ago when I got a tiny sliver of signal) I thought it would be my poetic and deeply-moving goodbye to the world. Maybe I’d write about love and loss, or maybe the splendour of nature. Then, when all is done and dusted, I’d have left something to be remembered by. As well as my corpse, of course.
This was a bad idea.
*
Okay, I’m an idiot. There’s nothing else I can do down here. I’ve rooted through every cardboard box a hundred times, organised and reorganised my supplies, I’ve even built a fort. So, I’m back. Hello. Again. God, this diary is going badly.
But there’s just enough light coming through the boards I nailed over the cellar’s tiny window to type by. So I may as well type. Stops me staring up at the window just waiting for a shadow to pass by.
Maybe I'll just write and not hit Submit. Right, where to start? Well, my name is – actually, I think I’m going to refer to myself as ‘X’. That sounds mysterious. If you’re reading this and want to know my real name, I still carry my purse. My railcard is in there and, if you really want to know who I am, go find me and fish it out. I won’t bite...
So, my name is X. I live in a little English village in the middle of nowhere. Before all this happened, I had a mum, a dad, a sister and there was a boy I liked, his name was Jonah.
*
I couldn’t think of anything else to write so I waited until I came back from my rounds. That’s the stupid name I have for when I go outside at night scrounging for stuff. Drinks are the hardest. I only trust bottles or cans, or did, and I was running out of places to search for them. But I guess that doesn’t matter now.
My leg is doing alright actually; didn’t hold me up at all. I saw Jonah too. He’s looked better, I have to say. It’s strange because this is only the second time I’ve seen him since we came here. Maybe his ears were burning.
Anyway, I found some tinned pineapple in a creepy old caravan I hadn’t searched yet. Had to bust the door open with Old Trusty – which I thought might attract some unwanted attention – but it was fine. I’m actually eating the pineapple right now, tastes good. I also found a radio in there. I already have three down here, but none of them work. Not that the caravan radio works either, all you get is static. It’s just nice to collect something. You know, to have a hobby.
*
I can tell the sun is rising. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but I woke up after a bad dream. I know some people can remember their dreams, but I never do. I wake up and grasp at them, but I never manage a hold before they fade away. It’s like trying to pinch the corner of a wisp of smoke; the harder you try, the quicker it fades to nothing. I’m just left with a sensation, a kind of imprint which sums up the most intense part of the dream.
And a cold sweat. That’s new.
*
I’ve been through the box of photo albums I found at the back of the cellar again. I’ve looked through them a few times now, but I always notice something new.
There’s a photo of this little girl playing with a pretend guitar. I can tell it’s pretend because it doesn’t have strings, only brightly-coloured plastic dials. Kind of like My First Guitar Hero or something. The girl has dark hair and she looks a tiny bit like my sister did a million years ago. I don’t have a picture of my sister. I suppose I could go and get one from my old house, but it’s right in the middle of the village. I’m lucky I wasn’t torn to shreds the last time I went back. So, what I’ve done is put this girl’s photo in my back pocket as a substitute.
I guess I should probably write something about my real sister now. But I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet.
*
Daylight is starting to fade and I’m getting ready to go out on my rounds. I always take my satchel with me, packed with useful objects. I have Old Trusty (a crowbar) which sticks out of the top for easy access, a small toolbox, a pair of heavy-duty gloves (there’s a good story about how I got those, I might write that one down later) and a hammer. I carry a penknife I found down here in my pocket, my purse and phone, and a torch in my hand.
I don’t like to use the torch because its battery is running out and there’s always the chance it might attract them. I probably shouldn’t have used it last night when I got back. Maybe I’m starting to enjoy this writing malarkey? I need to be careful with luxuries.
*
Okay, that could have gone better.
Picture the scene: I’m using Old Trusty to try and lever a kitchen window open, when one of them just walks right through the garden hedge. Seriously, straight through it. It’s not the mightiest of hedges but, still, it just appeared like it was walking through one of those Japanese paper walls. My satchel was on the ground, but I legged it anyway. I’m not stupid. I know I can go back for it tomorrow. I felt strangely naked without it on the way back here though.
Like I said before, I need to be careful with the torch so I think I’ll try and get some sleep now.
*
I slept pretty well last night; no nightmares or cold sweats. Maybe a midnight chase was just what I needed to blow away the cobwebs.
I actually woke up wondering about you. If you’re reading this, who are you? If you’re like me, living through this village nightmare, how have you managed to go this long without being killed or whatever? Maybe you’re Army or some such. Maybe you’re just some kid who’s played so many videogames that surviving all of this was already second nature to you. Or maybe you’re like me; living on borrowed time and searching for a good place to die. Maybe Future Me was brave enough to tap Submit on my diary and you're currently reading this on your phone or computer.
Here’s an idea. Maybe you can carry on this diary from wherever I left it at. God, I really hope this isn’t my last entry, although I suppose any entry might be. If you do carry the diary forwards, and I'm a corpse, maybe it will become cursed. Spooky.
*
I’ve been preparing for my next excursion.
If I know I’m going somewhere I’ll likely run into an ugly, I like to take extra precautions. And I want my satchel back. It was a present from my dad, and I know it cost him a lot of money.
So, I’m taking a pair of shears from the shelf of old tools down here. That way, if I lose Old Trusty, I’ll have a backup weapon.
If you are local, I wonder how you like to kill them? Pretty morbid question I know, but everyone around here seems to have their preferred method. The last villager I saw alive carried a pair of mini cricket bats and seemed to have bludgeoning down to an art form. He never saw me though, I was watching from a grove of trees as he killed his way along the main road near the village.
That was before I decided to stay inside during the daylight hours. We can at least see a little bit at night; ambient light and everything. They can’t though. I’ve seen them, they bump into things. It’s pretty funny to be honest. If they hear a noise, they walk in the direction of the sound, never trying to avoid any object in their path. They either bash said object out of the way, or, like that hedge, blunder right through it. Obviously bigger things stop them dead (ha!) though. If that happens, they sort of shuffle backwards and then try again a few times. Eventually – and I’ve seen this too – they just give up and stand there, waiting for something else to attract their attention.
That’s not how it works in the daytime though.
*
I think it’s about an hour before the sun sets so it’s nearly time to head out. I’m going to change my bandage. One minute.
Okay, it didn’t look that bad really. The original scratch wasn’t too deep and now the wound seems to be doing that scabbing thing I remember from normal injuries. It just doesn’t smell very good. A bit like when you walk past a bin that needs emptying.
Anyway, I’ve applied more antiseptic and redressed it. Time to go.
*
That was fun. I’m glad I had those shears with me.
I got my satchel back you’ll be happy to know. And I got inside that house I’d been trying to break into as well. More through necessity than choice in the end, but I’m pleased I did. I found more batteries! That means I can justify writing at night a bit more. In fact, the people who used to live there (I think the husband owned the local garage) were pretty well kitted out. There were a lot of tins in their cupboards, and they’d even left a shotgun. It wasn’t loaded though.
Not that I need a shotgun. I didn’t tell you this before, but I have my grandpa’s old service revolver. He always told me and my sister that it was decommissioned, but my dad apparently knew otherwise. I keep it tucked into the back of my jeans at all times. It had three bullets, one of them is gone, so only two left.
I’ll only be needing the one of course.
*
Morning. I’m feeling pretty low today. I think concentrating on getting my satchel back took my mind off things, but now I feel pretty deflated.
Surely that’s understandable? The village I knew and loved has been replaced with this sodding hell. I miss my family, my friends, TV and hot dinners and Instagram. Before all of this I was a pretty positive person. Sure, I had a bit of trouble getting up in the morning, but, once I was up, that was it. I’d meet the day’s challenges head on, try to enjoy myself as much as I could. Not today though.
Maybe if I write about Jonah I’ll cheer up. Not Jonah as he is now of course, Jonah when he was all smooth-skinned, curly-haired and bright-eyed. Now he’s like the anti-Jonah or something. His face looks like it lost a fight with an angry lobster. No, wait, I’m supposed to be writing about Jonah version one here.
He’s one of those people that I can’t remember meeting. My family has always lived around here and so there are lots of people who have just always been, if you get me. I always thought we would drunkenly get it together at a party – that’s what I’d usually do if there was a boy I liked. Classy.
*
I’ve perked up a bit. Out of sheer frustration I went upstairs (naughty, I know) and looked out of a window. Sure, I saw an ugly, wandering aimlessly as they always do, but I saw that the trees are starting to turn too. That means it’s nearly autumn, and I love autumn!
My sister and I always used to go out and kick leaves at each other in the autumn. I don’t know if it was because of her low centre of gravity, but my sister was amazing at it. She could somehow whip up a blazing whirlwind of golden-yellow and fire-red, surrounding us both in a leaf storm that I couldn’t help but flail my arms madly at. Then we’d both fall backwards into the leaves laughing, me wondering how on earth what had happened was possible. She was that good.
God, I let her down in the end.
*
I think I’ll stay away from the house with the shotgun tonight. It usually takes a day or two for a group of uglies to disperse once they’re all riled up. I could use the rest of that tinned food I suppose, but I’ve got plenty to be getting on with for now.
Instead, I think I’ll swing by another farmhouse I was scoping out before I decided to turn nocturnal. I never met the people who used to live there, but I remember Mum telling me they liked their privacy. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me visiting now though.
Also, there’s a woodland between here and there and I might be able to find some leaves to kick about a bit. I think that would make me feel close to my sister again.
I’ll check back in later.
*
I’m still alive, but only just.
I made it through the woods just fine (only the odd leaf on the forest floor at the moment though, sadly), the trouble started at the farmhouse. I couldn’t get in – the doors and windows were barricaded – so I tried one of the outbuildings. Locked. It had a cat flap though.
My first instinct was to leave it, but then I wondered if there might be something useful inside. Lord knows what thinking about it now. I lifted the cat flap with one hand and shone the torch beam through with my other. That’s when an ugly dived at my pinkies. Luckily, it misjudged its leap and got a mouthful of plastic cat flap instead. As for me, I fell backwards onto my bum.
Next, the damn thing started bashing on the door from the inside. I don’t think it could ever have got out, but the noise attracted more uglies from out of nowhere. I only just managed to outmanoeuvre them and hightail it back into the woods.
That’s not the worst of it though. On the way back my leg started to hurt. A lot.
*
I woke up this morning and I’m walking with a limp. It’s funny, Dad had a limp when he and Mum died. He was nailing planks of wood across our windows and doors because there was no signal (as per bloody usual) and we thought that what was happening here was probably happening everywhere. It's only recently that I realised this was an isolated, local outbreak. Anyway, Dad dropped the hammer onto his toe, he always was useless at DIY. I think it was only a couple of hours after that when he and Mum were taken.
It was like a wave of death. No, not like, that’s exactly what it was. A hoard of uglies swept through the village, probably originating from the secret research facility in the woods we're not supposed to know about. My sister and I wouldn’t have had a prayer if Mum and Dad hadn’t charged down the first few that got into our house. They gave us just enough time to escape, to run away and leave them to die. My sister was screaming all the way and I had to drag her like she was four again.
She wouldn’t speak to me for a few days after that. I didn’t blame her, I hated myself too. But I would have hated myself even more if I hadn’t done what I did next. On my own, I snuck back into our house with the crowbar I found here. Then I dispatched my parents. I can’t bring myself to type it any other way. It wasn’t like in the movies, I didn’t pound their skulls into mush whilst sobbing, ‘Why?’ over and over again. I just found them, or what was left of them, forced the crowbar through each of their eye sockets, and came straight back here.
Then came the crying.
*
I haven’t told you about the heavy-duty gloves yet, have I?
After I got back from our old house, my sister started speaking to me again. A shared, day-long cry will do that for sisters. Once we felt up to it, we decided to explore the parts of the farmhouse we hadn’t searched yet. All the bedrooms were empty, only a few belongings flung about the place (I suspect the previous tenants left in a hurry). The problem came when we investigated the attic. Once we’d opened the ceiling panel in the upstairs hallway, once we’d pulled the compact staircase down, I went up. My sister stood at the top of the hatchway shining the torch beam over my shoulder. And that’s when it touched me. Terrified, I fell to my left, screaming as the thing came crashing down on top of me. I was yelling things like, ‘Shoot it!’ and, ‘Run!’ but my sister was just laughing her head off. I soon realised that my attacker was in fact a shop-window mannequin.
I think the people who previously lived here must have been arty (or into some seriously freaky stuff) because the mannequin was dressed in scarves, bandannas, ties, watches – loads of things. The rest of the attic was pretty empty but at least we got the mannequin’s gloves.
*
I’m not feeling good at the moment. I’ve got a sore throat and I’ve coughed up blood a couple of times. My leg pain is getting worse too.
I don’t think I’ll go out tonight. I have enough tins left and one of them is a Full English In A Can. Sounds pretty disgusting, but intriguing at the same time. I’ve been saving it for near the end. A sort of consolation prize.
*
There are two mattresses down here. Obviously one is mine, and the other one was my sister’s. After she died, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. I don’t have a photo of her, only Guitar Girl’s. Her bed is the only thing of hers I have left. And she didn’t even sleep in it that many times.
*
The tinned Full English was vile! You’ve got to laugh though, what else can you do?
*
I’m crying as I write this. Tears of sorrow, shame and regret.
It happened as we were searching a cottage just off of the main road. We’d used Old Trusty to get inside, and I’d rushed straight into the kitchen to find the food. We’d run out more than a day before and I was famished. My sister followed me into the kitchen, a wide grin on her pretty little face because I was sitting there with an open can of beans. Then one of them came at her from behind. I must have walked right past it on my stupid way to the cupboards. It bit into her neck and blood gushed over the tiles in a torrent. As she yelled out in agony, I leapt up and implanted the crowbar right into the thing’s skull. It crumpled to the floor, but the damage was done.
‘Don’t let me lose myself.’ That was the last thing my sister whispered to me before she passed out. Her wound was much more severe than mine is, and much closer to the brain. That seems to make it quicker. I took grandpa’s revolver from behind my back and blew her brains out.
I buried her in the back garden.
*
After my sister died I went kind of crazy. I took Old Trusty out across the fields and pulverised every ugly I could find. I don’t even remember it that well, it was just, find, kill, find, kill…
We’d only been going out in daylight before then but, in my anger, I carried on through the nights. That’s how I learned about their inability to evade in darkness. Eventually, though, one got me. I found three munching on a dead cow and ran straight at them. Took out the first two easily enough, but the third managed to scratch my leg with a bloody fingernail just before I clobbered it into oblivion. Once I realised its nail had broken the skin, it was like a switch had been flicked inside me. That’s it, I’m dead too. I lost my bloodlust and came back here.
*
If none of this had happened, I think my sister would have eventually gone into medicine. I was doing okay at College but she was top of her class at school. And she had a really kind nature too. She’d never squish any bugs that got trapped in our house; she’d get a glass, scoop the little critter up and seal it inside with a book. Then she’d take it outside and release it, even if it was a wasp.
*
I’ve decided that here’s not the place. I'll hit Submit and then I’m going to do it in those woods I wrote about; consider this diary as my Note. I’ll be able to find a nice spot to sit and look at the trees, some place that's calm and peaceful. I’m going to leave the picture of Guitar Girl in this cellar, she belongs in this house. The tree leaves will remind me of my sister more than any photo ever could anyway.
I guess all that’s left to say is thank you for listening.
I know it’s possible that no one will ever read this, but that’s not really the point is it?
Love,
X

Unforgiven 2006 (Raw)
Date: 17/9/06
Location: Air Canada Center, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Intercontinental Championship:
Shelton Benjamin (c) vs Jeff Hardy
(Jeff Hardy returns to the WWE after being away for 3 years the night after SummerSlam and immediately sets his sight on the Intercontinental Championship. Shelton Benjamin says that Hardy is going to wish he never came back after he embarrasses him at Unforgiven. Jeff Hardy wins the championship in his first big match back in the company to end Shelton’s 10 month reign as champion.)
Kane vs Umaga w/Armando Estrada
(An angry Kane wants revenge on Umaga for costing him the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam. The Big Red Monster challenges The Samoan Bulldozer to a match at Unforgiven, promising to unleash vengeance. Armando Estrada accepts on Umaga’s behalf and promises that he’ll destroy Kane to remain undefeated. Umaga wins thanks to a distraction from Estrada.)
WWE World Tag Team Championship:
Carlito & Chris Masters (c) vs The Highlanders vs Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch vs D-Generation X
Women’s Championship:
Lita (c) vs Trish Stratus
(Trish Stratus announces that she’s retiring at Unforgiven but wants to bow out in style in her hometown of Toronto so she calls out Lita and challenges her to one final battle. Lita accepts the challenge and says that it’ll be a privilege to beat Trish in her last match while embarrassing her in front of her own people. Trish Stratus forces Lita to submit to The Sharpshooter and wins the Women’s Championship for the last time, bowing out in style the way she dreamed. Trish receives a standing ovation from the Toronto crowd as she heads to the back.)
Ric Flair vs Randy Orton
(The Legend Killer continues attacking his former mentor after SummerSlam even despite winning because that old man just refuses to stay down when he should for his own good. An angry Flair challenges Orton to another match here, Orton accepts.)
Tables, Ladders and Chairs Match for the WWE Championship:
Edge (c) vs John Cena
(With Rob Van Dam being out of the picture, John Cena challenges Edge to put the WWE Championshipon the line against him. Cena says apart from Edge’s cowardly act at New Year’s Revolution, him and Edge are even in a one on one capacity with The Rated R Superstar winning at WrestleMania and Cena winning at Backlash. Edge says that he’ll accept as long as it’s all on his terms meaning he gets to pick when it happens and also gets to pick the stipulation which Cena says is fine. Edge says it’s going to be at Unforgiven in his hometown of Toronto. The match? A match he made famous… Tables, Ladders and Chairs! Cena vows to shut Edge up and regain top spot on Raw, even if it means beating Edge in his type of environment. During the match, Lita interferes but she receives an FU from John Cena. Edge meanwhile sneaks up the ladder but Cena climbs up and gets to him on time, delivers an FU to Edge through two tables and retrieves the WWE Championship! Unforgiven draws to a close with John Cena back on top.)
Notes:
(Trish Stratus vacates the Women’s Championship the night after Unforgiven and thanks the fans who give her an unbelievable ovation with Thank You Trish chants.)
(John Cena beats Edge in a rematch on the Raw after Unforgiven in a Steel Cage match despite Edge recruiting Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch because DX even the numbers.)
(Edge hosts The Cutting Edge and forms an alliance with Randy Orton. Rated-RKO is born!)
(Sabu returns and wins the ECW Championship against The Sandman.)
No Mercy 2006 (SmackDown)
Date: 8/10/06
Location: RBC Center, Raleigh, North Carolina
Cruiserweight Championship:
Gregory Helms (c) vs Super Crazy
WWE Tag Team Championship:
Paul London & Brian Kendrick (c) vs The Pitbulls
Submission Match for the United States Championship:
Chris Benoit (c) vs William Regal
I Quit Match:
Rey Mysterio vs Chavo Guerrero
(Rey Mysterio demands answers and wants to know why on earth has Chavo Guerrero turned his back on him. Chavo says it’s really an easy thing to explain. He says that Rey was leeching off Eddie’s name when it should’ve been him and it makes him feel sick to his stomach. Chavo says he’s better than Rey and Eddie was too. Rey says all he did was honour his friend and win the title his late friend also earned before passing away and all Chavo is doing is spitting in the face of people like Eddie by taking his dedication of being World Champion away from him. Chavo challenges Rey to a match at No Mercy to prove he’s better than him. Rey accepts and the stakes are upped when Teddy Long announces it’ll be an I Quit Match. During the match, Chavo injures Rey’s knee and does so much damage with a steel chair to the point Rey has no choice but to say I Quit.)
The Undertaker vs Mr.Kennedy
(Mr.Kennedy wants to make a name for himself so he calls out The Undertaker although gets ignored by The Deadman. Kennedy takes matters into his own hands and attacks The Undertaker on an episode of SmackDown during a match against Finlay and finally draws his attention. Kennedy says The Undertaker no longer ignoring him is what he wants and demands a match at No Mercy. The Undertaker accepts and tells Kennedy he’s tried him so now he’ll make him famous and also tells him that he’s just dug an unnecessary grave for himself. The Undertaker is about to win until a debuting MVP provides a distraction to the referee. This allows Kennedy to smash Taker over the head with a chair before pinning him to escape with the victory.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Booker T (c) w/Sharmell vs Bobby Lashley vs Batista
(Batista and Bobby Lashley face in a SummerSlam rematch on SmackDown but this time to determine the #1 Contender for the World Heavyweight Championship. Booker T interferes, attacks both men and causes a no contest thinking it’ll mean he doesn’t have to face either man. Teddy Long however has news for Booker T and tells him his tactics have backfired because at No Mercy, he’ll be facing both men! Booker T is furious but Teddy Long tells him it’s his no one’s fault but his own. Booker T accuses Teddy of abusing power but says he’ll retain because he’s the best on SmackDown, Bobby Lashley says this is the opportunity he’s wanted and promises to take the chance with both hands. Batista says he never lost the World Heavyweight Championship and promises that it’s only a matter of time before he’s once again the top dog on SmackDown. Finlay interferes during the match and smashes Bobby Lashley over the head with his Shillelagh. This allows Booker T to capitalise and pin Lashley to retain his World Heavyweight Championship. After the match, Batista delivers a Batista Bomb to the World Champion and signals this is far from over as No Mercy draws to a close.)
Cyber Sunday 2006 (Raw)
Date: 5/11/06
Location: U.S. Bank Arena, Cincinnati, Ohio
Cryme Tyme vs Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch
Carlito vs Chris Masters
(Chris Masters turns on Carlito after they lose their tag team title rematch against DX. This turns Carlito face in the process. Carlito says what Masters done wasn’t cool but what will be cool is him kicking his ass and beating him right in the middle of the ring. Masters says Carlito was the weak link of the group who he protected for months.)
Two-out-of-Three Falls Match for the Intercontinental Championship:
Jeff Hardy (c) vs Shelton Benjamin (2-0)
Vacant Women’s Championship:
Mickie James vs Lita
WWE World Tag Team Championship:
D-Generation X (c) vs Rated-RKO (By Disqualification)
(Edge and Randy Orton after forming an alliance immediately set their sights on the World Tag Team Championship . Edge says DX are nothing but a disease who are the reason he isn’t the WWE Champion meanwhile Randy Orton says Shawn Michaels is a legend he’s yet to take care of and he’s never forgotten about or gotten over Triple H turning his back on him when they were in Evolution together. DX say Edge and Orton are without doubt two of the biggest cry baby bitches in the whole company and will take nothing but pride punching their teeth down their throats at Cyber Sunday. DX are about to win after Triple H Pedigrees Randy Orton but Edge smashes The Game over the head with a chair which causes a disqualification. Edge and Orton attack DX with chairs and leave them in a bloody mess.)
Loser Leaves Raw Match:
Kane vs Umaga w/Armando Estrada
(Umaga wins clean to close out the feud and send Kane to SmackDown.)
Falls Count Anywhere Match for the WWE Championship:
John Cena (c) vs Rob Van Dam
(Rob Van Dam returns from suspension and asks John Cena for his one on one rematch. Cena says not only is he a fighting champion but he also has a point to prove seeing as Van Dam beat him at One Night Stand and their match at Vengeance didn’t have a clear winner so he accepts. Van Dam offers Cena to up the stakes further by making their match a Falls Count Anywhere Match and Cena accepts. John Cena retains after delivering an FU to Van Dam through 2 tables and redeems his loss from ECW One Night Stand. Both men shake hands after the match to close out the feud.)
Notes:
(Rey Mysterio goes away to have knee surgery and is out for the foreseeable.)
(The ECW Roster cause chaos during a match between The Undertaker and MVP on SmackDown, destroy both men and others on the roster and do the same on Raw during a match between Edge and Shawn Michaels, making their message clear.)
Survivor Series 2006
Date: 26/11/06
Location: Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
United States Championship:
Chris Benoit (c) vs Chavo Guerrero
(After beating Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero says he’s restored pride and dignity back into the Guerrero name. Chavo is interrupted by Chris Benoit, a man Chavo thinks will be on his side. Benoit however tells Chavo that if he thinks he’s on his side after what he did to Rey Mysterio then he’s sorely mistaken. He tells Chavo what he did to Rey was disgusting, not what Eddie would want and Chavo is doing nothing but living in Eddie’s shadow. This enrages Chavo to the point he attacks Benoit and demands a match for the United States Championship so he can take something from him too like he did Rey Mysterio when he cost him the World Heavyweight Championship. Benoit retains after Chavo submits to The Crossface.)
Intercontinental Championship:
Jeff Hardy (c) vs Shelton Benjamin vs Johnny Nitro w/Melina vs Carlito
Title vs Career Match for the Women’s Championship:
Lita (c) vs Mickie James
(Lita says Trish Stratus retiring is hilarious and jokingly says if she loses to Mickie James at Survivor Series, she’ll retire. Mickie then dares Lita to actually put her career on the line against her at Survivor Series. Lita says she’s that confident seeing as she’s beating Mickie twice already that she accepts. Mickie James finally beats Lita to win the Women’s Championship and ends Lita’s career. Lita leaves to a chorus of boos and gets taunted by the crowd with goodbye chants. Cryme Tyme do NOT sl*t shame her.)
Cruiserweight Championship:
Gregory Helms (c) vs Jimmy Wang Yang
World Heavyweight Championship:
Booker T (c) w/Sharmell vs Batista
(Batista says that he can’t stand Booker T and wants to face him one on one at Survivor Series. Booker T says no and has nothing to prove but Teddy Long grants Batista his wish after making a case that Batista hasn’t had his one on one rematch for the title he never lost. Booker T is furious and Batista tells him his days as World Heavyweight Champion are numbered since he’s never lost a singles match for a title. Booker T tries heel tactics and Sharmell tries to help too but their tactics backfire, Batista is prepared and counters, delivers a Batista Bomb and pins Booker T to win the World Heavyweight Championship.)
Survivor Series Tag Team Match:
Team SmackDown (The Undertaker, Kane, Bobby Lashley, Mr.Kennedy & MVP) vs Team ECW (Sabu, Rob Van Dam, Tommy Dreamer, CM Punk & The Big Show) vs Team Raw (John Cena, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Randy Orton & Edge)
(Paul Heyman says that ECW invaded Raw and SmackDown because he wants to establish the fact that ECW is well and truly back and can hang in the big leagues, even if it means causing a war. Teams are filled with men who can’t stand each other and this night is all about if they can get along and win for their brand. There’s plenty of chaos and fighting amongst the teams since Cena & DX hate Orton & Edge, Taker & Kane hate MVP & Kennedy, Sabu hates Dreamer. The match comes down to Rob Van Dam and Edge. Van Dam has the upper hand until Randy Orton RKO’s him and his partner Edge capitalises to win this match for Team Raw in a very fun and chaotic affair.)
(Sole Survivor: Edge)
December to Dismember 2006 (ECW)
Date: 3/12/06
Location: James Brown Arena, Augusta, Georgia
Extreme Rules Match:
Balls Mahoney vs Elijah Burke
Hardcore Holly vs The Great Khali w/Daivari
Extreme Rules Match:
The Hardy Boyz vs MNM w/Melina
Justin Credible vs Marcus Cor Von
Stevie Richards vs Test
Elimination Chamber Match for the ECW Championship:
Sabu (c) vs The Big Show vs The Sandman vs Tommy Dreamer vs CM Punk vs Rob Van Dam
Note:
(The Big Show leaves the company after this event to rest up seeing as he’s burned out from all the travelling.)
Armageddon 2006 (SmackDown)
Date: 17/12/06
Location: Richmond Coliseum, Richmond, Virginia
Ladder Match for the WWE Tag Team Championship:
Paul London & Brian Kendrick (c) vs MNM vs Finlay & William Regal vs The Hardy Boyz
(Poor Joey Mercury still gets his nose broke here.)
Cruiserweight Championship:
Gregory Helms (c) vs Jimmy Wang Yang
Bobby Lashley vs Finlay w/Little Bastard
(Bobby Lashley wants revenge on Finlay for costing him the World Heavyweight Championship at No Mercy for Theodore Long announces that they’ll face off at Armageddon. Lashley wins here and is then traded to Monday Night Raw.)
United States Championship:
Chris Benoit (c) vs Chavo Guerrero w/Vickie Guerrero
(After losing at Survivor Series, Chavo Guerrero continues to attack Chris Benoit since he can’t accept what Benoit said about him living in Eddie’s shadow. Chavo gets Vickie Guerrero involved and Vickie says to Benoit that perhaps what he’s saying is true but Chavo’s heart is in the right place. Vickie comes to her senses and slaps Chavo which helps Chris Benoit retain as he locks in The Crossface and Chavo taps.)
Kane vs MVP
No Holds Barred Match:
The Undertaker vs Mr.Kennedy
(Mr. Kennedy continues attacking The Undertaker and claims beating him wasn’t enough, he wants to finish him. Kennedy claims Taker is nothing but smoke and mirrors nowadays, has reached a point someone needs to put him down and that man is MRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR… GONG! Taker Chokeslam’s Kennedy and tells him they’ll face off at Armageddon in a No Holds Barred Match! Taker also tells Kennedy his fate will be sealed for good at Armageddon and he’s going to put an end to this for good. The Undertaker wins in a brutal affair.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Batista (c) vs Booker T w/Sharmell
(Booker T invokes his rematch clause and promises to win back the World Heavyweight Championship. Batista says he’s just getting started when it comes to being back on top of the food chain on SmackDown and promises just like at Survivor Series, he’ll kick Booker T’s ass to end 2006 on a high. Batista retains the title even despite Sharmell’s best attempts yet again to help Booker T win the title back.)
And that’s part 43 over and done with! 2006 is officially in the history books with 2007 just around the corner. I’ll be back tomorrow for part 44 where we’ll see Triple H injure his quad again, an iconic Royal Rumble match and the biggest threat to The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak in years. Stay safe and stay tuned!

We found two friendly staffordshire bull terriers in Williams wandering around, hot as hell. Male -brown I. Neutered, female - black, presence of previous pregnancy (large nipples). No collars on female.
We caught the female before the male wandered off. She’ll be at the Garland shelter within an hour or so.
I’m thankful they’re friendly because they interrupted a meeting with a repair person. Keep your dogs contained. Not everyone loves these big giant jawed creatures like I do.

I spend all of my daylight hours scared and alone in this musty old cellar.
It’s woeful, and I bet it smelled this bad even before everything around here turned to crap. Great. My second sentence and I’ve already resorted to swearing. When I decided I’d start this diary (five minutes ago when I got a tiny sliver of signal) I thought it would be my poetic and deeply-moving goodbye to the world. Maybe I’d write about love and loss, or maybe the splendour of nature. Then, when all is done and dusted, I’d have left something to be remembered by. As well as my corpse, of course.
This was a bad idea.
*
Okay, I’m an idiot. There’s nothing else I can do down here. I’ve rooted through every cardboard box a hundred times, organised and reorganised my supplies, I’ve even built a fort. So, I’m back. Hello. Again. God, this diary is going badly.
But there’s just enough light coming through the boards I nailed over the cellar’s tiny window to type by. So I may as well type. Stops me staring up at the window just waiting for a shadow to pass by.
Maybe I'll just write and not hit Submit. Right, where to start? Well, my name is – actually, I think I’m going to refer to myself as ‘X’. That sounds mysterious. If you’re reading this and want to know my real name, I still carry my purse. My railcard is in there and, if you really want to know who I am, go find me and fish it out. I won’t bite...
So, my name is X. I live in a little English village in the middle of nowhere. Before all this happened, I had a mum, a dad, a sister and there was a boy I liked, his name was Jonah.
*
I couldn’t think of anything else to write so I waited until I came back from my rounds. That’s the stupid name I have for when I go outside at night scrounging for stuff. Drinks are the hardest. I only trust bottles or cans, or did, and I was running out of places to search for them. But I guess that doesn’t matter now.
My leg is doing alright actually; didn’t hold me up at all. I saw Jonah too. He’s looked better, I have to say. It’s strange because this is only the second time I’ve seen him since we came here. Maybe his ears were burning.
Anyway, I found some tinned pineapple in a creepy old caravan I hadn’t searched yet. Had to bust the door open with Old Trusty – which I thought might attract some unwanted attention – but it was fine. I’m actually eating the pineapple right now, tastes good. I also found a radio in there. I already have three down here, but none of them work. Not that the caravan radio works either, all you get is static. It’s just nice to collect something. You know, to have a hobby.
*
I can tell the sun is rising. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but I woke up after a bad dream. I know some people can remember their dreams, but I never do. I wake up and grasp at them, but I never manage a hold before they fade away. It’s like trying to pinch the corner of a wisp of smoke; the harder you try, the quicker it fades to nothing. I’m just left with a sensation, a kind of imprint which sums up the most intense part of the dream.
And a cold sweat. That’s new.
*
I’ve been through the box of photo albums I found at the back of the cellar again. I’ve looked through them a few times now, but I always notice something new.
There’s a photo of this little girl playing with a pretend guitar. I can tell it’s pretend because it doesn’t have strings, only brightly-coloured plastic dials. Kind of like My First Guitar Hero or something. The girl has dark hair and she looks a tiny bit like my sister did a million years ago. I don’t have a picture of my sister. I suppose I could go and get one from my old house, but it’s right in the middle of the village. I’m lucky I wasn’t torn to shreds the last time I went back. So, what I’ve done is put this girl’s photo in my back pocket as a substitute.
I guess I should probably write something about my real sister now. But I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet.
*
Daylight is starting to fade and I’m getting ready to go out on my rounds. I always take my satchel with me, packed with useful objects. I have Old Trusty (a crowbar) which sticks out of the top for easy access, a small toolbox, a pair of heavy-duty gloves (there’s a good story about how I got those, I might write that one down later) and a hammer. I carry a penknife I found down here in my pocket, my purse and phone, and a torch in my hand.
I don’t like to use the torch because its battery is running out and there’s always the chance it might attract them. I probably shouldn’t have used it last night when I got back. Maybe I’m starting to enjoy this writing malarkey? I need to be careful with luxuries.
*
Okay, that could have gone better.
Picture the scene: I’m using Old Trusty to try and lever a kitchen window open, when one of them just walks right through the garden hedge. Seriously, straight through it. It’s not the mightiest of hedges but, still, it just appeared like it was walking through one of those Japanese paper walls. My satchel was on the ground, but I legged it anyway. I’m not stupid. I know I can go back for it tomorrow. I felt strangely naked without it on the way back here though.
Like I said before, I need to be careful with the torch so I think I’ll try and get some sleep now.
*
I slept pretty well last night; no nightmares or cold sweats. Maybe a midnight chase was just what I needed to blow away the cobwebs.
I actually woke up wondering about you. If you’re reading this, who are you? If you’re like me, living through this village nightmare, how have you managed to go this long without being killed or whatever? Maybe you’re Army or some such. Maybe you’re just some kid who’s played so many videogames that surviving all of this was already second nature to you. Or maybe you’re like me; living on borrowed time and searching for a good place to die. Maybe Future Me was brave enough to tap Submit on my diary and you're currently reading this on your phone or computer.
Here’s an idea. Maybe you can carry on this diary from wherever I left it at. God, I really hope this isn’t my last entry, although I suppose any entry might be. If you do carry the diary forwards, and I'm a corpse, maybe it will become cursed. Spooky.
*
I’ve been preparing for my next excursion.
If I know I’m going somewhere I’ll likely run into an ugly, I like to take extra precautions. And I want my satchel back. It was a present from my dad, and I know it cost him a lot of money.
So, I’m taking a pair of shears from the shelf of old tools down here. That way, if I lose Old Trusty, I’ll have a backup weapon.
If you are local, I wonder how you like to kill them? Pretty morbid question I know, but everyone around here seems to have their preferred method. The last villager I saw alive carried a pair of mini cricket bats and seemed to have bludgeoning down to an art form. He never saw me though, I was watching from a grove of trees as he killed his way along the main road near the village.
That was before I decided to stay inside during the daylight hours. We can at least see a little bit at night; ambient light and everything. They can’t though. I’ve seen them, they bump into things. It’s pretty funny to be honest. If they hear a noise, they walk in the direction of the sound, never trying to avoid any object in their path. They either bash said object out of the way, or, like that hedge, blunder right through it. Obviously bigger things stop them dead (ha!) though. If that happens, they sort of shuffle backwards and then try again a few times. Eventually – and I’ve seen this too – they just give up and stand there, waiting for something else to attract their attention.
That’s not how it works in the daytime though.
*
I think it’s about an hour before the sun sets so it’s nearly time to head out. I’m going to change my bandage. One minute.
Okay, it didn’t look that bad really. The original scratch wasn’t too deep and now the wound seems to be doing that scabbing thing I remember from normal injuries. It just doesn’t smell very good. A bit like when you walk past a bin that needs emptying.
Anyway, I’ve applied more antiseptic and redressed it. Time to go.
*
That was fun. I’m glad I had those shears with me.
I got my satchel back you’ll be happy to know. And I got inside that house I’d been trying to break into as well. More through necessity than choice in the end, but I’m pleased I did. I found more batteries! That means I can justify writing at night a bit more. In fact, the people who used to live there (I think the husband owned the local garage) were pretty well kitted out. There were a lot of tins in their cupboards, and they’d even left a shotgun. It wasn’t loaded though.
Not that I need a shotgun. I didn’t tell you this before, but I have my grandpa’s old service revolver. He always told me and my sister that it was decommissioned, but my dad apparently knew otherwise. I keep it tucked into the back of my jeans at all times. It had three bullets, one of them is gone, so only two left.
I’ll only be needing the one of course.
*
Morning. I’m feeling pretty low today. I think concentrating on getting my satchel back took my mind off things, but now I feel pretty deflated.
Surely that’s understandable? The village I knew and loved has been replaced with this sodding hell. I miss my family, my friends, TV and hot dinners and Instagram. Before all of this I was a pretty positive person. Sure, I had a bit of trouble getting up in the morning, but, once I was up, that was it. I’d meet the day’s challenges head on, try to enjoy myself as much as I could. Not today though.
Maybe if I write about Jonah I’ll cheer up. Not Jonah as he is now of course, Jonah when he was all smooth-skinned, curly-haired and bright-eyed. Now he’s like the anti-Jonah or something. His face looks like it lost a fight with an angry lobster. No, wait, I’m supposed to be writing about Jonah version one here.
He’s one of those people that I can’t remember meeting. My family has always lived around here and so there are lots of people who have just always been, if you get me. I always thought we would drunkenly get it together at a party – that’s what I’d usually do if there was a boy I liked. Classy.
*
I’ve perked up a bit. Out of sheer frustration I went upstairs (naughty, I know) and looked out of a window. Sure, I saw an ugly, wandering aimlessly as they always do, but I saw that the trees are starting to turn too. That means it’s nearly autumn, and I love autumn!
My sister and I always used to go out and kick leaves at each other in the autumn. I don’t know if it was because of her low centre of gravity, but my sister was amazing at it. She could somehow whip up a blazing whirlwind of golden-yellow and fire-red, surrounding us both in a leaf storm that I couldn’t help but flail my arms madly at. Then we’d both fall backwards into the leaves laughing, me wondering how on earth what had happened was possible. She was that good.
God, I let her down in the end.
*
I think I’ll stay away from the house with the shotgun tonight. It usually takes a day or two for a group of uglies to disperse once they’re all riled up. I could use the rest of that tinned food I suppose, but I’ve got plenty to be getting on with for now.
Instead, I think I’ll swing by another farmhouse I was scoping out before I decided to turn nocturnal. I never met the people who used to live there, but I remember Mum telling me they liked their privacy. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me visiting now though.
Also, there’s a woodland between here and there and I might be able to find some leaves to kick about a bit. I think that would make me feel close to my sister again.
I’ll check back in later.
*
I’m still alive, but only just.
I made it through the woods just fine (only the odd leaf on the forest floor at the moment though, sadly), the trouble started at the farmhouse. I couldn’t get in – the doors and windows were barricaded – so I tried one of the outbuildings. Locked. It had a cat flap though.
My first instinct was to leave it, but then I wondered if there might be something useful inside. Lord knows what thinking about it now. I lifted the cat flap with one hand and shone the torch beam through with my other. That’s when an ugly dived at my pinkies. Luckily, it misjudged its leap and got a mouthful of plastic cat flap instead. As for me, I fell backwards onto my bum.
Next, the damn thing started bashing on the door from the inside. I don’t think it could ever have got out, but the noise attracted more uglies from out of nowhere. I only just managed to outmanoeuvre them and hightail it back into the woods.
That’s not the worst of it though. On the way back my leg started to hurt. A lot.
*
I woke up this morning and I’m walking with a limp. It’s funny, Dad had a limp when he and Mum died. He was nailing planks of wood across our windows and doors because there was no signal (as per bloody usual) and we thought that what was happening here was probably happening everywhere. It's only recently that I realised this was an isolated, local outbreak. Anyway, Dad dropped the hammer onto his toe, he always was useless at DIY. I think it was only a couple of hours after that when he and Mum were taken.
It was like a wave of death. No, not like, that’s exactly what it was. A hoard of uglies swept through the village, probably originating from the secret research facility in the woods we're not supposed to know about. My sister and I wouldn’t have had a prayer if Mum and Dad hadn’t charged down the first few that got into our house. They gave us just enough time to escape, to run away and leave them to die. My sister was screaming all the way and I had to drag her like she was four again.
She wouldn’t speak to me for a few days after that. I didn’t blame her, I hated myself too. But I would have hated myself even more if I hadn’t done what I did next. On my own, I snuck back into our house with the crowbar I found here. Then I dispatched my parents. I can’t bring myself to type it any other way. It wasn’t like in the movies, I didn’t pound their skulls into mush whilst sobbing, ‘Why?’ over and over again. I just found them, or what was left of them, forced the crowbar through each of their eye sockets, and came straight back here.
Then came the crying.
*
I haven’t told you about the heavy-duty gloves yet, have I?
After I got back from our old house, my sister started speaking to me again. A shared, day-long cry will do that for sisters. Once we felt up to it, we decided to explore the parts of the farmhouse we hadn’t searched yet. All the bedrooms were empty, only a few belongings flung about the place (I suspect the previous tenants left in a hurry). The problem came when we investigated the attic. Once we’d opened the ceiling panel in the upstairs hallway, once we’d pulled the compact staircase down, I went up. My sister stood at the top of the hatchway shining the torch beam over my shoulder. And that’s when it touched me. Terrified, I fell to my left, screaming as the thing came crashing down on top of me. I was yelling things like, ‘Shoot it!’ and, ‘Run!’ but my sister was just laughing her head off. I soon realised that my attacker was in fact a shop-window mannequin.
I think the people who previously lived here must have been arty (or into some seriously freaky stuff) because the mannequin was dressed in scarves, bandannas, ties, watches – loads of things. The rest of the attic was pretty empty but at least we got the mannequin’s gloves.
*
I’m not feeling good at the moment. I’ve got a sore throat and I’ve coughed up blood a couple of times. My leg pain is getting worse too.
I don’t think I’ll go out tonight. I have enough tins left and one of them is a Full English In A Can. Sounds pretty disgusting, but intriguing at the same time. I’ve been saving it for near the end. A sort of consolation prize.
*
There are two mattresses down here. Obviously one is mine, and the other one was my sister’s. After she died, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. I don’t have a photo of her, only Guitar Girl’s. Her bed is the only thing of hers I have left. And she didn’t even sleep in it that many times.
*
The tinned Full English was vile! You’ve got to laugh though, what else can you do?
*
I’m crying as I write this. Tears of sorrow, shame and regret.
It happened as we were searching a cottage just off of the main road. We’d used Old Trusty to get inside, and I’d rushed straight into the kitchen to find the food. We’d run out more than a day before and I was famished. My sister followed me into the kitchen, a wide grin on her pretty little face because I was sitting there with an open can of beans. Then one of them came at her from behind. I must have walked right past it on my stupid way to the cupboards. It bit into her neck and blood gushed over the tiles in a torrent. As she yelled out in agony, I leapt up and implanted the crowbar right into the thing’s skull. It crumpled to the floor, but the damage was done.
‘Don’t let me lose myself.’ That was the last thing my sister whispered to me before she passed out. Her wound was much more severe than mine is, and much closer to the brain. That seems to make it quicker. I took grandpa’s revolver from behind my back and blew her brains out.
I buried her in the back garden.
*
After my sister died I went kind of crazy. I took Old Trusty out across the fields and pulverised every ugly I could find. I don’t even remember it that well, it was just, find, kill, find, kill…
We’d only been going out in daylight before then but, in my anger, I carried on through the nights. That’s how I learned about their inability to evade in darkness. Eventually, though, one got me. I found three munching on a dead cow and ran straight at them. Took out the first two easily enough, but the third managed to scratch my leg with a bloody fingernail just before I clobbered it into oblivion. Once I realised its nail had broken the skin, it was like a switch had been flicked inside me. That’s it, I’m dead too. I lost my bloodlust and came back here.
*
If none of this had happened, I think my sister would have eventually gone into medicine. I was doing okay at College but she was top of her class at school. And she had a really kind nature too. She’d never squish any bugs that got trapped in our house; she’d get a glass, scoop the little critter up and seal it inside with a book. Then she’d take it outside and release it, even if it was a wasp.
*
I’ve decided that here’s not the place. I'll hit Submit and then I’m going to do it in those woods I wrote about; consider this diary as my Note. I’ll be able to find a nice spot to sit and look at the trees, some place that's calm and peaceful. I’m going to leave the picture of Guitar Girl in this cellar, she belongs in this house. The tree leaves will remind me of my sister more than any photo ever could anyway.
I guess all that’s left to say is thank you for listening.
I know it’s possible that no one will ever read this, but that’s not really the point is it?
Love,
X

TDLR: I love him to bits, but don’t see a future with him in which I am happy. In addition to our standards of cleanliness being different and some possible incompatibilities, I think this relationship is just taking too much out of me for this time in my life.
At this point I’m afraid I might be making a mistake, but many times I’m just so tired of being with him. My partner (26m) and I (26f) have been dating for about 3 years. This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in, and there’s so much love and care between us. The thing is, I just can’t imagine a future with him, and I’m wondering if the things holding me back are… valid enough I guess?
I’m open to marriage in general at some point in my life… and he knows this. But for some reason, when I imagine a future with him I just feel miserable about it. He is so incredibly messy, and never learned to clean. We don’t live together anymore because of finances, but when we did it was awful. I eventually gave up on cleaning. I would go to work for 8 hours after cleaning, and come home to the house a wreck. I’ve never lived in filth like that before, it started to take a toll on my mental health. Even when he cleaned, he did a terrible job. I have since talked to him about going on youtube to learn how to clean, and he said he would. I don’t know if he has.
Another thing is I’m certain I don’t want children, but he says he is still on the fence. When I told him I had realized I don’t want kids (I was on the fence too when we met), he asked if I would be opposed to him donating sperm in the future… so I think he actually does want kids, whether he raises them or not. I get concerned he’s lying to himself, and will say he doesn’t want kids to stay together when he actually does want them deep-down. If he does want them, I don’t want to waste our time anymore, when he could be meeting someone else who also wants kids, and I could be focusing on other areas of my life than a committed relationship.
Another issue I’m having is that he’s quite clingy. I already spend more time than I have with him, but it’s never enough. I want to spend time with him too, but I have things to get done. I have an elderly family member and my dogs to take care of (as well as myself), and he just doesn’t have that much responsibility other than school. We’re both full-time students. I care very much about my grades because I’m trying to get into a selective Ph.D program next year, yet he always asks me to hangout and watch movies when I’ve already told him I need to study. When I do refuse, he gets all sad and quiet, and I end up feeling guilty. I know he does this on purpose, guilt-tripping is his go-to move.
We will both be graduating university next year, and future planning has caused some problems. He isn’t sure what he wants to do. He bounces back and forth between working in the industry his degree will be in, or going on to law school. Like I said, I’ll be pursuing a Ph.D program.
The thing is, though there aren’t many universities in the U.S that have the specialty I want, so I will definitely have to move out of sate, maybe very far. This fact causes him to spiral on a regular basis.
He’s extremely anxious to move to another state, especially since the cost of living is higher pretty much everywhere else in the country. But he also doesn’t want to do long-distance, which I would be fine with… I just want him and I both to pursue the career paths best for us. But he keeps pressuring me to go to graduate school in-state, even though no schools here can train me in what I want to do. I noticed since I told him about moving, he has started calling me more and more often while I’m at school, upset about something random (think traffic-jam-level stuff) which I then spend half an hour talking him down. I know this may sound crazy, but I’m beginning to think he’s trying to sabotage me? Maybe even subconsciously?
Anyways, my head is too immersed in the fog to get a good read on the relationship, so I ask you, internet strangers, for your opinion. Do you think I’d be justified in breaking up with him? Is there something about my role in all this that I’m not seeing? Any comments would be helpful, thank you.

PART III of our Character Study of Gorou Amamiya is an intermezzo chapter. We'll rehash some content from the previous parts and try to understand them on a basic structural level . This is more of an extra edition I allowed myself to write down since this was impossible to fit into the main study without unnecessary distractions . Last but not least some conversations that followed from the previous releases had been ever so fruitful for the creation of either new or advancing preexisted ideas .
This is an Analysis of the Good and the Evil, the Heroe's Journey, the Problem and the Solution.

For thosee who are new here and haven't read the previous parts: You still can just enjoy MYTHOLOGICAL LORE! Scroll down until you see all the Hyperlinks or better start a bit earlier at "3. Entertainment"

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SANATORIUM - DISEASES - TREATMENTS
In Part I we discussed Gorou's loner existence in a rural city that would mainly revolve around the mountain hospital he works at. Due to low patients frequency Gorou had lots of free time to hang around mostly in patient rooms. Besides of highlighting a selfish reason for his behaviour, the general assumption was that his arrangement was convenient. Just a doctor hanging around at his workplace, right?
Now I'd like to flesh this picture out for you. This previous one was actually pretty dull, it allows too many variables in a story that is actually very intentional. Since Aka Akasaka - as well known - had figured out the beginning and the ending of the story he wants to tell before the manga even started, it's obvious that the beginning scenery is thrilled with symbols, metaphors and meanings for both the Heros but also the meta plot itself and is interconnected with the story's ending in which all those pre-established elements will meet a final resolution to its opposite: In principle this is what you all know as the "Hero's journey".
First lets talk about location location location, as real estate agents love to say. And indeed the location is essential to the plot. Our story begins in a rural hospital. Stop. Actually "hospital" is already too arbitrary of a word and misses the significance of the location. A more accurate word for a rural hospital on a mountain is the Sanatorium. A Sanatorium is an antiquated name for specialised hospitals, for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments and convalescence. Sanatoriums are tradionally located in healthy climate, usually in the countryside. In the 19th and 20th century these were popular centers for tuberculosis suffers. Some of you might be familiar with Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" (german: Der Zauberberg) which is the most prominent novel revolving around such an institution. Magic Mountain, huh? So we have our Sanatorium, we have our countryside Mountain and certainly we have our magic through the sanctuary of Ame-No-Uzume Goddess of Entertainment and the reincarnation on top of that mountain.
Now that we have established the location lets look at our most prominent patients. What's so special about their condition that they would need treatment in a specialised hospital? How are they all connected to each other? Our most prominent patients are Sarina Tendoji, Ai Hoshino and ... well ... Gorou Amamiya.
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1. Gorou Amamiya

The alert reader immediately knows why I include Gorou Amamiya in that list. I know, including Ai is actually the hot take here. But be patient, we'll get o her later.
Since we established Aqua's trauma to be inherited from Gorou and explored the tragic nature of his birth and the abuse he suffered during his childhood, his inclusion is reasonable. But this - only way later in C75 unvealed background - is already visible right from the beginning with intentional symbols, metaphors and hidden meanings. There are two levels for the representation of his illness.
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• The general representation of his life in this rural area and his habitual lurking around patient's rooms, like when Sarina was around and so on. Just sitting their while looking out the window at the beautiful landscapes. On the surface this is of course just a Doc with a qurik and a lot of free time. But no, the actual meaning is here that he's seeking a cure too. That he is sick. Patients are naturally bored in hospitals, they have a lot of free time because they are sick. They also enjoy the countryside's view. It's one of the main healing attractionto Sanatoriums and made them so popular in the 19th and 20th century. In this specific case the countryside he observes is sacret and related to entertainment. Keep this in the back of your head for now.

Thus we transformed the surface explanation that his free time as a doctor comes from low frequency to the meaningful symbolic depths that it's actually reflecting his status as a chronically ill patient. Moreso even his decision to move out of Tokyo to the countryside - what I called in part 1 the "self-imposed isolation" - turns out to be a meaningful representation of his trouble. We'll later explore another underlaying structure which is the very reason for his "existencial boredom". It's not directly trauma, but for now lets just say it's so fundamentally burned into him that as a consequence his stay at the Sanatorium is as permanently as befits his disease and eventually only ends with his death and reincarnation, or perhaps only then it actually is challenged. Stay tuned.
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• The second, now tangible representation of his diseases is what we already established in Part 1: his obsession with Ai, the inner void he tries to cure with his active measures of "medicine" in a patient's room. While technically he could've watched her literally elsewhere, he decided to hide away in a patient's room. This is a symbol. His first scene in the Manga ever starts exactly in such a room. The sister came in to check - metaphorically speaking - on the patient Gorou Amamiya. This illustration is completely intentional and meaningful to flesh out the double-sided irony of his employment at this particular hospital as a doctor and admission to the Sanatorium as a chronically ill patient.

It's the very first scene that exactly establishes that split personality. We witness a hard cut between the body language of the patient and the body language of the competent cross legged Doctor who explains to us the nature and reason he consumes this "medicine". In this scene he switches back to the doctor's role and while it's a funny cope towards the sister it's at the same time sounds like a serious prescription for himself. Absurdity meets underlaying seriousness and a real problem of the highest importance possible. A problem which is the very reason this story exsists, a problem that will embark our heros on their journey and a problem that will ultimately be solved.
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https://preview.redd.it/ewasnfmvnd3b1.jpg?width=2571&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3fed46b24063b90c79df20a7a1231eaca9208bc2
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1. Sarina Tendoji

In contrast to Gorou's more subtle immaterial deciption of his disease, Sarina's situation is basically the exterior as the utmost visible form of it. She is the embodiment of the classic Sanatorium inhabit with the typicel physical characteristics: chronic disease, handicapped existence, very care-dependent. But these 3 characteristics will show themselves also for Sarina as mental barriers after she reincarnated in Ruby. Care-dependets in her seek for Ai's, a mother's and a father's love, the handicapped existence in her troulbe to move and dance how she''d like to and ultimately the expression of a chronic disease in form of the trauma she inherited from Sarina's soul. From the point of view of "plot related meaning" Ruby's inheritance of those 3 characteristics are more important then the physical showcase in Sarina's body, although we will later also unveal another layer of particulary Sarina Tendoji not Ruby Hoshino in this story. You see, I'm really bulding up here.
She has a symbolic double function as both a sick dying child but also as physical representation of Ruby's, Aqua's and Gorou's mental situation. To quote PART II for that matter:

In a sense the image of the handicapped Sarina living in the hospital is the quintessential metaphorical representation of Gorou himself. She shows upfront what was the psychological state of Gorou's soul. When he realized in C119 that Sarina's life must've been like hell he reflected his own experience too.

But in order to apply these 3 characteristics to Gorou we first have to explore another symbolic layer to why all of our proganists revolve around this particular hospital. For this we have to step back and look at the most dominent theme of the story: Entertainment...
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3. Entertainment

... is our PATIENT ZERO. Entertainment itself in this Story is chronically ill. It's existence - the very nature of art - is handicapped and crippled by cold hearted and ultimately in opposition to the essence of entertainment standing particular business interests. Their practice of entertainment harms both artists and art enjoyers and thus the meaning of entertainment itself. Entertainment as a mass-produced industry is a disease to entertainment as the realm of the truth-seeking, philanthopic and graceful expression of the uttermost passionate creative minds who enjoy the blessing of the goddess and share her blessing with the community.
The true meaning of Entertainment is joyfull fullfillment and the exploration of new uplifting expressions of cultural life. It's a healing power in the most innocent and human-loving way, it's first and foremost an enrichtment of the soul, not of the pocket. The industry however inverted this relation: Now the money dictates the art. As a consequence talent get's blocked, content is cheap and underwhelming, instead of uplifting humanity, the mere consumer gets just as much exploited as the performer. The consumer is conditioned to waste his limited precious lifespawn with the consumption of the most primitive motives of entertainment. This is a form of exploitation through the industry and it has rotten everyone to the bone. The artist gets either drained or he himself corrupts and uses the same sort of schemes, trickes and deceptions to climb to the top. But the higher they climb the further they uproot from the essence of true entertainment ... And those who oppose and try tu succeed with honest and uplifting ideals will literally killed on the way.
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🚬
We have diagnozed the problem, the chronical disease. A disease which is the very reason for this story to exsist, a disease that will embark our heroes on their journey and a disease that will ultimately be cured. And indeed the location has proven to be essential to this plot. Our story begins with a Mountain Sanatorium in the heart and on top of the Goddesses of Entertainment's realm. A symbol for The Cure of Entertainment.
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1. Ai Hoshino

To understand why Ai seeks cure exactly at that hospital we have to expose the location she's fleeing from: Tokyo. Tokyo is the center of this plot's Entertainment industry. A metropolis is the absolute opposition to the countryside, this tension between Tokyo as the center of Business and Commerce and Takachiho as the center of the Goddess of Entertainment's true and opposing expressions of Art sets the dialectic. I was purposely holding back the name of Ame-No-Uzume's town until now because it only has a concrete meaning in this tight relation to the plot-stretching antagonist, which culminates in Tokyo. Ame-No-Uzume occupies the domain of Takachiho, but who occupies Tokyo the? It's a mix between the Japanese Mythology of the Seven Lucky Gods who are basically characterized as Gods of Business and Commerce and the Seven Deadly Demons from Christian Demonology.

1. Lucifer: pride
2. Beelzebub: envy
3. Satan: wrath
4. Abaddon: sloth
5. Mammon: greed
6. Belphegor: gluttony
7. Asmodeus: lust

It all leads to Hikaru Kamiki as our personified antagonist: If you write "Kamiki" in kanji, it will be like 光る or just 光, which literally means "to shine, to glitter, to be bright", which make a lot of sense being the name of man who got starry eyes. But, if we look a bit deeper, such name can be translated as "The Shining One" or "One who brings the Light"... In christian mythology this is - Lucifer the Morning Star himself. Double irony there in the fact that Ai often nicknamed and referenced as VENUS, Evening Star Reborn, as u/Raeliic4 pointed out to me. On top I also found a suitable association with Beelzebub which is another name for the Devil. Beelzebub is also called "The King of Flies" and in the Dictionnaire Infernal (1863) a Book on Demonology he's depicted as a Fly! So maybe he wasn't wearing only crow feathers but actually also Fly-hair?... Beelzebub is known in demonology as one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell, Beelzebub representing gluttony and envy. Gluttony = He appears as the best drinking buddy of Yura (and maybe Frill). Envy = He's envious towards the white-glooming Star-People.
Thus the antagonist is created: It's a demonic force of industrialized Entertainment that has rotten down Art to the bone and occupies Tokyo as it's center. Kamiki however is for now the most malicious and excessive release of this evilness. While the industry tries to just drain, corrupt and exploit stars, he literally kills stars out of personal envy. In order to cure Entertainment our protagonists have to be embarked on a journey to Tokyo. In this antagonistic relation Aqua and Ruby are ultimately Heroes blessed by the God of Entertainment to cast out the Devil that holds "Entertainment" in his death grip.
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Ai Hoshino's story begins with her escape from the Devil. She flees Tokyo and tries to find protection and cure in Takachiho in at least 3 meanings.
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1. AS AN IDOL : On the surface level it's because an Idol can't justify promiscurity towards her fans and because the Agency can't justify pregnancy of a Teenager, so she has to flee where nobody knows her. This is besides also a metaphor that indeed the Town of God is where nobody knows the filth of the rotten Tokyo-World. But this is just again the convenient explanation the characters verbalize towards us, as proven many times there is also a hidden symbolic dialectic to it. The IDOL as the Evening Star VENUS is an object of LUST (Asmodeus, one of the seven deadly demons). You might be familiar with the VENUSBERG) from european folklore. "In German folklore of the 16th century, the narrative becomes associated with the minnesinger Tannhäuser who becomes obsessed with worshipping the goddess Venus." But what AI seeks is real love, somethinf that can be loved. And thus she steps down from the Venusberg ("Venus Mountain") in other words steps down as an Idol of Lust to become a Mother, It's a purification - "I am Maria" she sings in the OP song. There is a metaphorically similar transformation which starts Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" Opera. Tannhäuser: The world of Venus is dedicated exclusively to LUST. Tannhäuser found his way here as a mortal, but is increasingly weary of the enjoyment (“If a god can always enjoy, I am subject to change”). Trying to persuade her knights to stay, Venus prophesied that the people would never forgive Tannhäuser for dwelling with the pagan goddess of love: he would never find salvation there. However, Tannhäuser sticks to his decision: “My salvation rests in Maria!” When Mary is invoked, the world of Venus disappears and Tannhäuser sees himself transported to a lovely forest valley in Thuringia at the foot of the Wartburg. The Beginning of Wagner's Tannhäuser basically sums up AI'S ESCAPE from her VENUS-TRAMMEL to her MATERNAL HAPPINESS. Even that this purification situates Tannhäuser in a lovely forest valley at the foot of a mountain-castle fits the narrative. Our Sanatorium in the lovely rural japanese backwaters is a powerful castle which gives her ultimate protection to bear her children. Just like that Ai "spawns" into the our plot. A minute before that she was the worshipped VENUS obsessed over by Gorou on his TV, but became the MOTHER when she entered the Castle. Gorou became her KNIGHT. Gorou had a Tannhäuser-Transformation himself, when he realized that the IDOL Ai needs him as the future MOTHER Ai and therefore overcame his lewd interest and served her as the protector of her maternity.
2. AS A BRIDE: Lucifer's wife is also associated with the she-demon LILITH, the child murderer. Ai flees her relationship with Kamiki and therefore flees from the fate of a child murderer. She was pregnant with "soulless Children" which means: Stillbirths. In german we also say "Sternenkind" (Star Child) for stillbirth. So she metaphorically flees the "marriage" between Evening Star and Morning Star and eventually opposes her fate as the child murderer LILITH who carries Sternenkinder with the help of the Knight and Hero Tannhäuser-Gorou. As Takachibo is the realm of our blessing Goddess of Art and the Sanatorium her Castle on the Magic Mountain it's fair to assume that also soul migration is only possible there in the center of her purifying power. The Devil Kamiki maybe can't even enter the Castle himself because it shields itself from Evilness...
3. AS A SAVIOUR: Just as RUBY and AQUA our AI gets send back with a Mission: To Cure Art and Entertainment. There is a lot we can say about her involvement in this but I want to cut it down to one essential plot-line: Her association with Gotanda and the following shoots for a documentary with him. Gotanda for that matter is a very, very important figure. He is the man who only wants to hear the TRUTH, a man who is capable to see through LIES instantaneous, he who CAN'T BE DECEIVED. As long as he doesn't stop the recording it is a proof for the verisimilitude of the content. He is the "NOTARY" who witnessed her TESTIMONY but also her TESTAMENT (in german we also say "LETZTER WILLE" instead of Testament, which means LAST WILL or LAST WISH... Ai's Wish). She was killed but she archived everything she needed to archive: Found true Love and passed down her LEGACY through the recordings with Gotanda. Ruby and Aqua received everything they need to fight the Evil. Ai's KARMA as a result led for her soul to enter NIRVANA and break out of the cycle of rebirth which in Buddism is called "SAMSARA" - Thus "her soul collapsed and returned to the stars and the sea. It will never be reformed again. Death is Death. Ai Hoshino doesn't think of anything anymore, nothing is on her mind" -> NIRVANA. But as far as the content of the movie goes it's obviously a big exposure of the corruption and wrong doing that is happening in the Industry. She, Goatanda but als Aqua want to archive a social phenomenom with the movie. They want CHANGE. Thus she came to Takachiho to heal and left as a HEALER and MOTHER MARIA with her Twins as the SAVIOURS of ART. In PART I and PART II we identified in full extent her role as a saviour for Ruby and Aqua in the form of Ruby's muse and mother-figure and Aqua's unconditonally loving mother that reenacted his innocence in the tragic death of Gorou's mother.

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I promised to talk about another connecting layer, the very reason why it must be exactly SARINA and GOROU who are chosen to wield the sword against the devil. But we will delay this topic for another time. PART IV will get us to the THAT CORE. They are not chosen because they have Trauma, this would be absurdly dull. The Trauma or chronical disease they suffer are the result of a "crime" against the blessings of the Goddess of Arts. That's a small hint from my side.
Thank to the faithful readers and brave souls who dived back again into another of my essays and also thanks to every new face here as well.. Hopefully I'll see you all again for the next Part!
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***

TDLR: I love him to bits, but don’t see a future with him in which I am happy. In addition to our standards of cleanliness being different and some possible incompatibilities, I think this relationship is just taking too much out of me for this time in my life.
At this point I’m afraid I might be making a mistake, but many times I’m just so tired of being with him. My partner (26m) and I (26f) have been dating for about 3 years. This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in, and there’s so much love and care between us. The thing is, I just can’t imagine a future with him, and I’m wondering if the things holding me back are… valid enough I guess?
I’m open to marriage in general at some point in my life… and he knows this. But for some reason, when I imagine a future with him I just feel miserable about it. He is so incredibly messy, and never learned to clean. We don’t live together anymore because of finances, but when we did it was awful. I eventually gave up on cleaning. I would go to work for 8 hours after cleaning, and come home to the house a wreck. I’ve never lived in filth like that before, it started to take a toll on my mental health. Even when he cleaned, he did a terrible job. I have since talked to him about going on youtube to learn how to clean, and he said he would. I don’t know if he has.
Another thing is I’m certain I don’t want children, but he says he is still on the fence. When I told him I had realized I don’t want kids (I was on the fence too when we met), he asked if I would be opposed to him donating sperm in the future… so I think he actually does want kids, whether he raises them or not. I get concerned he’s lying to himself, and will say he doesn’t want kids to stay together when he actually does want them deep-down. If he does want them, I don’t want to waste our time anymore, when he could be meeting someone else who also wants kids, and I could be focusing on other areas of my life than a committed relationship.
Another issue I’m having is that he’s quite clingy. I already spend more time than I have with him, but it’s never enough. I want to spend time with him too, but I have things to get done. I have an elderly family member and my dogs to take care of (as well as myself), and he just doesn’t have that much responsibility other than school. We’re both full-time students. I care very much about my grades because I’m trying to get into a selective Ph.D program next year, yet he always asks me to hangout and watch movies when I’ve already told him I need to study. When I do refuse, he gets all sad and quiet, and I end up feeling guilty. I know he does this on purpose, guilt-tripping is his go-to move.
We will both be graduating university next year, and future planning has caused some problems. He isn’t sure what he wants to do. He bounces back and forth between working in the industry his degree will be in, or going on to law school. Like I said, I’ll be pursuing a Ph.D program.
The thing is, though there aren’t many universities in the U.S that have the specialty I want, so I will definitely have to move out of sate, maybe very far. This fact causes him to spiral on a regular basis.
He’s extremely anxious to move to another state, especially since the cost of living is higher pretty much everywhere else in the country. But he also doesn’t want to do long-distance, which I would be fine with… I just want him and I both to pursue the career paths best for us. But he keeps pressuring me to go to graduate school in-state, even though no schools here can train me in what I want to do. I noticed since I told him about moving, he has started calling me more and more often while I’m at school, upset about something random (think traffic-jam-level stuff) which I then spend half an hour talking him down. I know this may sound crazy, but I’m beginning to think he’s trying to sabotage me? Maybe even subconsciously?
Anyways, my head is too immersed in the fog to get a good read on the relationship, so I ask you, internet strangers, for your opinion. Do you think I’d be justified in breaking up with him? Is there something about my role in all this that I’m not seeing? Any comments would be helpful, thank you.

So went to Wal-Mart just now for dog food and the like. As I was walking in, there were these 2 kids, under the age of 5 coming out the front door just doing what crotch goblins at that age do: running around and climbing on shopping carts outside. Didn't see any parents. No one coming in or out seemed to be particularly concerned about it. So I'm just standing there watching that and seeing no one else notice. I went up to the kids and said, hey guys where's your mom or dad? How about we go in and look around for them? To which they started giggling and ran back into the store. Sorta followed at a distance until they went up to their adults. Didn't say anything, just went on getting what I needed. About the time I was heading out I saw them again running around the aisles. Watched for a bit and again, no one at all seemed to notice or care but by then I was like fuck it, at least they can't get hit by a car for now. Hopefully no Amber Alerts go out, cause I'm not dealing with it anymore.
That just makes me so fucking mad. They were literally about to go out into the parking lot and probably would have if I had not gone up to them.

I worked as a park ranger in Northern Alaska for years, from when I was in my early twenties until my mid-thirties. At first, when I took the job, I was trying to escape, but over time, I learned to love it- the endless wilderness, the snow-capped mountains, the muffled way everything sounded during blizzards. With no light pollution, the stars up there look like tiny chips of diamond. And during the winter, the Northern Lights roll in, twisting and shimmering in strange, alien colors.
But a few years ago, things got much worse. People up here have started to go missing at an alarming rate. And I started having strange experiences around the park and the nature preserve.
One of the strangest parts of my story started on a freezing, dark night in 2018. I was on a snowmobile out in a terrible blizzard. The conditions were nearly to the point of being impassable. The snow was falling so thick and fast that it looked like a moving, shimmering wall of white on all sides of me.
Another ranger, a huge, lumbering man named ‘Ace’ Acosta, pulled up behind me on a second snowmobile. I looked at him, standing six foot six with majestic peaks stretching up into the night sky, and thought about what a great picture this would make. As I was looking around, I saw the faint tracks in the snow. Ace’s snowmobile lights were pointed in their direction, and I had been standing almost on top of them without realizing it- which is fairly easy to do when a few inches of snow are falling every hour.
At first, I thought it was the frozen tracks of an injured animal. I saw the drops of blood soaked into the superficial ice first. Following their direction with my eyes, I realized there were footprints pressed into the frozen crust leading away from me and towards the flat stretch of the tundra. I squinted, getting down on my knees and leaning inwards. I didn’t want to trample the tracks.
I quickly realized I was looking at human footprints- naked human footprints. But who would be out here in December in -40 degree winds without shoes? They would die rapidly out here. Just for me to drive across the tundra on a snowmobile required me to wear three jackets, long-johns, snow pants, thick jeans, a ski mask and multiple layers of socks and gloves with hand-warmers. I wore special water-proof boots with composite toes that wouldn’t freeze like steel toes. And despite all of this, I was still cold.
I moved forward, and saw handprints mixed in with the footprints, all of them bloody. The ice was thick enough to slice open human hands and feet, undoubtedly. The logical conclusion was unshakable- someone had crawled through here, maybe naked, on all fours, and their frozen body would be somewhere up ahead. I sighed, turning to Acosta. He still stood in the same position, his face covered in a red scarf with only his eyes showing. I saw one ice-covered eyebrow raise questioningly.
“I think we got us a body somewhere nearby,” I said, getting back on my snowmobile and starting it. He did the same.
“What kind of freaked-out tweaker would be walking around here without clothes on?” Ace asked in his deep baritone. “Man, I need a hit of whatever that guy’s on. I’ve got two sweaters and two winter jackets on, and I’m still cold. Eh, Kelton? Eh? What do you say?” He started elbowing me jokingly. I frowned, not responding.
Ace always had a smart aleck remark. He was next to me when I was interviewed for this job originally, down at the recruitment center in Washington state. The old lady doing the interviewing was a bloodless, angry-looking specimen of a woman with huge glasses that magnified her eyes twice over. She spat out each of the questions like a drill sergeant talking to fresh meat in the Army.
“Are you a member of any organized religion?” she had asked brusquely. Ace shook his head.
“No, ma’am, but I am a member of a disorganized religion,” he said. “We call ourselves ‘the Servants of the Old Ones’. We’re waiting for the ancient reptilian gods at the bottom of the ocean to awaken. So far, however, they haven’t responded to any of our texts.” I thought about this as I revved the engine twice, a sign that I was about to pull off and that he should stay close.
We took off, going slow and following the tracks as close as possible without destroying them. But the tracks just kept going, the bloodstains seeming to grow fainter as we moved forward- and strangely enough, the distance between the hand and footprints also started to get longer, as if someone were running on all fours and speeding up. We were nearing the beginning of the forest of evergreens when I saw a white flash just up ahead.
The thing that ran from us was humanoid, but I knew at once that it was no person. It ran on hands and feet, totally naked, its skin a pale, lifeless white color. It turned its head towards the lights of the snowmobiles briefly. I saw a hairless creature with skin that clung tightly to its simian body, its lips permanently pulled back from its mouth as if they were eaten away. Underneath it showed mottled black and red gums covered in thick, clotted blood. Its nose appeared as little more than two irregular holes, and its eyes- they reflected the light of the snowmobiles, like the eyes of a raccoon or opossum. They were huge and sunken in its starving, monstrous face.
And I saw what was leaving the bloody trails. The creature was, as far as I could tell, totally uninjured. In its permanently grinning mouth, between rows of crooked, sharp, blood-stained teeth, it held the body of an infant. The baby’s head lolled from side to side, the neck seemingly broken, and blood dripped constantly from its mouth and nose. It had deep puncture marks in its tiny parka, half-rings of teeth marks that must have broken its ribs. The bloodstains on the snow were becoming fainter, because the heart was no longer pumping in the body of the one leaving them.
I had a loaded rifle inside my snowmobile, and kept a 12-gauge shotgun slung around my back, mostly in case of bear or moose attack. I always kept the shotgun loaded with slugs, which were, in my experience, the most versatile ammunition for stopping any large animal. The .308 might take down a polar bear, at least with a good headshot, or it might just piss it off on a bad day. But a shotgun slug to the head or heart will stop any bear or moose in its tracks.
Of course, this was no polar bear ahead of me. For all I knew, it was something far worse. I looked down at the speedometer to see I was going twenty miles an hour, in the dark, in a blizzard. And yet this strange humanoid creature was still losing us, its seemingly never-ending store of energy still sending it forward at a superhuman speed. Its pale, bony legs and arms pumped back and forth so fast that they were just a blur. It kept its sharp teeth around the nape of the dead infant’s neck, like a mother cat carrying its young.
I kept one hand on the steering wheel while trying to free the strap of my shotgun over my head. I slowed down below twenty, and the creature responded by going even faster. It was making a break for the mountain forests that started only a few hundred feet away. I got the gun free and quickly stopped the snowmobile and raised it. I centered the sights, taking a deep breath to steady myself, and fired.
I missed, though I don’t know by how much. Shotguns had the drawback of being significantly less accurate at further distances than the rifle. But by the time I got the .308 out, I knew the creature would have long since disappeared in the thick brush and trees. By this point, Ace had also stopped and opened fire, but the creature had already gone.
“God damn!” Ace screamed. “That was one fast motherfucker. I can’t believe he got away after all that.” I heaved a deep sigh.
“I think we better go find out where he got that baby from,” I said. “We might have a lot more corpses on our hands than we realize.”
***
We found a radio in the snowmobile and messaged in what had happened, or at least the basic gist of it. I left out the part about naked, half-human abominations, and said that it was an unknown animal. There wasn’t much law enforcement up in these parts, because, hell, there were barely any people. The rangers as well as fish and wildlife agents regularly worked with the police officers in small towns, at least those that had police officers. Dozens of the local tribal villages had no police at all. These people would come to forest rangers and fish and wildlife agents most of all, and were always some of the county’s friendliest and most helpful residents.
By the time we got back to the original blood-stained footprints, the snow had covered up the tracks completely. However, based on the direction that the creature had been going and where the tracks had come from, I thought I knew where it might have started. Following the path in a nearly straight line led to the Lutna Peak Trailer Park. Ace and I drove off at max speed across the rolling hills and flat plains, the snow coming faster and heavier now. They say eskimos have dozens of words for snow, and after being a ranger up here, I can say I’ve seen every variation of it a thousand times. This was turning into the kind that was wet with huge flakes and tended to stick to everything. We would probably have to find refuge soon, especially if it got any heavier.
I heard the screaming before I saw the commotion. As we came around the sharp right turn where the dirt road turned into the trailer park, I saw dozens of people out, flitting like gnats around one of the trailers at the back corner of the park. All of the lights were on in that particular trailer, and I saw one woman comforting another who was bent over and crying.
Even though almost everyone knew us here, I pulled out my badge identifying me as a federal law enforcement officer. Up here, all the rangers were technically federal agents, allowed to carry guns and make arrests like typical police, except we were licensed under the Department of the Interior rather than under state law enforcement agencies.
I ran into the trailer, and after one long glance around the place, I knew there was no need to call for any ambulances. Ace followed close behind me, his heavy, thudding footsteps shaking the trailer slightly as he ascended the steps. We said nothing for a long moment. The entire family was dead.
There was blood everywhere, even spotting the ceilings. Most of it had frozen in the cold, and I wondered how long the door had been left open. Body parts were scattered across the floor, an arm in the corner of the room, a head standing up on the kitchen counter, even a random tooth embedded into the sheetrock. The savagery was brutal, and the amount of strength required to carry out such an attack must have been extraordinary.
“I think we’re going to need a lot more people on this than just me and you,” Ace said. I nodded, already bone-tired, and with so much more work to do tonight before I could go to sleep.
We phoned both state and federal authorities in the area. Since much of the land was tribally owned, we had to deal with multiple branches. Eventually we got CSI out there in the middle of a snowstorm, though they had to come from over three hours away. We just secured the scene while we waited, constantly being brought into neighboring trailers where townsfolk would tell us the latest gossip. They also brought us hot coffee and tried to milk us for any information we might have, as they usually did in such situations.
“No, Maggie, honest,” Ace was saying to one old lady wrapped up in an ancient fur coat, “I don’t know any more about it than you do. You can be sure that you’d know if I did.” By that point, police cars were slowly pulling in, one by one. Ace and I told them a simplified version of the night’s events, said goodnight and left the scene to them. I went home and took a scalding hot shower, trying to force the night’s coldness out of my bones. Then I slept deeply, though I had nightmares of that creature’s face turning to me, holding a dead baby in its mouth and marking me with its emotionless, reflective eyes. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I would sleep in a bed for many days.
***
The state police assigned us an officer the next day, stating they wanted an official representative of their interests involved in the case. It was, by this point, a fairly high-priority case. We didn’t even have many assaults or robberies up here, less likely murders, and the murder of an entire family really stirred up the locals. The fact that the CSI techs couldn’t make heads or tails of it made it even worse. They hadn’t even agreed on whether it was done by humans or animals or a combination of the two, like men with fighting dogs who went berserk. With no leads, they wanted us to go back to where we had seen the creature the previous night and see what we could find.
The police officer who would be tagging us, a woman named Officer Melinda Jansen, had the look of someone who just started a new job, and doesn’t realize how terrible it is yet. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and when she shook my hand, she nearly crushed the bones together under her iron grip. I saw Ace wince slightly when he shook her hand too. When she turned her back, he looked at me with one eyebrow raised, as if he were saying, “What can you do?”
It didn’t take us long to find the spot from the previous night. When we got close to the forest where the creature disappeared, I saw a branch that had been hit by a shotgun blast, and knew we were right on the money. In the daytime, I saw that there was a slight, curving trail through the trees here, maybe an old deer trail. It was just wide enough for us to take our snowmobiles through if we went slow. Occasionally, I would have to get off, being in the lead, and move large branches that lay across the path, but overall it was faster going than I had expected.
The trail followed across the top of a rolling hill, went down and then spiraled up around a mountain. We were high now, at least 7,000 feet above sea level, and the view went for hundreds of miles. It was breath-taking, seeing the frozen white landscape below us, mountains lining one horizon and the Arctic Ocean on another. A couple hundred feet ahead of us, however, the trail just stopped. I saw an opening in the mountain. Slowly bringing my snowmobile up, I looked into it and saw what looked like naturally-formed stone hallways.
The halls sloped down at a steep angle without stairs. An eerie silence radiated from the gradually thickening darkness. The other two snowmobiles cut out right behind mine, and Officer Jansen came walking up, flicking on her LED headlamp. Immediately, I saw a strip of light blue cloth. I walked forward, bending down to confirm what I had already suspected: that this was a piece of the missing infant’s clothing.
“That looks like more than enough cause to me. Let’s do this,” Jansen said. “I’d like to be back before sundown.” She kept walking without waiting for confirmation. Ace and I slung on our packs and turned on our headlamps. I tried using the radios and sat-phone to share our location, but neither was working. The bright, artificial lights showed that the natural stone walls of the hall just kept on descending into the mountain. A warm breeze blew past me, an acrid, sulfuric smell following in its wake.
“This is just a body recovery mission at this point,” I whispered to Ace, giving Officer Jansen a wide space so I could talk. “So why are we potentially risking our lives here? We should be waiting for back-up. We both know that the infant is dead, and has been for a while.”
“You know what I think…” Ace whispered conspiratorially, before a low shriek stopped us all in our tracks and ended conversation. I never did get to hear what he thought. By this point, it was much warmer than it had been outside, and I had the urge to start stripping off jackets. The shrieking had intensified, and was now being answered by dozens of others that surrounded further away in the stone halls.
Officer Jansen had pulled out her gun, which I saw with some astonishment was a .454 Ruger, a large caliber gun with good stopping power. I saw enough magazines strapped around her hips to decimate an entire herd of buffalo. I also pulled off my shotgun, making sure it was filled with lead slugs.
“Do you have any idea what we’re up against?” I asked her. Ace was right behind us, his shotgun already cocked and loaded, the muzzle pointed downwards. I was sweating heavily by this point. The air in the tunnel just kept getting warmer. It felt like I was walking into a sauna. Thin clouds of mist and droplets of hot condensation clung to the smooth granite ceilings. The hall continued to descend at the same steep rate, but now I could see something at the bottom: light.
“Not much more than you, really,” Officer Jansen said with a slight sneer. “My only advice is to shoot first and ask questions later. Kill anything that moves. This place has taken a lot of people already, people who were too fat and slow to watch their own backs…” I squinted as I examined the lights. They seemed to emanate from some sort of organism growing on the stone’s surface.
It wasn’t electrical lights, and it certainly wasn’t natural sunlight. It glowed like the lights of millions of fireflies, a purplish-blue color that painted the granite floors and walls in a totally different light. We were walking as quietly as possible by this point, but I still hadn’t seen anyone. We reached the bottom of the stone halls, where strange mushrooms glowed in the darkness, their mycelium giving off that black-light color everywhere as it stretched across the threshold of the opening. I turned off my LED, seeing my comrades do the same, then poked my head through, looking back and forth.
I saw more of those creatures from before, their lips missing, their skin pale, their eyes huge and rabid. They constantly twisted and snapped their heads to the left or right, as if hearing something only they could perceive. Two were dragging an elk that had been mutilated and torn down the middle. Another was dragging an old man’s dead body forward by the upraised legs. I saw the old man’s head was missing, his wrinkled hands trailing behind the body. I watched where all this activity was headed, then I gasped.
A huge, insectile monster sat lazily against the stone wall as these creatures brought it meat. The monster was so fat that I wasn’t even sure it could stand up. It had a blood-red, chitinous exterior with a hood like a rattlesnake’s that extended around its head. Its teeth trembled together constantly as it shoved more gory offerings into its mouth, sending blood gushing forwards in thick clotted rivulets that dripped down its chin. Its long, thin arms had sharp knife-like digits, and its six legs branched like those of a praying mantis, splayed out on each side of its body, shining a dark red color in the strange light of the chamber. Its belly stretched far in front of its body, and with horror, I saw it drop a cluster of eggs, each as big as a dog. Their surfaces writhed and trembled, looking tight and ready to burst at any moment.
The creatures that fed and cared for this monster rushed over, dragging the eggs to the corner of the warm chamber. I saw that there were dozens more of them over there, and that some had already hatched.
Whatever that monster was, it had already given birth, and now those things were walking around, totally free to kill anything, or anyone, they wanted.

Me and my sister go to a Disney-type amusement park with a small water park near the center. We stay there for a while. Once it starts to get dark, my sister leaves. There's a concert starting near the water park that I go to. After I'm done at the concert, I join my parents to go home. There's what seems to be a farmers market with a bunch of different booths. We grab some hot dogs to eat then head out.

Anyone else remember these? I think they tried remaking The Gong Show recently, but all three of those shows had such a weird vibe it was like lightning in a bottle.
The acts (and judges) on The Gong Show were such a mix of over the top and occasionally good that even as a kid you felt you were watching something weird. I remember one of the usual judges on The Gong Show was a guy with a paper bag over his head called "The Unknown Comic" which only added to the strangeness.
Of course, the other shows had things going for them too - Cathy Lee Crosby was also kinda hot on That's Incredible...

Introduction
1) Will this be your first dog? If not, what experience do you have owning/training dogs?
*As an adult, I adopted a senior Aussie/lab that I had until he passed away, and fostered a Border Collie for approx. 6 months. Both at separate times.
2) Do you have a preference for rescuing a dog vs. going through a reputable breeder?
*I prefer going through a breeder due to the longterm connection, assistance with any breed specific issues, and health & temperament reliability.
3) Describe your ideal dog.
*My ideal dog is one that can go on long walks with me before and after work, not absolutely destroy the house while I am gone, can enjoy downtime, and will be able to handle and ENJOY weekend adventures with me (hiking, kayaking, etc). I enjoy a dog that is Velcroed to me, but not necessarily laying on top of me at every second (my senior Aussie would follow me from room to room and then lay down two feet away from me, coming up for occasional pets. That was perfect)
I would like a best friend & partner, but not a blanket.
4) What breeds or types of dogs are you interested in and why?
*I have always loved herding breeds. I like how intelligent and ready for anything they are, while still having a bit of quirk. I also like that they aren’t as “bumbling/goofy” as gundogs.
5) What sorts of things would you like to train your dog to do?
*Ideally, I would love to train my dog into advanced obedience - I have sensory issues and a poorly trained dog that is completely out of control would drive me crazy. I am open to dog sports, as well.
6) Do you want to compete with your dog in a sport (e.g. agility, obedience, rally) or use your dog for a form of work (e.g. hunting, herding, livestock guarding)? If so, how much experience do you have with this work/sport?
*I am open to dog sports, but do not have any experience with them. They seem like fun, and if my dog needs a job to do regularly, I am certainly okay with the idea.
Care Commitments
7) How long do you want to devote to training, playing with, or otherwise interacting with your dog each day?
*I would say that my playtime & training dedicated time (which I hope would be able to intermix, I love hide & seek dog games and other dog learning games) would be approx. 2 hours per day. I consider my pets family, so interaction would be able to occur whenever I am home and awake.
8) How long can you exercise your dog each day, on average? What sorts of exercise are you planning to give your dog regularly and does that include using a dog park?
*I have a fenced yard, so the dog will be able to use the bathroom outside whenever it needs. Otherwise, I would anticipate 45-60 minutes of exercise per day, whether this is rigorous play in the backyard or walks. On the weekend, I am usually out for 2-4 hours in total of hiking, kayaking, etc.
9) How much regular brushing are you willing to do? Are you open to trimming hair, cleaning ears, or doing other grooming at home? If not, would you be willing to pay a professional to do it regularly?
*I would prefer to keep brushing to once a week or every couple of days. I don’t think I could manage daily brushing. For other grooming needs, I am happy to pay a professional groomer.
Personal Preferences
10) What size dog are you looking for?
*Medium to large. I don’t want a small cat-sized dog or a giant.
11) How much shedding, barking, and slobber can you handle?
*I have no issues with shedding. I need barking to be fairly minimal - I don’t mind an alert bark or two to let us know that someone is by the door, but I can’t deal with barking at every passing squirrel… and person… and rabbit… and dog… etc.
I don’t love drool. I can handle a bit, but my grandmother had boxers that would rain spit when they shook their heads, my dad had a spaniel that would drool puddles… I can’t do that.
12) How important is being able to let your dog off-leash in an unfenced area?
*Not important. I have a fenced yard, and otherwise I will be using a leash without exceptions.
Dog Personality and Behavior
13) Do you want a snuggly dog or one that prefers some personal space?
*As mentioned, I like the mix of Velcro with personal space. I’m fine with occasional snuggles, but my preference is to be in the same area with pets now and then, and maybe a lean against the legs.
14) Would you prefer a dog that wants to do its own thing or one that’s more eager-to-please?
*A healthy mix of both, but leaning to eager to please. I want a dog that is trainable and excited to live life with me.
15) How would you prefer your dog to respond to someone knocking on the door or entering your yard? How would you prefer your dog to greet strangers or visitors?
*A healthy bark is fine with me, but not aggression. I really appreciated the aloofness of my Aussie with strangers.
16) Are you willing to manage a dog that is aggressive to other dogs?
*I am willing to manage it, but I would prefer to avoid that risk.
17) Are there any other behaviors you can’t deal with or want to avoid?
*I have a cat, and I need to know that she will be safe sharing a space with a dog.
Lifestyle
18) How often and how long will the dog be left alone?
*I am gone for approx. 10 hours total on weekdays including commute, but I am willing to pay for a dog walker or daycare two or three times a week. On weekends, the dog would be with me nearly all the time.
19) What are the dog-related preferences of other people in the house and what will be their involvement in caring for the dog?
*My partner shares my preferences with a lean towards less shedding, specifically on his work clothes. I’m fairly sure we would be able to figure out a way to lessen hair on work clothes, and we have lint rollers if we can’t. He’s fine with giving pets and helping with care, but I will be the primary caregiver.
20) Do you have other pets or are you planning on having other pets? What breed or type of animal are they?
*As mentioned, a cat.
21) Will the dog be interacting with children regularly?
*No.
22) Do you rent or plan to rent in the future? If applicable, what breed or weight restrictions are on your current lease?
*Yes - no breed restrictions.
23) What city or country do you live in and are you aware of any laws banning certain breeds?
*Southeast US
24) What is the average temperature of a typical summer and winter day where you live?
*In the summer, mid-90s. It wouldn’t be incredibly surprising for temperatures to hit 100. Winter is mild. It is also humid, so the heat feels pretty blanketing.

Hey everyone.
I'll be heading to the above places this Summer for vacation. Yes, it will be hot and humid. I'm looking to keep up my training for three weeks and would like to ask for some tips to survive the heat and humid in Asia.
Would you do more time-based training vs distance training?

“... the site of Verled Tamthaed, for example, contains a high concentration of equine remains estimated to have been slaughtered at a relatively young age, suggesting the importance of keeping lactation present within the horses for milk products, and thus the importance of milk and horseflesh to the diet of the northern Neam, both settled and semi-nomadic.¹⁵ Elsewhere, remains of older (aged 6-10 years) horses are found buried alongside human remains, suggesting spiritual importance, economic status, or both.¹⁶ Though these horses could not be used for mounted riding, there was clearly some sort of status reserved for horse-rearing due to its importance to their diet in the early Neam period, and these may lead into the development of the ubiquitous cashels and fortified enclosures found…”
Of the days of old, it is known that like the Neam of all the rivers, the river Tam held many a warring kinship engaged in perpetual kinstrife, born out of feuds and of simple minded struggle against one another, witnessed from above by the gods. In keeping with the will of the gods, the warriors made attempt after attempt on their neighbours under day, and those of the other kinships had done the same on them, and this had been this way for generations untold save for when a kinship felt it necessary to send all their men to conquer and take entire a great erhaehedden, spoken of most highly for the size of their gatherings by lords and men alike, and whose deeds and names were known to all in those days.
But though the mother and fathers of the rivers approved and let it continue feeling it natural, this strife pained the lady Tam, and thus she endeavoured to bring her power to the people on her river, and recruited the trickster spirits to bring her favour to the world below. Taking her favour, the spirits descended by night sky and found a newborn child, and imbued him with their spirits, and he was called Rhaelod. When he was young his kinship, the Tamesae, had been rising in renown, but a great strife with the neighbouring kinship known as the Tameterae had forced back and forth raiding, and the result was disaster, for even in those days the Tameterae had built wonderfully tall enclosures and palisades for their herds of horses and for their own protection, and these were built tall so as to be closer to the gods, and they enjoyed their benefits.
The Tamesae, deprived of their menfolk following their failed raids on the mighty palisades of the enclosure of the Tameterae soon thereafter feared the advances of the kinships surrounding them and their slave-take, and they had cried out in fear of being destroyed in their entirety, reduced to slaves. Perhaps, the womenfolk had asked, the Tamesae should hang their heads low to the mighty Tameterae in seeking the joining of their kinships, lest they should become slaves?
And yet, brave Rhaelod had rebuked his elders, and set out in mid-night time to the Tameterae seeking not surrender but an equal deal by himself, for the spirits had imbued him with cleverness even in his young age. In those days after the failed raids when they had defeated all before them, the Tameterae did not need fear the Tamesae by day for their warriors had been taken slaves, and were thus bound by their honour not to disobey. They had set the former Tamesae to watch over their horses whilst the Tameterae made mirth knowing they were invincible to an attack, such was the strength of their high palisades and of their arms when prepared for attack which they could see coming from many miles away.
Though the palisades were tall, clever Rhaelod knew that the mirthmaking of the Tameterae, powerful as they were in arms, had left them distracted and weak even to a child such as he. He thusly snuck over the powerful walls of the horse-enclosure as they celebrated and approached with his head down as Tamesae, imitating the movements of the slaves, and passed by undetected and unnoticed in the eyes of the Tameterae, who continued their mirth. When the Tamesae saw him, they despaired and thought that yet another of their own had been slave taken, and that their kinship had been taken in entire, and they prayed to the sky, and they cried.
And yet, smiling Rhaelod merely walked past them, for he had not been taken a slave as they had and was not therefore bound by the honour that dictated their slavehood. He took the reins of horses and led them away from the enclosures and away from the fields, towards the river crossing as the menfolk of the Tamesae stared at him, and not knowing they were shocked that he would dash his honour so young. They challenged him, and blocked his path, and tried to tell the Tameterae though the act broke their hearts.
And yet, did smooth Rhaelod tell them, ‘Peace, kindred! I be no slave! Your masters have told you to watch for men come to take their horses or their kindred? I am no man but a child! And I take not their horses, but merely borrow. And I come not to take their kindred, but to trade! Upon my honour, by nightfall you shall see them returned to the pens!” And the menfolk were stunned and feared for the boy, but kept silent. They let him outside whilst the Tameterae were distracted, and he returned to the great gate with horses in tow.
But even one brave such as he felt fear, and thus pious Rhaelod made prayer to the gods. And he felt the touch of the mothers, and the approval of the judges, and the valiance of the war goddess, and the glory of his fathers, each admiring his courage, and though they knew not the blessing of the lady Tam they each independently decided he was worthy in any case, and they heard the lady Tam give her blessing again, and though they then realized what she had done, they allowed it. And he went to the gate of the mirthful Tameterae and cried aloud: ‘O mighty lord, that I may trade what is yours for what is mine! Though I only bring some of the herd, I wish my kindred free of bondage!’
The laughing Tameterae saw this lone child, and perceived he was giving what was left of the Tamesae horse-herd for little but small sentiment that they could soon retake with ease with the Tamesae weak even if they returned a few men. And they took the horses at the gate, and gave him back free of bondage five of the menfolk enslaved, and threw them out of the enclosures while entrusting the horses to the remainder of the enslaved Tamesae, unnoticing in their mirth that they had been tricked. And the lord of the Tameterae mocked the free Tamsae, and demanded what remained of the Tamsae herd.
And thus, valiant Rhaelod returned with several of his own, and the next day returned to the Tameterae and repeated his trick. Once again, the Tamterae met him at the gate and allowed five men free of bondage, and demanded more of what was left for more of the Tamsae, laughing as they went. But on the third return in daylight, he returned with horses but also with all the fine food the Tamsae had remaining and declared he wanted to dine with the Tamterae and make mirth. And the lord of the Tameterae accepted him through the gate, and they made mirth together though he was little more than a boy, and he found the friendship of the lord and his children.
In the hour when next crafty Rhaelod made his appearance he did not seek to take the horses of the Tamterae herd, but insteaed brought with him ten horses of the Tamesae’s own herd, and they let him in openly. But he had carefully hidden the warriors he had freed behind the horses, and they rushed into the open gate of the Tameterae enclosure in full weapon holding whilst the Tamterae were nowhere near ready, and he said aloud: ‘For these ten horses, my kin are mine own and a wife there also. Thus shall the Tamesae and the Tameterae be joined in sight of the gods, and in peace, for our feud shall be resolved by this word and the word of the lady Tam.’
The Tameterae were shocked, and found that they had been trading their own horses before in their distraction, and lost the favour of the gods despite their proximity. Perceiving that the clever boy had tricked them and kept his honour despite, they decided he indeed held the approval of the Lady Tam, and the Tameterae relented and freed the Tamesae, and gave brilliant Rhaelod his kin, and his betrothal.
Thusly did smiling Rhaelod return to his kinship with his kin following, singing his praises and that of his lovely wife, and there was peace for a time, and their descendants grew to become lords of all the river Tam. We, the Tamneam, claim descent from the union of the Tamesae and Tameterrae. Not all erhaehedden are now valued simply for their size, but also for their trickery and guile. Such, then, is the account and the fate of the erhaehedden of bold Rhaeod, and the end of the kinstrife.

• An early account of the founding of the Tamneam

I've spent most of my life in a very cool climate where it rarely got above 70, but I recently moved to the upper Midwest which is very hot and humid by comparison. I've quickly realized that my strategies for dealing with the heat are completely inadequate!
A couple days ago I was finishing up a 30mi ride and stopped at an ice cream shop for a break and some water. I felt hot and thirsty, but I thought I was fine. Unfortunately I blacked out and collapsed on the floor, and came to with another biker putting his backpack under my head and giving me water.
I was very lucky to avoid injury as I don't seem to be any worse for wear. But the experience scared me because it could have been so much worse and I easily could have been seriously injured, and who knows what would have happened if I had been out in the country.
Do you guys have any strong advice for avoiding heat exhaustion?
The strategies I've decided to adopt:

• Make sure I carry much more water
  
• Put electrolyte mix in one of my bottles (I picked up some LiquidIV, open to recommendations)
  
• Eat something before a long ride
  
• Take 5-10 minute breaks every 30 minutes or so when it's hot
  
• Go out in the morning if at all possible
  

Is cycling in the heat still risky despite these, or should this protect me?