Super Bowl Props 2021: Best Prop Bet Odds And Strategy For

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WEEK 3: Denver Broncos (0-2) vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-1)

The Denver Broncos will look to snap their two-game losing streak to start the season against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High (2:25 p.m. MDT kickoff). The Broncos will be hosting approximately 5,700 fans as the team opens the stadium’s doors to Broncos Country for the first time this season.
Game Previews
TV/Radio - TV Broadcast Map
Game Notes
Team News/Injury Report - Final Injury Report
Last Meeting
Notable Team Connections
Please check back throughout the week as I’ll update the news/injury report daily.
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CreateYoureReality NFL Week 17 Analysis and Picks (Last week of regular season!!!😀 )

Weeks 15 and16 Recap: Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! The stats in the recap are just of week 15. I did not make a post or any plays on week 16, as I was busy playing an online poker tournament, here in New Jersey. My apologies for slowing down a bit this year, it has been rather busy here. We have one more week to get it in before PLAYOFFS?!., Lets see what value we can find.
Singles (4-4 -1.03u)
Parlays (0u) All Free Bets
Teasers (1-0 +8u)
BBDLS (0-5 -2.7u)
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Sunday Games
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Dallas at New York Giants: Potentially a huge game for either one of these teams. Whichever of these teams wins gets to sweat the Eagles/Washington game and pray for an Eagles win. Dallas has been playing well over the last quarter of the season holding opponents to 24, and their offense has been clicking averaging over 30ppg over that span. Even with the defensive improvement, they are still one of the worst defenses in the league. New York on the other hand has a top 10 defense. It has been doing a fantastic job this year, struggling a bit over the last two weeks but overall is still one of the better defenses in the NFL. Their offense scores a pedestrianly average of 17 ppg but on the bright side seems to have figured out their turnover problem with Daniel Jones. Taking into account full season stats, the algo has this as NY -2. Taking into account only the last 4 games the algo has this as DAL -4.5. The bets the algo favors the most are teasing either team +6.5 or more. It predicts the highest likely game script includes mostly low scoring games due to it being a divisional rematch to end the season and potentially get in the playoffs.
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Pittsburgh at Cleveland: A very important game for Cleveland, not so much for Pittsburgh. Cleveland needs the win to guarantee a playoff birth, while PIT has already punched their ticket. In fact, PIT will be resting Big Ben, in order to have him at his freshest for a playoff run. Cleveland will be returning most of the players that were out due to Covid vs. the Jets. They will still be missing 2 LB and 2 Safetys, but the majority of the key offensive players have returned. For Pittsburgh they will see Mason Rudolph step in at QB, the last team he faced the Browns, him and Myles Garret got into a fight that saw Garret swing a helmet on an unprotected head of Rudolph. The algo loves Cleveland to come in and take care of business, however it only likes a spread of -7/8. It was 4.5 with Big Ben but with the news of him out, it adjusts about a field goal.
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New York Jets at New England: Boy oh boy, what a dumpster fire we have here. Both teams out of playoff contention, and both seeing some of their worst lows. (Although the Jets are more used to this at the end of the season) Jets have had some recent success, winning their first two games and beating two pretty good teams in the process. Now they go for three in a row to close out the season vs the struggling offensively, New England Patriots. They will be sitting Cam Newton and starting Stidham this week. He has looked even worse than Cam, so I don't really know what we can expect out of their offense this week. The algo leans about as close to a pickem as the computer can produce so you can imagine with the Jets catching points and odds on the moneyline, we will be looking their way.
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Minnesota at Detroit: This game is currently on my dog or avoid list. There is to much uncertainty with the Lions QB and who is starting. All we do know is that Dalvin Cook for the Vikings is not going to be playing this game due to a death in the family. With the missing key offensive player and the unknown with Covid who the starters will be, this game is an avoid. (Possibly find value with the dog if Stafford is announced playing right before game time)
With two mediocre defenses (The Lions just giving up) this could be a good game for a same game parlays on some props. Jefferson and Thielen are both close to breaking records. Cook is out so backup RB should get more touches...
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Atlanta at Tampa Bay: This is a tricky one for me. The algo loves TB to take care of business at home and favors them by 6. However, I personally am weary of both this and the Saints game as neither team NEEDs a win and only the Saints can positively change their playoff seating with a win *(and a GB loss). I think it is possible and highly favorable for both teams to rest their key starters in order to give them a makeshift bye week. Because of that, I will mostly stay away from this game and the Saints game.
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Baltimore at Cincinnati: A divisional game that is a "Win and you're in" game for Baltimore. They will be taking on the Bengals, that have actually looked great in their last few games. However, the algo does heavily favor the Raven's to get it done on the road to close out the season. It does think that two TDs might be a bit much though. Because of that I lean Baltimore winning and clinching a playoff birth, but will either look Cincy on the points or stay away from the spread.
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Miami at Buffalo: A VERY important game for Miami. Win, and you're in. Lose, and most likely the Colts are in. Fitzmagic came in in the last 3 mins and gave them the win and this opportunity, however he is out with Covid this game so no Magic to be had. It will be down to Tua vs. whoever Buffalo decides to play. Personally I think the value is on Miami. Who knows who and how long the Buffalo starters will play, given they are already in the Playoffs. But, it would be sweet for them to keep a divisional rival out of the post season. My algo likes Buffalo, but my gut says Miami.
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Jacksonville at Indianapolis: I shouldn't have to talk about this game. Indy knows they need a win and help, and Jacksonville already STUNNED INDY to open the season. It should be a confident grind of a win...but Rivers feeling defeated and needing help to make the post season, this might be a trap game.
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Green Bay at Chicago: Ugh, such a hard game. My algo has GB as -3.5 Favorites (6.5 if they were at home) I think the loss of one of GBs key O-line might have a greater effect on them than one of their star offensive scorers. Rodgers is one of the best when given time, but take that time from him and he starts to crumble. Chicago has been playing as well as they could hope for down the stretch. They need a win or a loss and some help to be in.
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Tennessee at Houston: Henry needs like 223 yards to reach the 2000 yard club. Houston is one of the worst teams in the league at stopping the run? Seems like a recipe for some TEN running and a play action pass or two for some big chunks. EZ$ Tenn
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New Orleans at Carolina: The had NO as -6.5 here, but the loss of Kamara has to be worth at least 3 points right now given NO is already a little shorthanded without Thomas. Carolina has been one of those teams that just hasn't quit. They keep playing and will probably be a good team to bet on next year as they develop. Personally, a divisional game where NO doesn't improve their playoff standings with a win (unless GB loses to CHI) might be a recipe for CAR to have some easy shots at covering, backdoor covering, and maybe just winning outright. Like most of the teams with their ticket punched, there is a good chance they rest starters in the second half just to preserve the health of key players.
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Seattle at San Francisco: Except for the loss to the Giants, Seattle has been on fire in the second half. Their offense hasn't had the firepower it started the season with, but it seems to be adding some more short passing into its game and finding a better balance. While the defense seems to be clicking on on cylinders. They have given up 17 or less in their last 5. As for San Fran: " Shanahan said he doesn't expect Garoppolo (ankle) to return this week. Wide receivers Brandon Aiyuk (ankle) and Deebo Samuel (hamstring), left tackle Trent Williams (elbow), defensive end Jordan Willis (ankle) and cornerback Richard Sherman (calf) have already been ruled out. Kicker Robbie Gould was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list"
I think this is the best odds you are going to get on SEA winning the whole thing. I gave this play out to my premium subscribers a few weeks ago, but I like (and bet) SEA having the best odds/price to make it out of the NFC. If by some lucky chance GB and NO lose today, SEA can still get the number one seed and a first round bye. They are currently +1200 to win it all and have (in my algo's opinion) the best QB in the NFC right now.
🤑🤑🤑 GO GET THAT MONEY 🤑🤑🤑
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Las Vegas at Denver: This is one of my throwaway games. My algo has this as LV -2, however both teams are out of the playoffs and this game leaves the door open for anyone to flop, or try their heart out. Personally I love Derrick Carr and I think the Raiders are primed to make a deep playoff run next given a few additions to defense.
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Arizona at LA Rams: Hmmmm... Kyler Murray is playing(hurtish) Arizona basically needs a win and in. Rams also need a win, but can still make it with a loss. Both teams should be playing their harderst, the biggest variable is going to be the Rams QB. Goff is hurt and will not play. Rams will be going with recently upgraded from the practice squad, Worford. He will be playing in his first NFL game, and I expect the Rams to lean very heavy on the run. Worford IS a mobile-ish QB, so it isn't out of the question for him to take the rams to a good low scoring, defensive win. If he can just make 4-5 good throws on key downs and NOT turn the ball over, I think the Rams come out on top. But if he can't handle the NFL speed and commits even one turnover, then AZ becomes the favorite to win.
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Washington at Philadelphia: Last game of the night! Flexed here because it has massive implications in the NFC East. If Washington wins, they win the NFC East and make the playoffs as the 4 seed. If Philly wins, then the winner of the Dallas/NYG game will be the winner of the NFC East. Washington let go of their rookie QB and Alex Smith will start with a "hurt" calf. Philly has 9 players on the injury report and is expected to reach deep into their reserves to field players for this one. My algo slightly favors Washington to win, but given 3-5 points at home, on primetime, I lean heavy Philly.
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Singles (91-116-1, -30.11u)
Parlays (6-30, +33.96u)
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Teasers (4-4, +34.6u)
BBDLS (0-66, -50.24u)
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Futures plays:
Seattle to win the NFC (100u to win 600u)
Seattle to win the Super Bowl (83.33u to win 1000u)
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Thank you everyone for reading. Good luck to all!!
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I’m Lily Madwhip and I’m Being Followed By a Big, Black Dog

I’m Lily Madwhip and I’m being followed by a big, black dog.
“Hey, do you know whose dog that is?” I ask Jamal. We’re sitting on the bus and I’m looking out the window at the big, black dog that has been following me since I left the house ten minutes ago. It’s long and thin, with short fur and a pointy nose. Judging from how it looks I bet it’s hungry. I spotted it first parked on its butt in the Tennison’s front yard staring at me and I thought it was doing its doggy business. I’m not a fan of watching animals do their business, so I looked away, but as I rounded the corner onto Smiley Ave, I looked back and it was still there, just watching me walk away.
“What dog?” Jamal asks.
“The big, black dog.” It’s peeking out from behind the old, dead tree by Mr. Lawrence’s house. Lightning struck the tree four years ago and split it down the middle. Mr. Lawrence had the two halves propped up and tried to hold them together by nailing boards up it like stitches. I think he thought since the boards were made of wood and the tree was made of wood, it would reabsorb the boards or something. It didn’t. Half the tree was dead and it’s all rotten and dried up now. The other half is fine though, so it looks like a weird tree with boards leading up to the branches, half of which have no leaves. Like a ladder to the lamest treehouse.
“What big, black dog?” Jamal looks out the window with curiosity, but he seems to look everywhere but where the dog is.
I point at the dog peeking out from behind the weird tree. “The big, black dog peeking out from behind Mr. Lawrence’s weird tree.”
Jamal keeps looking in the wrong places. He pauses. “Wait, who’s Mr. Lawrence?”
I give up. “Alright, well this has been fun, thanks.”
The bus drives off and the dog watches us go. I watch the dog watch us go. It’s a watching party.
Sixth grade has been hard to deal with. Particularly the “no toys allowed” rule, which means I have to leave Paschar at home every day. I can’t even try to smuggle him into school in my backpack. I still see things before they happen from time to time, but without Paschar, I don’t always know what’s going on. I have to be on my guard all day until I get home. It’s nerve wracking.
“You seem tense,” Simone tells me. Simone is one of my best friends. She’s got orange hair but people call it red or ginger. I don’t know why they don’t just call it orange. I guess that sounds too much like the color a clown’s hair would be or something. We sit in the back of the class during social studies because Mr. Hasan doesn’t assign seating like the other teachers do. I like Mr. Hasan. He always wears a bow tie. Most days it’s red, but some days he likes to throw everybody for a loop and wear a black one. Once he wore a green one and I swear Hayden Brickowski nearly had an aneurysm.
“I saw a dog at the bus stop.”
“Do you not like dogs?”
“I don’t think anybody else could see this one.” At least, Jamal couldn’t. Then again, maybe he was looking from the wrong angle. Of course, this all wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t mean something. I’ve learned to trust my instincts when they tell me something’s not right.
Simone covers her mouth in mock surprise. “Maybe it was a ghost dog!”
“You know... you joke, but you have no idea what I have to deal with sometimes.”
Actually, she does. I told Simone all about fixing things for the angels, my dad getting kidnapped by a magician with a grudge, meeting the angel of death, and all the awful stuff last year regarding Meredith and Felix and Officer Flowers. She listened to it all and never asked for any proof. She just took me at my word. But sometimes I think she thinks I imagined some of it, or maybe she thinks I’m a bit of a loon.
There’s no recess in sixth grade, but we have gym outside on the soccer field. That’s where I see the big, black dog again. I’m holding Simone’s feet as she tries to do a sit up. How can you not do one full sit up, Simone? I don’t ask her, I just pretend that each halfway sit up counts and she thinks she’s done ten. The big, black dog walks out from around the side of the school where they keep the dumpsters. I wonder if it’s a stray and happens to be wandering through town. Maybe this is a completely different dog. What are you saying, of course it’s not a completely different dog, Lily.
“Hey,” I say to Simone as she flops back down onto the grass, “there’s that big, black dog.”
She turns to look. “The ghost dog?”
“Yes, the ghost dog.” Maybe I’ll just call the dog Ghost from now on. That’s certainly a good name for it. It kind of looks like Officer Flowers’ ghost, all black and charred, only it’s not charred it’s just furry.
Simone sits up on her elbows and nods. “Yeah, I see it.”
I feel a sense of relief. “Really?”
“No.”
Okay wait, I hate it when she does this. “Are you kidding that you see it or that you don’t see it?”
“I don’t see it,” Simone says. She looks at me apologetically. “Sorry.”
Crud.
The rest of gym class, the dog and I have a staring contest. After exercises, we practice dribbling soccer balls and passing. Eventually, Mr. Betty our gym teacher blows the whistle to have us go in and change. I take one last glance over at the big, black dog and there’s someone kneeling beside it, petting it gently. It seems happy to be petted. I can’t really make out who the person is petting it, as they’re all hunched over and wearing some sort of hoodie. My first thought goes to Officer Flowers once again, but I haven’t seen her in almost a year, and I’d like to think she’s moved on, not haunting me with some weird ghost dog.
Today we have art class with Mrs. Zimmerman. I love art class. Last month I brought in one of my still lifes I did at home and Mrs. Zimmerman said I have a good eye for details. Today we’re using pastels to make a zoology collage to hang in the hallway. I’ve been working on this herd of giraffes since last week. I want to put a crown on the king of giraffes but that would be “unprofessional” as my mom always says.
Mrs. Zimmerman comes by to check our progress. She leans over and looks at Todd Gambil’s drawing of piranhas and nods but doesn’t say anything. That’s her way of politely avoiding a conversation with the principal and Todd’s parents about why she made their son cry. I saw Todd’s piranhas earlier and they look like a bowl of Fruit Loops.
“Very good giraffes, Lily,” she says. She hovers over me so close I can smell her perfume. She wears a lot of perfume, but nobody says anything. Todd Gambil is laying on his drawing of piranhas and I can’t tell if he’s trying to get in close for the real fine details or Mrs. Zimmerman’s perfume knocked him flat out.
“Is that a panther in the background?” Mrs. Zimmerman asks.
“What?” I look at my drawing. I don’t see a panther, I see one, two, three, four, five giraffes. Uh... I had drawn six. Oh there it is, laying on its side back by the treeline. Wait, did someone change my drawing? No, I literally was just working on it and the sixth giraffe was drinking out of the pond. Why is it all covered in red pastel? Oh my God-- my giraffe drawing has been murdered. Near the giraffe’s corpse sits a big, black-- oh it’s the dog. Of course it’s the dog.
“The big, black dog is in my drawing,” I say without thinking.
Mrs. Zimmerman leans back, “That’s a tad macabre but very realistically rendered, Lily.”
Did I draw the dog without thinking? But the giraffe... how did that change? I run my thumb over the paper to confirm its just a drawing, and I smudge the king of giraffe’s neck, making it look all zig-zaggy. Crud. Mrs. Zimmerman makes a “hmm” sound and wanders off to the next table. I lean in close and stare at the dog on my drawing.
“You better stop killing my giraffes,” I whisper at it. To emphasize my point, I jab the dog drawing with the end of my orange pastel. It doesn’t yelp or run away because it’s just a drawing and the idea that it might is of course utterly ridiculous. I take some green and try to cover the dog with it, but I can still see its dark shape underneath and now it truly looks like a ghost dog.
After school, we pile into the bus home. There’s a lot more kids on the bus home from middle school than there was from elementary school. If you don’t get on early, you gotta hope you find a seat next to someone decent. The big kids from eighth grade claim the back every day, and dispense wedgies or overturn your entire backpack if you try to move in on their territory. Jeffrey Baker learned that the hard way on our first day. I’d never seen anyone pick on Jeffrey Baker before, so it was really satisfying to watch him waddle back toward the front trying not to cry while at the same time not let his underwear ride up any further.
I like to sit by one of the front wheels. When the bus hits a bump in the road, kids by the wheels get launched the highest. It’s kind of like jumping on a trampoline, only you’re sitting on your butt the entire time. And there are a lot of bumps in the road around here.
It’s while I’m sitting there in the seat by the wheel, looking out the window that I see an odd reflection in the building we’re passing. The building’s side is made entirely of windows, and in them I see the bus I’m in, only there’s faces of other people looking back. We’re going by kind of fast, and the glass of the windows warps the reflection, but I can definitely see the faces. They all appear to be adults with sickly gray skin and sunken eyes and they are all looking directly back at me like some sort of ghost tour bus visiting the land of the living. I glance around but nobody else is even looking out the window who might also see this, they’re all talking to each other or the kids in the seat behind them. Well, okay, there’s one girl who’s looking out her window, but she’s on the other side of the bus, so that doesn’t count. I look back out, but the building is passed and there’s cars and a side street we’re going by.
Something inside me says, Get off the bus. I’ve learned to listen when something inside me speaks. I excuse myself past Hanna Glass who had sat next to me earlier with a clear face of disappointment that there wasn’t another seat available. She gladly moves to let me out so I can creep up the aisle to the front of the bus. We’re not supposed to stand up while the bus is in motion, but Ed our driver never pays attention to what’s going on in the back unless people start getting too loud. Of course, even as I think that, I see him look up and stare at me just as I get to one of the half empty seats right behind him.
“Sit down, Lily.” he says sternly.
I sit behind him and lean around the chair. “Ed, I need to get off the bus.”
“You shouldn’t be calling me Ed, Lily. Sit back.”
“Mr. Ed, I need to get off the bus, please.”
Ed narrows his eyes at me. I like to think he knows me well enough to know when I’m serious, because that’s all the time. I can see he’s going through the typical adult list of questions, number one being, “Is she goofing?” His expression hardens.
“Just sit back, Lily,” he says, “I can’t let you off before your stop. You’ll be home soon.”
“Please!”
He gives me one more uncertain look. “Sit back.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
I think about going back to my seat by the wheel, but Hanna Glass has already convinced someone else to take my spot. We exchange looks for a moment when I glance back, and then she goes back to talking to her friend. That’s fine, I’ll just sit here up front and be the first one off the bus if it catches fire.
We go several more minutes and a couple stops, dropping kids off. The seat over by the door clears, so I move to it because the boy I was sharing a seat with smells like he works at a pet store and doesn’t bathe. Maybe he does work at a pet store. Paschar would know. He’d know if the boy doesn’t bathe too, but that’s not really something I care about. Just the smell.
The bus drives past Holy Oaks Cemetery, where my brother Roger is buried. My parents got a plot for him by a willow tree. In fact, the only type of trees in the cemetery are willows. I wonder why they named it Holy Oaks instead of Holy Willows? I guess Holy Oaks rolls off the tongue better.
I hold my breath, as you are supposed to do when driving past a cemetery so you don’t inhale a person’s ghost. Several other kids who know the rule do the same. Some of the loud mouth eighth graders in the back start dramatically huffing and laughing, “Oh! Oh! I just sucked up someone’s spirit!” someone shouts.
A moment later, a big kid plops down in the seat next to me. He’s super tall, like maybe five foot ten, with long, dirty blond hair and the start of a mustache that looks like only every other hair grew out. There’s a gold loop in one of his ears, and he’s wearing torn jeans and a Pantera t-shirt. When he looks down at me his eyes are weird, kinda glossed over like someone whited them out.
“Lily,” he says. I wait, but that’s it.
“Yes.” I nod. “That’s me.” I try to act calm, but inside I’m praying he doesn’t twist my head off. I don’t even know who he is.
“It’s me, Roger.”
I’m nervous and confused, but I manage to squeak out, “It’s nice to meet you. My brother’s name was Roger.”
He frowns. “No, assface, I am Roger.”
“Roger?” I look closer at him but beyond the dirty hair and the dirty clothes and the... dirt... he looks nothing like Roger. Then it hits me. “Oh my God, Roger, did you get sucked up by this kid?”
Ed glances at us in the mirror with the same expression my mom gets when I start talking to my doll Paschar in the middle of one of her parties she hosts for work.
Roger shakes his head. Or rather, the kid with Roger in him shakes his head. Roger makes the kid he’s in shake his head. The kid’s head. Not Roger’s-- you know what I’m saying.
“I’ve got a message for you.”
“Are you in purgatory?” I ask him. Paschar told me Roger was in Purgatory. That’s where you lie in your body until someone comes to get you.
“Not anymore,” he says, “I took a deal. Give you this message and I can finally get out of that hole.”
The bus stops and a couple other big kids walk by us to get off. They look at me and the kid with Roger inside him with confused and disgusted faces. I can’t blame them. This is all confusing. And maybe a little disgusting.
“Where are you going to go?” I ask, “Heaven?”
He smirks at me. Or rather he makes the kid smirk. “No way, squirt, they wouldn’t take me.”
“Oh no, Roger,” I whisper so no one else can hear. Honestly, I should have been doing that from the start. “You’re not going to H-E-double hockey sticks, are you?”
“For shit’s sake, Lily, you can say ‘HELL’.”
“Are you going to Hell?”
Roger... the kid.. Look, I’m just going to call the kid Roger and you’ll know what I’m saying. Roger leans back and puts his hands behind his head like he’s relaxing on a beach instead of sitting in a cramped bus, or rather sitting in the body of some greasy thirteen year old on a cramped bus. “Nope, I’m joining a whole new pantheon.” He looks over at me. “You know what a pantheon is?”
“A marathon of pants?”
Roger sighs and closes his eyes. “No, dumbass, it’s like a different religion.”
“Ohhh...” I look out the window at people on the street for a moment before turning back to him. “Are you Jewish now?”
“No.”
“Buddhist?”
He sits up and waves his hands. “No, look, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to give you this message before my stop. Before this kid’s stop. You know what I mean.”
“Okay.”
He leans toward me and I can smell the flavor of the gum the kid must have been chewing on his breath. It was orange gum, in case you were wondering. I bet he swallowed it when he was huffing in Roger back at the cemetery. That’s not good for you. “Don’t swallow gum,” my mom always says, “it sits in your stomach for years.”
“Two things, squirt. One: she’s coming, and two: be careful.”
We stare at each other for a moment.
“That’s really vague,” I tell him.
He grins. “I know, right? And now I get to go join this new pantheon and be done with all this Christianity bullshit. Can you believe they were going to leave me rotting in the ground until the end of time?”
“I love you, Roger.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I look past Roger just in time to see Ed the bus driver make a face in the mirror like he just saw a two-headed racoon scooting across road. The smelly kid in the opposite seat is sitting there staring at me and Roger with his mouth hanging open and the same expression as Ed. Well, there goes what little reputation I had.
Roger spasms suddenly and coughs twice right in my face, then blinks several times. When he’s done, his eyes aren’t all whited out anymore, and he immediately reels back like I’m the one that just covered his face with spit instead of vice versa. So gross.
“What the Hell?” he snarls. “What are you doing back here?”
He looks around and seems to realize that it was he who was in the wrong place, not me. “Shit, I must have hyperventilated or something.” and with that he gets up and walks back to where he came from at the back of the bus, followed moments later by more cussing when he realizes the stop we just made that he walked to the back during was his own.
When the bus finally gets to my neighborhood, I hop off with the others from my street and who should be waiting for me but that big, black dog. It sits next to a row of hydrangea bushes and watches intently as we cross the street in front of the bus, just staring coldly at me. I think about approaching it, but you’re not supposed to approach strays, and as if it reads my mind the dog curls its lip back in a quiet snarl.
“Fair enough,” I say to it, “I was just told to be careful after all.”
I walk home with the big, black dog keeping pace far behind me, close enough for me to know it’s there but far enough back to not feel threatening. Every now and then I look back and it stops and sits down and cocks its head at me. I am quickly becoming not a fan of dogs.
Once I get home, I go straight to Paschar and ask him about the dog and Roger. He tells me that what Roger said is true, that there are other religious pantheons. He even spells the word out so I can look it up, which is good because I thought you spelled it with an ‘i’. He says that while he is aware of other pantheons, he is limited only to what humanity knows of them. In other words, Gods and angels of different religions don’t usually mingle. Paschar says Roger is outside of their “jurisdiction” now, which I also looked up and that means they can’t judge him--?
“So does this mean all the big books of mythology I read are true?” I ask.
Probably not, Paschar says, not even everything you read in the Bible is true. It’s like a two thousand year game of telephone. Someone said something at the dawn of time, and it got told to someone else, and someone else, and each time slightly changed from the last until you get here and things are vastly different.
“But you would know, wouldn’t you?” I ask, “You were there when it first got said, right?”
No.
“Oh,” I scratch my head. “Okay. So... do you know who ‘she’ is?”
I have no idea, Paschar admits, I don’t know what pantheon Roger joined. Take his word for it though, and be careful.
“I’ll be careful. But I’m sure whatever happens, I’ll see it coming.” I force a smile and hug Paschar. He can’t hug me back because he’s just a doll.
The rest of the afternoon and evening goes by as it usually does: my dad lets me play drums in the garage on Roger’s old drum set for a while. Good thing Roger’s been stuck in his coffin all this time, because if he had ever found out I was using his drums, that conversation on the bus would have been a lot different I think. He probably would have really twisted my head off. Dad makes tuna noodle casserole for dinner, which is super gross. I eat it, but I don’t like it, and I have to drink some milk with every bite just to keep from gagging.
At bedtime, I feed Dr. Fishy and Dr. Brown. Dr. Fishy is a Siamese fighting fish. If you have more than one, they kill each other, so Dr. Brown is a little algae eater who floats along the bottom of the tank and sucks up stones and spits them out again. Siamese fighting fish don’t attack algae eaters, so the two doctors make a great team. I’ve had them for four months now and they’re still alive which is probably a record for me.
After I read for a bit from the book I’m doing a report on, Mom and Dad come in and kiss me goodnight and then turn out the lights. I don’t tell them that I talked to Roger. Once they’re gone, Paschar who lays next to me in bed starts reciting the lyrics to old hymns you can’t find in church anymore. His voice is always so calm and soothing that it helps me go right to sleep.
It’s after midnight when I wake up sweaty and confused. I was having that dream again about the summer my cousin Susan got run over by a boat and chopped up by the rudder. I never tell anyone about the dream because they’d just sign me back up for therapy. Paschar is still beside me in bed and he’s immediately aware that I’m awake, so he starts reciting hymns again quietly. But there’s something wrong in the room. The moon outside the window is making everything blue, and I can kind of see most of my stuff. In the corner by the closet door, there’s a shape that’s not supposed to be there, not very tall, maybe half the size of a person, unless it’s a hunched over person. Please don’t be a hunched over person. As if in response, I see them: two shiny eyes reflecting light from outside, staring at me. They’re not human eyes, they’re doggy eyes. Like the eyes of a big, black dog that should not be in my bedroom.
“Paschar, the dog is in my bedroom,” I whisper.
He stops reciting hymn lyrics. I can’t see it, Lily he says.
This isn’t good.
“Go away!” I hiss at the dog.
It responds by standing up. For a moment I think it’s going to pounce on me and tear my throat out, but instead the hinges of the closet door creak as it begins to open. I know I shut it tight because closets freak me out ever since I saw the movie Poltergeist. The door opens a crack and the dog walks slowly into it, disappearing into the darkness inside.
Something just opened the closet, Paschar says, Was that the dog?
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly, the closet door swings wide open into the room. I frantically pull the covers up to my chin, waiting for the dog to come back out or something worse. Maybe a billion spiders. No no no, neon glowing robot made of spinning blades and shooting flames. Zombies... pet zombies.. Zombie versions of every pet that died in this house. That’s-- that’s horrifying. Why am I thinking about that? Stupid imagination. Maybe it’s clones of my mom and dad, with black holes for eyes and blood pouring out of their mouths. Stop! Stop thinking of things!
Paschar sounds suddenly scared too. Maybe it’s Samael, he says.
Oh... oh crud. Someone, something in the closet is getting into our heads. It’s flipping through the rolodex of our nightmares, and trying to pluck just the right one to introduce itself to us with.
Lily, Paschar says urgently, Clear your mind! Focus on one thing and keep it in your head!
I start thinking of a brick wall, just focusing on the brick wall. Bricks. Lots of bricks. How tall is this wall? This brick wall? How brick is this wall? So many bricks.
Paschar starts singing the hymns he was droning on earlier. He doesn’t stop, and when one ends he goes right on into the other. He actually sounds really nice. I guess you could say he has the voice of an angel.
Bricks, bricks, bricks.
The closet door slams shut angrily. A minute later, my father comes stomping and shouting down the hallway and barges into the room, flipping on the light. I sit up and rub my eyes.
“What’s going on in here?” he demands.
“I have no idea,” I admit. “I was asleep and then something loud woke me up. It sounded like a door slamming.”
My dad eyes the closet door suspiciously. For a moment I see him in my mind, opening the door and the big, black dog leaping onto him and tearing him to pieces. No, stop that, brain. Don’t open the closet, Dad. Please, don’t open the closet.
He looks at me. “Go back to sleep.” Then he flips the lights off and leaves the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
I do not sleep a wink the rest of the night.
submitted by Lillian_Madwhip to nosleep [link] [comments]

I’m Lily Madwhip and I’m Being Followed By a Big, Black Dog

I’m Lily Madwhip and I’m being followed by a big, black dog.
“Hey, do you know whose dog that is?” I ask Jamal. We’re sitting on the bus and I’m looking out the window at the big, black dog that has been following me since I left the house ten minutes ago. It’s long and thin, with short fur and a pointy nose. Judging from how it looks I bet it’s hungry. I spotted it first parked on its butt in the Tennison’s front yard staring at me and I thought it was doing its doggy business. I’m not a fan of watching animals do their business, so I looked away, but as I rounded the corner onto Smiley Ave, I looked back and it was still there, just watching me walk away.
“What dog?” Jamal asks.
“The big, black dog.” It’s peeking out from behind the old, dead tree by Mr. Lawrence’s house. Lightning struck the tree four years ago and split it down the middle. Mr. Lawrence had the two halves propped up and tried to hold them together by nailing boards up it like stitches. I think he thought since the boards were made of wood and the tree was made of wood, it would reabsorb the boards or something. It didn’t. Half the tree was dead and it’s all rotten and dried up now. The other half is fine though, so it looks like a weird tree with boards leading up to the branches, half of which have no leaves. Like a ladder to the lamest treehouse.
“What big, black dog?” Jamal looks out the window with curiosity, but he seems to look everywhere but where the dog is.
I point at the dog peeking out from behind the weird tree. “The big, black dog peeking out from behind Mr. Lawrence’s weird tree.”
Jamal keeps looking in the wrong places. He pauses. “Wait, who’s Mr. Lawrence?”
I give up. “Alright, well this has been fun, thanks.”
The bus drives off and the dog watches us go. I watch the dog watch us go. It’s a watching party.
Sixth grade has been hard to deal with. Particularly the “no toys allowed” rule, which means I have to leave Paschar at home every day. I can’t even try to smuggle him into school in my backpack. I still see things before they happen from time to time, but without Paschar, I don’t always know what’s going on. I have to be on my guard all day until I get home. It’s nerve wracking.
“You seem tense,” Simone tells me. Simone is one of my best friends. She’s got orange hair but people call it red or ginger. I don’t know why they don’t just call it orange. I guess that sounds too much like the color a clown’s hair would be or something. We sit in the back of the class during social studies because Mr. Hasan doesn’t assign seating like the other teachers do. I like Mr. Hasan. He always wears a bow tie. Most days it’s red, but some days he likes to throw everybody for a loop and wear a black one. Once he wore a green one and I swear Hayden Brickowski nearly had an aneurysm.
“I saw a dog at the bus stop.”
“Do you not like dogs?”
“I don’t think anybody else could see this one.” At least, Jamal couldn’t. Then again, maybe he was looking from the wrong angle. Of course, this all wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t mean something. I’ve learned to trust my instincts when they tell me something’s not right.
Simone covers her mouth in mock surprise. “Maybe it was a ghost dog!”
“You know... you joke, but you have no idea what I have to deal with sometimes.”
Actually, she does. I told Simone all about fixing things for the angels, my dad getting kidnapped by a magician with a grudge, meeting the angel of death, and all the awful stuff last year regarding Meredith and Felix and Officer Flowers. She listened to it all and never asked for any proof. She just took me at my word. But sometimes I think she thinks I imagined some of it, or maybe she thinks I’m a bit of a loon.
There’s no recess in sixth grade, but we have gym outside on the soccer field. That’s where I see the big, black dog again. I’m holding Simone’s feet as she tries to do a sit up. How can you not do one full sit up, Simone? I don’t ask her, I just pretend that each halfway sit up counts and she thinks she’s done ten. The big, black dog walks out from around the side of the school where they keep the dumpsters. I wonder if it’s a stray and happens to be wandering through town. Maybe this is a completely different dog. What are you saying, of course it’s not a completely different dog, Lily.
“Hey,” I say to Simone as she flops back down onto the grass, “there’s that big, black dog.”
She turns to look. “The ghost dog?”
“Yes, the ghost dog.” Maybe I’ll just call the dog Ghost from now on. That’s certainly a good name for it. It kind of looks like Officer Flowers’ ghost, all black and charred, only it’s not charred it’s just furry.
Simone sits up on her elbows and nods. “Yeah, I see it.”
I feel a sense of relief. “Really?”
“No.”
Okay wait, I hate it when she does this. “Are you kidding that you see it or that you don’t see it?”
“I don’t see it,” Simone says. She looks at me apologetically. “Sorry.”
Crud.
The rest of gym class, the dog and I have a staring contest. After exercises, we practice dribbling soccer balls and passing. Eventually, Mr. Betty our gym teacher blows the whistle to have us go in and change. I take one last glance over at the big, black dog and there’s someone kneeling beside it, petting it gently. It seems happy to be petted. I can’t really make out who the person is petting it, as they’re all hunched over and wearing some sort of hoodie. My first thought goes to Officer Flowers once again, but I haven’t seen her in almost a year, and I’d like to think she’s moved on, not haunting me with some weird ghost dog.
Today we have art class with Mrs. Zimmerman. I love art class. Last month I brought in one of my still lifes I did at home and Mrs. Zimmerman said I have a good eye for details. Today we’re using pastels to make a zoology collage to hang in the hallway. I’ve been working on this herd of giraffes since last week. I want to put a crown on the king of giraffes but that would be “unprofessional” as my mom always says.
Mrs. Zimmerman comes by to check our progress. She leans over and looks at Todd Gambil’s drawing of piranhas and nods but doesn’t say anything. That’s her way of politely avoiding a conversation with the principal and Todd’s parents about why she made their son cry. I saw Todd’s piranhas earlier and they look like a bowl of Fruit Loops.
“Very good giraffes, Lily,” she says. She hovers over me so close I can smell her perfume. She wears a lot of perfume, but nobody says anything. Todd Gambil is laying on his drawing of piranhas and I can’t tell if he’s trying to get in close for the real fine details or Mrs. Zimmerman’s perfume knocked him flat out.
“Is that a panther in the background?” Mrs. Zimmerman asks.
“What?” I look at my drawing. I don’t see a panther, I see one, two, three, four, five giraffes. Uh... I had drawn six. Oh there it is, laying on its side back by the treeline. Wait, did someone change my drawing? No, I literally was just working on it and the sixth giraffe was drinking out of the pond. Why is it all covered in red pastel? Oh my God-- my giraffe drawing has been murdered. Near the giraffe’s corpse sits a big, black-- oh it’s the dog. Of course it’s the dog.
“The big, black dog is in my drawing,” I say without thinking.
Mrs. Zimmerman leans back, “That’s a tad macabre but very realistically rendered, Lily.”
Did I draw the dog without thinking? But the giraffe... how did that change? I run my thumb over the paper to confirm its just a drawing, and I smudge the king of giraffe’s neck, making it look all zig-zaggy. Crud. Mrs. Zimmerman makes a “hmm” sound and wanders off to the next table. I lean in close and stare at the dog on my drawing.
“You better stop killing my giraffes,” I whisper at it. To emphasize my point, I jab the dog drawing with the end of my orange pastel. It doesn’t yelp or run away because it’s just a drawing and the idea that it might is of course utterly ridiculous. I take some green and try to cover the dog with it, but I can still see its dark shape underneath and now it truly looks like a ghost dog.
After school, we pile into the bus home. There’s a lot more kids on the bus home from middle school than there was from elementary school. If you don’t get on early, you gotta hope you find a seat next to someone decent. The big kids from eighth grade claim the back every day, and dispense wedgies or overturn your entire backpack if you try to move in on their territory. Jeffrey Baker learned that the hard way on our first day. I’d never seen anyone pick on Jeffrey Baker before, so it was really satisfying to watch him waddle back toward the front trying not to cry while at the same time not let his underwear ride up any further.
I like to sit by one of the front wheels. When the bus hits a bump in the road, kids by the wheels get launched the highest. It’s kind of like jumping on a trampoline, only you’re sitting on your butt the entire time. And there are a lot of bumps in the road around here.
It’s while I’m sitting there in the seat by the wheel, looking out the window that I see an odd reflection in the building we’re passing. The building’s side is made entirely of windows, and in them I see the bus I’m in, only there’s faces of other people looking back. We’re going by kind of fast, and the glass of the windows warps the reflection, but I can definitely see the faces. They all appear to be adults with sickly gray skin and sunken eyes and they are all looking directly back at me like some sort of ghost tour bus visiting the land of the living. I glance around but nobody else is even looking out the window who might also see this, they’re all talking to each other or the kids in the seat behind them. Well, okay, there’s one girl who’s looking out her window, but she’s on the other side of the bus, so that doesn’t count. I look back out, but the building is passed and there’s cars and a side street we’re going by.
Something inside me says, Get off the bus. I’ve learned to listen when something inside me speaks. I excuse myself past Hanna Glass who had sat next to me earlier with a clear face of disappointment that there wasn’t another seat available. She gladly moves to let me out so I can creep up the aisle to the front of the bus. We’re not supposed to stand up while the bus is in motion, but Ed our driver never pays attention to what’s going on in the back unless people start getting too loud. Of course, even as I think that, I see him look up and stare at me just as I get to one of the half empty seats right behind him.
“Sit down, Lily.” he says sternly.
I sit behind him and lean around the chair. “Ed, I need to get off the bus.”
“You shouldn’t be calling me Ed, Lily. Sit back.”
“Mr. Ed, I need to get off the bus, please.”
Ed narrows his eyes at me. I like to think he knows me well enough to know when I’m serious, because that’s all the time. I can see he’s going through the typical adult list of questions, number one being, “Is she goofing?” His expression hardens.
“Just sit back, Lily,” he says, “I can’t let you off before your stop. You’ll be home soon.”
“Please!”
He gives me one more uncertain look. “Sit back.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
I think about going back to my seat by the wheel, but Hanna Glass has already convinced someone else to take my spot. We exchange looks for a moment when I glance back, and then she goes back to talking to her friend. That’s fine, I’ll just sit here up front and be the first one off the bus if it catches fire.
We go several more minutes and a couple stops, dropping kids off. The seat over by the door clears, so I move to it because the boy I was sharing a seat with smells like he works at a pet store and doesn’t bathe. Maybe he does work at a pet store. Paschar would know. He’d know if the boy doesn’t bathe too, but that’s not really something I care about. Just the smell.
The bus drives past Holy Oaks Cemetery, where my brother Roger is buried. My parents got a plot for him by a willow tree. In fact, the only type of trees in the cemetery are willows. I wonder why they named it Holy Oaks instead of Holy Willows? I guess Holy Oaks rolls off the tongue better.
I hold my breath, as you are supposed to do when driving past a cemetery so you don’t inhale a person’s ghost. Several other kids who know the rule do the same. Some of the loud mouth eighth graders in the back start dramatically huffing and laughing, “Oh! Oh! I just sucked up someone’s spirit!” someone shouts.
A moment later, a big kid plops down in the seat next to me. He’s super tall, like maybe five foot ten, with long, dirty blond hair and the start of a mustache that looks like only every other hair grew out. There’s a gold loop in one of his ears, and he’s wearing torn jeans and a Pantera t-shirt. When he looks down at me his eyes are weird, kinda glossed over like someone whited them out.
“Lily,” he says. I wait, but that’s it.
“Yes.” I nod. “That’s me.” I try to act calm, but inside I’m praying he doesn’t twist my head off. I don’t even know who he is.
“It’s me, Roger.”
I’m nervous and confused, but I manage to squeak out, “It’s nice to meet you. My brother’s name was Roger.”
He frowns. “No, assface, I am Roger.”
“Roger?” I look closer at him but beyond the dirty hair and the dirty clothes and the... dirt... he looks nothing like Roger. Then it hits me. “Oh my God, Roger, did you get sucked up by this kid?”
Ed glances at us in the mirror with the same expression my mom gets when I start talking to my doll Paschar in the middle of one of her parties she hosts for work.
Roger shakes his head. Or rather, the kid with Roger in him shakes his head. Roger makes the kid he’s in shake his head. The kid’s head. Not Roger’s-- you know what I’m saying.
“I’ve got a message for you.”
“Are you in purgatory?” I ask him. Paschar told me Roger was in Purgatory. That’s where you lie in your body until someone comes to get you.
“Not anymore,” he says, “I took a deal. Give you this message and I can finally get out of that hole.”
The bus stops and a couple other big kids walk by us to get off. They look at me and the kid with Roger inside him with confused and disgusted faces. I can’t blame them. This is all confusing. And maybe a little disgusting.
“Where are you going to go?” I ask, “Heaven?”
He smirks at me. Or rather he makes the kid smirk. “No way, squirt, they wouldn’t take me.”
“Oh no, Roger,” I whisper so no one else can hear. Honestly, I should have been doing that from the start. “You’re not going to H-E-double hockey sticks, are you?”
“For shit’s sake, Lily, you can say ‘HELL’.”
“Are you going to Hell?”
Roger... the kid.. Look, I’m just going to call the kid Roger and you’ll know what I’m saying. Roger leans back and puts his hands behind his head like he’s relaxing on a beach instead of sitting in a cramped bus, or rather sitting in the body of some greasy thirteen year old on a cramped bus. “Nope, I’m joining a whole new pantheon.” He looks over at me. “You know what a pantheon is?”
“A marathon of pants?”
Roger sighs and closes his eyes. “No, dumbass, it’s like a different religion.”
“Ohhh...” I look out the window at people on the street for a moment before turning back to him. “Are you Jewish now?”
“No.”
“Buddhist?”
He sits up and waves his hands. “No, look, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to give you this message before my stop. Before this kid’s stop. You know what I mean.”
“Okay.”
He leans toward me and I can smell the flavor of the gum the kid must have been chewing on his breath. It was orange gum, in case you were wondering. I bet he swallowed it when he was huffing in Roger back at the cemetery. That’s not good for you. “Don’t swallow gum,” my mom always says, “it sits in your stomach for years.”
“Two things, squirt. One: she’s coming, and two: be careful.”
We stare at each other for a moment.
“That’s really vague,” I tell him.
He grins. “I know, right? And now I get to go join this new pantheon and be done with all this Christianity bullshit. Can you believe they were going to leave me rotting in the ground until the end of time?”
“I love you, Roger.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I look past Roger just in time to see Ed the bus driver make a face in the mirror like he just saw a two-headed racoon scooting across road. The smelly kid in the opposite seat is sitting there staring at me and Roger with his mouth hanging open and the same expression as Ed. Well, there goes what little reputation I had.
Roger spasms suddenly and coughs twice right in my face, then blinks several times. When he’s done, his eyes aren’t all whited out anymore, and he immediately reels back like I’m the one that just covered his face with spit instead of vice versa. So gross.
“What the Hell?” he snarls. “What are you doing back here?”
He looks around and seems to realize that it was he who was in the wrong place, not me. “Shit, I must have hyperventilated or something.” and with that he gets up and walks back to where he came from at the back of the bus, followed moments later by more cussing when he realizes the stop we just made that he walked to the back during was his own.
When the bus finally gets to my neighborhood, I hop off with the others from my street and who should be waiting for me but that big, black dog. It sits next to a row of hydrangea bushes and watches intently as we cross the street in front of the bus, just staring coldly at me. I think about approaching it, but you’re not supposed to approach strays, and as if it reads my mind the dog curls its lip back in a quiet snarl.
“Fair enough,” I say to it, “I was just told to be careful after all.”
I walk home with the big, black dog keeping pace far behind me, close enough for me to know it’s there but far enough back to not feel threatening. Every now and then I look back and it stops and sits down and cocks its head at me. I am quickly becoming not a fan of dogs.
Once I get home, I go straight to Paschar and ask him about the dog and Roger. He tells me that what Roger said is true, that there are other religious pantheons. He even spells the word out so I can look it up, which is good because I thought you spelled it with an ‘i’. He says that while he is aware of other pantheons, he is limited only to what humanity knows of them. In other words, Gods and angels of different religions don’t usually mingle. Paschar says Roger is outside of their “jurisdiction” now, which I also looked up and that means they can’t judge him--?
“So does this mean all the big books of mythology I read are true?” I ask.
Probably not, Paschar says, not even everything you read in the Bible is true. It’s like a two thousand year game of telephone. Someone said something at the dawn of time, and it got told to someone else, and someone else, and each time slightly changed from the last until you get here and things are vastly different.
“But you would know, wouldn’t you?” I ask, “You were there when it first got said, right?”
No.
“Oh,” I scratch my head. “Okay. So... do you know who ‘she’ is?”
I have no idea, Paschar admits, I don’t know what pantheon Roger joined. Take his word for it though, and be careful.
“I’ll be careful. But I’m sure whatever happens, I’ll see it coming.” I force a smile and hug Paschar. He can’t hug me back because he’s just a doll.
The rest of the afternoon and evening goes by as it usually does: my dad lets me play drums in the garage on Roger’s old drum set for a while. Good thing Roger’s been stuck in his coffin all this time, because if he had ever found out I was using his drums, that conversation on the bus would have been a lot different I think. He probably would have really twisted my head off. Dad makes tuna noodle casserole for dinner, which is super gross. I eat it, but I don’t like it, and I have to drink some milk with every bite just to keep from gagging.
At bedtime, I feed Dr. Fishy and Dr. Brown. Dr. Fishy is a Siamese fighting fish. If you have more than one, they kill each other, so Dr. Brown is a little algae eater who floats along the bottom of the tank and sucks up stones and spits them out again. Siamese fighting fish don’t attack algae eaters, so the two doctors make a great team. I’ve had them for four months now and they’re still alive which is probably a record for me.
After I read for a bit from the book I’m doing a report on, Mom and Dad come in and kiss me goodnight and then turn out the lights. I don’t tell them that I talked to Roger. Once they’re gone, Paschar who lays next to me in bed starts reciting the lyrics to old hymns you can’t find in church anymore. His voice is always so calm and soothing that it helps me go right to sleep.
It’s after midnight when I wake up sweaty and confused. I was having that dream again about the summer my cousin Susan got run over by a boat and chopped up by the rudder. I never tell anyone about the dream because they’d just sign me back up for therapy. Paschar is still beside me in bed and he’s immediately aware that I’m awake, so he starts reciting hymns again quietly. But there’s something wrong in the room. The moon outside the window is making everything blue, and I can kind of see most of my stuff. In the corner by the closet door, there’s a shape that’s not supposed to be there, not very tall, maybe half the size of a person, unless it’s a hunched over person. Please don’t be a hunched over person. As if in response, I see them: two shiny eyes reflecting light from outside, staring at me. They’re not human eyes, they’re doggy eyes. Like the eyes of a big, black dog that should not be in my bedroom.
“Paschar, the dog is in my bedroom,” I whisper.
He stops reciting hymn lyrics. I can’t see it, Lily he says.
This isn’t good.
“Go away!” I hiss at the dog.
It responds by standing up. For a moment I think it’s going to pounce on me and tear my throat out, but instead the hinges of the closet door creak as it begins to open. I know I shut it tight because closets freak me out ever since I saw the movie Poltergeist. The door opens a crack and the dog walks slowly into it, disappearing into the darkness inside.
Something just opened the closet, Paschar says, Was that the dog?
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly, the closet door swings wide open into the room. I frantically pull the covers up to my chin, waiting for the dog to come back out or something worse. Maybe a billion spiders. No no no, neon glowing robot made of spinning blades and shooting flames. Zombies... pet zombies.. Zombie versions of every pet that died in this house. That’s-- that’s horrifying. Why am I thinking about that? Stupid imagination. Maybe it’s clones of my mom and dad, with black holes for eyes and blood pouring out of their mouths. Stop! Stop thinking of things!
Paschar sounds suddenly scared too. Maybe it’s Samael, he says.
Oh... oh crud. Someone, something in the closet is getting into our heads. It’s flipping through the rolodex of our nightmares, and trying to pluck just the right one to introduce itself to us with.
Lily, Paschar says urgently, Clear your mind! Focus on one thing and keep it in your head!
I start thinking of a brick wall, just focusing on the brick wall. Bricks. Lots of bricks. How tall is this wall? This brick wall? How brick is this wall? So many bricks.
Paschar starts singing the hymns he was droning on earlier. He doesn’t stop, and when one ends he goes right on into the other. He actually sounds really nice. I guess you could say he has the voice of an angel.
Bricks, bricks, bricks.
The closet door slams shut angrily. A minute later, my father comes stomping and shouting down the hallway and barges into the room, flipping on the light. I sit up and rub my eyes.
“What’s going on in here?” he demands.
“I have no idea,” I admit. “I was asleep and then something loud woke me up. It sounded like a door slamming.”
My dad eyes the closet door suspiciously. For a moment I see him in my mind, opening the door and the big, black dog leaping onto him and tearing him to pieces. No, stop that, brain. Don’t open the closet, Dad. Please, don’t open the closet.
He looks at me. “Go back to sleep.” Then he flips the lights off and leaves the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
I do not sleep a wink the rest of the night.
submitted by Lillian_Madwhip to Lillian_Madwhip [link] [comments]

Sunday Morning NFL Line Movement and Player Props

https://www.sportsinsights.com/nfl/
https://sports.bovada.lv/football/nfl/quarterback-props-market-group
Edit: the player props for the Super Bowl re-match just got released. they are excellent. Ryan 300 yards, Brady 310, Julio 92, Gronk 72. Good TD props as well. I would say Ryan/Brady/Julio are the tops at their positions and Gronk is likely top TE (need to see Ertz but doubt it would be as high) and essentially a top 10 receiver over all.
The most striking line movement as of this morning is the Seahawks moving from -7 to -3.5 despite having 59% of the betting on them. To put this in perspective, if you assumed even dollar of bets, I would think a -7 favorite with almost 60% of the bets would move up to -8 or -8.5. To move in the other direction by more than a field goal, and to have the number continue to move all week, is really odd. There is some huge money on the Giants. With the over moving up .5 points despite having 61% of the money on the under, I'm starting to think that near min priced Eli and Darkwa have some real appeal.
The Steelers opened up as -6 point favorites vs the Bengals, and with the Bengals getting only 53% of the action, they've moved down to -4. There must be some heavy bets on the Bengals to move a line 2 points with almost even betting.
New Orleans opened as -5.5 favorites against Hundley and the Packers and with 64% of the betting on the Saints, the line has actually moved 2 points towards the Packers. This is Reverse Line Movement.
Player Props
The props for the Atl/NE and Philly/Wash games are not posted yet. I would assume the 4 QB's in those games have amongst the 6 or 7 best yardage and TD props for the position. The props that are posted for the games/players so far are in a word "Shitty" for the QB position.
Yardage: Brees 290, Palmer 265, Winston 259, Goff 252, Ben 250, Dak 249, Rivers 246. That's it for guys over 245.
TDs: literally, the worst props I've seen posted this year. Brees leads the way at 2.5, but -165 under. The only QB's with an over on TD passes are Newton 1.5, -125 over, Palmer 1.5, -130 over, Mariota 1.5, -130 over. You should really check these out for yourself.
Newton also has a good rushing prop at 25 yards, -125 over.
RBs:
Bell has a combined 125 and Zeke is next at 122 and then Shady at 117. Pure Rushing: Zeke 99, Bell 92, Ajayi 87, Shady 77, Gurley 75, Peterson 75, Howard 72, Ingram 65, CJA 64, Gordon 60.
WRs
Brown 87, AJG 77, D. Thomas 75, Thielen 75, M. Thomas/Evans/Landry 72, Fitz 67, Dez 65, Baldwin 64, Jordy 62.
Again, with possibly the two juiciest DFS games not having props posted yet, the overall props are kind of underwhelming. I wouldn't over react and read too much into it, but it seems like the props will likely favor the 4 QBs in the late games, and I would bet Julio has the highest yardage prop once posted, and that Ertz and Gronk have big numbers for TE's.
Good luck.
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[Table] IAmA: I am Pat Morrow, the head NFL Oddsmaker at Bovada AMA!

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Date: 2014-09-04
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Questions Answers
I saw a comment in /nfl yesterday which suggested that your MVP odds are based not only on the actual odds of the player winning, but on the amount of money that is being bet (which was their explanation for why a guy like Manziel even has odds in the first place.) Part of the fun in posting odds like these across any sport is having to follow the opinion of crotchety sportswriters talk about why they may vote for a player because he "plays the game the right away". Goodness.
I'm an avid gambler and I always wanted to work in sports gambling- how did you get in your position? I kind of fell into it. I had been wagering on sports from a very young age with medium levels of success. While I always thought that I just "got sports", having a mathematical background helped me quantify what I was seeing, and then eventually, what and how I was betting.
One stupid question (maybe) what are the restrictions on betting for you since you are an oddsmaker? Because there isn't often a 'Help Wanted' sign when it comes to these positions, I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with the ins and outs of excel, programming and intense mathematics. Then go out and start crushing books. The best way to get noticed by sportsbooks is to go and take their money.
How do you determine odds for WWE events when it's a scripted event? Admittedly I'm not the biggest WWE fan, but there's a lot of information in messageboards and podcasts about what storylines make the most sense and what fans reasonably expect to happen.
Having said that...
The Undertaker was a 1/20 favorite at Wrestlemania versus Brock Lesnar. Long story short, his reign of Wrestlemania supremacy came to an end and we suffered our worst single-event loss in the month of April of this year.
Lesnar has the rare distinction of costing us a lot of money in both real and scripted fighting.
What (in your opinion) is the most interesting prop bet you've ever done on the site? Wracking my brain and we've really run gamut here. Our Super Bowl props this past February had 500 different options surrounding national anthem length, gatorade color dumped on winning coach, Bruno Mars' first song...etc.
Lately we've been experimenting more with in-game props. If a player is close to a significant in-game achievement, we've begun to offer odds on perfect games, no-hitters, hitting for the cycle. Anything that differentiates us from our competitors. The reception to these have been really positive.
Do you have any stories or examples of a time you've set a line and found yourself WAY off where other books (Vegas, online, anywhere) have put the number? The Super Bowl is a great example here as while most games closed it as a PK (or SEA/DEN) small fave, we held with the Broncos as 3-pt favorites. I know this seemingly contradicts what I've said before about recreational money affecting the line, but the Super Bowl as a one-off event takes more than anything else we'll offer in a calendar year.
Did you stick to your number or move more in line with the consensus? Because of the overwhelming action on a event like this, we were happy to have money on the Broncos at this price while conceding that those betting on Seattle likely had very valuable bets.
What was the largest bet you have ever taken? In relation to the average bet size for the market, we took mid-five figures over-limit bet on Mitt Romney to win the last Presidential Election from one of our larger players. Political wagering was something that in previous years had seen average bet sizes of $10-$20 but with more science behind the process (ie. poll aggregation etc), we had much higher limits in 2010 than we had had in previous years.
We were big Obama fans by election night.
What's the hardest sport to get right? Of the main sports right now, I'd say NCAA-B was brutal last year, if only for totals. The new rules surrounding called fouls pushed scoring up ~20 pts per game early last season as games devolved into free-throw competitions. Fortunately the calls softened as the season progressed but there were a lot of NCAA-B events last year that both we and our competitors were unable to even post totals for.
Curious approximately how much money (in how short a time span) has to get put down for a line to move by a point (or even half a point)? There's no one answer here as there's a lot of competing factors here. Earlier in the week when the limits are lower, a smaller bet from a respected player can move the line simply by having his financial opinion out there whereas a longterm loser dropping a significant bet on a point spread will rarely make us bat an eyelash. More often than not it's the opinion of the few (or changing information) that moves lines for us, not pure volume.
How come you guys are always the last ones to put up moneyline bets or even spreads in general? Why are your spreads constantly worse than other sites such as 5dimes? We get this one a lot and its dictated largely by our player base. Because our players are more of the recreational variety (smaller bets with bets coming closer to game time), we don't traditionally see a lot of handle, especially in relation to our game day handle when we post early. In terms of raw numbers, ~80% of our wagering for an NFL event comes in about an hour before it kicks off.
Recreational, small bettors are the majority everywhere. You are in fact driving away the larger bettors at the same time by limiting yourself to that audience. 2 days prior to the game is not posting early. Most large, growing sites list at least a week in advance. That's a fair point and we may look in the future to posting earlier with even lower limits. As it stands, we're comfortable with the current offering times as a business practice.
Why is it that bovada only offers a limited amount of moneylines? It's a liability issue -- When spreads get up to a certain point, the ML payout on the underdog becomes high enough that, when available for parlays with other significant underdogs, creates concerning liabilities. Each book eventually kills the moneyline offering when the underdog odds get up to a certain point. Ours is just a touch more conservative.
How come you dont offer any kind of betting trend statistics? Eh, a lot of the time these trends are close to useless. There are so many mitigating/contextual factors missing from "[team-x] has covered the spread [y-times] when [z-factor] is in play" that there's not always a lot to be taken from it.
They serve as entertainment but I would rarely be betting off of these so-called trends.
Have you looked in to adding Esports such as Starcraft 2, or League of Legends? As for Esports, I loved playing StarCraft when I was younger but I just don't see the market for it with our players and to be honest, wouldn't know where to start when it comes to capping it.
What stats do you use when making odds for week 1? Preseason or last season? A combo of both? Does it vary for the team? Last season with adjustments for depth. Preseason is largely a tirefire (the Colts under Peyton Manning would traditionally go 0-4 and 1-3) but there are small snippets of info worth gathering, especially with teams that are looking to improve and actually need those extra reps, versus teams that are already established.
How does live betting work? Do you hire people to watch the games and close betting when certain events happen (penalties, goals, etc)? Are the people hired sitting in the actual stands watching the games? Because it seems they always see things happen before the delay. We try to optimize the variety of the feeds we have available to us to ensure we have the quickest feed possible. Unfortunately (for our live traders), they have not yet been given the opportunity to attend the matches they're trading, but we try and keep them as comfortable as possible with their own private offices, big screen TVs and 6 different television feeds for each event.
What are your best leans for a 7 team parlay this opening weekend? I would advise finding individual bets that you like more than looking to make it rich on a massive payout like that. Typically sportsbooks hold much higher on parlays then they do on a straight bets so you should...
Wait.
Seahawks Browns Bengals Bears Cowboys Giants Titans/Chiefs u43.5.
Lock it up :)
Who do you like for final two this year and why? (NFL) The Broncos out of the AFC because the rest of the conference is hot garbage otherwise. While the Seahawks are still the class of the NFC, I personally like the Saints to represent them in the Super Bowl this year. (I think that Rob Ryan defense will be deadly )
I find pop culture bets really fascinating; outside of awards shows, what leads to a pop culture event getting posted odds? Any chance that you'll increase your number of pop culture bets going forward? Player interest drives these and awards shows are becoming more and more popular. We used to only offer the Academy Awards for film related wagering, but have since complemented that with the Golden Globes and Screen Actor's Guild awards.
We're probably not going to add the Razzies anytime soon, though.
Is it hard to cap teams such as Baylor, Oregon, etc in NCAAFB? They seem like they can score so much that setting a line seams difficult. Going back the past two seasons, they are 11-0 ATS at home. If it's a prospective blowout, then very much so. We have our ratings based on how strong we believe teams to be, but at what point do they take their foot off the gas? Trying to account for that is much harder than a shorter spread that is more likely correlated to what a team is trying to achieve over 60 minutes.
Are any games memorable as huge money makers (or losers) for Bovada? Most recently, the Super Bowl was the best individual day in terms of spread, props, futures, even live betting -- We continued to offer an updated spread throughout the game and the Seahawks covered each one, the highest being around -37 in-play.
Last updated: 2014-09-08 21:02 UTC
This post was generated by a robot! Send all complaints to epsy.
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