Boyer funeral home obituaries waverly ohio

Palm Royale Funeral Home and Cemetery

2023.05.31 08:39 funeralclient Palm Royale Funeral Home and Cemetery

Welcome to Palm Royale Funeral Home and Cemetery

Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery's mission is to be dedicated to every family we serve and hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards.
We will always abide by our industry's best practices and treat every family with respect, fairness, and sensitivity. Your comfort, peace of mind, and the trust that you have placed in us will remain our staff's top priority and our commitment to help you will be expressed in everything we do.

Why Choose Our Funeral Home?

At Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery, we pride ourselves on serving the Naples community and surrounding areas with dignity, respect, and compassion. Our experienced staff is available to help you select funeral, burial, or cremation services and design a special place of permanent memorialization that acknowledges and celebrates your loved one’s life in a way that will be meaningful for generations to come.
What We Offer?
Palm Royale Funeral Home was built on the beautiful grounds of Palm Royale Cemetery to offer the community a funeral home and cemetery co-located on the same property to provide families with a continuity of care and services.
Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery is the newest funeral home in Naples and offers burial, entombment, and cremation service options that range from highly personalized to time-honored traditional. Our brand-new facility has a light and airy feel to it and was designed to offer a serene, yet uplifting and supportive place to gather and honor.
Inside is a contemporary chapel, reception room, and catering café that are adjacent, yet separate, providing flexibility in the types and styles of services we can offer. There is also easy access to a covered, wrap-around veranda, that provides additional seating in an open-air setting.
A high-quality digital platform enables us to offer sophisticated services such as recording and live streaming, allowing distant family and friends the opportunity to “stay connected”, “say good-bye”, and view services either “live or later”. To learn more, please visit our Recording & Live Streaming page. You're also welcome to call and speak with one of our funeral directors to learn more details, have any questions answered, or to arrange for your loved one's service.
If selected, our state-of-the-art audio-visual system will showcase your loved one’s themed and personalized Life Tribute pictorial throughout our facility, making the time and space feel truly dedicated to celebrating their special life. This Tribute will also be available for viewing on an online Obituary Page we will set up in honor of your loved one at no charge. This page will have its own link and capture condolences and cherished remembrances shared by others. In addition, a Life Tribute DVD will be provided to you as a keepsake. We are also able to produce custom playlists, play special songs, accommodate live musicians, and much more.
Our advanced technology also enables us to make virtual and online arrangements so that those who are out of the area or are confined to home are able to plan, make selections, E-sign documents, and E-pay remotely.

Funeral & Memorial Service Options

Many families feel uncertain or burdened by the notion of planning a tribute. They anticipate that arranging services will be cumbersome, complicated, or overly sad. But setting a unified time and place to gather, share, and pay one’s respects is an important and worthwhile step in the healing process.
Many also don’t know where to start or what they “should” do. But we know that families prioritize and find meaning in different ways, so we embrace originality and strive to make every remembrance special. For some, the traditions and rites they are accustomed to offer comfort and stability, while others feel inspired to plan something that reflects the unique personality of their loved one.
Our staff will help you determine the best way to tell your loved one’s story, memorialize their legacy, and bring comfort to family and friends. We will also coordinate with other parties on your behalf, arrange any ancillary services, order items, place obituaries, set up, clean up, and more.

Contact Our Funeral Home

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to submit a message to our funeral home, cemetery, and/or preneed staff and we will contact you as soon as possible.
PALM ROYALE FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY
Address: 6790 Vanderbilt Beach Road
Naples, FL 34119
Phone: (239) 354-5330
Website: https://www.palmroyalecares.com/
submitted by funeralclient to u/funeralclient [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 06:30 mrpokec Silly season -March 2012

ARCA
submitted by mrpokec to Nr2003 [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 01:32 The_Alloquist [A Lord of Death] - Chapter 49

[←Chapter 48] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 50→]
As soon as he placed the tip of the blade against the stone, a crawling dread swept over. He held it there for a moment, trying to tabulate the functions of the tool, but nothing but raw guesswork remained to him. He heard the footsteps of the children and their minders vanishing up the stairs.
“You ready?” he asked Innie.
“No. But don't let that stop you,” she said, wide amber eyes fixed on the door.
There was nothing for it - Efrain steadied his hand and pressed the black blade into the stone. It was a relatively simple application of magic, almost instinctual, to activate the tool. He projected down into the chisel end, where stiff filaments would pierce the wall and sink deep within. This defeated the function of the chisel, but he already suspected that some of the features were more ornamental.
The next part was slightly more complicated, angling the blade up and down until he’d pressed the furled tips to the smooth surface. They sank in as well, leaving him holding the blade spine nearly parallel to the wall. Slowly, taking painstaking care not to twist the metal, he drew it down.
The stone split apart and drew back, guided through the furls and out, revealing a thin line in the stone. There was a silent thrill that fought against the dread as the hairline crack grew larger and larger. Finally, he reached the floor, and drew the knife out of the stone with minimal resistance.
With one last look at his partner, he placed both hands on the door and began to push.
There was a grinding squeal as the heavy stones slid open and out. Past, there was a thick darkness that blotted out most of the detail, even with the magelight active. Efrain took two steps and raised it high, its luminosity increasing as it rose. Even so, it flickered as the smothering cold poured out of the chamber, casting wavering shadows on the surrounding stone walls.
A moment of grim satisfaction availed him - he had surmised correctly about the room being some sort of important tomb. Large alcoves with carved-relief tombs marched off into the dark, twinned pillars marking each and every one. A vaulted ceiling spanned the passage, faded mosaics depicting unknown scenes of times past.
In fact, it would’ve been a place that Efrain could easily see himself working in. Painstakingly brushing off the faded paint and chipped stone, recreating the designs in book after book. Days and nights of note taking, trying to piece together the story of what this place was and why it was here. Unfortunately, the beauty of that vision was marred by the hostile darkness that wrapped around the vault.
He and Innie cautiously crept forward, the light above his head pushing back the heavy shadows. Her fur stood on end, amber eyes inspecting every little pittance, every corner past where something might hide. Efrain was much the same way, expecting something to detach itself from the stone and give chase.
Yet, there was nothing, no movement, no sudden gleam of hostile eyes. Just the stone, and the ever deepening cold.
Finally, they reached the depths of the tomb, a handful of steps that lead down into a wider room. In the muddy light he cast, he saw something large and round, sitting slumped over what looked to be an altar of some kind. There was no aggression that he could feel, no stirring of the thing in response to their presence, just the cold that poured off it.
As he entered through the arched steps, he realised that the thing was making sounds. A wet, gurgling noise, that was rather uncomfortably reminiscent of the creatures from the fog. The sound of a throat that had been crushed and twisted by the weight of its deformities. Still, it lacked the rage that came with the things that had crashed on the church roof or swarmed its outer wall.
Efrain took another few steps and stood before the round mass, slightly taller than he was, peering closely as its features came into relief. When he realised what it was, he felt a stomach that no longer existed turn over on itself. There were pale bumps and ridges where there might’ve been anatomical landmarks at one point. Various malformed limbs jutted out and merged back into the structure, some recognizable, some alien. The flesh shuddered and writhed as he neared it, groans and gurgles exiting various gashes and holes in its surface.
What was far, far worse, however, was what he discovered when he looked within.
Innie must’ve discovered it at the same time, issuing a violent wail of disgust and grief. Efrain staggered away, trying to steady himself on one of the pillars as his vision swam. The self-hatred, the sorrow, the unbelievable nauseating pain that issued from the thing was enough to make him wish he never came here. Its magic was even worse - an indescribable warped abomination that should’ve never been borne into existence.
It took a herculean effort to remain standing, fighting the physically impossible urge to sink to his knees and vomit. Innie was slamming herself into a pillar in a mad horror, and his gaze slid to the knife in his hand. The terrible revelation was like an explosion in his mind.
He could almost see the priest raising the knife, almost seeing the gears of thought turning in his head. If it could join and separate stone, what else could it pull asunder? A terrible demon, removed from a child, think of the praise, think of the tithes, think of the reaffirmation of the faith!
Innie lay on the ground, curled and shivering, her wails fallen into a grim silence, punctuated only by quiet sobs. Efrain stood there, feeling the knife slip to clatter on the ground. The thing twitched and issued another moan as it undulated from its base to top.
Somewhere in the corners of his mind he wondered if somewhere in the mass the priest was still alive. It would be a ghastly fate, and a deserved one, to be trapped in this fleshy prison. But what had happened to the wisp matriarch’s power? Why was there a ghost appearing to Aya and granting her access to the flames?
Shrinking back into himself, he huddled by the wall - more than anything, he wanted to be away from here. He wanted to be in his isolated little castle in a far-away mountain. He wanted a cup of tea, and a good book, and to forget such horrible things could exist in this world.
But alas, he was here, he had made the choice to come here, and it made the choice to open the door.
It’s not fair, he thought, numbly, why must it be me?
Innie had stopped sobbing, merely lying there in a terrible stillness. Not dead, nor was she injured beyond superficiality, rather trapped in the depths of paralytic grief. But it would soon fade, Efrain knew for it was happening to him. All that stupefaction, swept away by rage.
There were footsteps, far behind him, a set of them, hurrying down the tomb corridor. Distant faces, barely distinguishable from the darkness, emerged past the arches, still some distance away. Their eyes were straining, faces scrunched up as they tried to pierce the gloom, not yet realising the dire horror that awaited them.
Maybe it was in a spirit of mercy that Efrain rose, and turned toward the cat. More likely, it was the rage that was boiling just under the surface, only held by the thinnest membrane of numbness. The stones under Innie were beginning to be cast in a red light as her fur began to glow, despite the damping of her magic.
“What is that?” called one of the paladins from down the hall.
Efrain said nothing as he faced the horrible fusion of the priest and girl, twitching and moaning. He didn’t need to.
Flames rose into the air, exhaustion no longer a barrier as Innie rose to her height. The cat was melting, dribbling down on the floor as the true form of the wisp mother bled through in a pillar of yellow-red light. The temperature of the room shot up from icy to lukewarm in an instant as flames began to crawl across the stone and reached for the abomination.
The paladins had reached the threshold, thrusting their charges behind them as they gazed upon the scene. They were reaching for their swords, even as the flames grew in heat and intensity. The mass did not attempt to lash rather bellowed as the fire licked, shuddering so violently Efrain thought it might come apart. It coiled and twitched as the flames rose up its side, the smell of burning flesh filling the room.
Efrain didn’t even look at it, merely fixing his stare on the church insignia, emblazoned on the plate of the paladins. The screams rose to a fever pitch, met by a furious roaring and crackling of the ever-growing blaze. There was one last desperate burst of coldness that rolled over him, dimming the firelight for a moment, and turning the paladin’s pale.
Then, as if a floodgate was opened, his magic was no longer suppressed, and the fires roared to new heights. The thing had been submerged in a pillar of red and yellow flames, leaping up almost to the tall ceiling of the room. In the back of Efrain’s mind, he realised it wasn’t wise that the fire would eat the air up so deep in the earth. He did nothing.
He simply stood there, staring at the paladins without a word.
“Efrain,” croaked Innie.
He turned to see the charred remains slumping to the floor. In its centre, no longer bound, floated a thin ring of yellow blue flame. The fragment shed little bright rivulets like downy feathers, soft sparks fading into Innie’s blaze.
The rage drove Efrain forward, knowing what was about to happen and what he was about to do. No rational impulse was going to stop him now. Innie was in lockstep with him as he knelt down before the remains, the flames parting as he reached in. The paladins were screaming something as he closed his hand around the ring, and felt his world come to life.
The fire was no longer just fire, it was light itself, so blindingly bright and hot that stones around them began to glow. Efrain felt something immense move into him, a wall of molten power moving enough momentum to sweep him away. The traces of the wisp matriarch entered the man and the cat, and in that moment they were its avatar.
He rose, and the blue-yellow blaze rose with him, fanning over the whole room. At some point, the paladins had grabbed their charges and ran for dear life. Efrain was almost beyond thought as he began to make for the stairs. Every step was a burden, his body rattling uncontrollably with each footfall.
Step-by-step, the pair made their way through the corridor, leaving a sea of flame in their wake. The stone glowed with the rage of their passing, murals utterly destroyed, features beginning to run like wax on the carven reliefs. The only thing untouched by the flames was the black doors, a constant wall in the flames.
As he made his way into the crypts, leaving glass footprints in the sand, he became dimly aware that his robes were beginning to smoke. The magic coursing through him was not meant for him to wield - memory, knowledge, consciousness, all seemed to fall away at its burning touch.
He was being consumed, he and Innie both as they channelled the might of the matriarch, fraction as it was. The burst of magic on the roof was nothing compared to what they now held within themselves. This was a primal power, far grander than anything they’d seen in their long lives.
The passage was beginning to groan and warp, the stone beginning to run as he found his way to the spiral stair. Step-by-step, gripping the walls for purchase, he managed to drag himself up. Every rise was harder than the one that came before it, and soon he was climbing mountains with each step. The stones trembled at his touch, his hands leaving glowing impressions. Soon they too fell into the wall of conflagration that rose behind him.
Still, onward and upward he climbed, higher and higher, past the entrance to the church and to the roof. Night had finally fallen, the sounds of battle beginning as the monsters moved for the final assault. The posted guards screamed warnings of ‘fire!’ ‘fire!’ and shouted prayers as Efrain crawled his way onto the roof. They must’ve thought this some terrible new monster, something immune to their burning brands.
“Leave. Now,” Efrain said, the words slurring as he forced them into the air.
The men were quick to take his advice, but stopped at the tower stairs, staring in horror at the dripping stone. Some looked to the edge, preparing to leap to avoid the frame.
In the midst of the tumult, some bare fraction of Efrain remained to recognize the arbitrary cruelty of their position. He reached out, not to the men but beyond them, and plucked the heat from the stones. With a gust of warm air, they cooled rapidly from molten red to survivable grey. Somewhere, the scholar in Efrain screamed at the indignity of this impossible action.
But this was a magic of fundamentals. It did not stoop to petty things like ‘rules’.
The men, seeing their chance, hurled themselves down the stairs. With their absence, there was nothing left to restrain the power. The flames poured out like water, spilling over the walls of the church, roaring into the sky. Efrain didn’t think about the memory, intent, or emotion, nor any mechanical aspect of the magic - where he wanted, the world burned.
What little left of his mind felt memories of times and places foreign to him roar through his mind. The chaos of his mind lent him very little clarity, sights were smells, sounds were feelings, a cacophony of sensations raced through him faster and faster. In that blurring conundrum, he could see a single, core memory, one that drove all others.
A sunlit place, far away near a golden sea, a funeral, a birth, both at the same time, a tall figure, singing of purpose.
With a final effort, he called the magic to him, hoping to gain some vestige of control. The flames coiled and twisted and condensed, collapsing into an ever-tighter sphere as nature did its work. Heat itself lifted off the melting slates of the roof, absorbed into the mass at his fingertips, leaving a bright ball no bigger than his fist.
The world hung in that moment, the sounds of battle far away, screams of human and monster distant memories. In that moment of brief lucidity, Efrain held a star in his hand.
Then with a tremendous expansion of sound and rage and fire, a blast of hot wind ripped the fog away from the hill and scattered it across the highlands. Men and monsters were sent sprawling, the creatures flying on the icy mist spiralling and falling to earth.
Now the true force of the enemy was revealed - hundreds, perhaps as many as a thousand on the hill beyond. It was only a matter of time before they would rise over the wall, dismantle the barricades, and slaughter the defenders. Men, women, even children who’d worked so hard to defend their homes and lives. All rended to pieces because a little girl had gone for a little hike.
Chains were wrapping around Efrain, white hot and heavy, pulling him to the roof, disintegrating the spells that held him together. He was smoking in truth now and might catch flame at any moment. At his back, felt rather than seen, was an immense twisting whirlwind. It reached up and out into the night, its sudden light blotting out the stars. At its very centre, a consciousness took form within the power, something that wished for nothing more than to reduce all to ash. Efrain turned to the creatures that squirmed and charged below, heedless of the peril above.
He barely even perceived what happened next.
There was one final roar, louder and more violent than anything he’d ever heard of, conceived of, and would likely ever hear again. Branches extended down from the fire, great scouring fingers that swept across the earth, tearing down fruit trees, barely missing the barricades, and spilling down the hill.
The creatures came to meet it, not even turning aside as the heat and light submerged them. Perhaps they couldn’t even understand death anymore, so far gone was their nature. In a heartbeat, they faltered in the tide of flame, falling to the ground as they burned to ash. Dozens of them went in an instant as the power of Wisp Matriarch did its terrible work.
The fingers swept down past the outer wall, two tendrils splitting and crashing back together in a fountain of fire. The great bulk of the monsters were burnt into mere shadows on the cobbles. Efrain’s vision began to darken as his last vestiges of consciousness began to fail. He felt a draining sensation, the last of the magic of the matriarch flowing out into the night.
The heat that ate away at his very being was gone now, leaving behind a scorched emptiness. He fell to the ground, his limbs barely weak enough to prop himself up against the church roof. Innie, once more a cat, dragged herself over to him, curling on his lap as her eyes closed.
Too late, he remembered the curse upon the mask. That must’ve been the draining sensation, now that he’d let so much magic flow through it, it was sucking him dry. He tried vainly for some way to stem the flow, but he was so tired, so weak. Looking down, he noted that the church, although singed, was still more-or-less intact. There was a strange mix of regret and relief at the observation.
His voice, now a drab, thin thing, echoed out, remembering the conversation he’d had with Innie about her future plans of arson.
“Sorry, old friend,” he said, “I think I missed.”
Then Efrain Belacore, Baron of the Frozen Vale, and self-titled ‘Lord of Death’, was no more.
[←Chapter 48] [Cover Art] [My Links] [Index] [Discord] [Subreddit] [Chapter 50→]
submitted by The_Alloquist to redditserials [link] [comments]

2023.05.30 13:02 tomimendoza AEGIS - An OnK FanFiction

I know it's not exactly fan art, but it's the most fitting for this kind of thing. Another fanfiction has it as its flair when it was posted here. Anyway, this is my output for the OnK fanfic train. I hope you guys enjoy! The link to the fanfiction.net page will be at the bottom.
***
With the rise of violence against celebrities also comes the rise of elements that protect against them. A rookie agent finds himself assigned to a famous idol with a promise to defend. And what was supposed to be a training assignment would eventually grow to so much more.
***
The young man grumbled as he trudged the halls of his home towards his father’s office. His hand would rake through his black hair in his face in annoyance while his two emerald eyes with four-point star-shaped irises focused forward. He already knew what was gonna happen and he wished he could refuse. He had been hoping to devote his time to honing his gaming skills with the hope of maybe one day joining a pro-E-sports team. But, because his father was an old man with a small scope of the modern world, he laughed and told him to do something real with his life. And something real meant taking over the family business one day.
Kurosawa Security Services, or simply KSS, is a Japanese family-owned security company based in Kyoto although they have offices all over the country and even abroad. KSS provides everything from security guards for convenience stores to close protection agents for top government figures. They can also provide security consultation and training. The service is rated as the best Japan has to offer with highly trained agents. KSS agents regularly train with the police and military elements like the Security Police and Special Forces Group. And in rare occasions, they would even train with the US Secret Service abroad. KSS is also the best because of the long history of the organization which dates back to the feudal era when Kurosawa Saitō picked up the sword and protected the local Daimyo from an attack. In other words, they had a long time to hone their craft.
Now, what makes a security company like KSS so big in a country where crime is almost non-existent? Isn’t Japan a safe nation? Those would be your first mistakes if you thought of them. It doesn’t matter which part of the world you’re on, good and evil exist everywhere. And good must be protected from evil. That’s why KSS exists.
And soon enough, the company will be in Akio’s hands when it's his father’s time to retire. That’s how the system works, despite what he thinks of it. So, now his ultimate tests will begin. His first assignment.
After walking for what seemed like hours he reached a pair of large doors. He knocked on them and was asked to come in by a voice on the other side, so he complied. Entering, he was greeted with a fairly large office for only one man. And that man was currently seated behind a desk reading through some papers.
“Hey, Dad,” He greeted as he sat down on one of the chairs before across from him.
Kurosawa Tadao put the papers down and then looked at his son before smiling. He was an aging man with black hair that was already greying and blue eyes that had four-point star-shaped irises.
“Hey, Son! How’re ‘ya doing?” He asked.
“Just fine. I was finally getting my KDR up in Black Ops and I was planning on getting my skills up in CSGO later. But, here we are,” Akio answered.
“Staying inside is not good for your body you know.”
“I planned to play basketball tomorrow and I have band with the boys this weekend.”
“It’s still unhealthy because it’s exactly anything productive. You’re 17, Son, you need to start shaping up for your career,” Tadao said.
“I’ve been shaping it up since I was five,” Akio muttered.
“And that’s why we’re here right now. Your first assignment, son! It’s the moment of truth! Aren’t you excited?” Tadao asked with a wide grin as he picked up a folder from the side.
“No, not really,” Akio answered flatly.
“Well, maybe you’ll be excited once you find out who I’m assigning you to. Spoiler alert, she’s an idol,” He said with a grin, whispering that last part as he handed him the file.
“I’m not into idols, Dad,” He said flatly as he took the file.
“Your little brother a good chunk of this company’s personnel, and hell, a good chunk of the population are though,” He commented.
“That doesn’t make sense. Everyone can have different interests. And Goro, well, I guess being tied to a hospital bed for years does that to you,” He said sadly.
“You’re one weird kid, you know.”
“Well, I was raised by the likes of you, Dad,” Akio retorted with a sly grin which made his father laugh.
“Well, you got me there,” He chuckled and promptly silenced himself to let his son read.
“Hoshino Ai? Never heard of her. Although I admit she is pretty cute,” He mumbled as read through the file with her picture on it. He took in her personal information like date of birth, age, physical appearance, and all the usual things. And then he got to a part that listed her status— “What the fuck?! She’s pregnant?!”
“Language, Akio!” Tadao scolded. “Anyway, officially, she’ll be taking a break from showbiz for a while due to ill health. Actually, she’s pregnant and they’re trying to keep it under wraps. Bad for business, because a lot of fans are a bunch of lonely losers, they’ll drop her just because she has kids.”
“Language, Dad,” Akio retorted and shook his head. “Well, teen pregnancy is bad, but it’s unfair for her to be hated for that reason.”
“Yeah, the life of a celebrity is a lot shittier than most people would think. I know, your mother was a singer, she dealt with that too when we were found out,” Tadao said with a frown before smiling a bit. “She
“Please don’t tell me about your romances, Dad,” Akio cringed. “Anyway, Hoshino-sama will be my protectee, huh?”
“Yes. She’ll be heading here with her management agency soon to settle the contract. And then you’ll be heading to the countryside where she can lay low until she gives birth. That’s the basics of it.”
“Alright. Babysit a pregnant teenager and keep her from doing anything dumb. Should be easy enough,” He said.
“Do not underestimate the dangers tied to the entertainment world, Akio,” Tadao reminded. “As I’ve said, a lot of them are a bunch of lonely losers or generally just of questionable character. Some of them will go to great lengths just for attention. Fans can get really wacky after all. It’s already happened before. Not to mention, all the snakes in the industry. Someone might want to up their game so they think about eliminating the competition. You get the point.”
“I’m very aware, Dad, don’t worry,” He assured then sighed. “Just doing this and my studies at the same time? What am I gonna do?”
“That’s rich coming from someone who was planning on just lazing around all day. Besides, you’ve been homeschooling for more than a year already, right? I’m sure you can get a read in every day without compromising your job.”
“Well, it’s not impossible, but it’s gonna suck,” He said then sighed. “Alright, I’ve got this. Not much of a choice anyway. Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah. Remember this, you do not ever let your protectee out of your sight. Wherever she goes, you go. That being said, don’t be too overbearing, and make sure to give her room to breathe. She is a woman, she will want her space. Also, try not to set such a tight atmosphere. Try being her friend, and she’ll be easier to work with. Tomita will meet you tomorrow too to evaluate you. You’ll also be reporting to him your progress during your task.”
“Noted, Dad. In that case,” Akio stood then positioned himself directly in front of the table before bowing. “I shall see this task to the end.”
***
Idol music was not his cup of tea and Hoshino Ai was a complete stranger to him till that moment. He’d spend a whole week with the pre-preparations with one of the senior agents until it was time to meet the latest customers. Then he would meet Hoshino Ai for the first time and they’d make their first impressions of one another.
***
“Are you really sure about this?”
“We’re going to need a shield just in case. Lot’s of wackos around here. Besides, we’ve already agreed to meet.”
“It’s just, there’s a lot of shady dealings in the security world.”
“Are we any better? Besides, KSS is the best this country can offer. I also know the company head personally too, we went to high school together, and he owes me. We’ll be just fine.”
“Um, o-okay…”
“I didn’t understand any of that, but okay!”
“Never change, Ai…”
How do you keep a secret from the world? Simple: you lie. You lie a lot. But then you realize it’s not so simple and every day is spent with fear that everything might fall apart. Just trying to get anywhere was a massive undertaking. For example, right now. Two adults and a pregnant teen in a car. Aside from the teen pregnancy, there’s nothing strange at all about it. But if you knew who the car’s passengers were, then you’d immediately understand.
After a couple of hours of driving (making occasional turns to make sure they weren’t followed and consequently getting lost a couple of times) they finally reached their destination which was a large estate in the outskirts of Kyoto. A guard met them at the gate, and after the driver talked and showed some credentials, they were let in. It took another minute or two until they reached the house where a group was waiting for them. The car group got out of their vehicle with the house group greeting them shortly after. A man with short blonde hair and yellowish-brown eyes underneath some shades stepped forward and led the group.
“Ichigo-san, you’re still about as ugly as when I last saw you,” Tadao greeted with a cheeky grin as he approached.
“Tadao-san, you’re clearly the most repulsive one here. I see you still haven’t taken my advice to get your face fixed,” Ichigo greeted with a snarky expression as he also approached.
Once close enough, they locked hands for a shake before pulling each other in for a hug.
“It’s nice to see you again, friend! How’re you doin', man? No troubles getting here?” Tadao asked.
“I’m just fine. Getting here was a lot smoother than we thought. But we are exhausted,” Ichigo replied.
“I imagine. Remember that time in Second Year when we bought booze with fake IDs and we had to run for it?”
“Ha, how can I forget?! I was terrified the cops would get us!”
As the two men shared stories and laughed, everyone else present could not help but be astonished at how casual the two were being. It almost was like this wasn’t a business meeting.
“Yeah, those were the days,” Tadao laughed and turned to the other two people to address them. “Before we continue any further, allow me to introduce myself. I am Kurosawa Tadao, head of Kurosawa Security Services, and I welcome you all to my home. It’s nice to meet you!”
He then stepped toward the next person. She was a rather tall woman with long strawberry-blonde hair and pinkish-brown eyes.
“And you must be Miyako, his wife, yes?” He asked.
“Yes, I am,” She said with a polite smile as they shook hands.
“You know, I’ve always wondered how someone with a face like his could get married. But here we are,” He joked earning a laugh from her.
“I sometimes wonder why I decided to marry him too,” She commented and they both laughed.
“Huh? What?” Ichigo said but was ignored.
Then, Tadao moved to the last person. She was a short girl with long violet hair with matching eyes that have stars in them. But her most distinct feature was the bulge in her abdomen showing her pregnancy. Moreover, she looked like she wasn’t even 18. This observation made his gut wrench due to feeling pity for this poor girl’s bad decision. Regardless, he put on his best smile and took her hand.
“And you must be Hoshino Ai,” He greeted. “I’ve heard all about you, but since I’m the stereotypical old man, I’m not into your music. Regardless of that, and after listening to a couple of songs, I think you’re doing some very great work in your field.”
Her lips curved into a smile that cured souls as her eyes seemed to shimmer. Tadao kept himself from reacting, but at that moment he knew why she was so popular.
“Thank you so much, Tadao-san! You know, I don’t think I’m that popular to begin with but I’m always so happy to hear that someone like what I do!” She said happily.
He chuckled a bit. “I used to be in a band in middle school and high school, so I still try to stay up to date with the latest musical trends these days. Although, I still don’t know much. I mostly get my info on that from my own agents.”
He glanced to the side followed by Ai shortly after to see three younger agents standing stiffly as they tried to ignore them. They knew exactly who she was. All three of them have her as their phone’s lock screen wallpaper. And it’s clear that they wanted to talk to her, but they couldn’t. And even if they could, they didn’t know how. Ai giggled in amusement while Tadao just stared.
“Anyway, now that introductions have been made, let’s go inside where it’s more comfortable. I know you’re here for business, so let’s dive right in. We’ve also prepared snacks and refreshments inside in case you want some. Ichigo, my valet will take care of your car, so give him the keys please,” Tadao said as he gestured for them to follow.
“Do you have ice cream?” Ai asked.
“We sure do!”
“Yay! Let’s go!”
After Ichigo handed over the keys to a valet, Tadao began leading them into his home with the trio following shortly after. But before that, a mischievous thought entered Ai’s mind and she acted quickly. She suddenly turned to look at the trio of agents who tensed up even more under her gaze. Worse, they realized that she was up to no good just from her grin. But before they could even speculate what she was up to, she suddenly did her signature love heart hand pose with a smile. In a flash, the three agents felt their knees go weak in the presence of such moe cuteness that they struggled to stay upright as they covered their mouths to silence their ecstatic screams. Satisfied with her handiwork, Ai giggled as she left the scene of the crime.
“Um, are they gonna be alright?” Ichigo asked nervously as he saw one of them falling over.
“They’ll be fine.”
They entered the huge house and led them through a series of hallways that were decorated with all sorts of interesting stuff. One of them was some sort of cannon on a towed carriage, except, aside from one big barrel, it’s got multiple little ones arranged in a circle with a crank.
“Kurosawa-san, what’s that?” Ai asked.
“Oh, this? This is a Model 1874 Gatling Gun. It fires a .45-70 caliber round from top-loaded 20-round box magazines with a rate of fire of about a thousand rounds per minute, although, it really depends on how fast you can crank it. It was one of the most revolutionary weapons ever designed and it changed the battlefield forever. This specific weapon here was used by the Imperial Army against revolting samurai during their last stand in the Battle of Mount Shiroyama, the last action of the Satsuma Rebellion,” He explained. “Sometimes I wonder what the samurai were thinking in their last moments just before they were all gunned down.”
“Wow,” Ai whispered in awe.
“Indeed. I don’t even know where my father dug up this gun,” He said before tracing across the black-painted barrels of the old weapon.
“That’s so cool!” She exclaimed happily then fished out her phone from her hoodie pocket. “Can I take a picture with it?”
“Ai, we’re here in business and the man’s likely very busy, so let’s not take anymore—” Ichigo said but was cut off.
“Sure thing! Our meeting is the only thing I have on my schedule today, so I’m basically free to do anything!” Tadao interjected with a wide smile as she took her phone.
What followed next was a comedic scene which was basically an old man doting on his granddaughter while he took pictures of her doing cute things. Meanwhile, everyone else present just stared with blank expressions.
“So much for not being into idols,” Ichigo muttered.
“These are so good! Thank you so much, Kurosawa-san!” She thanked him with a wide smile after going over the pictures.
“You’re very welcome! And you know, we’ve got a lot of goodies in this house, maybe you’d like to take some pictures with them too?” He offered.
“I’d love to!” She squealed.
“Mhmm!” Someone cleared their throat.
Looking in that direction, they saw a young man dressed in a nice business suit who was basically a younger version of Tadao. He approached them with his hands in his pockets and regarded them with a straight expression.
“You’re getting off track here, Dad. We’re still conducting a business,” He said as a matter of factly. “And what happened to ‘no touching of the expensive decor’?”
“Oh come on, son, do you honestly believe I can refuse that?” Tadao complained as he gestured to Ai who maintained a happy expression as she looked at the photos.
“Don’t enable her, Dad. Ma’am, please stop touching the gun, it’s very old and very expensive,” He said.
“Ai, get off of it,” Ichigo ordered.
“Aw, okay,” She said sadly as she backed off.
“Sorry for the trouble, but this stuff is crazy expensive. And oh, I’m Kurosawa Akio, by the way. It’s a pleasure to meet all of you,” He greeted with a polite smile.
“This is my son. He’ll be taking care of the business one day, so I’m bringing him along more now,” Tadao said.
Another round of handshakes was exchanged as the group introduced themselves to Akio. Ai expected the tone and body language of a fan holding himself back, the same kind she’s gotten used to seeing, but was rather surprised when he shook her hands normally with nothing but politeness in his eyes. Strange, now she’s curious. Akio on his part thought that she was a rather normal-looking girl, except for the bulging stomach, and didn’t find anything very special from just looking at her.
“Sorry for messing around. It’s just a really cool-looking thing!” Ai said.
“It sure is, ‘can’t argue with that. They don’t make weapons like these anymore these days. It’s all just big bombs now, which is boring,” Akio remarked.
“I don’t think death and destruction are supposed to be nice to see,” Miyako remarked.
“Exactly,” Tadao stated with a firm voice. “And that’s what we strive for in KSS. Every day must always be boring. Now come on, we’ve got business to attend to.” He said before turning and walking away.
“Is he always like this?” Miyako asked with a sweatdrop, noting the man’s sudden change of face.
“You’ll get used to it,” Both Ichigo and Akio replied in a flat tone.
They finished the walk toward their destination which was a conference room inside the house. The place was quite spacious and cozy looking, especially since it has a fireplace. They all immediately took their seats with KSS taking one side of the table and Ichigo Productions sitting opposite of them.
“Snacks will be brought in a little bit, so let’s get down to business to business shall we,” Tadao said as he placed a briefcase on the table and pulled out some papers. “By the way, everything we talk about will not leave this room, you can trust us. I think I also know the reason why you need an extra pair of hands. Your reason for getting a bodyguard is because you’re worried that you’ll be attacked like that idol that got stabbed recently, yes?”
They all nodded at that. It was already a month old, but the memory of it was still fresh on everyone’s minds, especially since it was covered on national news.
An idol named Hirose Keiko, who was pretty popular and only 16 like Ai, was recently murdered by a crazy fan in her own home. The autopsy report stated that the cause of death was cardiac arrest from severe bleeding after being stabbed three times and that she died in minutes.
The police captured the killer before he could jump off a bridge and took him in for questioning. He said that a Twitter post showing Keiko being all friendly with some guy somewhere made people think she had gotten a boyfriend. This enraged him because he felt betrayed by her actions, therefore he stalked her and plotted her murder for weeks. So, it was pretty awkward for him to find out that Keiko’s supposed boyfriend was actually her cousin and she was at a family get-together at that time.
The news shocked everyone in the country and many celebrities started taking their personal security more seriously. Ichigo was worried for Ai, and Ai was a bit scared herself. She knew Keiko, they did some collaborations together in the past, and she was upset she couldn’t attend her funeral. So, Ichigo Productions, though a bit cash-strapped, decided that it would be a good idea to have some form of security with them to help out in the long run. Especially now that Ai was pregnant… they couldn’t stomach the thought of some deranged lunatic stabbing her to death like what happened to Keiko.
“I don’t think I can forget that. I knew the girl and her agency, they were good people. I hope that bastard gets the chair,” Ichigo muttered.
“You and me both. And don’t worry, we’ll make sure nothing ever happens to you,” Tadao assured. “Alright, now, how do you want to be protected?”
“We just need someone with us to keep the creeps away, especially one that can lie low with us. Nothing flashy at all,” Ichigo answered.
“Hmm, I understand what you want. One or two agents on you at all times at least, covering your front and back. They’ll be in plain clothes too so as to not draw attention. Okay, I’ve got a lot of agents to spare for that kind of job,” Tadao said, as he wrote on a piece of paper.
“What else is there?” Ichigo asked.
“We’re gonna brief you on how we operate and how we intend to do this. None of them are hard to follow at all. The gist is that you need to tell us everything, your schedules, contacts, extra activities, etcetera.”
“So, I’ll basically be followed around everywhere?” Ai asked.
“Basically, yes. But the key difference is that it’ll be by people you can trust. However, that doesn’t mean we’ll be poking around your daily life and infringing on your space every day. We’ll create a system in which you’re safe but still comfortable. In fact, we even have methods to protect you without you or anyone seeing us, but that’s really expensive though,” Tadao explained. “We know our boundaries too, Hoshino-sama, you don’t have to worry.”
“Hmm,” Ai hummed as she considered his words before another thought occurred to her. “Will you kill people?”
“Only if they really force us to. Every agent has a loaded gun with him, but we’re also trained in ways to stop an attacker with non-lethal force. Besides, one of our tactics is that by simply being there, we can discourage anyone from trying anything funny. As I’ve said, the best days for us are the most boring ones.”
“I see.”
“What’s the price tag?” Miyako asked.
“Despite the low elements, you’re still looking at 500,000 yen per month. But…” He trailed off. “But… due to my debt to you, Ichigo, I’ve decided to give you half that price for six months. This is paid like a subscription service where you have to pay every month. Failure to pay means immediate termination of services.”
“Is there anything else?” Ichigo asked.
“There are a bunch more details that you need to know. Legality, protocols, company policy, and all that. But, there’s one detail that I threw in as a condition for this,” Tadao said then placed a hand on Akio’s shoulder who was sitting to his right. “My son will be the one to run point of your protection detail. This’ll also act as his first test, to prove his skill as a protection agent.”
“Although I’m inexperienced, I’m quick to learn and adapt, and I’m ready to take on whatever task is needed from me,” Akio said politely.
Ichigo and Miyako frowned at the prospect of being given someone who was inexperienced in the field. But if he was the son of the guy who runs the place, then he should be pretty good, right? Besides, this is possibly the best deal they’ll ever get, and they weren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Alright, that’s fine,” Ichigo said.
“I’m okay with it,” Ai said.
“Although, Akio will be running point so you’ll see him the most often, another rookie agent will also be there to learn too. He’ll be number two. A senior agent will also be dropping by occasionally to check on them and evaluate their performance, although you don’t need to pay him. And in case things get really bad, emergency services and other agents won’t be too far to assist,” Tadao added.
“Ah, alright,” Ichigo said.
“Now, for the rest of everything.”
They would spend the next thirty minutes getting into the details of how everything would be under their care. Snacks and refreshments were brought in at that time with Ai receiving a pint of ice cream, making her very happy. They got into some legal conditions that were implemented to protect both sides. They also got into how the protection detail would work and what to do under certain situations. And of course, company policy.
One such policy is that the client can sue the company for up to 30 million yen for disclosing any secrets entrusted to them without permission. And although KSS can definitely pay that amount, their reputation would be tarnished and they’d lose even more money. That was a fact that allowed Ichigo Productions to rest easier. Ai’s pregnancy needed to remain under wraps.
After a few more minutes and a couple more things were clarified, they finally moved on to the last piece of the puzzle. Tadao opened up his briefcase and pulled out one last set of papers.
“This is the contract. What’s is just a summary of everything we talked about, but I suggest you read it carefully so you’re not missing anything,” Tadao said.
Ichigo Productions took the document and carefully read through it to make sure they were not missing anything. It took another five minutes, but they confirmed that everything was in place.
“A service that tells you everything and makes you read the contract first? Finally!” Ichigo joked.
“We’re the guys that protect the Emperor, not some shady organization! We’ve got a reputation to uphold!” Tadao stated. “Anyway, if nothing is amiss, sign your name and seal on the space provided and we are officially under your employ.”
“Everything’s here. Let’s seal the deal,” Ichigo said.
He grabbed a pen that was provided to him and signed his name on the line at the bottom then stamped his seal on the side. Miyako did the same thing after him. And finally, Ai filled out the last line with her name and seal and even drew a little heart on it. Tadao took the document and looked through it before putting it down and giving them a smile.
“You are now under the protection of Kurosawa Security Services! With Hachiman, the divine protector of Japan, guiding our hands, you will not have to worry about anything as long as we are around! Rest assured that we will take care of you. And anyone that tries to harm you will die a horrible death!” He proclaimed.
“That’s… oddly specific,” Ichigo remarked.
“If you get hurt, we’ll cover the expenses of your medical bill. If you die under our watch, which you won’t, we’ll offer a full refund to your relatives, and we’ll even avenge you. That’s our policy, to treat our clientele as if they are our family,” He added.
“That’s very nice,” Miyako said.
“Only the best we provide our clients,” Tadao said. “And aside from giving you a copy of the documents, this concludes our business. Thank you for choosing our services. We promised not to disappoint.”
“We’ll be watching closely then.”
Both groups then stood up and gave each other one last bout of handshakes to truly seal the contract that was just signed.
“I’ll make sure your men get tickets to one of my concerts in the future!” Ai said and looked at Akio. “Especially you, Akio-san.”
“Oh, that’s very kind of you, Hoshino-sama. But, I’m not into idol music,” He replied politely.
“Huh?”
“Please excuse my son. We know he’s a weirdo,” Tadao jokingly said.
“I ain’t weird, Dad. I don’t hate idol music but I don’t exactly like it either. I just like other things,” Akio stated.
“It’s not impossible, but it’s a first for us. Everyone your age we’ve met is into idols,” Saitou said. “Looks like you’re the 10% we didn’t see coming.”
“Please just take it as less worry for you, since I won’t be prying for your attention all the time. I’ll always keep a respectful distance. I promise.”
“That’s all we can ever ask really. Thank you.”
“Now that business is concluded, we can all turn in for the night. But would you like something before you leave? Some more snacks or drinks perhaps? We’ve got a lot here,” Tadao offered but Ichigo shook his head.
“No, we’ve already been here too long, we don’t want to overstay our welcome. Besides, it’s late and we’re all tired. We should be getting back now,” he said.
“Alright. In that case, allow us to walk you out while I get the valet to get your car.”
“Alright then.”
Ichigo Productions prepared to leave while Tadao got on his phone. Ichigo and Miyako started discussing something with each other while Ai simply looked around the room. Her eyes would eventually land on Akio who was looking at his phone. He’d pocket it a moment later and his eyes would land on his protectee’s. She’d flashed him a wide smile, the kind that can captivate any man, while he returned with a simple smile and a nod. Ai began opening her mouth to speak before stopping short when there was a disturbance from Tadao.
“... Really? Alright, I’ll tell them,” He sighed before turning to the group.
“What’s wrong?” Ichigo asked.
Tadao smiled awkwardly. “A small problem just developed on your end.”
They’d find themselves outside again a moment later, watching a scene unfold before them. Ichigo Production’s car, a white rental Toyota Corolla, remained where Ichigo last left it although the hood was open and multiple guys were peering into the engine compartment with flashlights. One agent tried turning the key and starting the ignition, yet the engine remained quiet. A moment later, a middle-aged man with his sleeves rolled up walked up to Tadao while wiping his hands on a rag.
“I think it’s a broken sparkplug, Tadao-san. It just won’t start,” He reported.
“I told you it was broken!” Miyako scolded Ichigo in a hushed voice.
“Do we have spare parts, Hiro-san?” Tadao asked.
“No, we just ran out when our own rides needed maintenance and we haven’t resupplied yet,” He said with a shake of his head. “We can’t run to the shop too because it’s already closed at this time. This thing’s staying here till morning.”
Ichigo and Miyako groaned at their misfortune while the rest of them simply stared indifferently. Tadao then sighed and spoke again.
“Alright. In that case, Hiro-san, please get the van off the driveway and onto the side. We’ll deal with it tomorrow morning. Then please take one of the Land Cruisers and take them back to their hotel. The rest of you are free to leave for home too,” He ordered.
“Hai, Kurosawa-sama!” Everyone replied.
“Tadao-san, are you sure? This is probably too much—” Ichigo began but stopped when Tadoa raised a hand.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind at all. Just think of this as me helping a friend in need. And no, you don’t have to pay,” He replied.
Ichigo was unsure but ultimately allowed it and bowed a bit. “Alright, thank you.”
“No problem,” Tadao replied with a shallow nod.
While the adults addressed the issue of their ride, the two kids remained on the side and simply watched. Akio and Ai were still in their teens, so they were kids in the eyes of the adults present.
“So,” Ai began. “What kind of music do you listen to, Kurokawa-san?”
“Uh, I like rock music of all types from pop to death metal. I’ve been listening to them since I was five. And it’s Kurosawa, Hoshino-sama,” He replied, her sudden question and error of his name catching him off guard.
“Ah, really? Ahahaha, I’m so sorry! I'm not very good at memorizing people’s faces!” She laughed jovially.
“Ahaha, I can imagine. Since you probably see so many faces every day, it’s hard to keep track of them all, huh?” He laughed.
“Ah, yeah! It’s a bit of a problem for me, hehe. Sometimes, I even forget the President’s name too, haha!”
He laughed along with her but internally, he was cringing a bit.
Does every idol have such an airheaded personality? He wondered.
“It must be kinda hard for you too, having to work like this when you’re so young,” She remarked.
“Well, this is my first job ever, so it doesn’t seem hard at all right now. That’s definitely gonna change though,” He replied. “But, I don’t think my job will get anywhere as difficult as yours with you having to put up an act all the time. I don’t think I can handle that.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I really like my job, but sometimes it gets pretty tiring. Taking a break like this is gonna help out a lot!” She said happily before taking a deep breath and looking around. “I think I’ve already said this, but your place is really nice.”
“Mhmm, and this is just our place here in Tokyo. We’re only here now because we need to be closer to some of our clients at the moment. Our main house in Kyoto is even bigger and cooler!” Akio replied.
“You guys are really loaded, huh?”
“For the past few decades, Kurosawa has been branching to other things that make money. We need the cash to pay for our stuff after all. Although, we’re still inferior to zaibatsus like Shinomiya and Shijo (who we provide services to, by the way) but also still better than most.”
“Wow.”
“Mhmm, but money still isn’t everything. We try to take a humble approach to things too. Dad doesn’t like spending money on anything that isn’t important and I don’t buy a lot of things myself,” He added and kept his mouth open to continue when he was interrupted.
“Don’t believe him! He eats yakiniku at least once a week!” One of the younger agents stated as he walked by with a bag over his shoulder, likely on his way home.
“Look who’s talking, idiot! You spend the most out of all of us!” He retorted angrily but only got a laugh in response. He turned back to Ai who was holding a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles, prompting him to sigh in annoyance. “Alright, I admit that part and also I spend a lot quite a lot on video games and band equipment, but only on special occasions. I’m not some pompous rich jerk that throws money around, I promise you.”
“Hmm, alright, I believe you,” She giggled and then thought of something. “You could’ve totally left that part out or outright lied. Why didn’t you?”
“Uh, it was already out, so there’s no point in trying to lie about it anymore. Besides, I don’t believe you deserve to be lied to, Hoshino-sama,” He answered.
Her smile wavered ever so slightly as she processed his answer. I don’t deserve to be… lied to?
“Um—”
“Ai, our ride’s here! Let’s head back to the hotel!” Ichigo called out as one of the company’s Land Cruisers had been brought out to take them.
“I guess we’ll just have to continue this conversation some other time, but it’s been a nice talk. I look forward to working with you, Hoshino-sama,” He said with a wide smile and an outstretched hand.
“Ai.”
“Sorry?”
Ai smiled widely too, her eyes seemingly shimmering brighter as she took his hand and shook it. “Since we’ll be sticking so closely together for a while, you can just call me Ai, Akio-san.”
He blinked. “U-Uh, sure thing, Ai-san.”
“Just Ai,” She clarified.
“Just Ai,” He nodded and smiled widely, happy that she remembered his first know, even if he didn’t know why.
“If that’s what you want, you’re the boss,” Akio remarked, earning another laugh from her. “You have a good night, Ai, and I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
“You too, Akio-san.”
She’d head back to her group a moment later and they were leaving the estate shortly. Akio waved at the car as it drove past him and he could just barely see a human figure waving back through the darkness. As he watched the SUV disappear, he put his hand down and looked up at the sky.
“Wow,” He breathed. “Her eyes are something else.”
He’d retire for the night shortly after without another thought. He’d sleep soundly not knowing that he had just stepped on the path that would define his life.
***
This is the link to the ff.net page. Thank you very much for taking the time to read it, and thank you even more if you decide to support it on ff.net! Please also tell me what you think and/or if you have any ideas you'd like to share here or there!
For now, have a great day, and peace out!
Veritas vos liberabit.
The Truth will set you Free.
submitted by tomimendoza to OshiNoKo [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 13:26 Naao_101 Seeking Feedback on Online Obituary Generator Website

Hello everyone,
I've been developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows users to create online obituaries efficiently. It's a tool I've designed with funeral homes in mind, hoping to streamline their operations and offer additional value to their clients.
The platform allows the customization of obituaries with an easy-to-use interface, offers a variety of templates, and facilitates the sharing process to various social media platforms.
I'd greatly appreciate any feedback from this community regarding the following:
  1. The Website: Any suggestions about the design, usability, functionality, or any features you think would be beneficial to add?
  2. The Business Model: Thoughts on the per-use pricing model for funeral homes. Are there any alternative pricing models you think could be more effective?
  3. Marketing Strategy: I'm planning to approach funeral homes directly to sell this service, but I'm open to suggestions for other marketing strategies that could be effective.
  4. Market Demand: Do you think there's a demand for this kind of service? Are there any other markets you think I should be targeting?
You can access the platform at https://elysianmemorials.io/. Thank you in advance for your time and feedback.
submitted by Naao_101 to SaaS [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 03:26 Lemonloid He passed away at 22

TLDR: I just need to vent becuase I'm so heartbroken right now. I just want some support. My friend/ex died and before he died he told his other friend that he didn't ever love me.
My friend's celebration of life was a few hours ago and I can't stop crying. I loved him so much. We met eachother in kindergarten but weren't close until after high school. I grew up around him. He was just such an amazing, unique person but he really struggled with alcoholism. It was like I met the person of my dreams. When he was sober he was so charming, funny, intelligent, creative, passionate, energetic, and loving. We had such an intense connection and I've never had butterflies like that before. But I broke up with him only after a week of being official becuase he wasn't very reliable. He was blacking out, canceling plans to get drunk and then lying about how much he had been drinking. We took a break and then started being friends again and I would hear from him from time to time. I moved on to other relationships after that, but I still cared about him deeply as a friend. I just couldn't tolerate his alcoholism anymore as a girlfriend.
I had a dream about him saying goodbye, so I tried to reach out to him but I couldn't becuase all his accounts were deactivated. After that dream I would wake up comforted just to the thought of him and memories of him just kept popping up everywhere. there was one moment it genuinely felt like he was hugging me and resting his head on my shoulder. Until one night I get home from work and I start feeling an intense sense of grief and dread without reason. I could almost hear his name in my room, even though I live alone. So I google him and the first result is his obituary. It says his funeral happened just a few hours ago so I didn't make it. But I still went to the celebration of life. At the celebration of life one of his friends told me that they called him before he passed, and he was talking about me and how much he never loved me. That really broke my heart. I saw his mother too and she said he wouldn't stop talking about me in a good way and that he really loved me and cared. He just wasn't in his right mind to continue a relationship when he isn't sober. His best friends told me not to look too much into it becuase he wasn't well and before he got to that point in his alcoholism he really did care. I'm just so sad that he is gone and I just wanted him to care becuase I cared. I still care.
submitted by Lemonloid to AlAnon [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:40 RandomAppalachian468 Don't fly over Barron County Ohio.

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.
submitted by RandomAppalachian468 to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.05.28 20:40 eulalie_pop Logan made Succession a circle, not a line, and we're about to watch it end where it began

So I’ve been down the rabbit hole, trying to chase every off-the-cuff reference, stray allegory, allusion, comparison, and tangent. I’m going to need you to bear (hug) with me for a bit because I think I’ve stumbled on some truly insane parallels between this show and the myriad of references it makes and it will take a lot of text to justify to you that I'm not crazy (or that I am, but at least I do my research).
This is a show that employs a ton of intertextuality and what the poet T.S. Eliot (someone quoted frequently throughout the series) calls “the mythic method”: essentially using historical, literary, and mythological allusions to draw parallels between characters on the show and characters throughout history (real and imagined).
This method helps the audience to build both conscious and unconscious associations with each of the characters and, ultimately, underscores the Roys’ (and humanity’s) damning commitment to making the same mistakes over and over again. The show seems to draw a lot from Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, biblical parables, Shakespearean tragedy, and modernist poetry (among many other things).
These networks of symbolism span from the earliest recorded history to modern celebrity culture and yet they reveal frighteningly unchanged elements in the stories they tell. The parallels of these references throughout the show serve to highlight the cyclical (the illusion of progress) and deterministic (the illusion of free will) nature of existence.
While I will be dipping in and out of the existing references, I want to call particular attention to the poetry of the aforementioned T.S. Eliot (who champions the mythic method) and John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 29 because I believe much of their work has served as a foundation for characters.
In the show, Frank makes mention of his poem “The Long Song Of J Alfred Prufrock” more than once. Outside of the show, Matthew McFayden (the actor who plays Tom) references the same poem to describe his character. Jeremy Strong (the actor who plays Kendall) says Eliot’s work The Four Quartets is a huge inspiration to his acting and character. A line from this particular work did strike me as being quite on the nose, which is why I continued to comb the poem for more (which it does deliver on):
"In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf."
This will probably be a monster of a post, so I will attempt to break down the following sections between poetic parallels, visual and dialogic symbolism of eternal recurrence, and an exploration of the historical and mythological allusions. Ultimately, I believe all of these clues point to the overwhelming conclusion that we will end where we began, in some way or another.
Circles & Cycles: Endless Recurrence & The Futility Of Progress
The show toys a lot with the philosophical concept of eternal recurrence, which postulates that “time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.”
These eternal loops are symbolized visually with mirrors, water, fractal reflections; in the “uh-huh” and “mhmms” of repeated, near-palindromic dialogue; and in the show events that echo and repeat: in-air death scares, asynchronous business deals, family betrayal, weddings, retreats, implosions, family reunions, trauma bonding, baptism, funerals, etc.
In this understanding of time, there is no linear progress — or even progress at all. Time is cyclical. People are cyclical. As are the events that transpire. This is particularly interesting in a show like Succession whose title alone implies the phrase “line of succession.” Viewers would expect to see what comes next — who comes next — but as Logan himself yells, “Nothing is a line. Everything is moving all the time.”
Logan consistently evokes the circle shape in his speech, “Put a circle around him” he tells Shiv. “We’ve been circling for an hour, tell them we’re out of gas,” he complains in a moment of grim foreshadowing on his plane. “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes,” he shouts during the game of Boar on the Floor.
And he is the bright, burning nebulous center of this circle. He’s described as “carr[ying] his gravity. He's not a man, he's a f*cking planet.” And the people around him are described like satellites and moons. Characters exist in his orbit. And every complete orbit (or “revolution”) leaves characters in exactly the same place. There are motions, there is the illusion of progress, but the result is the same. Eliot again:
“every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure”
With this understanding, the show may just end where it begins. Not only in “nothing” happening, but in repeating the same events ad infinitum: A kid tries to take over the family business, they try to align with their siblings, they eventually backstab their siblings, they end out in the cold, and then they reunite, swear not to do it again, until it all repeats.
As most of us are aware, the show has made very direct mention of the John Berryman poem Dream Song 29. The names of the past three season finales (as well as the name of the upcoming fourth) are all direct excerpts from the poem, which deals with grief and sadness and the guilt of killing someone when you can’t even confirm there’s been someone killed at all.
Berryman consistently wrote about the guilt and grief he experienced from his father’s suicide. Berryman himself would eventually end up taking his own life, which on its own is a brutal reminder of the cycles of trauma. It also doesn’t feel insignificant that Berryman jumped off a bridge.
What’s really interesting is how each subsequent finale is named for a line that comes earlier and earlier in the poem. It also toys with this concept that things come full circle and end where they begin. This echoes Eliot’s essential thesis of the poem:
“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
But while the speaker of the poem comes to realize he has not murdered “nobody” by the poem’s last line; Kendall, moving through the poem backward, must reckon with the idea that he may have killed somebody even if they were a “nobody.” And while we may encounter this as a moment in which Kendall is genuinely despairing over his season 1 inadvertent murder, I believe we are far more likely to see Kendall embrace this moment.
We see "nobody" and "no one mentioned" a lot when it comes to Logan, who believes most people are "fungible as f*ck," and "pygmies" while he's "1,000 feet tall." When Kendall is involved in the accident, we see him echo "NRPI" or no real person involved.
The reason Kendall couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations is that he couldn’t be the killer his father needed him to be (even if his morality or basis of being a good person is off). This retroactive movement through the poem could be Kendall realizing he is, in fact, the killer his father always needed him to be, enabling him to take the necessary steps of seizing the crown on his own.
Allegories & Allusions: Mythic Comparisons & Determinism
It’s Shakespearean, like Roman says, “I kill Kendall, get crowned king, like we’re in f*cking Hamlet or something.” But it’s not just Hamlet, it’s King Lear, King Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth. And it’s not just Shakespeare, it’s Oedipus Rex, The Odyssey, The Waste Land, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cronus devouring his children, Romulus killing Remus, Noah cursing his child for looking upon him naked.
The concept of the monomyth was popularized in "The Hero With 1000 Faces" and discusses throughout history, throughout different times and places, different cultures, different religions, different people have developed stories with relatively similar fundamental elements. The show is rife with allusions of stories that follow that same thread. Logan is Cronus who is King Lear who is Romulus who is who is. This is another form of endless recurrence: the inability to break the cycle. Or, in a very Hamlet reference, "maybe the poison drips through."
The themes of patricide, fratricide, and incest in particular are rampant. Rhea (like Rhea Jarell) in Greek mythology is both sister and consort to Cronus. Both are part of the first generation of aptly named Titan gods. Cronus overthrew his father Uranus and learns his children are fated to overthrow him. So he eats them as soon as they are born. Logan does refer to people as food a surprising amount throughout the show, varying from red meat to vegetables. He outright calls for blood sacrifice, which evokes the language of the gods.
Logan is referenced specifically as one of the last real American titans in his obituaries and eulogies. The language around him is frequently god-like. He's known as "the big man" or even "the big man upstairs." Tom tells Greg to "be his representative here on earth"; Roman asks the audience, "who is going to climb Mt. Olympus and be the next Dr. Zeus?" And that's where the myth gets interesting.
The only child not to be eaten is Zeus, who does end up killing his father and was surprisingly interested in marrying his mother. We're familiar with this plot formula through a different archetype: the Oedipus Complex, which we see referenced in the show with “Oedipus Roy,” “Oedipussy,” and “stabbing my eyes out.” The same story is repeated again in Hamlet with brother killing and brother and son yelling at his mother about her milky breasts (something Roman does to Shiv more than once). In the show when Logan says to Roman, “You may want to f*ck your mother but I don’t.” We know none of these stories end well. As Connor muses, “It’s not right to kill one’s father; history teaches us that.”
In the story of Romulus and Remus (whose mother’s name is also Rhea), the two brothers were initially chased out of their city as potential threats to the King (yet again). They were left by the river to die and were saved by the river god (important). After successfully overthrowing the kingdom that left them for dead, they agree to found a new city. They ultimately disagreed on which hill to found it and decided to have a bird-watching competition to see who could see the most omens indicating they had divine approval for the hill. Remus says he saw 6 auspicious birds but Romulus claims to see 12. Romulus kills Remus over this.
It should remind you of Logan visiting his childhood home with Ewan: “I saw a mistle thrush at the bandstand,” and the log book he kept as a child of birds he “saw” that Ewan would cross out if he didn’t believe him. It may also echo a part of The Four Quartets, “Other echoes/ Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?/ Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,/ Round the corner. Through the first gate,/ Into our first world, shall we follow/ The deception of the thrush?"
There is much to be said about the themes of warring brothers. Also the themes of fathers worried their children would one day overthrow them who take action to thwart or murder their children, which inadvertently sets into motion the very outcome they fear. It happens over and over again in stories old and new. As Panhandle Pete says, “I push him, he pushes me, and around and around we go.” Or as Eliot puts it, “that the wheel may turn and still / Be forever still.”
Much of these works touch on a sort of determinism, or the slow crushing reality that every action you take — even if that action is an attempt to thwart your fate — will ultimately lead to the same inevitable ending. This is the illusion of free will on top of the illusion of progress. And Logan, in fearing his children would usurp him (and also disparaging his children for not being able to), set into motion his own death and his own messy succession.
It’s also a reminder that the greatest men in life are all the same when laid to rest:
"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark…"
Structure & Symbolism: Water As Rebirth & Destruction
The show has very much been structured around Kendall, and we watch him move through bodies of water with what feels like different symbolism each time. Is he drowning, is he reborn? We witness Kendall at his lowest point face down in a pool and at one of his highest, splashing into the Pacific ocean. We watch a man drown. We watch Logan beg Kendall for water as they walk through Adrien Brody’s maze. We watch Roman clamor for water at the funeral when he needs to calm down. Poetry has long played with this life and death dynamic in water, like the sailors dying of thirst in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner who cry:
“Water, water, every where,. And all the boards did shrink;. Water, water, every where,. Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ!”
This sub has noted Kendall’s connection to water, which has been represented over and over visually. But once you realize every metaphor, analogy, and simile he uses is water-based, you can’t unhear it. He calls his father “a tsunami of corruption” and describes things “as more precious than water”; he calls deals “choppy” and “dead in the water,” and asks to “help steady the ship”; he offers to “row back” on business deals, says timing is “high tide,” and that he has “bigger fish to fry.”
Logan is apt to use similar water symbolism, even telling Shiv that she’s marrying a man “fathoms” beneath her. As Rhea tells him, fearful of his own monstrosity, “I can’t see the bottom of the pool. I don’t know if you care about anything. It scares me.” ATN’s major scandal was “death cruises.” Even his operating nemesis is called “Sandy.”
In fact, there is mention of all elements and seasons — in particular, fire from Shiv, air from Roman, and earth from Connor. T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets confront these same themes and share some surprising similarities with show scene locations, dialogue, and plot points.
That’s because Succession is an allegory for the micro and the macro: the rise and fall of families, civilizations, monarchies, dynasties, and empires. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, the cycles rinse and repeat. Eliot modeled the four quartets on the 4 elements and the 4 seasons. And you can see even in Succession a similar manifestation of 4 elements. And, well, 4 seasons of the show. (And what occurs after 4 seasons? A full revolution around the sun, bringing you to where you began.)
Water seems to be at the root of it all. Even Ewan’s eulogy meditates on his and Logan’s journey on a boat. Even their abusive uncle is named Noah. In the show, we watch our nobody die by water, we watch our main character nearly die by water, and then we watch him revive in the ocean. As Kendall and his father wind their way through Adrien Brody’s circuitous Long Island home, Kendall remarks, “I think this leads to the ocean.” Because every path leads to the sea in some way or another.
The overarching narration from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is the Arthurian Legend of The Fisher King. This story is told a million different ways with a million different outcomes, but always boils down to an injured or maimed monarch ruling over a dying land. Or as Ewan refers to his "empire of shit": “He’s built a wasteland and called it an empire.”
He’s looking for someone, anyone, to heal him, rescue the kingdom, and ensure the dynasty survives. This is the myth of the holy grail, which, in this show, can be seen as the throne: The original stories of the holy grail were not Christian/religious but they do employ a lot of the same mythmaking from earlier religions and mythologies to tell their stories and thus construct their new realties. As Eliot says in The Four Quartets:
"The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere."
I believe Kendall (and the other children) represent the grail knights who try to save the king. (On the same level they stand in for the gods, the elements, or anything at all). When Christianity became more popular, these myths adapted to Christian overtones, but they still had the Celtic and pagan myths at their core: the grail becomes the chalice from the last supper.
That’s why Kendall’s easy comparisons of himself to Jesus feel less blasphemous than revelatory. Jesus is another hero archetype in the show’s mythology. He is willing to sacrifice himself, which Kendall must do in order to become the successor his father wanted. As he says, "this is a culmination of my life's journey to be crucified for you morons."
(It’s worth noting: In some legends, the knight saves the king; in others, he inadvertently destroys him. We know Logan dies, but it does feel less likely that Waystar Royco survives.) Drowning is a constant feature of Eliot's poems, but so is baptism and renewed life. It is difficult to determine the meaning of water in either instance, except that it doesn't discriminate as a life or death bringer, which is both beautiful and terrifying.
Parallels & Predictions: Piecing The Plot & Poetry Together
To repeat again, as this show is wont to do: “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes!” Logan Roy shouts during a game of Boar On A Floor. It’s an allegory, like many games on the series, and proudly says the quiet part out loud: Logan always wins. Here’s a little boar on the floor reference in The Four Quartets:
"We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars."
We’ve seen the L.O.G.A.N. system at work many times and with many people. He dangles a carrot, a morsel of love, as each character attempts to play the game over and over while expecting different results. They are doomed to crawl in that circle, to play that blind game, as Logan angrily shouts, “It’s fun!” And this game doesn't end in death. The children still ask. "What would dad do?"
Games on Succession (which are a consistent refrain), it turns out, are rarely fun and are often designed to humiliate or inflict pain. The same goes when characters say “I’m just kidding” after an eviscerating remark. Logan thinks life is a game, and as he says, games should be taken seriously. And because Logan explicitly makes the rules, there is no winning, just trudging around the board, passing Go, and collecting $200. The games are essentially Sisyphean tasks that the kids wouldn’t be able to win even if they were actually competent enough to run the company. And yet they keep rolling the boulder. It’s endless. The repetition. It ends where it begins.
"Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments."
Please also note the use of “the rose” and “the yew tree,” which are the names of Logan’s siblings Rose and Ewan, which derives from yew-tree. Other important name comparisons include Kendall’s association to spring/river valley; Siobhan’s nickname either a knife (Shiv) or Pinky (a variation of the name Rose); Roman’s connection to Romulus/Corialanus; Tom’s name meaning “twin” because there was already someone named Judas in the bible HELLO; Logan’s name meaning little hollow, which recalls another Eliot poem, The Hollow Men.
We know this show is a game, one that isn't fun at all, and one whose rules Logan made up. Even when there's a winner, there's no winner. So it's almost futile to play at all. That said, it’s impossible to make sense of any of it all without the ending — to confirm this ball has been rolling toward an inevitable conclusion, but given the show’s ending has probably occurred already, here are my thoughts:
This may feel a bit on the nose given we’ve already seen this almost happen to “the Kurt Cobain of floaties,” but it would certainly be poetic. This could be sad (launched from a bridge); empowering (a la The Awakening); or metaphorical (a drug overdose). At some point Kendall says, "If dad didn’t need me right now I wouldn’t know what I would be for." The kids exist with Logan as their sun; they are moons, satellites, in orbit. And when their sun dies out, they repeat the motions in the cold, slowly losing their patterns and motions. The term is science is a rogue planet and the following lines from the poem remind me of Kendall and his broken, hollow stare.
“It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.”
Any victory feels like it will be a Pyrrhic victory regardless when you've had to systematically take down everyone you love to achieve it. The same lines above can echo here "the purpose is beyond the end you figured/And is altered in fulfilment." A hollow victory. The Fisher King question Logan poses is, "Who can replace me?" Logan wanted each of his children to display the killer instinct. Kendall’s backwards journey through Dreamsong 29 may very well see him realize he is, in fact, the killer his dad always wanted — with open eyes. This will probably involve taking down his siblings. In this version, winning is a lot like losing, which feels very Succession.
These Shakespearean histories and tragedies rarely end well for existing houses. With Richard III (the-multiple-lineage-ending war of the roses) and Hamlet (the-whole-house-dies-but-a-norwegian-king-swoops-in-to-take-it-all dynastic struggle) references abound. We may just see a new house rise up and rinse and repeat. This would probably also occur if the kids take each other down and leave it open for another party. We saw last season that Roman thought he had an in with Mattson until it didn’t serve Mattson anymore. I see the same thing happening between Roman and Mencken. This puts Mencken and Mattson in a position to take over, which may make Mattson win it or…
When Mattson is introduced, he is referenced as a trickster. Generally, in mythology, this character is quite intelligent or in possession of secret knowledge, and he uses it for trickery and commandeering situations. (Is that blood thing real???). Hamlet concludes with every major character killing the other with their own tragic flaws until a third party Scandinavian comes in to take the crown with no necessary action or bloodshed at all. We already know he's unscrupulous; what is his end game? It reminds me of one of his early lines to Roman, which would be an eerie foreshadowing:
“Success doesn’t really interest me anymore, it’s too easy. Analysis + capital + execution. Fucking, anyone can do that. But failure, that’s a secret. Just as much failure as possible as fast as possible, burn that shit out, that’s interesting.”
We’ve seen it happen before (which is why it should happen again). We’ve also seen Tom remove the thin veneer of his ambitions to the point where he almost feels like Richard III. He has played the fool, which is Shakespearean estimation, is often equivalent to the trickster. This would be a fun and distorted parallel to Shiv offering this job to him for Logan to offer it to her. This would probably happen in conjunction with Mattson winning. As I mentioned earlier, the name Tom means “twin” and the apostle Tom was only called as such because there were already one too many “Judas” in the mix. He's also from Minnesota (the twin cities!), so this is becoming very real, you know???
While we know Tom has betrayed Shiv before, we also know Greg betrayed Shiv and Tom when he spoke to Geri in the first season about Tom having a press conference on cruises. He leads Tom to believe Shiv has betrayed him, getting one over on both of them. There may also be something with the Rule of 3 and being betrayed 3 times that feels biblical. The show also makes TONS of references to holding on to blackmail for opportune moments. Will we see something like this?
I’m not a big believer that Greg will fail so far upwards that he will win (this would feel like a betrayal in its own right), but do I believe there’s a world where Greg gets himself on a piece of paper with a question mark. Maybe???
This is my personal hope because I want the Tom and Jerry allusion to be real more than any other I put together (we love a good cat and mouse game). If Mattson wins, he needs a US CEO. Geri has collected a massive amount of dirt on everyone. And to call back to season 1’s interim CEO discussions, Shiv says, “I don’t like Geri. But I don’t hate Geri either.” It would feel particularly good given how much time and effort Logan spent clarifying Geri would be terrible at the position. Especially as Logan disparaging someone generally means he’s afraid of what they can do.
I’ll end at the ending. Or conclude where Eliot did on The Four Quartets:
"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always— A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one."
PS. Given ‘Pinky’ is another name for ‘Rose’ does this mean Shiv wins??? JK let’s just watch the show tonight and laugh at our predictions in the morning.
submitted by eulalie_pop to SuccessionTV [link] [comments]

2023.05.28 20:38 kaybyeee_1 My (28F) husband (30M) tried to pick a fight with me after my brother’s (35M) funeral

My brother died in a car accident a week ago and I went and stayed a week at my parents with our daughter (1) so i could help plan the funeral while my husband stayed home and worked. He came for the funeral and had to leave that afternoon. He’s been as supportive as he can before the funeral. Me, my daughter, and sister (21) came back home to my house the night after the funeral because my sister didn’t want to be alone. After I got in bed last night, I said goodnight to my husband and he mumbled something that I couldn’t understand and he snipped at me saying that he said goodnight. I was annoyed at that point and said nothing else. And he said “I love you” and I said it back and he just sighed and said “why do I always have to say it first?” I got so angry and just snapped. I asked him why did he have to pick a fight with me right now, and he just turned over and went to sleep. I have so much grief with losing my brother, and I had to pick up the pieces of my parents and do everything. I created the obituary, I had to take clothes for them to put my brother in for the funeral, I had to pick up his belongings form the funeral home they sent. I haven’t been able to have a single moment alone to process my own grief. For my husband to obviously think I’m going to snap back into our life of normalcy just makes me so angry. I have felt no compassion from him since I’ve come back home. I’m almost considering divorce. Advice?
ETA:
The divorce comment seems extreme, I know. It’s just that this isn’t the first time he’s snapped or came at me while I’ve already been upset about something. It just feels like he’s lacking compassion. Do I truly want to divorce him? Of course not. I just want him to have some compassion. I have had to be strong for everyone this past week, and I just really needed his support and love. Not for him to already kick me while I’m down.
submitted by kaybyeee_1 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]

2023.05.27 22:43 FYREFLi_KNG My ideas for a Coven spinoff!

I am a massive fan of the Coven and have always wished that Ryan would make a spin-off series devoted to the coven. I came up with a few ideas for what the show could look like, let me know what you think!
  1. American Coven Story: Pilgrimage
The origins of the Supreme, spanning from the late 1500s to the early 1600s. Scathach is already a several hundreds of years old powerful witch, surrounded by myth and legend. The old gods who bestowed her powers onto her are displeased with her wavering faith during an outbreak of witch trials, and offer her an ultimatum: Take pilgrimage to new lands and practice in their name; or lose her powers. She accepts the pilgrimage and flees to the New World, where she spends the next century on her pilgrimage while facing the rise of Puritanism.
  1. American Coven Story: Revolution
Prudence Mather is the Supreme. It’s the height of the Salem Witch Trials. The coven has managed to avoid suspicion of being witches, but their luck is running out. One of their own is caught and hanged by the townsfolk of Salem, and a traitor within their ranks is suspected responsible of betrayal. The coven must do everything that they can to avoid further suspicion and survive the witch trials. By the end of the season, Salem has become too dangerous to live in and the witches flee in search of a new home.
  1. American Coven Story: Hollow
In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, the coven has relocated to the Hudson Valley, settling just outside of Sleepy Hollow. The townsfolk are welcoming of the coven, but at the same time unnerved - upon their arrival, a headless horseman has started to roam the streets and surrounding lands at night in search of soldiers. He is Death, the horseman of the apocalypse, sent forth by Satan at the behest of Benedict Arnold to wage war against Washington and the newly formed USA - and the coven itself.
  1. American Coven Story: Civil War
Set during the Civil War. The supreme is a traitor. She presents as an abolitionist and friend and ally to the union, but is in turn using her powers to help the confederacy and provide slave holders new slaves. Future supreme Mariann Wharton and a few other witches defect from the coven in an effort to take out the current supreme, allying with voodoo queen Marie Laveau to accomplish this. By the end of the season, Miss Robichauxs is established and Marie declares a life long feud between her tribe and the coven.
  1. American Coven Story: Visions
Set in the late 1800s to the early 1900s, during the height of the Spiritualism movement. A trio of witches arrive in San Francisco, under the belief the city is sitting on the source of magic which they wish to harness for themselves. The eldest opens a funeral home, where she performs experiments on necromancy. The middle sister opens a brothel that employs succubi. The youngest runs an apothecary, whose clients range everywhere from the poor to the social elite. The supreme and her Coven are called to San Francisco to combat the sisters before the trio succeeds in their plot for supremacy.
  1. American Coven Story: Crisis
Set after the events of Apocalypse. Mallory has successfully reset the timeline and the birth of the Antichrist has been delayed - but the existence of a second Supreme witch and her her actions has caused a disruption of the Supremacy line and a gradual breakdown of magical laws - ordinary people are able to preform small bursts of magic, rifts into other dimensions opens, and Madison Montgomery has returned from the dead with full knowledge of the other timeline. Together, Cordelia, Mallory, and Madison must work together to find the true cause - and source - of these bursts of magic chaos before they become out of control to the point of another apocalypse.
submitted by FYREFLi_KNG to AmericanHorrorStory [link] [comments]

2023.05.27 03:34 erinc2005 (35f) 1 month without a job, failed interviews, suicidal

Lost my job of almost 5 years in the medical field that I absolutely LOVED. I absolutely loved my doctor I worked for. We were an amazing team. He called me that night upset as well. I've been interviewing for a month now with failed interviews. I've never "job hopped." Kept jobs for years. Never been without a job. This is utterly terrifying. Last time I lost a job (job of 6 years), I attempted suicide- and was nearly successful (doctors told my family to call the funeral home.) Medicaid is taking forever to get approved. I haven't been able to see any doctors, esp my psychiatrist and cardiologist. I've been approved for SNAP. I still have to pay child support or I'll go into arrears. My ex-husband doesn't know I lost my job and he doesn't need to know. There was one clinic that seemed very interested but they haven't contacted me this week despite saying they WILL be in touch. They were supposed to do reference checks last week. I know for sure they contacted one. I really want that specific job for a few reasons. I left a voice mail this morning to check on the status of everything. No return call. I have 3 interviews next Mon and Tues however. I am a woman of Christian faith. I do have a few mental illnesses which is making this transition more difficult on me and keeping my faith wavering. God knows my heart. He knows my true feelings and desires despite my sickness. I'm pushing obviously. I've gone on countless in person and phone interviews. I took that first day I was let go to grieve and the following day I hit the pavement and got my resume together and started applying. I know I'm going to get a lot of "no's". It just takes one "yes."
Please pray for that one yes. Please pray for my peace of mind and the suicidal thoughts and desire to self harm to dissipate. Please pray for my boyfriend for his stress level to go down as well bc he's carrying the both of us as I'm barely contributing to the household now besides food.
Please pray. I'm scared.
submitted by erinc2005 to PrayerRequests [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 18:40 My_Munchausen_Mom My mother took the life of her husband

After I (35) confronted my mother (55) about her abuse of me, I went no contact with her. Shortly after, her husband died under suspicious circumstances.
Her husband was a little over 20 years older than her and had dementia and alzheimer's. I had talked her into getting a home health nurse several times to help provide care because it was very obvious that she was not. She inevitability came up with reasons to fire each one and she made a big deal out of it every time. Without the care he needed, her husband continued to deteriorate and I wound up reporting for elder abuse, but nothing ever came of it. I really, really regret not pushing harder.
I had a sit-down with her a couple of years ago to talk about all the medical abuse she put me through as a child and an adult and confronted her about munchausen and munchausen by proxy. It went about as well as one would expect and she became super dodgy and passive aggressive with me after that, but maintained communication. However, it got to a point where I no longer found the relationship worth maintaining and went no-contact. After that, things escalated extremely quickly and very severely with her committing several state and federal crimes in attempt to get back at me for cutting contact with her. I have since moved (no one knows my address), do not own a phone, and have no contact with any members of either side of my family.
During the time she was escalating her lashing out and while I was moving, her husband died, and I know that she killed him. He had one of the most storied lives that I'd ever heard and his obituary is two sentence long. This is it, in it's entirety, with identifiers changed: "John Doe, age, passed away on Day, Month Date, Year. He was born on Month Date, Year, to Jack and Jill Smith in City, STATE. John is survived by his wife My Mom." He was cremated, which was against his wishes, and there was no funeral service or memorial. There are also things like how he had money set aside for donations that didn't get donated but that's not the point.
The last time I saw my mom's husband, I was at her house. He was wearing clothes that were extremely dirty and way too big on him due to weight loss. His hair and beard were unkempt where he used to always shave and get haircuts. It was also very clear that he hadn't been bathed in a very long time like on the scale of months. My mom and her roommate were constantly getting on to him for his pants falling down (talking about how they didn't want to see his body and how gross it was) or dropping cigarette ash/food crumbs on himself and making too much noise. It's like they were watching him just to catch him doing something they didn't like so they could scold him about it. I noticed that he didn't speak at all while I was there beyond a mumbled greeting when I came in. At one point I went to the bathroom and there was poop all over the toilet and sink and around that whole general area. I went to grab cleaning supplies hoping my mom wouldn't notice but she did. She all but physically rubbed his face in it like a shitty dog owner trying to housebreak a puppy. She was angrily chiding and shaming him like he did it on purpose to make her life even harder taking care of him. I left and went to the nearest health and senior services center and again reported what happened and what I saw and made several follow up calls, but I don't know if they ever even did anything.
On the outside, she presented herself as loving her husband and that she was a warrior sticking by the side of and taking on the care of someone with dementia and alzheimer's. Her whole thing was that she wasn't going to be like other people that put their loved ones in care facilities when things get tough. She's better than that.
I don't know if she did some of the same things to him as she did to me like the poisoning and inducing illness, but it's beyond clear that she neglected and berated him and got pleasure from seeing him deteriorate. I'm not entirely sure what happened with the exact circumstances of his death, but he was so frail from the abuse at that point that I assume either her or her and her roommate went too far with some sort of torture while they were all keyed up from doing shit to me that she/they wound up killing him either accidentally or intentionally. I didn't witness the act, but I know that she killed him.
One of the details that's always stuck out to me as strange is that, months after his death, my partner got a text from my mom telling them to pass on the message 'I thought you should know that "John" died'. No further information, no details, just 'my husband died'.
This has been weighing on me because I could have done more to stop it. I knew she was abusing her husband and I didn't get him out of there. I'm not saying this so someone can give me a hug and tell me I tried, I say it because I genuinely don't know why I didn't do more. I don't like the psychological implications there. I'm terrified of becoming something like her. My mom killed her husband, but I feel like I let it happen. I feel an immense amount of guilt but I also recognize that my mother is a monster and is the one that perpetrated these acts. It's a lot of complicated feelings and they're all bad. I almost feel ashamed of how much I let the trauma I carry from a life lived with her control me, because she at least never successfully killed me. I don't know. I don't know what to do with this.
submitted by My_Munchausen_Mom to MunchausenSupport [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 17:48 nksdabomb I made a timeline of events based off of podcasts & WWHL/VPR details.

Please feel free to correct me if any details are wrong. I literally whipped this up at work this morning. Also worth noting, some info was featured on the "extra footage" episode of the reunion on Peacock, the Call Her Daddy podcast Ariana was on, WWHL and VPR episodes. And lastly, anytime "Tom" is used, assume I'm talking about Sandoval.
Edit: watching again for the 3rd time and added a couple dates I missed and made a couple corrections.
Dec 2021 - James and Raquel call off their engagement.
Beginning of 2022 - Tom tells Andy during 1:1 this is around the time he starts having feelings for Raquel. 🧐 🤨
Mid April (at Coachella) – Allegedly, Tom tells Raquel that he and Ariana are in an open relationship. Raquel tells others, and it gets back to Scheana, who tells us this at the reunion. Rumors start swirling that Raquel and “Tom” were seen kissing at Coachella. It’s assumed to be Schwartz, but little did we know. 😠
Sometime in July – Schwartz tells us at the reunion Tom confided to him that he and Ariana are having problems. He's setting the narrative.
Aug 2 – Ariana’s Dog Charlotte passes away :(
Aug 3 – Guys night at the Mondrian hotel. Raquel and Charlie show up after leaving the girls trip.
Aug 4 – Schwartz tells us at the reunion that Tom told him he confided into Raquel about his relationship problems with Ariana and they had an "intimate moment”.
Aug 9 - After filming wrapped at “C-U-N-Tuesday” a bunch went to the Abby and that’s the night they had sex. Tom tells Andy this during his 1:1.
Aug 13 - Tom and Ariana host a pool party where Tom defends Raquel against Lala
Aug 23 – Scheana’s wedding in Mexico (Schwartz and Raquel kissed) Tom caught in footage smacking Raquel’s ass. There are rumors Tom and Raquel were seen making out in the hotel.
Aug 31 – Schwartz tells us at the reunion that’s when he finds out about the “one night stand” between Tom and Raquel. Says Tom blamed alcohol and it absolutely won’t happen again.
Sept 2 – Lala’s birthday – Katie tells Tom that Ally saw him and Raquel at the Abby “enjoying” each other.
Sept 5 – Ariana’s Grandmother dies (according to the obituary)
Sept 5 – Labor Day cook out in LA, Raquel is also in attendance. Tom says he “couldn’t get a Lyft” back home to Ariana while others confirmed Lyfts and Ubers were in and out of there all day long.
Sept 12 – Raquel’s B-day, she buys the Lightning Bolt necklace for herself around this time. Also Glamping trip. This is also when Schwartz confirmed at the reunion he was including Tom when he mentioned Raquel having a type of going after men that are taken.
Sept 16-18 Life is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas – Pictures shown of Raquel on Tom’s shoulders. Tom tells Andy at the reunion this is when the affair “amped up”. (Ariana was in attendance.)
Sept 19 - Raquel’s Instagram post from life is beautiful featuring her wearing the lightning bolt necklace. Captioned “It’s giving Harley Quinn falls in love with the joker vibes ⚡️”
Sept 24 – Ariana’s Grandmoms funeral. Ariana flies to Florida twice this month to be with family. Unclear what those dates were.
Sept - While Ariana is home in FL, Ken Todd drops the mother of all gossip bombs. “I can’t believe, that Tom Zandaville had Raquel, over, when Ariana’s away, in the ju… jacuzzi as well. AND SHE STAYED ALL NIGHT, YEAH?!”
Sept sometime - Tom tells show runner in unaired footage that he feels guilty he’s not sharing his issues on the show and thought it was unfair to the rest of the cast. Again, laying the groundwork.
Oct 14-16 Bravocon – Raquel shows up in TomTom hoodie. Schwartz tells Katie that Raquel isn’t there for him. 👀
Oct 31 – Tom dresses up as Raquel for Halloween
December – Tom takes Raquel home to STL for Christmas.
January - Scheana says she has a convo with Ariana and she said she and Tom are in a good place. Communication and intimacy were good.
January 2023 – Big Bear trip with Schwartz, Jo, Tom, and Raquel – Ariana was not invited. Schwartz claimed he did not know about the affair at this time.
“Mid/late Jan” – Tom tells us at the reunion that’s when he told Schwartz about the affair. Neither can get their stories straight however.
Feb 8 – Both Toms on WWHL. Schwartz is extremely nervous. Tom acts very composed and laid back. (Meanwhile, Raquel is in their hotel room based on info Ariana shared on the CHD podcast)
Feb 14 – Valentine’s Day, Ariana and Tom go to V-day dinner, Tom gifts her flowers. Fight all night about their relationship. (Details provided by Ariana on CHD podcast)
Feb 28- Tom records him and Raquel fapping to each other on Facetime at Schwartz’s apartment.
Mar 1 – Scheana & Raquel are guests on WWHL. Raquel calls Sandoval the “hotter Tom”. Ariana finds out about affair by looking in Tom’s phone in a bathroom stall at Tom Tom restaurant.
Mar 2 – Affair made public by TMZ.
submitted by nksdabomb to vanderpumprules [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 03:03 dlschindler The Witch Cat Of 13B

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part of my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to my home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, told me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.
submitted by dlschindler to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 02:38 dlschindler The Witch Cat Of 13B

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.
submitted by dlschindler to ChillingApp [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 02:36 dlschindler The Witch Cat Of 13B

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.
submitted by dlschindler to CollabWithFriends [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 02:31 dlschindler The Witch Cat Of 13B

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.
submitted by dlschindler to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 02:30 dlschindler The Witch Cat Of 13B

Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.
Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I'd never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.
She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.
I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.
Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn't suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn't responsible.
My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I'd have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It's how they went back out: all-at-once.
Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:
"Is she somehow controlling me?"
After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn't open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn't be repaired, because it wasn't broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.
My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I've always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part my lifestory already. That didn't mean I wasn't frightened.
Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn't escape. I felt drawn to me home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.
The shelter had, after I convinced them, to tell me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She'd belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.
I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he'd have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.
"You're here now. That's what I need." I told him.
He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.
"It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."
"What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.
"The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That's what happened." He explained.
After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.
The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.
How did it go?
I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the 'window' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn't give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one's efforts. I'd never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.
I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.
My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.
I had nightmares from that night on. I'd sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.
I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.
Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.
"I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn't how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.
I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her's was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.
"Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."
Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon's own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.
Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.
Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.
I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon's spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.
As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.
"Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.
I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.
"No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won't do it."
"You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.
I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.
"You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I've used it all up! Damn you!"
And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.
My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.
Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.
Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.
submitted by dlschindler to Wholesomenosleep [link] [comments]

2023.05.23 20:15 No_Mirror_2680 Area 51Big Bend

Area 51Big Bend
Purchased in Willard, Ohio 4 days after totalling my 2022 Ford Ranger in Tampa, Florida. Was in Ohio for a funeral. 3 days later drove it back home to Tampa. I loved the Ranger.... I LOVE my Bronco Sport even more. I added the Ford textured bug deflector, Bucking Bronco hitch cover and the rear bumper protector. All purchased with Ford reward points. Future plans are the roof rails and a roof basket. Only complaint... gas mileage. I drove 5 hours before my bladder decided it couldn't last as long as the fuel gage. I had to stop and pee with 1/4 tank left. I averaged 30.5mpg from Ohio to Florida with an average speed of 74mph. I LOVE THIS VEHICLE.
submitted by No_Mirror_2680 to BroncoSport [link] [comments]

2023.05.20 18:38 overthinkingoverhere I think I died in another universe and saw it while dreaming?

I hope this is the correct sub for this, if not, kidly direct me to the right one. Now, let me start by saying, I have no knowledge in dream reading, multi universes or quantum mortality/immortality. I've only heard about it, maybe read an article about it, but I want to hear your thoughts on this...
I was having this dream and in it, I was driving home w a friend in her truck, it was night time. We were talking, catching up. I was in the passenger seat and she was driving. All of a sudden while I'm talking to her, I start panicking. I can see the road but I can see another layer, like im in another place, but I can still see where I am. In this other layer, im focusing in and out of it, like I'm im the car w my friend and Im also in this other place. What I see is I'm in a crowd during the day, Im with some person and we're downtown. We round a corner and hear shots being fired. Its a long stretch of road with businesses and more people. Everyone starts running and I see the shooter pointing down the direction where I am. I start running and screaming, "No, no, no no! Run" When I'm screaming I'm screaming in the car again w my friend in the original setting. I can see her driving, but I also see this street where Im running in a crowd full of people from this shooter. She starts freaking out and trying to talk to me, she asked what's going on and Im still screaming, "Its a shooter its happening, run, run!" And Im saying this as im sobbing and choking through my words. So Im in the crowd again, all the while I can hear my friend screaming asking whats wrong and it gets muffled out. I am north of the shooter and I am able to run around the shooter in the crowd and he begins to turn and shoot west where I just went w the crowd. I keep looking back as I run to make sure he isn't running or walking with/towards the crowd. He stays standing in the same place and I can see him shooting into the crown. I make it south of him then he begins to turn south and shoots. This time I keep looking forward. I can see the street w people, but I can also see myself in my friends car. I hear the shots go off behind me and people screaming even louder around me I look back, see him shoot, I turn my head as im running to look forward. Then I feel a burning in my neck. In that split second, I'm back in the car w my friend and I just slump over dead! Everything went black and in that moment I opened my eyes in real life and Im at home on the couch...
When everything goes black I see flashes of a funeral, news articles, my obituary, my friend screaming in the car, her driving to the hospital, the date Oct 20th (😱) and I can FEEL heartbreak, sadness, sorrow, all in a split second before my eyes flew open and I actually woke up...Usually if I have an intense dream I'll wake suddenly sometimes crying, hyperventalating, sad, still scared... but nothing? Even if I dream about getting cut or stabbed or something crazy, there is usually a lingering sensation when I wake. I even expected my neck to hurt when I woke, but nothing...
Maybe being in a dream state my psyche was able to tap into this other universe?? The emotions of the crowd and myself were so intense that it took over and I was able to "be" in these two parallel places?... I've always been open to the unexplained and I've heard a handful of stories similar to mine on podcasts or other places, this is very interesting to me, especially the fact that I saw a date. I also saw street names but I've tried google maps and there is no place where these two streets are in the same place? The streets were Research and Brackenridge, unsure of "street", "Lane", "Avenue", etc.. Now I do live in Austin Tx and we have these streets, but theyre in no way similar or near each other like they were in this other setting I experienced.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts! I appreciate any feedback! also did I flair this correctly? So much unsure-ness.
submitted by overthinkingoverhere to Dreams [link] [comments]

2023.05.20 02:29 DaVinky_Leo I would appreciate advice for tracing a Jewish relative

I am currently trying to gather documentation and identification regarding my great-grandmother in order to prove my halachic status (prove to clergy that I am Jewish). She would have been born between 1915 and 1925 (she passed in 2013). All I know is that she had been born in an area of Russia around the Black Sea (or at least a nearby territory annexed by Russia, but most likely a place in modern Russia’s borders) and was later forcefully relocated to Germany during the holocaust. She later moved to Munich before moving to New York. (Considering that she moved around a lot I am fearful that this is will be a fruitless effort but I don’t want to give up)
I have tried google searching her name but nothing comes up. My family is also very disorganized and I am unsure if we ourselves even own any documents that could be of use regarding her. Are there any official Russian websites or archives going back that far that would have such information regarding her citizenship status, birthplace, other family, family burial sites, ethnicity? Any official websites that are in English or could easily be translated to English?
I was wondering if there would also be any sort of holocaust records available? I unfortunately do not know what camp she was held at, all I know is that it was located in Germany and possibly somewhere around Munich, and I am unsure if my mother or grandmother even knows which one, but I am going to ask them just in case.
I plan on looking on Ancestry.com, but in case I find nothing there I need alternatives.
I’m on a bit of a time crunch as I will probably be meeting with clergy in a few weeks and I’m worried that I won’t find proof in time.
EDIT 1 Her name according to American records was Musa Woronkov (unsure of middle name). I now have reason to believe she was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. She died in Toledo Ohio but did not receive a funeral in Toledo (cannot find a Toledo obituary either), and I believe her final resting place is somewhere in Columbus Ohio where one of her daughters lives. She has two daughters, Musa Steele (my grandmother), and I am unsure how to spell her name correctly but I believe my great aunt’s name is Vera (unsure of married last name at the moment), she also had a son who died as a young adult (unsure of his name at the moment). I currently do not know her husband’s name but I will find out soon. I also have a published author that she is directly related to (unsure if sibling or parent or cousin) and his work is in Russian so I’m unsure if that would be of any help. If it helps my grandmother (the one that is alive) was born in Munich.
EDIT 2 Oh my goodness thank you so much everyone. Especially u/amauberge for suggesting the Arolsen Archives, and huge thanks to u/Fredelas for finding everything and more that I was looking for. I plan on checking holocaust camp records as suggested in the comments as well to see if I can learn even more. Thank you all so much and to everyone else who commented and made suggestions.
EDIT 3 I realize now that I read one of the documents wrong, and I do not actually have the proof yet I need for my Jewish heritage. However I am still so so thankful for all the information found and I will continue to search until I’ve either found my answer or give up.
submitted by DaVinky_Leo to Genealogy [link] [comments]

2023.05.19 23:23 NarglesAreAmongUs Death in the family. No one knew.

Advice...family's drama ahead:
My cousin cut off his mother (my aunt) from contact months ago; she's an elderly woman and had sent numerous people in the family some monetary gifts. Cousin was VERY upset and he turned off her cell phone, home phone. He was expecting a hefty inheritance and didnt want anything leaving the house. He had recently got power of attorney over her.
She had in the past help pay for my degree and promised to help pay my kids college too... and I knew eventually he would change her will if he found out.
No one in the extended family could contact her either, even our family in Europe couldnt reach her. My dad (her brother) called the non-emergency police line to do a wellness check up, and then he got sent a letter from an attorney to never contact her son or her again.
Obviously everyone is concerned, my aunt was a busy-body and loved to chat with everyone for hours daily, before the cut off my cousin had even taken away Christmas and church, she wasn't allowed to decorate or celebrate. (She was a super-religious Catholic). Which she would complain about often to my mother. My mom had thoughts that the cousin would drop off the aunt in a nursing home and move on with his life. She calls around in the city in AZ (We're in FL)and the first nursing home answers with "We're not allowed to to let anyone speak with her on family's orders." So we assume she's there, my mom sends her flowers in April for her birthday.
My dad, worried about his only sister... calls her church today, whom she used to be VERY involved in. Church tells my dad she passed away May 2nd.
We're obviously heart broken to have found out like this. I've checked obituaries, the family funeral plot... and I can't find any information. I just want peace of mind, that she passed.
What do I do?
TLDR: cousin cuts off wealthy aunt from family, doesn't notify anyone she's passed.
submitted by NarglesAreAmongUs to family [link] [comments]