While at our local county fair and discussing our distrust of the rickety rides, my fiance asked if anyone has ever died at Cedar Point. I typed the words "has anyone" and "Has anyone ever died at Cedar Point?" was the top search prediction on my phone. Out of all the possibilities involving "has anyone", there is no way this is even close to being at the top of searches.
This has happened to me multiple times. The time before this we were watching Benji with my kids and my fiance asked what kind of Dog Benji is. All I typed was "What kind"... and what do you think the top prediction was on my phone? Do our phones listen to us?

Warning- This is a doozy, so buckle up.
This past thanksgiving break to now has lead to some intense things. I was spending the November holiday with a relative in Vegas and things were perfectly fine, of course in the most covid friendly way possible. However, nearing the end of the break I got a text from my mother stating that she had purchased a plane ticket for me to come back to Houston tommorow morning.
Why?
She wanted to surprise me with an extended trip home, even though I had nothing but a whole week’s worth of clothes, my phone, charger, and wallet.
I told her this, yet she said that one of my close friends in Cedar could mail it for me, which is naturally inconsiderate.
I confronted the Vegas relative about this, and they refused to give me flight details until the day of the flight. The whole situation was naturally suspicious, and I told my extended friends in Cedar, one of them being my current boyfriend. All of them thought this whole thing was ridiculous, however, being the patient person I am, carried on with the trip back home.
Being on that flight was horrid the next morning, considering that I was crying for quite a bit of it due to not knowing what was going on. When my parents came to pick me up, it was a drive filled with small talk, which is something I despise. As soon as we got home, we ate lunch quietly and then my parents started questioning things about my life, such as my friends,classes, and of course the boundary pusher of how I am doing spiritually, which is none of their business.
I told them I was doing fine, since I consider myself more spiritual than religious at this point in my life. I believe in a higher power, but I do not trust organized religion. However, they pushed it farther and asked about how I felt about the law of chastity. I told them my honest answer that it has its damage, even though it has good intentions. They didn’t take it well, and told me the ultimate thing that made me lose complete trust in my Vegas relative:
“Your relative found a condom in your wallet when we asked her to go look at your DL card. How far have you gone with boys?”
First off, I am a twenty-year old third year college student, who had two jobs and seventeen credits this past year and still managed to make the Dean’s list.
I told them that it’s not their business, and I am still a person with morals. Of course, most Mormon parents do not understand the concept of boundaries, and asked in detail about how many people I’ve slept with and of course nagged me about The Word of Wisdom. Keep in mind that I occasionally used marijuana and drank very little. I’ve also only slept with two people and was safe every time. However, I still got called a leaf in the wind who stood for nothing, therefore, I fell for everything. With that being said, they took my phone and my dad gave me his shitty laptop to finish school on since everything went online after thanksgiving break. Luckily with zoom, my boyfriend was able to message me about what was going on and he was livid. Thankfully, he was able to contact my cousins who live in Cyprus via text to tell them what was happening. I was able to tell him about the not so subtle ways my parents tried to get me back to God. The talks of turning my scarlet sins to snow. The fruits that people produce. How they painted my ex Mormon cousins as bad influences just because they are sexually active, and encouraged me to get birth control. The constant push to get me back into something they wanted was hell. I lost motivation to do basic things like hygiene and cooking due to how depressed I was. Yet my parents insisted that I was addicted to drugs and needed to be fixed. In reality, I was depressed with how my life was at the moment. With these things happening, my boyfriend, his sister, and another friend offered to fly to Texas to come get me out, and I consented to them moving my stuff out of my old apartment to my friends.
We had it planned out via constant secret emails, yet my mother was secretly going through my emails and found out my plan to leave at the wrong place and time. She demanded that I told my friends to pay them back on the plane ticket that they had purchased for me because they didn’t want me to leave because in their eyes I was mentally unstable. The very next morning my parents took all of the money I had in my bank account taken out. I was very numb to this naturally, and had several episodes of angry tears. Thankfully, my friends were planning to come get me the next day and I kept quiet on the escape plan. However, my parents questioned me about it that very night, and when I got called them out on their BS and still told them I wanted to leave, they used the classic lines of how selfish and arrogant I was, and took my DL and student ID. I got driven to a family friend’s house with my mom, and before she left for work, she read out the Utah laws on marijuana, which I was already well aware of. My friends are not addicts at all, and actually have benefitted from marijuana. She also threatened to call the Cedar City cops on them, just so if “I ever went back, I could visit my boyfriend in jail.” Being in a fragile mental state, I didn’t fight back because I did think that they were going to hurt him. The next day, my boyfriend’s mom posted about the whole thing, and hundreds of people responded like there was no tomorrow. It got to the point where people like Sam Young and John Delin were alerted of the situation. Some of the responders were able to contact my old bishop, and they told what my parents did. My parents of course told him their version, and he took their side. My friends and my parents played the game of calling the cops on each other, but I was never able to give them my word. Being in a fragile mindset, my parents insisted that I give them my word that I would stay home and “work on myself”. So they sold my lease without my consent, and I lost both of my jobs I had.
I wasn’t able to contact anyone for three weeks.
During that time, I went through the worst depression of my life, and my parents of course continued to insist that I was going through withdrawal symptoms. After those weeks passed, my parents payed for this semester with my money that they stole, and gave me my phone back. I immediately contacted my boyfriend and asked for his side of the story of what happened in Houston. He told me how they tried to reason with my parents, but they said to not even come and pick me up, as was expected considering there were jail threats.
The next few weeks I fought an internal battle with my mind, trying to figure out how to get out of my situation. I talked with a therapist who happened to be a BYU grad suspiciously, then again my parents chose a family therapist for their reasons. I filled out the paperwork, but my therapist still insisted that I try to listen to their perspective.
Pretty fishy huh?
I ended up talking to my parents more weirdly enough. They were mainly fights of course. One fight I remember having was regarding my sexual health when my mother dropped this Golden line-
“Consent is not respect. Waiting is.”
My dad agreed with her of course, and I got painted as the person tearing the family apart, while my mother texted my cousins and their mom who have tried to get me out as well that I was a drug addict who was going to die if they tried to help me get out.
The very next week, I had several long conversations with my boyfriend, and after constant talks about how the whole situation was psychological abuse and how I wasn’t a bad person for wanting to leave. I finally gave my consent for them to buy the plane ticket, and I kept quiet about my escape plan.
I ended up leaving the house Sunday morning via Uber, before anyone woke up. I packed minimum baggage, and ignored the various angry texts and calls I got throughout the day about how I was being deceived, and I had no sense of morality, despite the shit that happened the past two months. Yet I still got on the plane I wanted to get on and reunited with the people I loved in Vegas, then drove back to Cedar.
Today, I have a place to crash for a while, a loving boyfriend, support from extended family, and a new job that will help me get back on my feet. There are still things to work out considering that I was just cut out from my family, but it will take one day at a time. This is not an easy path, but I know it’s the right one.
Cheers, Heathens!

My mouth was covered by my older brothers hand, shallow, panicked breaths escaping between the sweat between the cracks of his fingers.
Both of us whimpering underneath our house in the crawlspace. Our sweat pants and Fanshawe T-shirts covered in spider webs, dirt and blood. I'm crying underneath his hand, I know I'm crying inside the cusp of his grip as he holds me close.
The sound of his footsteps grow louder above us, 'He's inside, he's right above us' I think to myself, squeezing hold of my brothers arm with my bloodied hands. I look to him, in the darkness all I can see is the green in his eye when the moonlight skims past between dark clouds, creeping through the cracks of the grating and reflecting off his iris.
My heart sank into my stomach when the sounds of tapping happened directly above us. We could hear his soft snigger, like some sort of personal, deranged victory.
I wake up, clammy hands and a heartbeat racing as if to escape a now fading memory as I sit upright in this bed. I feel cold, alone. I am still there. I am still stuck in that moment. When the officers found the scene of the crime, they asked me how it all happened. In truth, I barely remember them arriving. Between the shock and the blood loss, the memory comes faded, the words said inaudible.
It was nearly seven months ago I had that encounter with a serial killer which has since put me in Protective Custody and moved me far from my home of London Ontario. Each day I wake up at nearly five in the afternoon, since now I won't sleep till my eyes cave from exhaustion around eight in the morning.
What the documentaries rarely tell you, what survivors seem to never say is that when you live through the horror, the hell of the encounter with a serial killer, they never tell you how regardless of whether you live or die, you still become theirs.
They still own your thoughts, even just for a fleeting moment, or throughout the night such as myself.
The perversion on some is the belief of collection their victims, to own them, control them, to have them. A sycophant to their own murderous, self-believed desire, and impulse. This is my story of what happened on July 15th, 2015.
It was no secret that a serial killer called "The Dollhouse Murderer" had been active in the news. He travelled between London and Strathroy, murdering random victims.
Never an age, gender, place of employment, hair colour that he sought after in his trail of slayings. The only factor was the area, Middlesex County to Strathroy, but that is far from an easy net to cover. His only pattern, his gruesome pattern that he would leave behind was a dollhouse.
He would take a body part or hair, finger nails, eyelashes, some gruesome piece of a person he would collect, and when you opened the dollhouse, you'd find a porcelain copy of whatever he took. That was his calling card.
When my Mom heard the news, she took us out of London and to our cottage in Hanover. A slowly growing town with a beautiful landscape and a river that ran up to our little run down cottage house. That was our true home. It was not a rich person cottage with lighting, electricity and fresh paint. It was a simple wood house, cedar wood finish that was slowly wearing off.
Still, it was our home. Our escape.
Our Father was still in London, he unfortunately did not receive his vacation time from his job at the Honda Plant. So Mom, my brother Andy, and I, Sarah, made our way to the cottage.
The day was beautiful. A hot, sunny day. Mom was out for a stroll, soaking her feet in the river, basking in the sun while Andy and I were already at war with each other on who got the unicorn floaty.
I did, by the way.
Andy was just starting his apprenticeship in Plumbing, I was just entering my first year of High School. As a gift for me, Andy bought me some of his college's sweatpants and shirts which were roughly three sizes too big, but they made perfect pyjamas. Mom just loved that her "two babies" were wearing matching clothes. She constantly teased us about it.
We started a fire when the cold air began to come through and the sun began to fade down. Mom fired up the BBQ and made us some amazing ribs in a honey barbeque sauce, along with fried taters and an absurd, and frankly unnecessary amount of onions. I love her so much.
We sat at the fire, naturally making fun of dad. The smell of the wood burning, Mom and Andy drinking Moosehead, one tallboy after another, the crackling and hissing the fire would bellow when we threw pine needles into the flame because mom wanted "Natures febreeze."
When the moon began to settle in and the sky beamed with stars, we watched the fireflies flicker and do their luminated dance in the starry night. I loved this place so much. The coy wolves howling in the distance and the wind rustling between the trees in the twilight of this natural harmony.
We stayed by the fire for another hour before we heard the sound of a yelp from the distance. The coy wolves were done singing, now the harmony had stopped, and what was likely a fight over their dinner had started.
I quickly dozed off on the couch while my mom and Andy took to their own rooms after a heated game of Exploding Kittens. I remember sleeping so peacefully until I heard what would change me for the rest of my life.
"No, no no no. No!" My mom shrieked from the door window, locking it quickly.
"Mom?" Andy asked, scratching his tiresome eyes. "What's wrong?"
Mom was shaking so bad. I had never seen her scared before. Now I was nearly crying. I could see tears forming in hers. I could see her chest moving in and out, she was trying to control her breathing. I looked up from the couch and I could barely make out the fireplace, a few embers still clinging to life.
The wind would catch the embers, the flame would give off a bright enough glow for a fleeting moment that I could see it.
An opened dollhouse sat outside.
A knock came from the sliding door behind us. His face pale, clear blue eyes that were wide open, pupils wide and dilated. He had this unwelcoming, horrid smile. He was wearing a black hoodie and a camo toque, along with faded, dirt covered blue jeans with blood.
His face pressed against the window, his smile gazing over us in a putrid, perverse manner. He jammed his finger on the glass, pointing at my brother, then slid his dirty, bloody finger cross the glass, causing it to screech till the tip of his finger was pointed at me.
"I'm going to collect you. I'm going to collect you. I'm Going to Collect you. I'M GOING TO COLLECT YOU!" He screamed so loud the glass shook, we all jumped back terrified.
He kept muttering that as he walked around the cottage home. First it would be silent, then loud as he would bang his head against the window. Each time he would walk around the house he became more and more aggressive in his tone.
My Mom would follow him to each window, never getting to close, but her eyes always watching him. Andy and I sat on the couch, shaking out of fear until my mom spoke up.
"He went back into the bushes." she whispered. She ran to the sliding door, making sure it was locked. She covered the window with a quilt and then grabbed the both of us and pulled us into her bedroom.
"Kids, I love you, but this is real. This is happening. We have to stay together and stay alive. Do you understand me? You do whatever I say, do you understand me?" her voice was shaky, her hands quivered as she held us.
We both nodded our heads, softly crying into her arms. "Please protect us. Please god, I don't want to die. I'm so scared." I said to her.
"No baby you aren't going to die. I promise. You're okay, but you need to breath and be strong. We won't be his fucking statistic, okay?" she asked me, I shook my head and tried to control myself.
"Kids, lean in close. I need to tell you something." Andy and I huddled around our mom. "If he comes in I need the both of you to get to the crawlspace. Your Father and I made a trap door in the closet incase we ever got locked out and needed a way in. You stay in the crawlspace and leave only when I tell you too."
A loud bang came from the sliding door, we all rushed out of Mom and Dad's room, listening to him smash himself against it. Quietly I tiptoed to the other window. Outside he had a fire axe buried in the dirt, along with a blood soaked, rolled up carpet. I put my hands to my mouth. There was no doubt in my mind it was a dead body. It had to be.
"Mom there's an axe, and a body. Mom what do we do?" I remember whimpering to her.
"Mom what do we do? What do we do Mom? WHAT DO WE DO MOM!?" he screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Just shut the fuck up!" Andy cried out at him.
The sound of footsteps went around the house till a sudden smash came against the old wooden door, the hinge on the inside began to give in. "I'm going to collect them Tara." he said.
He knew my Mom's name.
"Tara, I'll let you live. You can live, just let me collect them. Sarah, Andy, you don't want your mom to die do you? Don't you love her? Don't you love her? You know what I will do?" his hand kept smashing against the door, his voice was no so calm, disgusting attempt to be soothing, convincing. "You can all live. Just need the rest. I just need the rest. I am so close. I'm so close. You really want to die Sarah? You want to never see again? breath? see anyone? anything? REALLY SARAH? ARE YOU THAT GREEDY SARAH? YOU WANT MOM TO DIE SARAH?"
Andy pushed himself in front of us, "You're a sick piece of shit. You will kill all of us. You're just a twisted, broken little boy. Did mom and dad not give you a hug so you have to kill? Fuck you!" Andy was red in the face, screaming at the door.
Another loud crash against the door, the wood began to split. All of us were silent. The door was old, wearing down. Hinges rusted and the wood had seen too many winters. The dollhouse murderer made his way back towards the sliding door. Andy walked over to the window I had been looking out.
He turned to us, he's just staring at his fucking axe..."
Glass shattered, the sharp silver of the axe collided onto the right side of Andy's face when he had turned back around. He fell to the ground, writhing and screaming in agony. "Mom!" he screamed out, to which the killer shouted back, laughing.
My mom looked horrified at her baby boy that she had carried for nine months in her body, raised with his adorable smile, held him when he first scraped a knee and cheered for him when he graduated high school. Her boy that she scolded when he came home high or tried to sneak a girl into his room without proper introduction. Sarah could see in her moms eyes the heartbreak that her baby boy, my brother, now laid in his own blood, rolling around in agony, his right eye gone and his face disfigured.
She helped Andy into her room, dousing his wounds with alcohol and bandaging it as best she could. I'll never forget the look on her face. That look of 'Enough.'
She pointed at the trap door to both of us. "He is going to come in. When I leave, you get your butts down there. Sarah, when you see an opportunity, you take my keys and you run to the car and you get out of here as fast as you can. I love you. I love you both."
The last time I would ever see my Mom. She grabbed a knife from the pantry, and waited near the door for him to come in.
The crawlspace on any normal day would be uncomfortable. Spiders, snakes, mice scurrying around. Yet in that moment with my brother, it was our last resort of feeling some form of safe.
There was a crash, a scream, and then silence. An unpleasant, harrowing silence. I needed to hear Mom's voice. Her tapping on the crawlspace door to let us know its okay. All I could hear was him.
"You killed her. You killed her Andy. You killed her Sarah." I began to sob, Andy put his hand around my mouth.
You know what happens next. The same thing I told you from the start. I cry underneath my brothers hand, then we hear tapping from above us, then laughter. What I forgot to mention before, my brothers hand was getting colder, his head nodding off. I try to shove him, but he slumps over. The blood on my hands, it was Andy's.
The Dollhouse killer was back outside. I could hear him grunt and mumble to himself as he stumbled his way up the steps and inside the cottage home. Our home.
Another tap from above. And then, something that leaves goosebumps with me to this day.
"Look behind you, Sarah" he whispered through the cracks of the trap door.
'I will bury you here' written in dried blood behind me.
How could he have had time to do this? How long had he been waiting for? I could feel my heart pounding, shortness of breath. My chest was heavy. I shook Andy, pleading with him to wake up. Begging. But all there was was laughter from above.
The crawlspace door snapped open, and I left my brother behind as I began crawling to the nearest grate. I looked behind for my brother but within seconds, the dollhouse murderer was there, crawling after me, that grin on his face, laughing as he squirmed towards me.
I felt him grab my ankle, I kicked as hard as I could. He laughed and continued after me. I continued to kick and fight him until I was finally free from his grasp. I ripped open the grate, it was already loose. Likely where he had snuck in.
A blue beam of light came streaking across the midnight sky. Sounds of sirens and officer storming out of their cars pulling me into their vehicle. One ordered another officer to drive, followed by laughter, then the sounds of gun shots.
The Dollhouse murderer was a fifty year old chef at an Italian Restaurant. He was a man of zero significance, a man who was despised by his peers at work. Verbally violent and unhinged who would often take days off and extensive holidays to commit his violent acts.
The once summer home that my family and I cherished was tainted ground. The detectives were appalled when they arrived on scene to see what the Dollhouse Murderer was making.
Each murder he took a different trophy. An arm, a leg, a hand, it was always a piece of the human body. He stitched it all together. All he was missing was another green eye, and a left leg. He made a dress and turned a pile of victims into a putrid doll.
His only reason for stalking each victim was because he was so attracted to certain parts of their bodies that he would hunt them down and kill them to begin his sick creation. Him and I never met. He found my family on social media and stalked us relentlessly.
The only reason he followed us so far, was to finish his Doll. His human, victim, doll.

Travel Tip: Don’t Take Coins From the Greenwich Steps
Location: A Long, Red Brick Stair Near Coit Tower, San Francisco
Fond of urban hikes? Coit Tower is one of the most popular day-hike destinations for travelers in San Francisco. Don’t worry; even if you fail to reach the tower before closing time, there’s a spectacular urban-ocean view from the parking lot.
Collectors will want to stop by Coit Tower’s glowing penny-press machine to get a coin stamped with the iconic tower silhouette. There’s nothing wrong with doing this. In fact, I encourage it if you are traveling with children. Visitors also leave pennies scattered on the wide stone slab window ledges on top of Coit Tower, itself. As with most coin-based rituals, it’s better to leave a penny than to take one . . . but these specific coins are not the ones that do harm.
A three-minute stroll from the tower, you may notice a secluded stair. This red brick stairway, called the Greenwich Steps, is actually a landmark “street” offering travelers a shortcut down a lush hillside garden. Even in summertime, the cool green shade on the steps may prompt you to pull up your jacket collar.
I say shortcut, but at 387 steps, the stair won’t feel that short. It descends the hill in crooked segments, and the brick gives way to concrete halfway down. At the bottom, you will be unceremoniously deposited between a residential garage and a frank Slippery When Wet sign. But from there it’s an easy twelve minutes on foot to the Embarcadero, the historic Ferry Building with its clock tower, shopping, restaurants, and a science museum that sells adults-only tickets on certain Thursday nights-- for those of you not traveling with children.
I only meant to walk the Greenwich Steps twice during my stay. Once up. Once down.
You should be fine so long as you simply keep moving. If you encounter a local tending the flowers, it’s okay to nod in passing.
Just don’t stop to pick up any coins.
I don’t care if you see coins on the steps, by the steps, in the foliage, or piled on top of an old-fashioned brick pillar at the halfway point. It might look like pennies, dimes, or a bright silver dollar. Do not pick up any of it. If your child finds a Greenwich Coin, stay calm. Consequences are rarely severe for children. The problem lies in what you’ll have to do to keep it that way.
There’s one way to deflect the consequences of taking a Greenwich Coin. Trade. Use a trinket, a piece of candy, make a promise-- whatever gets the coin out of their hands. Then discreetly toss it into the underbrush.
Your child won’t carry the onus of the Coin after trading it away. The downside is that you will. You touched it; you took possession of it for a short time. You aren’t the prey it wants, but by the laws that govern it, you’re still fair game.
If a stranger approaches you or your child directly after you’ve thrown away a Greenwich Coin, don’t get ruffled. Stick to your travel plans and do not deviate. Don’t listen, don’t give them anything, do not confront. Pretend they aren’t even there. Trust me, if there’s ever been a tourist trap, con, or scam artist that you’d want to avoid, it’s this one. They’re after more than your wallet.
Collectors, look. You’re going to be in the most trouble here. I’m sorry. I know it’ll really test your self-restraint when that Steel Wheat Cent or whatever turns up underfoot. Just keep in mind that the steeper the value of the coin, the deeper the shit you’re in if you grab it. Best thing you can do is kick it off the stairs to protect the next traveler who ventures along.
A stranger will come for you if you’ve taken a Greenwich Coin. Usually it happens on the steps, but you can’t rule out the garden, the parking lot, or the tower grounds. Careful, because locals often go jogging up the Greenwich Steps, and sometimes the stranger will pose as just another jogger. It’s unnerving how fast it closes the distance.
If being pursued, seek shelter in the popular mermaid-themed cafe near the bottom of the Steps. Yeah, I mean it. Order a drink you’ve ordered many times before-- that’s important, it helps. Trust me when I say this is better than the alternative. In the old days you’d need a church. A lot of travelers would fail to reach one in time. Now we have other options. Any place that is iconic, ritualized, and identical wherever you go can function as a sanctuary in a pinch. If you still have the Greenwich Coin on you, I’m sorry, but you have to drop it in the tip jar now.
If you don’t, you’re going to need more help than a barista can provide.
(If you are a barista working near the Greenwich Steps, don’t be alarmed. You’ve probably taken home a Greenwich Coin at least once, but it’s lost the power to hurt you. Ritual acts of selflessness are powerful like that).
Here’s the thing about sanctuary: it’s temporary. The thing hunting you will have difficulty crossing the threshold, though, so once you’re in, you’ve got a brief grace period to work with. I have to admit, I’ve been that traveler feverishly searching the internet for advice while a cold drink sweats in my hand and a monstrosity paces outside. The last time this happened, it casually slid a finger along the window to distract me. It looked human. They often do. It was even pretending to talk on the phone. Or . . . thinking back, that phone call might’ve been real. Muffled, but I could still make out the words: “Quite close. Yes, it’s that one.” Said while arrhythmically tapping the glass in front of my head.
Shit. I think I know who it called that day.
Back on track: the thing coming after your Greenwich Coin might look like anyone. Could be that man in a business suit, or that woman in sweats. Whatever you’re most attracted to. And no, it’s not necessarily carnal attraction . . . although it could easily exploit that. No. It’s whatever best draws you astray. You involved in a niche hobby? Got a favorite show, a band, or a game you can’t resist talking about? It’ll paint itself in your stripes, sing out to you in a voice familiar.
For me, it appeared as an older woman: denim jacket, bangles, sitting across the historic brick steps with one bare foot. She held her ankle as if it hurt. Her race and other details are not important. You shouldn’t expect any of that to be the same when it comes for you. I can’t say she reminded me of someone specific (I have suspicions). That tug of concern, though: I felt it, crisp as torn paper.
The wind tugged silver hair about her shoulders as she called out.
“Please, help me up?”
Of course I knelt by her and asked what happened. Look, I’d read up on travel hazards before leaving home. No book, blog, or article ever warned me about a thing that doesn’t have its own face. Most travel guides deal in bog-standard reality. Which bus to catch, local eats, how much tickets cost. I had faith in my wits and good fortune. After all, I’d just picked up a rare nickel at the bottom of the Greenwich Steps.
I’m not going to tell you the specific nickel, but it was good. The buy a house with cash kind. I’ve always wanted my own land. A place to call mine. You know what happens to your brain when you get hit with that kind of euphoria, jet-lagged in a strange city? Yeah. I was daydreaming up those steps.
I offered the stranger my hand. She pointed up through the green canopy. I thought it meant she lived in one of the square-topped residential buildings on the other side. She leaned on me as she hobbled. I kept a few fingers free to cover the sling-bag containing my passport, phone, and all my money. Yeah, I thought myself quite clever for making sure no one could pick my pocket, even as the stranger literally led me up the garden path.
“Here,” she said. The stair is steep, and most of it’s framed by safety rails. But there are gaps. She passed through one, still gripping my hand, and limped right into the humps of yellow sorrel and baby’s tears.
I tried not to let her pull me off the stair. I made all the usual protests. I don’t think there’s a path here. Ma’am? I’m not comfortable doing this. Please, stop. Let go of my hand. Hey! She didn’t even look back. Her grip tightened, and she dragged me over the edge before I could scrabble for a handhold. I lurched. You know those dreams where something has grabbed you, and your attempts to struggle make no difference? You just flail, and the teeth sink deeper. Her nails bit into my hand.
She stepped out of her remaining shoe and kicked it aside. Her limp was gone. We plunged under the myriad arms of an Angel’s Trumpet. That’s a tree you’ll see more than one of, here. The tined ivory blossoms whisked over my head and shoulders, dusting me in its sticky-sugar scent. I’ve hated that smell ever since.
I fumbled my phone out of my travel bag with my free hand. But I unlocked it sloppy-- right into camera mode. The second try got me a transit map. Third: home screen. No signal.
Don’t give up if you can’t get a signal.
Emergency services might work anyway (might). But don’t squander your chance. I kept making false starts, hunched against the stranger’s pull.
Everyone thinks they can dial for help as easy as 3-2-1. But you’d be surprised how wrong-handed you get in a crisis. You thumb open your work contacts, because that’s how you’re used to starting calls. Or you get as far as the keypad and mash the numbers in wrong. Ever had shaky hands?
Just save emergency service lines into your phone. Even the easy ones.
When I finally got a call out, it rang twice. The first trill was scratchy. The second slid off-pitch, as though falling into the distance. Then the call disconnected.
The ground dipped. It shouldn’t have; we’d been going uphill in a steady, inexorable climb. A sylvan hollow spread before us. Ancient cedars and spruce repeated into the gloom, all festooned in lichen. Far off lay the mossy corpse of a tree-- where tourists and concrete should have been. Golden strings caught sun in its branches. Spider silk.
There’s a primeval rainforest hidden between the shadows of the Greenwich Steps. Not a jungle. The cold kind, with evergreens and fog.
The stranger flung me into it. My phone bounced out of my grip. I caught my footing, wheeling to face her. But she-- she inhaled her nose. Sucked it into her skull like it was made of tissue paper. Her eyes wrinkled and her head curled up. No blood. Bones collapsed, nothing but spider-skin. Arms and legs shriveled off. For a moment the clothing held together. Then it settled into a pile of sticky leaves and silk. Not even the denim was real.
“You took my coin,” gasped the husk at my feet. “Now I shall exact the balance. My prize.”
I stomped on it. I wear combat boots, and I kick hard. That thing should have died under my heel.
Invisible fingers twined around my throat-- from behind me. “No arguments.” It’s voice still emanated from the webby mess on the ground, even as its unseen counterpart-- its other half? Its true form?-- nuzzled the back of my head with an appendage that humans lack.
Does it hurt when something eats your name? I remember my legs shook. I know I begged it to stop, more than once. After the first sip, when you finally quicken to what’s happening, the physical discomfort just seems incidental.
Let’s be clear: I don’t have amnesia. It wasn’t that surgical. That thing guzzled down every intonation, every sigh, every tag, award, shout, and signature. There was once a small corner of the world that knew me. A family. I had classmates, peers, a disappointing boss. Maybe I had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. I think I did.
If you could somehow track them down, not a single one of them would know my name. Everywhere my name should be, there is nothing. Every instance of that identity is gone. The thing on the Greenwich Steps took it all.
“Do you think you’ve paid enough to bear my currency?” it asked.
I gibbered. “Yes. Yes, I’ve paid.”
“So sure of your worth. Should you be? Your entire life so far is pennies to me.”
Then it took my face.
Afterward, I sprawled among the ferns. The leaves dripped. I could still see. That was the first thing I became conscious of. Watching dew slide through the moss.
Then came rustling and croons overhead. It sounded like parrots.
I slowly canted my head back. Trees came into focus. There they were, crowding a branch. Red masks, leafy bodies, flicking their heads left and right to study me. A wild flock of cherry-headed conures right in San Francisco. They are actually one of the features that draw tourists to the Greenwich Steps. I didn’t know that at the time, though. I wept in bewilderment at the parrots.
Then I reached up to touch my face. It was gone. Just like reaching into a bag of static.
I sat up with a jolt. Just a meter to my right: a long, red brick stair cut through the teeming vines. No sign of other people. Nor of my captor.
I staggered down the Greenwich Steps. Maybe three hundred of them, one or two at a time, with all the grace of a dazed animal. I gripped the safety rail so hard it squeezed the blood out of my fingers.
There was a coin on the second-to-last step. I stepped on it, then went back and kicked it away. I’m not ashamed to admit that I sobbed after that. Right next to the yellow sign that says Slippery When Wet.
Yes, I still shed real tears. They appear like raindrops on my hands and shirt.
It was a long walk back to my hotel to assess the damage. I passed dozens of people on the way. No one reacted as if anything were out of place. A man even nodded to me. I hesitated, wondering if he recognized me, if he could somehow help-- but it turned out he just wanted me to hurry on through the hotel doors so that he could go next.
Up in my room, I discovered that my reflection now gives me vertigo and screaming fits-- unless I focus below the neck. Then it’s ok.
My passport and driver’s license are not ok. Maybe it’s because both my name and face are supposed to be there. I can barely pick them up. I can’t look at them. Other people can, but I don’t think they actually perceive a specific name, face, or number. What they see, I’m not sure. Any time I present my signature (a line) or one of my ID, people just accept it. Routine, casual. But only if they don’t really try to look. They get upset if they really look.
Early on, I insisted that a man check my passport.
“Do you think the picture looks like me?” is what I actually asked.
He nodded without looking at it. “Nice picture.”
“What color are my eyes?” I asked.
The man opened his mouth. Stopped. He blinked at the passport, then up at me, before he blanched and backed away. Fast. As if I’d flashed a weapon at him.
“What’s wrong?” I was angry, I admit. Not at him. He was just some unlucky hotel staffer. I feel really bad about it, now, but I stalked after him, passport open in my hand like a bible. “Just tell me what my photo looks like. Is my signature legible?”
“I don’t, I can’t--” he stammered, still backpedaling. “Just go away. Please, oh fuck. Fuck.”
“Is my name easy to pronounce, John?” His sleek black nametag said John.
John backed right into one of his coworkers, who winced. She addressed me stiffly. You know how people talk when they’re forced to handle a belligerent customer. “Is there something we can do for you . . . ”
She got no further. Her customer service smile drained away and her gaze settled somewhere in the safety of the middle distance. Not alarmed, or anything. Not like John, who was still scrambling to put distance between us. I swept past the other staffer, still after John’s unsatisfactory answers.
People were turning to stare at him by then. (Him. Not me). John ran himself into a large potted tree in the lobby. Probably left a bruise on his leg. “Don’t ask me that,” he begged. “I can’t look again. I can’t.”
“Are you ok?” called one of the hotel guests, anxious.
At that point, shame caught up with me. I folded my passport and broke eye contact. “I’m sorry.” The words came out rough, at first, but softened as my hope gave way. The pain in my chest dwindled into a brittle dry thing, like webby leaves. “Sorry for-- for asking you a confusing question. You were very helpful. John. It’s not your fault. You understand that? I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Someone ran over to John.
At first he didn’t answer any of their questions. Then he said that he lost his balance. “I don’t even know why. My heart’s racing. I’m so cold . . . ”
I walked away. No one stopped me. I did glance back, once. Two people stood over John, who sat on the floor with his head cradled over his knees. He was shaking. Crying. One of the people near him was on the phone. I caught the word ambulance.
I’ve since put colored tape on my passport and all my cards so I can identify them by just the edges. People rarely ask me for identification, though. It can happen if someone’s distracted when I approach.
Oh. You’re probably curious what became of the coin. My lucky nickel.
It’s gone. Or, pervasive.
I have no idea where I used to bank, but now, it’s whatever bank I happen to walk into. My presence unsettles the tellers. They get antsy as soon as they have to ask for my account number. I can say any string of numbers that come to mind, and they punch it in. Once I just said, “I don’t know my account number.” The teller nodded and typed in . . . that, I guess.
Their computers usually start to whirr with effort at that point. Sometimes the video advertisements in the background get screen-rips or flicker off. Another time, the casing on an overhead light cracked. The tellers ask if I want to make a withdrawal today, and when the drawer finally springs open, they can’t get rid of the coins fast enough.
Yep. Banks never leave me empty-handed. All the coins in the drawer, all for me. Doesn’t matter what amount I request, what bills I specify. I walk out with pockets full of metal.
I have asked after my account balance. But only twice. I swear, I was just curious. The first time, the teller covered his mouth, said, “Excuse me, I-- I don’t believe I can . . . Certainly, I’ll write it down for you.”
His pen-hand trembled. I wondered if my account had somehow been filled to an impressive sum, since it took him so long to write. But the paper he slid across the counter had no numbers on it at all. It was an unintelligible scribble. I said thank you and the teller swayed on his feet. A bead of spittle formed at the side of his mouth. I asked him if he was ok, to which he started hyperventilating. I felt awful for that, and started to leave, but another teller took over. Stupidly, I slid the paper back across to her. The note with the jagged scribbles. I asked her if what was written on the paper matched the amount of money in my account.
She stared at the note, frowning. Then at the computer. “Yngh . . .” When she spoke again, her voice came out hoarse, as if invisible fingers had crowded around her windpipe. She looked absolutely terrified. No eye-contact, of course. “Thank you . . . so much . . . for banking with us,” she told the air right next to me. The tip of her nose turned translucent grey. Bloodless. I did not like that at all. I bolted.
Anyway, I prefer to use ATMs. It’s much easier to watch a machine clatter, churn, groan, or smoke (the smoke only happened once). I can insert my card, but if I’m not feeling up to handling my wallet, then I can usually get away with a tap-tap-tap on the machine chassis.
ATMs always spit out coins for me. Most of them aren’t equipped to handle coinage, of course. So there’s a lot of digging, wrenching, and groping involved on my part. I’ve had enough practice now that I can tickle out a few bills as well. I don’t think I’m technically supposed to do that, but when I poke around and a chewed-up benjamin crams itself between my fingers, I get the sense the ATM is equally pissed off about the rules. I understand, given what it must endure to deliver what I’m owed. I try not to bother the same machine more than once.
Yeah, I regret the one that started smoking. There was a line of customers behind me, too. I accidentally hit the green button when it prompted me for a receipt.
The screen flashed.
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Carbon paper erupted from the horizontal slot by the card reader. It was covered in more of the same, but with the text blown out in soot. The machine began to squeal as more and more receipt paper ribboned out of it. Smoke puffed from the inbuilt security camera pointed at my face, and the lens shattered. Then alarms went off inside the bank, mechanical wails overlapping.
Anyway, the fire department put the automated teller out of its misery before too much of the building was damaged. I watched it go down from a safer distance: a sticky red bench at the muni stop. When a bus pulled up and hissed open, my hands were still shaking. I reached into my pockets and annoyed the driver by dropping coin after coin while I tried to count out the cost of my ticket. Envious of my endless money?
If you haven’t figured it out already, the boon of the coin doesn’t make you rich. I survived the early days thanks to what was already in my travel-bag.
Of course, I then multiplied my very good fortune by going back to the Greenwich Steps.
It was hunting. Yes, for whatever reason, it stood out to me at once. I caught it pretending to photograph bees with a blocky vintage camera. Just a man in a fleece sweater, digesting my name in his belly. A gaggle of European tourists crowded down the steps between us, drawing that hungry gaze around to follow, until he looked past them and noticed me.
He sauntered down the steps, pausing just before the landing where I had (effectively) cornered myself.
At this point, my brain cells jump-started. This honey-eyed, fatherly figure made the perfect counterpart to the woman in denim. He wasn’t ambushing any European tourists in that face. (What they saw when they passed him, I don’t know). This face, this specific face, was just for me.
“Your expression right now,” he chuckled. He raised the camera and snapped my portrait.
Click. Flash. The camera whirred, and a glossy square of film slid out of the bottom. He removed the film and shook it gently in the dappled light. He looked me steadily in the eye as he did it, too. “The answer is no.”
“What?” my voice broke on the way out.
“No, you can’t have back what you traded away, you greedy thing. That is what you’re here to demand, isn’t it? Unless you come to me with a separate deal.” He smiled. Took the final, languid step down to my platform. He wore both shoes today.
“Though,” he continued, “I question whether you fully apprehend the deal you’ve already struck. You do understand that what I took, I ate? There’s no stuffing life back in the bird after you’ve chopped its head off and fried its legs for dinner.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
He loomed before me, smelling of Angel’s Trumpets. The white square in his hand had begun to transform into a photograph, thin shapes spreading over the surface and tarnishing with color. “Oh, if you beheld my face you’d fall in seven pieces, little pie. Pronouncing my name would burn all other words out of your skull. My sword pierces the Invisible Hand and tilts the scales. E pluribus unum is what I am. I am an American miracle.”
Close enough. I blew his knee out with my heel. Bone snapped like stick. Pigeons startled off the nearest rooftop. From him, just a wet gasp as he collapsed, eyes rolling up. Then I kicked him down the stairs.
His body tumbled around and down. Skull crunched on brick: spatter-sap. A leg bent the wrong way around a metal post. The sweater unspooled. Cobweb, hairy twigs (legs?), and spore clung to the stair in his wake. Ex uno, detritus, I thought to myself. Now you are mulch and smear of insect.
The vintage camera lay busted at my feet. Must have been the real thing. Looted off another victim, no doubt. Which meant that he’d taken a real picture of me.
Even in my fury, I couldn’t entirely wall off the questions pooling in a corner of my heart. The thing had to be stronger than this, surely. I still had five crescent-shaped marks in my hand, from when I had dangled in the grasp of the denim woman.
I followed it down. I was unable to look directly at it-- at the spindly, many-jointed thing hatching like a mayfly out of the sweater-man’s skin. Have to wonder if it meant what it said, earlier: about splitting into pieces if you ever saw it for real. By the time I reached the vacant husk, it no longer resembled a human at all. It was a cocoon of rushes and grass, shredded down the back as easy as newspaper in the rain. (If you’re curious, the photograph of me was conspicuously absent. Guess it got nabbed).
“So, how does this usually go?” I asked it. “Do your treats just hobble off and die nameless? No customer complaints at the corporate office?”
“Sometimes they come back, as you did.” The words drifted from the discarded body, rather than the thing itself (wherever it was). Two dandelion clocks stood where sweater-man used to have eyes. His broken-bark jaw hung open in a permanent grimace against the brick. “My worshippers.”
“They worship you?”
“Call me Prosperity. Call me Profit. I’m your only hope of either, now. Don’t worry, I drive a reasonable deal for the desperate.”
“I’m not-- I don’t want anything from you.”
“For now, yes. You wrung more out of me than most. That face-- mm, well worth silver. It may be some time before you come back to feed me.”
I stepped on what used to be sweater-man’s neck. It hissed-- but not in pain, as I first thought.
It was laughing.
“You should know that no matter how far you wander, I’ll always recognize you. By taste, if nothing else.”
Something that was not fingers flicked the nape of my neck.
Yeah, here’s a travel tip for you: when a freshly-molted greedfly kisses the back of your neck, run.
I sure as fuck ran.
For three nights after that, I dreamt I was lost in a crowd. No one knew me. No one could help. No, I wasn’t just lost. I had to find someone, to warn them-- but flies kept trying to crawl into my mouth.
Travelers, turn your attention to the Embarcadero. Late afternoon, cusp of evening. A throng of brightly-dressed tourists. Yes, just like my dreams. My pockets swelled with coin. Money is so damned heavy. You forget about that when it’s just a number chained to your name. You forget how important a name is.
I let the crowd eddy me into the Ferry Building. The inside: a golden medley of ways to spend too much money. I was exhausted. My nose-- my . . . sense of smell drew me into an artisanal bakery, and then to the famed local coffee with the alliterative name.
This stuff is not brewed under the sign of the mermaid. I ordered a small.
Eating and drinking works just fine if I don’t overthink it. Even so, I spill things down my shirt as often as I get a bite in. I lost half a croissant right outside of a charming bookstore.
But the espresso shot through me like a bullet train to full daylight. Despite the darkening sky, I woke all the way up. Shook off my woes, all that.
Espresso nuts, I think you’d like this stuff.
Cup in hand, I wandered the broad arcade with, shall we say, new eyes. I peered at tote bags stamped by Golden Gates, wire-stand postcards, kitchen keepsakes, exfoliants with rare ingredients, all the usual. Then I glimpsed a yellow shirt and a beat-up traveler’s backpack bobbing ahead of me toward the dock.
That one.
Espresso and cream stung my hand as I hastened after the shirt of yellow. Why? Call it a compulsion, a deep lizard-brain directive. Yeah. I just didn’t want this one to end in flies. I caught up just outside the ferry terminal. We weren’t alone: a line was already forming for the next crossing. The man in the yellow shirt stood by the ticket machines. He swigged from a water bottle and wiped his mouth.
Something bad was about to happen. I knew it like a wild animal senses earthquake, impending.
I followed his gaze to a wooden sign, hand-painted and hung right next to the ticket machines. It offered Private Boat Tour, Sunset! Just minutes from now. The curves of each s were bigger on top than on bottom. An arrow pointed away into the gathering dusk. Yellow Shirt teetered for a moment, then spun to follow it.
When I glanced back at the wooden sign, it was gone. Nothing left but a faint imprint of grease on the wall.
The certainty hit me as hard as the coffee, but equal and opposite. I didn’t know what laid the trap, or what he’d suffer after he was lured in. Just that my fellow traveler was about to fall down a hole there was no climbing out of. Strings of his life yanked out, snapped. Maybe worse.
He was alone, like I had been.
I ran, pockets jingling and slapping (damn it) to catch up. “Hey. Sir, sir?”
He strode ten more steps before he could no longer pretend I was talking to anyone else. The look he cast over his shoulder was annoyed. But at least he stopped. “I don’t have money for you. Well, maybe a little.”
He jammed a hand into crusty jeans and fished out a blackened nickel. He plopped it right into the dregs of my coffee. God, fucking da-- whatever.
“Thanks, man.” I made an effort to sound thankful.
Then I blurted, “That tour’s a rip-off. Go back and catch the ferry. It’s the only safe water-crossing tonight.”
“Um. What?” he squinted at me.
I backed away, averting my eyes. With any luck, he would see something normal-adjacent where my face was supposed to be. “Don’t miss the ferry,” I warned him. “Don’t stray. Go straight back where you belong. And then call someone and tell them where you are.”
After a silence that lasted too long, the man adjusted his backpack. He didn’t look happy. To be specific, he looked as if he’d just glimpsed a nightmare enfleshed. One of his knees started trembling. “Right on.” His voice came out an octave shriller.
He seemed weirdly reluctant to turn his back on me, but after stumbling back a few steps he wheeled around.
I watched him go all the way back to join the ferry queue. He walked much faster than before. Ran, actually. (The water bottle fell out of his backpack as he sprinted away, keening between each gasp of air).
I meandered the pier for a while, after. At one point, a seal broke the surface of the sea. Its dark head bobbed on the waves. Watching me? Harbor seals nose around here from time to time. Especially outside waterfront seafood restaurants.
But this . . . this was not that. The back of my neck prickled.
Its head was too narrow, its jaws the wrong shape. It had no eyes, but it kept pace with me as I walked. I got it, then. Yellow Shirt. I had cut loose its prey. I stopped, my heart struggling like a moth under a claw. It slipped back under. The water chopped violently in its wake. I shuddered.
Yeah, I don’t plan on napping on the beach anytime soon. No boat rides, either. But when you do, that blind gaze promised.
Oh, right.
You should probably hear this now: every famous landmark has a snare set just for you.
It makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to trap tourists. But there are traps not laid by human hands, and the cost of falling into them can’t be paid out of your wallet. What I lost, I can’t replace. What I gained in return-- I’m still figuring out.
The least I can do is warn people. I have to, actually.
We’ll get to that. For now, I’m avoiding the sea.
--the Blacknickel Guide
Part two: forthcoming

Hey there so this is a bit of a long story so get comfy lol! I’ve been lurking for a while now and I’ve seen how supportive you all are and I hope to get some advice. Now that I’ve finally mustered up the courage to do this post.
My husband and I grew up as witnesses, became baptized and both pioneers for a year.(worst year of our lives! Only way we got through is each other and we weren’t even dating then, but were best friends).
To preface this, before I even met my best friend who’s now my husband, honesty I’ve always felt like silenced in a way, I’ve always had this fire in me, that was always smothered. I’ve felt numb for many years and experienced depressive states. I’ve never really felt like I’ve fit in, I’m either too “spiritual” or “not spiritual “ enough there was no in between. Everything I did wasn’t good enough and even big goals I accomplished I still had to be humble and continue to “improve myself”. I got to a point where I couldn’t get out of bed some days. However since I was pioneering, commenting and had regular meeting attendance, essentially doing what was expected of me, no one bothered to ask me how I was really doing. I faked smiles, laughs all year long, all the while I was so incredibly depressed unlike I’ve ever experienced before. All I ever heard was what could I do to improve more, but I didn’t have the strength to. I was so tired of being counseled all the time.
Eventually something wonderful happened, my best friend asked me out and we started dating. He’s the best decision I’ve ever made (he’s POMO as well now). But however the new exciting feelings came and went, they were replaced by everyone scruntizing us. It felt as if they turned on us in an instant. The trust they had for us, the reputation we worked so hard for was gone, because we were dating and we might have sex before marriage. They watched our every move like hawks. My husbands grandparents went to the elders because his arm was around me...didn’t even speak to us first. His grandfather tried to break us up a few times. We told everyone if we made them feel “uncomfortable “ while chaperoning tell us! Instead they went straight to the elders. Sadly this was not the last meeting he had with the elders.Every meeting we went to, was so anxiety inducing, wondering if my boyfriend would be called to the back for some BS thing. Then out in service we got yelled at for holding hands. We were criticized to the point where we almost called it quits. Thankfully, we loved each other to much to do that, we kept going. We dated for almost 9 months then engaged for almost 4 months then finally married. We played their game, followed their rules, received no rewards only despair.
Our families are both PIMI, however they have been mentally, verbally and emotionally abusive to us all our lives. I feel like my mom tried to break us up by her expressing how he didn’t add up to her expectations when I was in a bad emotional state. I started to cry and she did nothing and just sat there. She has no motherly instinct whatsoever. However that’s a different story. My husbands father is a narcissist as well as his grandfather. They’re both terrible human beings and their behavior constantly gets excuses. My POS for a father in law emasculated my husband every chance he got and even when we were dating, saying how he’d never be a good husband and we were going to fail. (Jokes on him now, been together almost 3 years!)
I should mention that my husbands mother is POMO, df’d and is in a happy life. She escaped from their clutches and my father in law in has been married to someone else for the last 8 years. He always made her out to be the villain. (Typical narcissist move) how wrong he was. But I’m getting ahead of my self, I just wanted to explain that about my mother in law, she plays a vital role.
One might my husband broke down and told me how he didn’t wanna be a witness, how he never believed any of it. I broke down as well because of course I thought “he’s gonna die at Armageddon. I’m gonna lose him and I cannot live without him” That was a rough night of crying and holding each other. However I started to wake up then. We did more research about witnesses and heard about how they cover us sexual abuse. How they don’t go to police for rape, physical abuse and so on. It was disgusting. My husband started to think about his mother and about reaching out. He has reached out to her after 5 years of no contact , they rekindled their relationship, about 2 months ago. At first I was upset but then I heard her side of the story, the pain and suffering she went through. It’s a whole another story and a troubling one. We spoke to her about what all was going on and she supported us. She made sure we had food, medicine and everything we needed. Even though she lived states away! Our own families lived like 10 minutes away and didn’t even bother to make sure we were okay! We decided to remain in contact with her and even go out to visit her but not tell anyone else.
At the time we were both working cleaning jobs and I had worked in retail as well. We were exhausted all the time. We started to not comment at meetings, gradually left the meetings on as background noise, not even paying attention. We weren’t out in service at all. We were fading away. However that’s when the drones came in, the texts flooding our phones asking about us because we weren’t as active as we used to be and elders trying to meet with us. My husband and I had been having panic attacks every night, both suffer from severe anxiety which only got worse. The in-laws started to bombard us and want us to spend time with the them constantly, wanting to study with us, us to come down. We blew them off. My husband got into 2 arguments with his grandfather because how much of an ass he was being and for things he’s done in the past. Then my father in law kept trying to force us to spend time with them, I’m not exaggerating either. He kept telling us “you HAVE to get time off, you HAVE to come down, stay the weekend. “ We stood up for ourselves and said no. Then all hell broke lose.
One Wednesday night, my husband and I were watching John Cedars, which then we paused to FaceTime my husbands mom. My husband had finally quit his job in which was physically demanding on him. ( our boss was an elder who literally sat on his ass and took some of the pay. He literally didn’t pay us on time unless we bugged him. He’s the definition of lazy. He’s got a family of 4 and his cleaning company and this one big job is his only source of income. So he put so much pressure on us to not lose it. Essentially we were providing for ourselves and a family of 4). We had our old phones shut off, we were relaxing and enjoying our time together.
Then we heard a loud knock at the door, we told my husband mom to shh. She had heard the knock as well and understand. We hung up and began to text her. Another knock.we quickly shut off the tv and light. Another knock. We hid under the covers and held each other. The knocking turned into pounding. My husband was trembling as he texted his mom “Please make it stop” it broke my heart. For us to be this scared in our own home! She had previously booked us a flight to come visit, she immediately went to work on moving the tickets to an earlier flight.
Meanwhile the pounding has gone from the door to our bedroom window. We held each other as our hearts were racing. His mother had booked our flights and found a hotel for us an hour away. She didn’t want us to drive so she found a taxi to get us. The knocking went on for almost 30 minutes. Then the car finally pulled out of the driveway. We called his mom and her husband, as we packed what we could into our suitcase. My husband broke down and started sobbing. I tried to stay strong for him but I could only do so much. We grabbed whatever mementos we could and whatever clothes we could find. My husband was a wreck so I did most of the packing. Then we heard a knock at the door, it had an hour since the previous pounding. My husbands mother told us to answer it because it was probably the taxi driver. How wrong we were...
We had shut off the outside light so as I opened the door, I had to squint to see who it was. I noticed a truck and the lights were off, then I said “Hello?” A familiar voice said back “Hi. I wanna come in.” As he forced his way in, making it so I had to walk back. It was my husbands father. He was the one who was pounding on the door earlier. My husband came over , and asked what he was doing here? His father in law said he wanted to talk to us. He was worried because we weren’t commenting, making meetings or active at all. The grandparents had tried to reach out to us but gave up and went downstate “because of us “. It was our fault the grandparents were depressed. They were so Damn clingy asking us every goddamn weekend to come over. Our only days off to spend quality time together..anyways he proceeded to say that he was wondering why we blew him off to spend time with them this weekend! That we had to get work off. (Thankfully I was scheduled to work all of that particular weekend). He then said that he was worried because my husband had quit his job so suddenly, mind you, the only people that knew were the company, me and my husbands mother. None of us told him, which meant the elder we worked for...told him all about it. He asked what our problem was, that we needed an intervention and thats what they’re were going to go that weekend. We “HAD” to go, however we stood our ground. My husbands phone was ringing, so I grabbed it. I began to text his mom telling her that he was here. She said to call the police. She ended up doing it and they were on their way.
I found myself doing something I never thought I’d do in a million years, I stood up for myself and my husband. I found my voice raising as he was questioning why we were so tired the time and what we were bush with? I yelled “Because we’ve been busting out asses to pay for this piece of shit house!”. (Renting form a witness who did his own repairs, house was essentially falling apart) My husband stared at me in shock yet amazement. My father in law laughed in my face. My husband told him over and over to leave, get out of the house. My father I law said we were the problem and had to stop pointing fingers. Then finally left. We called my husbands mother back and told her everything. We explained how we’d rather just drive, we didn’t wanna wait any longer. So we drove to the hotel. We barely slept and woke up early for our flight out of there.I had called my work and I quit my job as well. When I called it turns out my mom had called there looking for me. Keep in mind it had been not even 12 hours since we last spoke. We had kept looking over shoulders until we made it safe and sound. We have them out old phones to monitor and handle so we didn’t have to worry.
They’ve been our support system and getting us doc appointments we needed and the mental health help we needed. They’re well off as well, so they’ve offered to help us pursue any schooling and career we wanna go into. They’re arranging to our car to get here, getting us furniture and much more. I’m so thankful for them. I feel like I have an actual family. My husbands reunited with his siblings and we’re finally taking care of ourselves.
This all being said, the part where I need help is that I’m struggling with the teachings I’ve had pounded into me. I’m torn mentally with my values and morals. We’re starting from scratch and it’s scary. I find myself with all this info from the old religion and I don’t know what to do with it. I’m scared to fill it up with new info because i don’t wanna get overloaded. I’m worried about being wrong in my decision. I guess I’m curious how did you guys go through this? We’re like in the initial stage I feel like. I get feelings of doubts and anxiety over my decision. I don’t wanna go back to that religion. I’m sad to lose my friends as well. But at the same time I wanna be free to do what I want to do. To be what I wanna be. This religion has taken so much from me and I don’t know why I feel so torn. I’m still sort of scared of dying at Armageddon and the world “chewing me up and spitting me out”. My husband has written them off and is much happier. I’m just struggling.
If you read all of this. Thanks so much I appreciate it.
Update!: So my husband was signing into his Xbox account to play some games and some old friends of ours messaged us through there. He’s got a family of 3 and I was closer to them for a while. Apparently, they went to our house, ponded on the door and played music to try to get us out of the house...I was really upset when I heard it last night. But now I don’t know how to feel lol. They also begged my husband to let them talk to me..??! Like I’m a hostage or something?? WTF
Update #2! Totally forgot! Thank you guys so much for all the support and the rewards!!! I did not expect that!!!!! You guys have been absolutely amazing! ❤️❤️❤️

Collected in The Road to Woop Woop, and Other Stories (Meerkat Press, 2020):

The Road to Woop Woop

Tumbling down the stretch, a confident glide, the 4WD is a beaut, over nineteen years old.
The argument is brand-new. Maps are convolutions, complicated like relationships. You scrunch the sheet, push it in the glovebox. You feel River’s displeasure, but you hate navigating, and right now you don’t care.
The wiper swishes to and fro, braves unseasonal rain. You and River maintain your silence.
Rain. More rain.
“When’s the next stop?” River tries. Sidewise glance, cautious smile. He is muscled, dark. Dreadlocks fall down high cheekbones to square shoulders. Eyes like black gold give him the rugged look of a mechanic.
“Does it matter?” you say.
“Should it?”
You don’t respond. Turn your head, stare at a thin scratch on your window. The crack runs level with rolling landscape racing away with rain. Up in the sky, a billow of cloud like a white ghoul, dark-eyed and yawning into a scream.
A shoot of spray through River’s window brushes your cheek.
A glide of eye. “Hell’s the matter?” you say.
“You ask me-e. Something bothering you?”
“The window.”
He gives you a look.
Classic, you think. But you know that if you listen long enough, every argument is an empty road that attracts unfinished business. It’s an iceberg full of whimsy about fumaroles and geysers. It’s a corpse that spends eternity reliving apparitions of itself in the throes of death. Your fights are puffed-up trivia, championed to crusades. You fill up teabags with animus that pours into kettles of disarray, scalding as missiles. They leave you ashy and scattered—that’s what’s left of your lovemaking, or the paranoia of it, you wonder about that.
More silence, the cloud of your argument hangs above it. He shrugs. Rolls up his window. Still air swells in the car.
“Air con working?” you say.
He flexes long corduroyed legs that end in moccasins. Flicks on the air button—and the radio. The bars of a soulful number, a remix by some new artist, give way to an even darker track titled ‘Nameless.’ It’s about a high priest who wears skinny black jeans and thrums heavy metal to bring space demons into a church that’s dressed as a concert. And the torments join in evensong, chanting psalms and canticles until daybreak when the demons wisp back into thin air, fading with them thirteen souls of the faithful, an annual pact with the priest.
Rain pelts the roof and windows like a drum.
He hums. Your face is distant. You might well be strangers, tossed into a tight drive from Broome to Kununurra.
The lilt of his voice merges with the somber melody.
You turn your face upward. A drift of darkness, even with full day, is approaching from the skies. Now it’s half-light. You flip the sun visor down. Not for compulsion or vanity, nothing like an urge to peer at yourself in the mirror. Perhaps it’s to busy your hands, to distract yourself, keep from bedevilment—the kind that pulls out a quarrel. You steal a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Deep, deep eyes. They gleam like a cat’s. The soft curtain of your fringe is softening, despite thickset brows like a man’s. You feel disconnected with yourself, with the trip, with River. You flip the sun visor up.
Now the world is all grim. River turns on the headlights, but visibility is still bad. A bolt of lightning. You both see the arms of a reaching tree that has appeared on the road, right there in your path. You squeal, throw your arms out. River swerves. A slam of brakes. A screech of tires. Boom!
The world stops in a swallowing blackness. Inside the hollow, your ears are ringing. The car, fully intact, is shooting out of the dark cloud in slow motion, picking up speed. It’s soaring along the road washed in a new aurora of lavender, turquoise and silver, then it’s all clear. A gentle sun breaks through fluffs of cloud no more engulfed in blackness. You level yourself with a hand on the dashboard, uncertain what exactly happened.
You look at River. His hands . . . wrist up . . . he has no hands. Nothing bloody as you’d expect from a man with severed wrists. Just empty space where the arms end.
But River’s unperturbed, his arms positioned as if he’s driving, even while nothing is touching the steering that’s moving itself, turning and leveling.
“Brought my shades?” he asks.
“Your hands,” you say.
“What about them?”
“Can’t you see?”
His glance is full of impatience.
You sink back to your seat, unable to understand it, unclear to tell him, as the driverless car races along in silence down the lone road.
If it hadn’t been such a dreary morning, perhaps the mood might be right. But a bleak dawn lifted to cobalt, to brown, slid to gray. One recipe for disaster that simmers you and River in separate pots.
This spring is of a different breed. It traps you, brings with it . . . fights. You gripe like siblings, the inner push to argue too persuasive. Smiles diminish to awkward; words sharpen to icicles.
Kununurra was a break long overdue. A planned trip. Your idea. A dumb-arsed one at that for a romance on the line. As though different soil would mend it.
“Drive?” River had asked.
“Best within the price bracket,” you said.
“Do I look half-convinced?”
“People drive,” you said. “It’s normal.”
“Seems normal to take the plane.”
“If we drive, River, what do you think the concern is? What?”
“If we drive my road rover? I hope for your sake to never ask myself that question.”
“That’s called pessimism.”
“Who’s pessimistic here, Miss Price Bracket?”
You flipped.
Despite his harassed face, he stunned you by agreeing to the trip.
Everything was organized to the last detail. Everything but the climate. A few hours into the day, the weather window opened, torrential rain that left a curtain behind. Despite the planning, you got lost. Twice. Ended up doing a long leg to Kununurra. Gave shoes for another fight.
Irish Clover in “The Road to No Place” chants her soulful lyrics:
You say you’ll climb no mountain with me I’ll go with you anyway Darling I’ll follow you Somewhere we’ve never been. I’ll go with you to the sun and to the night I’ll go with you where the water is wide I’ll go with you anyway No Place is where we’ll be. You say I’m not your rain, your rainbow But you’re my earth, my blanket You’re my canopy, my tree I’ll go with you anywhere we’ve never been.
Not saying a word about River’s uncanny state, one he doesn’t appear to notice, makes you feel complicit with the devil. Like you’ve already sold your soul, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Your dread melts to curiosity. You glance at River and his lost hands and let out a cry. His belly downward is gone. Just an athletic chest and a head, cropped arms driving a car without touching.
“River?”
He doesn’t immediately respond, emotions barricaded within himself. When he looks at you, it’s with a darkened mood. “Have to listen to that stupid song?”
You want to tell him that it’s his car, his radio. That he has no hands and no legs, and what the goddamn fuck is happening? But all you say is, “No,” a whisper in your throat.
“Will you turn it off?”
“No.”
“Be like that.”
No reason has its name, its talent, written on this new grumble. Its seeds sink deeper, water themselves richer, flower more malignant blues.
Though he maintains the same proximity in his hacked body, so close you can almost hear his heart talk, he is drawn away from you, accepting without question the space, its margin creeping further out.
You grip the seatbelt where he can’t see it.
River is . . . my big red lobster. Beautiful, until the fiend.
Two springs ago, you were working at a garden restaurant. He stepped into your life with a guitar across his waist, a rucksack on his back. An avid traveler, you thought. He caught your eye. Rapture, you thought. And then he smiled. Hey presto. Reminded you of the heartthrob muso who won the Boy-up Brook Country Music Awards years back. Your thoughts turned unholy.
We fell in love swatting sandflies . . . in Broome.
Longing swells, you feel empty next to a stranger.
Before the trip, before he became this . . . this . . . your body was willing, the mathematics of your need. But everything around it failed. Night after night, you turned to your pillow, swallowed in thought. One day, you feared, the pillow would mean more than River.
Sometimes you never kissed.
Just a melt of bodies, a tumble of knees, flesh against flesh, almost cruel. Thrusts that summoned a climax that spread from your toes.
“Jesus!”
“Goddamn!”
Your responses are simultaneous as an overtaking truck judders, sways dangerously close, pushes you nearly off the highway.
Silence for a startling second stretches miles out.
You switch driving at dusk. River lightly snores. Just his dreadlocked head and broad shoulders—his chest is gone. The road rover is a power train. You glide with your foreboding. River takes the wheel at dawn. You sleep. Wake on instinct. It’s a strange world in the middle of nowhere. A blue-green carpet with fluid waves. Ears of grass stir, tease, declare interest in everything about you.
Sandy gold stretches a quarter mile deep, some dapples of green with burnt yellows. Beautifully rugged in parts, it reminds you of River’s morning face. You glance at him, what’s left of him: black gold eyes and an ivory-white jaw—skeletal. Clouds dissolve to shimmering threads across the ocean-blue firmament.
The road rover halts at a divide.
“Left or right?” says River.
“Right.”
A whiff of aftershave touches your nostrils. You can almost feel him on your skin.
“Dying for a piddle,” he says.
“Me too. Where do people go in this wilderness?”
“The bush?”
You wipe your forehead with the back of your hands. “River?”
“Yes?” Just eyes—the jaw is gone.
You hug your knees. “I wonder about us—do you?”
“I wonder about it plenty.”
Your stomach folds. You rock on your knees.
“Maybe we should, you know . . .take time off,” you say.
“We are taking time off.”
You pull at your hair, worrying it. Tighten a long strand in a little finger.
“Let’s not fight. Please, River.”
“Okay. What now?”
“Don’t know.”
The road rover rolls into a deserted station.
“Well,” the engine dies, “I’m going for a piddle.”
“Me too.”
You slip on canvas trainers, hug a turquoise sweater.
You depart, perhaps as equals, not as partners.
You step minutes behind into the station, seek the toilet. River is nowhere to ask. You see it, a metal shack, labeled.
You push the door. It swings with ease.
You climb down a stone step, jump sodden paper on the ground. The walls are dripping, the floor swirling with water.
But the need to go is great.
You move tippie-toe toward one of the cubicles, take care not to touch the wetness.
Later, as you wash your hands, a cubicle door opens. River—nothing visible, but you know it’s him—comes out.
“Dripping mess,” you say. “You could have warned me.”
“What—spoil the surprise?” Your heart tugs at the lilt in his voice.
“Can’t find the dryer. What’s this?” You move toward a contraption on the wall.
“Don’t touch—” begins River.
You’ve already pressed it.
“—the green button,” he finishes lamely.
A moan on the roof, roar, and a glorious waterfall of soapy water spits from the ceiling. The deluge plummets, splashes and bounces off walls, floods you.
You screech, try to run. Slip.
Drowning in water, you lift your head and see a silhouette like a shimmering light forming of River. It is bolts of lightning shaping out a man. His translucent body is standing in the waterfall. Now he’s there, now he’s not. He’s shaking clumps of drippy hair, roped, from his face. “Washed itself, did it?”
He’s still wavering in and out like a breaking circuit.
You rise, coughing.
You guide yourself with palms along the wall. Squishy shoes make obscene sounds. Your nipple-struck T-shirt draws your sweater tighter. You stare, horrified. Sobbing denim clings to your legs.
“I just touched it,” you gasp.
Drip! Drip! says the wall.
“Oh, you beaut,” laughs River. Now he’s a silhouette, no longer twinkling in and out. There’s his smoky self, his smoky smile.
The ceiling sighs. The flood gurgles and narrows its cascade to a dribble. Dripping walls, clomps of soggy tissue float in a puddle.
He comes toward you, not the drift of a ghost, but walking, misty leg after misty leg. The blackest, most golden eyes hold your gaze, until you’re enveloped in his steamy form, in the waft of his aftershave: an earthy scent of cedar and orange flower.
“We’d best get these clothes off,” he speaks to your hair. You clutch him, nothing solid, just the emanating heat of his fog. It leaves you with a pining for the touch of him—a longing for his finger tracing the outline of your nose. His mouth teasing the nape of your neck.
You don’t know about tomorrow, whether River will ever be as he was, different from the torment he is now. Present, yet lacking. But he’s your rain, your rainbow. Your earth, your blanket. You’ll go anywhere with him.
Suddenly, you feel more. You feel more deeply.

The Enduring

She remembers landscapes, the history of silence loud in horses wearing blankets in a lush green farm near the Yarra Valley rodeo no longer in use. Vision remembers scent, the car’s “sweet lily of the valley” in a fragrance leisurely releasing from a hung freshener on the indicator stalk of a custom-made dash.
K steered with one hand and fiddled with the radio, his eyes off the road.
“What’s in your head?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
The color of words was gray in the stereo on full blast as the car whipped into Wandin and its white and yellow flowers near a graffiti-walled toilet named Lost Trains.
Nothing in the mood was changed inside a community park where the car pulled up, or near the parking machine labeled FRAGILE. NOT IN USE and goons had wrapped it in cling wrap so it couldn’t swallow coins.
The camphor-scented bar that was also a restaurant across the road hosted a waiter with the body of Apollo and a face both devils and angels would love.
Vision avoided both, the body and the face, knowing K’s caliber of jealousy. She focused instead on the waiter’s voice when he took their order of a flat white.
“Murderers have killed for less.”
She looked up startled to have spoken her thoughts out loud on the waiter’s constricted vocals, but K refused to notice.
“Are we fighting?”
He still didn’t answer but his silence never left the table or the saucer or her heart—it lurked everywhere it could hurt.
Vision dipped her thoughts in K’s coffee and sought for answers buried in dates and resentments in the muddied froth.
As the waiter busied himself shining glasses, a ruby-haired mermaid winked inside a framed photo of an island and a coal-dusted tower reaching for an otherworld along the wall.
She remembers the locating.
One way is a bell miner’s tink, sweet and musical, just before sunrise and finishing on a hiccupping note just after sunset. One way is the poet’s limerence, verse upon verse in gravity and circles, black-billed gulls in smoking puddles on the burned sand waiting for the whitewash in rhyme. One way is wintering in the northern hemisphere while the patios in the south grow hot and hotter, the flies zang as opposed to zing, beating at heat until they collapse, and Vision, sunstruck in Sailor Falls, said, “I do,” to an excerpt.
One way is albums and camping and everything in between that sirens warn against in songs full of rain. One way is the rumble of wind from his bum in the dead of the night, half a gallon of air condensed into fair dinkum toots. As he turns in his sleep she wonders about forever.
One way is the road to Lost Trains and locating that you’re dead.
She remembers the enduring.
His was the kind of jealousy that vomited a sizzle of green, silent as an ogre but just as mighty. It was no surprise when just days ago he reminded her: “Twenty-five years.”
“What?” She lifted her eyes from the manuscript and its proofreading mark-ups, but his face was a wall.
“All gains make for nothing.”
She raised her palm in exasperation, presenting him with the animation of an oak that wore the portrait of an old woman with cross tattoos on her face, each line of ink shaping a history of stumbles.
If K saw it, the portrait etched in air, he said nothing. Or perhaps he was immune to her gift of the preternatural, or was it simply to the characters in her manuscript?
In the worlds of her stories there were systems and plots to deal with green-eyed monsters, but in the world of K . . . She wondered what he saw as gains in their shared years and why they would make for nothing.
His suspiciousness of her beauty or her literary triumphs or both had the eye of an osprey spotting fish in a lake, the giant bird swooping with talons stretched, shaking water off its wings in slow motion and soaring skyward with the fish secure in its grasp, all the way to a feeding perch where a hungry beak tore into pink flesh.
Only in hindsight did she understand that twenty-five years was a milestone, the landmark of a dying, a dawning of the day he would shape out her beating heart with a kitchen knife to quell his need to possess.
She feels the writing.
She wrote herself into the story and transported her spirit into a quokka. She did consider a selkie but rather liked the furry macropod and its ebony button nose and jolly temperament, despite the selkie’s shiny seal coat and superior gentleness, let alone the advanced swimming. The quokka doggy paddled out of the manuscript, just as K finished the carving.
The critical incident response team, all sirens, arrived in a panel van blinking orange and blue. As K cradled Vision’s disconnected heart somewhere on a blood-bathed floor, the quokka opened the door, shook its head at the bewildered response team and said, “He was not a mouth.”
Men who rage out loud, the talkers, they are harmless. It is the silent ones . . .
But Vision was not a mouth either.
She relives the dying.
She allowed herself to feel each slice of the blade, and was still thinking long after the response team arrived. She wondered what the team might do next, if they understood the precipitous nature of unwisdom that had already sprayed Sailor Falls in the lead-up to the new year. What with gangs raping shops and residents, lotto megadraws going unclaimed and sexual abuse scandals hitting yet more politicians, would one more slaughter make a difference? Such was the world of detachment, the response team arrived and saw and departed, without doing a thing.
She determined that, unable to keep what the team had witnessed—not the blood-soaked floor or a husband holding his wife’s beating heart, but the sight in Sailor Falls of a quokka that spoke human—one siren in the incident response team might write an anonymous op-ed without getting a stint in the psych ward.
The history of silence was loud in horses wearing blankets in the lush green farm near the Yarra Valley rodeo out in the warm rain.
Unpunished and uncuffed, K had wrapped her in a shower curtain, hauled her out the door and lowered her and a spade into the boot of his car where her blood crystallized into gemstones.
Her quokka sat next to him, riding shotgun into a wail of cicadas soaring in circles etched in daylight, bothering the landscape now quiet after the response team chased down a different emergency. Vision was not surprised when the cicadas fell aground as dogs, and they ran away barking at K’s approach to the boot. She considered that they, too, were her animal spirit.
He buried her right there in Wandin and its white and yellow flowers near a graffiti-walled toilet named Lost Trains.
The end?
Not quite.
Turns out one siren in a whole team did write an op-ed.
The quokka watches K’s life in monochrome inside a prison that is an eternity, the husk of him shriveled to a gnome trapped in ancient skin.
If you listen closely, you will hear a faint scratching of nails long as a Komodo dragon’s on somber walls licked by a wash of tide, whispers from ashore in time after time inside a fossil tower on an island so unexpected, you’d be astonished anyone goes there.
And if you work more characters into the story, you’ll find an important writ both fascinating and disturbing in the profundity of prison house faces never too disarming to distract the photographer. The shutter clicks, clicks to stir the silence unwashed in coal dust scattered over a short story with an old woman full of cross tattoos on her face, where a ruby-haired mermaid winks in the shores of what bodes inside a frame.

Dying

It hurt each time he died. The first time it happened, Bluey was on his way to Kinetic, the insurance firm he worked for. That morning he woke up to the alarm at 6 a.m. Showered, cerealed, took the lift to the ground floor. He was crossing the road to catch a No. 78 tram into the city when he went splat, flattened by a truck. A mural on the pavement: flesh, blood, brain and bile.
6 a.m., the alarm woke him. He sat up in bed, scratched his head. He looked at his torso, his feet. Everything was there. Perhaps it was a just bad dream. He showered. Chewed a bowl of cereal soaked in milk. He took the lift—gray floor, blinking mirrors, steel walls as usual. He walked through the sliding door of his apartment building to a whooshing wind. Cobblestones. Trees on the sidewalks. A kid wearing a yellow shirt and green shorts whizzed past on a scooter. To the side of the street: parked cars. In the street: running cars. An Asian woman rode past on a bike, headed opposite.
He reached the main road. He took extra care at the intersection. A tall thin man in a tar-black cloak crossed with him. He was safe on the tram platform when a fire engine all lit, full siren, roared past on the street. It was headed to the city. The tram was six minutes away. Bluey thought for a moment that he should ditch it, leg it all the way to the city. The tram came, he took it. As did the tall thin man. In the city, there was the lollipop woman at the pedestrian crossing with its zebra lines. Bluey got to work carefully, without incident.
At the ground foyer of Kinetic, he walked on a polished floor, all marble. Wall décor: climbing vines snaking to the ceiling. Up on the ivory-white ceiling dappled with baby angels were blinking dots: smoke alarms. There was the receptionist behind her desk, even faced, cobalt haired. Round wide eyes, all lashed up. Potato cream suit. Bluey smiled. She smiled back.
He took the lift to the ninth floor.
“Mornin’ Bluey,” said Geoff Coles the team lead, approving claims at his desk.
“Morning, Joffa,” he said.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothin’. Glad to be alive, I guess.”
“Golly gum. First time I heard a ginger say that,” said Coles. He pointed at Bluey’s carroty curls. “Always so uptight.”
They laughed.
Coles was a gun whore, always yabbering about some weapon or another. Sometimes he brought guns to work, sneaked in a drawer: rifles, shotguns, semis—harmless things really, Bluey was sure. Coles was a brag. A gun-toting brag. Sometimes Bluey called him Indiana Jones.
Bluey sat at his desk. He looked at the yellow phone. It never rang. All day he stamped insurance claims, approved some, rejected some. Day in, day out. That was his job. Stamp, stamp, sign. Today was no different. Or was it? He refused to think he had died. Pushed it out of his mind. Someday he would joke about it with Coles. He and Coles were tight. Coles wasn’t just a gun-flashing brag. He was also a giver. Last Christmas he gave Bluey a nutribullet. Who named a juicer something close to a gun? No wonder Coles fell for it.
Their eyes met.
“Change your mind about being alive, I got a Colt 45 in my drawer.”
“Sure thing, Joffa.”
“It’s got a grip safety and a thumb safety.”
“No shit, Indie.” Stamp, stamp, sign.
They ate sandwiches in the kitchenette. “Nana’s brisket,” said Coles. “Grainy mustard.”
“Wilco that.” Bluey licked his lips.
Coles wife was a grand cook. Bluey had never met her. But he’d met her sandwiches: tomato, basil and mozzarella; super steak; apple and blue cheese. Today Nana’s brisket. Back to work. Stamp, stamp, sign.
The lollipop woman was still at the pedestrian strip. He was on his way home, about to cross the road, when he tripped on a shoelace, fell into traffic. A racing motor bike leaped to avoid him. Its revolving wheel struck and decapitated him. His head rolled seven meters from his body.
6 a.m., the alarm clock. He woke up in bed. He touched his head. It was there. Shower. Cereal. Lift. He thought about cycling to work, decided against it. The bike, a nine-year-old thing that had seen better days, was in the basement of the apartment building. He called up an app on his phone: Uber.
The Uber guy was chatty. “Turks and Dutch at it now.”
“Turks?”
“All over the news. Godamn politics. Hibernating or what?”
“Or what.”
He smiled at the receptionist with her cobalt hair, lashed up eyes and potato cream suit. Baby angels and sunbathed clouds on the ivory-white ceiling. She smiled back. Ninth floor.
“Headache,” he told Bluey. “Yabbering Uber chap. Couldn’t shut him up.”
“Exercising his freedom of speech. Next time just shoot him. Trams not running?”
“Mid-life crisis, I guess, Joffa.”
“Roger that.”
Bluey approved some claims, rejected some. Stamp, stamp, sign. They had lunch in a new joint two blocks from Kinetic. Coles got a plain risotto sprigged with truffles. Bluey went simple: a beef pie. Back to work. Stamp, stamp, sign. A mild cramp in his stomach came and went. A wall clock chimed. He stood up.
“Golly gum. You clock-watcher.”
“A man’s gotta be something, Joffa.”
“Headed out to the horizon?”
“And beyond.”
“Not so far a sniper can’t hit.”
They laughed.
Ground floor. Receptionist. Uber. Out in the street, he saw a woman who looked like the one who rode a bike outside his place. Wilco that.
His stomach was knotting by the time Bluey arrived home. In an hour, he was passing watery stool. In another half, it was bloody stool. By the time he thought to reach for a phone, his body caved, the agony excruciating. This is how he died of diarrhea.
6 a.m., the alarm. He touched his stomach. It hurt no more. He swung his legs off the bed. Pondered a moment. Shower, no cereal—today he was changing it up. He pulled the nutribullet from under his bed. Tore it from its glitz and ribbon wrapping. Rinsed it. Plugged it. Tossed in a few carrots from the fridge. Healthy living, hey? He flicked the switch and the blender hummed, hummed, exploded. Hot sticky sauce leaped toward his face. He dodged. A vomit of carrot spread along the tiled kitchen wall. There was a splatter on the floor. He looked at the mess, the mess looked back at him.
He grabbed a mop and a bucket. Took him an hour to clean it up. Finally he sank to the floor against a wall, wrapped his arms around himself and shivered a whole two hours. This was more than coincidence. Death was actively hunting him. He started laughing, laughing. Rolled on the floor laughing, laughing. This is how he died of loss of oxygen to the brain.
6 a.m., the alarm. He thought about the shower, decided on a bath. He was climbing into the tub when he tripped on a floor mat, hit his head on a shiny faucet, zonked out and drowned in the stagnant water.
6 a.m., the alarm. Outside it was pouring. A bolt of lightning licked the window. Bluey wrapped a nightgown around his pajamas. He went to the basement, unhooked the bike. He rode out into chopping rain. No kid on a scooter. No woman on a bike. He rode against the traffic. Cars swerved.
A flash of lightning lit toward him. He started laughing. “That’s right. Do it. Get over with it now.” A clap of thunder. Cars horned.
“Death wish, you fucker?” someone yelled.
Bluey pedaled faster in the rain, madly laughing as he rode. He aimed for an oncoming car. The driver braked. “You outta your head!” the driver yelled. He pedaled on and on, on and on, away from the city, toward the mountains. No bolt of lightning struck him. It stopped raining. The gray sky turned milky. He rode past a beach. The water was a turquoise blue. He pedaled until his legs hurt.
And then he saw it. A cliff! He huffed and pedaled toward it. The poison in his muscles was killing him. “Just one more pedal,” he whispered. “One more. Just one. Here, baby, cliffie. I know you want me.” The pedals refused to move. He was laughing, crying, his leg muscles stone. The bicycle tipped and he fell to the ground weeping. He was still sobbing when the coppers found him.
Soon as the hospital discharged him, Bluey hired a car. He drove out from the city, toward the mountains, past the beach. He arrived at the cliff. He sat in the car a moment, and then put the foot down. The car coughed, spluttered. He floored the accelerator, again, again. Nothing happened. The car allowed him to turn it away from the crag. It sped him away from danger.
Suddenly he had a purpose. Yeah, purpose: kill himself. Not like there was anything to lose. Nobody special to leave behind, someone to miss him. Maybe Coles, as in miss him, not like he was that special. No, Bluey didn’t have anyone who . . . loved him. He felt a bit sad at this thought.
6 a.m., Bluey towel-bathed, chewed an apple. Didn’t choke on it. Pity, he smiled.
He took the lift with its gray floor and blinking mirrors. The door of the apartment building glided and he was out into cobblestones. There was the kid, whizzed past him on a scooter. He took a tram to the city, a train to the countryside: Glen Ranges.
He walked, walked, walked, he didn’t know how long. Finally he saw a farm with big black bulls chewing hay. He jumped the fence, lay on the ground by a huge bull’s feet, goaded it. “Do it, fuckwit. Do it.” The bull gave a lugubrious sigh and lumbered away. “No!” Bluey grabbed it by the tail but nothing seemed to agitate it much. The bull’s kick was so half-hearted it barely left a scratch on his shin.
Distraught, Bluey returned to the city and hunted manholes. He’d read about them, lids giving way, loose crossbars and all. People plunging and drowning in twenty-one feet of human waste. Where were these goddamn holes with their loose lids? He found a few, lids clamped tight.
He fell into bed exhausted. He did not question his past, or his future. All he knew was now. He was Bluey, a ginger head who worked at Kinetics, an insurance firm. And now more than ever, he wanted to die. To die. To die. Didn’t death want him? A big fat tear rolled down his cheek.
6 a.m., the alarm. Out in the streets, just past Hade Avenue, he saw a milk truck. He ran toward it at full speed, eyes closed, arms spread. Nothing happened. “You got a death wish or something?” the driver barked.
The building that housed Kinetics stood tall, unperturbed by it all. There was the receptionist with her cobalt hair and potato cream suit. Sunbathed ceiling awash with heaven. She smiled back. Lift. Ninth floor.
“What’s going on?” greeted the team lead.
“I’d tell all, Joffa. But you won’t believe me.”
“Shove off. Hospital thing, I heard. Take more time off. Work will wait.”
“I’m good, Joffa. Ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“What do you know about me?”
Coles’s laugh was uneasy. “Messin’ with me, boy?”
“I wake up. Every day. Come to work. Go home. Who am I?”
Coles scratched his head. “You do your job. I’m good with that. No questions.”
“Then good for you! Me? I have questions. My life is the same, day in day out. Just the deaths. Now the living. I got questions!”
“Just go home, man.”
“You and your Nana, you’ve got a life. My life’s fucked-up.”
“Man. Get a grip.”
“I die and wake, die and wake. That’s right. When I avoided death, I died and then I woke up. When I chose to die, chased it, nothing happened. What twisted fuck controls my destiny? Who is in charge?”
“You’re talking like some TV guy, mate—”
“Am I? Am I! This ain’t no drama!”
Coles was quiet a long time. “You’re talking all over my head. I don’t understand a word of it. But if dying is what you want—” He pulled a brown bag from his drawer. He put the gun in Bluey’s hand.
“It got bullets?”
“What do you think?”
Bluey pressed the gun to his temple.
“Holy mother. Bluey. Thing’s loaded!”
“Is it?” said Bluey. “I’d like to ask what you’re doing with a loaded gun in the office. See, me, I ask questions.” He waved the gun.
“Point. That thing. Away from me!” Coles’s eyes were that wide.
Bluey dropped his hand. “You gave me the gun.”
“Jesus Christ. I was just messing with you! Pushing common sense!”
A burst of ringing, the phone. Bluey looked at Coles’s desk. “No shit.” The ringing persisted.
Coles answered. “Hello?” He listened. “I didn’t,” he spoke to the receiver. “Some mix up, sweetie. Golly gum. Really sorry.” He hung up. He looked confused.
“Well?” asked Bluey.
“Receptionist downstairs. Asks why I called.”
“Strange.”
“Roger that. What the—”
Bluey aimed at his temple and fired. The gun just clicked.
Coles had leaped, was crouching behind his desk. “Christ!”
The phone started ringing. It rang and rang and rang. No one paid attention.
“Thought you said this thing was loaded.” Bluey fired. Nothing.
He pulled back the top of the gun, slid the chamber. It spat out a bullet that dropped to the ground.
“Shit, Bluey—”
“So it was. Loaded.” Bluey laid the gun on the desk. “Told you. It’s not our script. Ever wondered? About life? What if we’re part of something bigger than us?”
Coles slumped against the leg of his desk. “You could have hurt someone.”
“What if it’s someone else’s show?”
“You could have killed yourself. You, you . . . Larrikin. You.”
“Ever wondered? What if that receptionist downstairs is a bot? And see those?” Bluey pointed at the ceiling. “Those blinkers, smoke alarm shit, what if they were eyes. Watching, always watching.” He yelled at the beacon above his head: “That’s right. You narcissistic fucks!”
Coles was looking at his hands as if they were snakes. “You want to kill yourself,” he said finally.
“Now you get it.”
“Would you? Try that again?”
“I’d try it again tomorrow.”
Again Coles went quiet. “Your life is fucked.”
“Sure thing, Joffa.”
“What now?”
“Imagine scientists in a room full of monitors. Someone speaking to a recording: ‘Computer, register this. Subject zero showing signs of reasoning capability beyond preconditioning.’”
“Ha-ha funny. Not.”
Somewhere in the city, in a dilapidated pub named Crockers, a few people sat round a table with the angel of death. Among them: a kid in a yellow T-shirt; an Asian woman; a lollipop woman.
“Why didn’t you let him blow his brains, boss?” the kid asked.
“To what end?” said the angel, the man in black. “It’s more fun when he doesn’t want to die. Just wish the Jesus chick didn’t keep patching him up.”
“Must have the hots for him.”
“Yes. She loves him.”
“Let’s get another prawn,” someone said.
“Yeah. That Geoff Coles goon.”
“Jesus Christ,” the angel snapped. A pay phone somewhere along a corridor started ringing. They all stared at the direction of the sound. “Coles got family,” the angel said, quieter.
“What, you’ve got a conscience now?”
The phone rang out.
“Call it whatever you want,” said the angel of death. “Everyone has to die some time. I’m just not ready to take Coles right now. That answer work for you?” He looked around. “No more of this shit. We have enough on our arses, like proving that free will is pure gumbo. Death comes knocking, we don’t ask you about voluntary. Any more of you clowns got questions?”
They all looked away.
“And while we’re on the topic of clowns. Stop calling her name in vain. Bitch won’t stop ringing.”
“Um . . . boss,” someone said. “It was you that said Jesus Chr—”
“Sod it, the goddamn phone—”
Ngrrrr-ngrrr! Ngrrrr-ngrrr! Ngrrrr-ngrrr!
At the ground foyer of Kinetic, the receptionist behind her desk, round wide eyes, all lashed up, cradled the receiver.

Mahuika

Available to read for free here

💃🏻 WARNING, long post ahead! 💃🏻
⚠️ 12/1/20: Added updates on SBP’s Eclat de Fruits and Pete and Alia’s longevity report. ⚠️
Hello! I’ve been meaning to write reviews of local perfume brands that I’ve tried from the past year to recent releases. I’ll try to be concise with my reviews as they’re a lot. I’m also typing this on my phone, so any faults in grammaformatting I’ll try to fix later.
Disclaimer: I’m a novice when it comes to perfumes, let alone reviewing them. Perfumes will smell different from person to person. Most notes listed don’t make sense to me as I’ve never encountered them yet irl, but in a process of elimination through my collection I can somewhat pinpoint a few of them. I’ll mostly describe them what category of scent they are (fresh, gourmand, spicy, fruity, etc.) and what vibe they give off to me, so please bear with me if some of these don’t make sense!
Also I’m reviewing ORIGINAL perfume blends, so these are not inspired perfumes. Some of these do resemble existing commercial ones, but otherwise aren’t stated as inspired from the brands themselves. Some of these I’ve also mentioned in previous threads, but I decided to include them here because of changed views, etc.
My preferences: I’m putting this here as reference in case our tastes differ, as what I think smells great may smell awful to another and vice versa. I love gourmands (especially with vanilla, chocolate, and coffee), powdery scents, white florals, irises, musks, moss, woods, certain fruits (specifically oranges and mangoes), and resins. I’m neutral to incense, most fruits, herbs, spices, and most florals. I dislike shampoo/laundry scents, and musks/incenses that smell too musty. There are some exceptions, and tastes will change over time.

🌻 Daniela Calumba 🌻
Where you can buy them: ig: danielacalumba
Scent/s: Honeysuckle + Oakmoss (5ml full size), Benjamin, Ravensara, Saltwater, Oud Nectar (0.5ml samples)
Price: Updated prices are P1800 for FS and P1100 for 5 samples
General verdict: All of her perfumes last about 3-4 hours on me. These are all roll-ons, so they stick very close to the skin and don’t project far unless you stand really close. Overall I love her unique takes of natural perfumes except Saltwater, and some of them are going to be part of my permanent collection. Daniela is also very kind during transactions, which is a plus.
Honeysuckle + Oakmoss - ”Fragrant notes: absolutes of honeysuckle and oakmoss, mitti attar, ho wood. Character: sweet narcotic, luxurious, luscious, sophisticated.”

Sweet, but not like sugar or candy. Like aged honey, boozy but it won’t make you smell like a drunk. The sweetness of honeysuckle and the wet, bitter note of oakmoss make such a unique and lovely scent, it’s almost atmospheric. This is my favorite out of all of Daniela’s perfumes, and I am so glad I took a gamble to get this in full size.
Verdict: 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻 LOVE! Hopefully she allows custom orders to have this in a bigger size because I truly love this perfume.
Vibe: drinking alcohol with friends in a rented house at Batangas, chilly night air bring about the scent of planted honeysuckles, petrichor setting in after the last days of summer.

Benjamin - ”Fragrant notes: benzoin resin, vanilla extract, oud, chamomile roman, calamansi Character: musky, seductive, creamy, alluring, elegant, aged vanilla rum.”

On me, the resin and the calamansi, as subtle as they are, make a very interesting combination to create a unique form of musk. I couldn’t smell the vanilla extract, which surprised me since my skin usually amps up vanilla notes. It aaaaalmost has that same boozy note as Honeysuckle, but it’s mostly musk with a slight tang to it.
Verdict: 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻 Love. Will get a fullsize.
Vibe: saturday morning, lying on the grass at Salcedo park after jogging across Ayala. Home-brewed citrus drinks and kombuchas sold at Salcedo Market beckons you to quench your thirst.

Ravensara - ”Fragrant notes: sandalwood, oud, petitgrain, jasmine absolute, ravensara Character: light, euphoric, fresh, youthful, exciting, bright, invigorating, sheer.”

Ravensara almost has the same dna as Benjamin, the difference is that the musk takes a backseat and florals take center stage, but it’s not heavy floral at all, in fact there’s almost something citrusy somewhere that gives the floral notes a lightness to it. It almost has that petrichor-note to it like Honeysuckle, but not so much that it overpowers the florals.
Verdict: 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻 Love. Perfect for lazy weekends.
Vibe: after resting and drinking kombucha from Salcedo Market, you browse through the flower shops being sold there, the signs of incoming drizzle about to form.

Saltwater - ”Fragrant notes: onycha, cade, jasmine concrete, black pepper, pomelo peel Character: slightly musky and floral, animalic, alchemical, warm and bright, shimmering, romantic, like saltwater clean skin, lingering.”

This is the first from her perfumes I don’t like, and either I’m not experienced enough to truly appreciate it, or my skin chemistry has something to do with it, but it doesn’t smell fragrant to me at all, even after almost a month of testing it hasn’t changed on me 😢. It reminds me of a certain smell, but I don’t know what. Closest I can think of are mothballs. I suspect it’s the combination of onycha, cade and black pepper. I’m sad that this doesn’t work on me at all, as the image of saltwater skin was enticing to me. If anyone owns this and likes it, please share your thoughts! I’d love to know how you perceive this scent.
Verdict: 🌻 NOPE. My skin hates it, sorry!
Vibe: decluttering years-old clothes and finding they’ve been eaten by bugs. The regret that comes after of not recovering them sooner.

Oud Nectar - ”Fragrant notes: oud, gardenia, saffron, pomelo peel Character: narcotic floral, creamy, luscious, bodacious, warm, caramel, smooth.”

This smells like that one fancy perfumed soap we got from balkbayan packages, but more natural, earthy. This is what I think vintage perfumes smell like, the saffron and gardenia create a strong floral fragrance without being sharp that most floral-heavy perfumes have, which I think the earthy note tones it down.
Verdict: 🌻🌻🌻🌻 Like! Though I’m still reconsidering in getting a full size.
Vibe: visiting your free-spirited tita who’s staying in her condo in the Philippines for a short while before going back out to the world for another adventure. Various flowers from her latest venture are meticulously placed in a glass vase while you browse through her vast collection of perfumes from different origins. (Highkey lowkey I want to be that tita hahaha)

🍄 Radioactive Mushrooms In The Forest 🍄
Where you can buy them: Her website, though it seems it’s under maintenance atm. Personally I bought this in a bazaar at Makati.
Scent/s: Promise Ring
Price: I cannot for the life of me remember, but it’s somewhere around P600-700
General verdict: They have a similar vibe as Daniela Calumba’s perfumes. This last 6 hours on me.
Promise Ring- ”Like a warm hug under a cozy blanket on a rainy day. Chamomile, lavender, rose, vanilla. Mild, powdery.”

What I bought is the previous iteration with flowers submerged in perfume oil, while the one after is purely perfume oil, so this review maaay be outdated in case the new version is different! On me the powder starts out very in-your-face, but I love powder notes so if anything this makes me excited. Over time the powder mellows down but is still more prominent, while the florals start to bloom to create a beautiful powdery floral fragrance that isn’t screechy.
Verdict: 🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄 LOVE. If the term “pabebe” existed in 1950s Philippines, I would wear this in that timeline hahaha
Vibe: Holding your recently-bathed, freshly-powdered baby. Watching your husband, your first and only love, watering your blossoming garden in a clear day. (Nope not projecting at all lol)

☕️ The Small Batches Perfumery ☕️
Where you can buy them: ig: thesmallbatchesperfumery
Scent/s: Anonymous Gal, Fleurs Exquise, Sucre D’Orge, Eclat de Fruits, Essence de Tourmaline, Le Jardin Secret, Prive Tous Inclus, Legere Comme L’air, Chocolat Extreme, Cafe Intense, Gingerbread Cookie, Iris and Saffron Oud, Iris en Hiver
Price: P3795 for a bundle of 12 10ml roll-ons
General verdict: I bought the 12 pc. set (+ 1 bonus 10ml scent, free body oil and 2 free decants of commercial perfumes) with the intention of keeping only 3-5 for myself and the rest to give as gifts to friends and family. These last 6-7 hours on me. Seller is kind and accommodating and always makes updates.
Anonymous Gal - ”Fresh, Aquatic, Oriental dry down.”

This evokes a specific childhood memory that I don’t even know what. It smells like shampoo from a brand that I don’t remember. Amoy bagong ligo, which there are a lot in SBP’s catalogue, for Anonymous Gal it smells clean, fresh, and...creamy? Not creamy like sweet, just, creamy? It’s hard to describe. I’m a bit jealous of the reviews saying it’s fresh creamy oriental on them, I think my skin amped the aquatic notes on this one. 😭
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️ I’d love it better if the dry down was the entire scent!
Vibe: taking a long shower during one of your rest days, contemplating whether you should go out with your friends or not exist for 24 hours while shampooing your hair for longer than necessary.

Fleurs Exquise - ”Opulent, Sweet Floral (borderline gourmand), appeals to fans of Flowerbomb, Flowerbomb Nectar, Flowerbomb Extreme, La Vie Est Belle, etc.”

I’ve never smelled any of the perfumes mentioned, but I have smelled YSL’s Black Opium, and to me Fleurs Exquise reminds me of that, but more sweet floral and without the coffee note from YSL.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ I’m quite torn tbh! If I smelled this a few years ago I would be ALL over it, but while I really do like this, I have since moved on to other scents, but I would fondly sniff this every now and then before giving this away.
Vibe: purchasing your very first big girl perfume to wear in your very first big girl job. Now your on your way to look for your first set of big girl clothes.

Sucre D’Orge - ”Cotton Candy, Sweet Florals, Marshmallow, and Sandalwood. Sweet, but sits lighter on the skin.”

MMM! This is sweet. My inner sweet tooth gets very excited every time I put this on. If you smelled Al Rehab’s Choco Musk roll on, it’s like that but much more refined and with more depth. The florals are a nice touch to the cotton candy and marshmallow to keep it interesting and not flat, while the sandalwood reigns in the candy notes to be a little more grounded. There's also a tiny bit of caramel in it if I smell closely, and tbh I dig it.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ LOVE! Definitely one of those can't-stop-smelling-my-wrists perfumes. Highly recommended for gourmand lovers.
Vibe: eating every chocolate and candy you've been craving for and you know it's really bad for you, but in that moment you don't care because what's wrong in eating another snickers bar? (actually no pls don't, everything in moderation!!)

Eclat de Fruits - ”Fruity, sweet, effervescent. Perfect summer fragrance for lovers of sweet scents, but can’t tolerate heavy gourmands. Sits very lightly on the skin.”

So first time I put this on, this smells like ballpen ink. So I rested it for a while thinking the scent might settle. Few days later, I can now smell the fruit notes, mostly cherry, but now instead of ink it now smells like cherry-flavored medicine I was given as a child. Over wear time, the medicine note goes away and is left with cherry with other notes I can’t identify.
UPDATE: OKAY, so the ballpen ink note is completely gone. I think this perfume has been properly rested. The cherry note remains, but I’m happy to report it’s not medicine-y anymore, it’s hardly there now, mostly at the background. Now it smells...well, fruity! But not like bright fruity, it’s dark like wine. It has a slight red wine accord to it, but I wouldn’t call it a an actual wine scent because of its sweetness. I’m actually starting to like it! Definitely a perfume that needs resting and getting used to.
Verdict: ☕️☕️ I occasionally like fruit-dominant scents, but I can’t get the picture of cherry-flavored meds out of my head!
UPDATE VERDICT: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ Not cherry medicine anymore!! It transformed beautifully on me into sweet, sweet red wine-ish fragrance.
Vibe: absent from school, anxiously waiting for 3:00pm for your scheduled cold medicine, watching cartoon re-runs while thinking what your classmates are up to while you’re gone.
UPDATE VIBE: looking through a photo album filled with old pictures of you from grade-school, fondly reminiscing the simpler days as you drink sweet, cherry red wine.

Essence de Tourmaline - ”Earthy, green, fresh and unapologetically sophisticated, sans the heaviness and slightly dated vibe of most perfumes. For women who take classiness a notch higher. Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but tourmalines are for queens.”

I. LOVE. This. This smells close to Lush’s Buck’s Fizz body conditioner and Celebration body, but blended more appropriately for a perfume. It smells like the fanciest orange I’ve ever smelled, with the earth note stopping the orange from being too sweet. This is such a great after-shower scent, fresh and clean but the earthy citrus keeps it interesting.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ LOVE. Now I want orange juice.
Vibe: drinking freshly squeezed orange juice to start your work day, after putting on your dainty jewelry to complete your power look. What they don’t know is you’re still swamped from your previous overtime, but they don’t need to know that after a bit of concealer.

Le Jardin Secret - ”The name suggests a mysterious fragrance and alludes to its floral nuances. White florals and powdery accords are the highlight of this fragrance. It brings about some of the best floral notes such as Jasmine, Neroli, Honeysuckle, Magnolia, Ylang Ylang, and Lily of the Valley.”

Another bagong-ligo scent to me. In comparison to Anonymous’ shampoo and Tourmaline’s citrus accords, Jardin is all florals. I can’t pick up the powder notes, my nose translates it as clean, creamy. Like floral soap. Tbh it smells more soap than floral on me!
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️ I prefer Tourmaline as an after-shower scent. Would smell better on other people, but soapy scents just don’t jive well with my skin.
Vibe: after a long day from work, you took a much deserved shower. You put your phone on silent for the next few hours to have a moment to yourself, browsing on netflix what’s the best series to binge on while waiting for your hair to dry.

Prive Tous Inclus - ”Opulence and unrestrained grandiose are among the most befitting words to describe this fragrance. The warm spicy accords as well as the woodsy notes bring about the feeling ease and coziness that is perfect for winter or cold indoor settings. This unisex fragrance makes clever use of notes such as cinnamon bark, sandalwood, snowdrops, nutmeg, ginger, and clove. The sweet undertones come from the spices instead of caramel or sugar, which elevates the perfume's personality to a much higher level.”

It says it’s unisex, but to me it leans very close to masculine. I’m not good at describing male-forward scents but I’ll try. It smells like a men’s perfume that I come across every now and then, but idk what that exact perfume is. It’s spicy, but in a cold way? I do pick up the sweet notes, but I can’t tell which notes are doing that, I suspect it’s the cinnamon bark and/or nutmeg. This would smell nice on guys. On me? Not so much.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️ It’s fine on guys, but I wouldn’t take a double take, er, sniff.
Vibe: that guy you’re seeing who you’re not sure whether his boasts at his entrepreneurial prowess actually has merit or is complete bs, but hey, at least he knows how to dress up!

Legere Comme L’air - ” On the fresher end of the spectrum is this light and airy fragrance that is perfect for those hot summer days when you almost do not want to put on perfume. The prominent notes of osmanthus blossom, green tea, grapefruit, bergamot, blood orange, and heliotrope brings it together to make it an accomplished fragrance. Legere Comme L'air is perfect for the office, and on those nervous first dates when you want to be memorable without leaving a cloud of cloying scent behind.”

So to me, THIS is unisex. Still masculine-leaning but I can actually see myself wearing this when the situation arises. This also reminds of another men’s perfume that I don’t know of. Light, fresh, and the combination of the florals and fruits blend well together that they complement each other without overpowering the other.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ Not for me, but would smell really good on guys!
Vibe: riding the mrt and standing beside you is a well-dressed man staring vacantly outside the window just like you did a few moments ago. Every now and then you catch a whiff of his perfume, and wonder what’s a man like him doing in a vehicle like mrt? The train stops at Buendia, and before you know it he’s hastily on his way out, accidentally bumping your shoulder and a quick glance at you says “I’m sorry.” As the train continues onward to Guadalupe, you catch a faint scent of the stranger’s perfume on the shoulder he bumped into. (Yaks bakit naging novella HAHAHAHA)

Chocolat Extreme - ”For chocolate lovers who can appreciate the subtle nuances of cocoa in its various forms. This fragrance is an indulgence like no other and it appeals mostly to gourmand lovers with singular cravings. This should come with a warning label: WILL MAKE YOU CRAVE FOR CHOCOLATE CAKE AND OTHER CHOCOLATE DESSERTS.”

I’m a chocoholic through and through, so this positive review is inevitable. It’s a bittersweet cocoa. That’s it. And sometimes that’s enough.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ LOVE! Kung gusto mo magdiet at tumigil sa tsokolate singhutin mo to hahaha
Vibe: hot chocolate made from tsokolate tablea, watching feel-good movies you used to enjoy many moons ago.

Cafe Intense - ”For coffee die-hards who love to smell of java. Coffee accords, lightly sweet toffee, and vanilla shine through and gives this fragrance structure and impressive longevity.”

Other than chocolate, I’m infamously known to be a coffeeholic. Smells like french vanilla with an extra shot of expresso with a smidge of toffee. Or kopiko candy. There’s also this slight floral note lingering somewhere upon dry down, which tbh I love it. I don’t know if that’s just me though, but I’m not complaining. Mixing this with Chocolat Extreme is ✨👌 gourmand goodness.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ LOVE! Enough said.
Vibe: drinking java at your local cafe, setting up your laptop, planner, and notes. You’re going to be there for a while.

Gingerbread Cookie - ”Made of praline accords, gingerbread note, cinnamon bark, vanilla, and brown sugar, Gingerbread Cookies Extrait de Parfum is a delectable gourmand fragrance that puts you in a state of holiday cheer, no matter the time of year.”

I’ve never tried gingerbread cookies, like at all. My idea of the holidays is chocolate cake, cookies, and strong coffee. So honestly my idea isn’t really festive. 😅 This scents smells strongly of cinnamon to me, reminds me so much of cinnamon bread (mmm now I want one). Very spicy, it dries down sweeter due to the vanilla and brown sugar, but the cinnamon still makes its presence known.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ I like it! Though I won’t put this as often as Chocolat, Sucre, and Cafe, this would be nice to use on days where I want gourmand but more spicy than sweet.
Vibe: you’re invited to your friend’s xmas party where their holiday traditions are more westernized, whereas you’d rather be eating sweet spaghetti and lechon than drink another eggnog (ngl I wanna know what eggnog tastes like)

Iris and Saffron Oud

IRISES! One of the few florals in perfumes I adore to bits. Iris and Saffron Oud is sophisticated, the oud elevating it beyond just being another floral perfume. It almost smells cold, despite the oud. I’d wear this for formal events, but I can see people wearing this for work because why the hell not?
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ Love. I feel so fancy wearing this for someone wearing shorts. 🥸
Vibe: attending a formal ball, roaming outside to the estate’s garden to take a breather from the noise. The music and chatter begins to fade away as you go further into the garden, irises swaying softly, the crisp chill air indicate the dying days of summer.

Iris en Hiver

This is Saffron Oud’s daintier sister. It reminds me a bit of Narciso Rodriguez Poudree, but they’re not the same. (I’m assuming NR Rouge would be similar, but I haven’t tried that yet) Soft powder complements the iris, with dry down leaning more powdery and creamy (is that even a thing?) as time goes on. Like RMiTF’s Promise Ring, it invokes a sense of innocence, but this is a tad bit more mature.
Verdict: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ Love. Irises and powder notes? So lovely. 🤍
Vibe: back to the ball, retouching your lipstick and patting another layer of face powder before getting back to the scene. You see irises in ornate vases upon exiting the bathroom.

🍷 Pete and Alia 🍷
Where you can buy them: website, shopee
Scent/s: (Feminine set) 004 Chance, 005 Beldandy, 006 Jasmine. (Cheers set) 007 Salvador, 008 Blanca
Price: P499 for the Discovery sample sets
General verdict: These solid perfumes are very well made, also worth noting is these are the first rice-based perfumes in the PH, and a percentage of proceeds goes to various charities. Even for small samples, they seem dense enough that finishing one will take a while before you buy a full size. I haven’t tested longevity yet as I got these recently and tested each one every 2 hours, so I’ll update this part in the future to report on that.
UPDATE: These last 2-3 hours on my skin, not very strong. Would need frequent touchups.
004 Chance - ”The chance is the classic rose scent destined on the skin of the independent city woman who longs to be free in a floral field of roses. she says hello with fresh notes of bergamot blended with floral and fruity notes of rose and cantaloupe. she smiles at you as she fades into vanilla, patchoulli, and leather. notes: bergamot, rose, cantaloupe, vanilla, patchoulli, leather.”

I don’t get rose? If there is, it might be faint. I think I’m mostly smelling cantaloupe, which I don’t really like. I can’t detect the rose and vanilla at all even after two hours went by, maaaybe I can smell the patchouli, but I could’ve been nose-blind at that point. There’s also something waxy about this scent, I thought it could be the leather, but idk? I have no idea, it reminds me of one of the Watsons brand lipbalms that I dislike so much because of its waxy scent.
Verdict: 🍷🍷 I may not be the right person for this. I really do wish the rose and vanilla notes were more prominent, but that’s just me 🤷🏻‍♀️
Vibe: accompanying your friend in their candle-making class. They’re passionately explaining to you the process of it all while you nod along and encourage them, genuinely happy for their excitement but also getting a little lost throughout their explanation.

005 Beldandy - ”The beldandy is the loyal friend of every strong independent woman. She comforts her with fresh notes of lemon and thyme blended with floral, aromatic, and nutty notes of rose and cardamom. She sits with you with calming notes similar to a cup of tea. notes: lemon, thyme, rose, cardamom, tea.”

Oooh, I like this! Citrusy and floral in equal measure, the rose and lemon notes really shine through in this one, while thyme and cardamom gives them an earthy balance. The lemon here isn’t like sweetened iced lemon tea, more like hot brewed lemon tea blend. It’s very calming.
Verdict: 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Love! Imo this is a pretty safe buy.
Vibe: browsing the shops at Cubao Expo, looking for a good deal on secondhand books. You eventually stop by a cafe residing there, sipping on lemon tea as you’re reading one of the books you bought.

006 Jasmine - ”The jasmine is the unapologetic fruity and floral scent made for the girl who chooses a bouquet of jasmine over roses. She draws you in with fresh notes of bergamot and jasmine blended with fruity notes of melon and green apple, and then slowly fades into vanilla, patchoulli, and leather. notes: bergamot, jasmine, melon, green apple, vanilla, patchoulli, leather.”

P+A has a quiz where the result is the recommended perfume for you, and I got Jasmine. I like jasmine usually (Lush’s Lust and Flying Fox are really good jasmine heavy scents!) and while this one is also purely jasmine, this specifically is very much like sampaguita. Sampaguita as a flower, I adore. As perfume, not really. The bergamot and green apple add a zest to the jasmine, while I can’t really detect a whole lot of vanilla/patchouli/leather even on dry down.
Verdict: 🍷🍷🍷 Not really keen on smelling like sampaguita. 😅
Vibe: visiting your local church on a wednesday, the last mass has just finished and you’re waiting for the next one. You kneel down and pray on one of the pews. The first thing you see when you look up is the statue of Mother Mary, her silent gaze knows of your untold truths.

007 Salvador - ”Salvador holds a glass of red wine in one hand and you in the other. He leads the night with a citrus combination of bergamot, ginger, and grapefruit. He seduces you with a garden filled with lily of the valleys and there, a delicious temptation of forbidden stone fruits of plum and peach. He leaves you craving for more with warm earthy memories of oud, cedar, and tonka beans notes: bergamot, ginger, grapefruit, lily of the valley, plum, peach, oud, cedar, tonka beans.”

This is a masculine scent, but works well as unisex. The fruit notes, particularly grapefruit, peach and plum, work really well with the earthy accords of oud and tonka beans. The bergamot and lily of the valley softens the rest of the notes to create a smooth aromatic blend. It’s fruity without being overly sweet, it just smells...smooth. Understated, but smells so good.
Verdict: 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 I would love to smell this on a guy, it smells really enticing!
Vibe: he invites you to have an impromptu dinner at his place, and upon getting there he surprises you with homemade dinner and a bottle of wine. He bashfully tells you that he wished this would’ve been more romantic, but you’re already thinking how to show your appreciation after dinner.

008 Blanca - ”Blanca composes herself with incredible spirit and grace. She wakes up flawless and fresh with notes of lavender and lemon. She brings in life with fruity notes of pineapple and coconut. The sunset waits for her to finish her glass of white wine with warm notes of incense and oud. notes: lavender, lemon, pineapple, coconut, incense, oud.”

This smells like an expensive candle, but unlike Chance, the waxy note smells better, most likely because of the coconut. The lavender, oud and incense softens the coconut further, it almost smells creamy, like luxurious coconut lotion. I can’t smell the pineapple on me though. Like Salvador, this is a smooth fragrance.
Verdict: 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Love! I don’t normally go for coconut scents, but this is an exception.
Vibe: having a staycation at a hotel outside Metro Manila. Scheduled a spa day with your friends as you catch up and gossip over white wine.

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you so much for sticking with me! Everything except Pete and Alia I’ve been testing and revisiting since the past year, either for weeks or months. As for Pete and Alia, if my thoughts change in the future I’ll do my best to update them in this post.
Anywho, please support local! So many brands are popping up that are creating original products, handmade and most materials are sourced right here in the Philippines. You’ll never know that what you’re looking for may just be right here all along! 😄💜
Edit: I HATE mobile formatting hahahayst

Chapter: 1 2 4

Trailing fingers of daylight burned through the mists as the sun fell bellow the horizon, transforming the endless sea of gray into a seething expanse of reds and purples to match the sky above. Rare tufts of cloud marred an otherwise clear sky, small pockets of moisture which Korin lazily avoided unless it was too much trouble. His heart pounded in his ears, an endless beat that struggled against his heavy eyelids. Far below a colossal vine skimmed along the top of the mists, guiding his path. Once every kilometer a knot of foliage marred the otherwise unbroken bridge, the only evidence of the greatvine support that fell into the mists.
Towroots, perhaps the greatest human achievement. Gaia was small, too small to support the growing population of those that called her home. Millennia ago – long before the first Ilaar war and when the Erithule still flew through the skies – Gaia had been the only island humanity called home, and she had been overflowing. Too many people and too little land to feed them lead to endless infighting for resources. To make matters worse this was before the unification wars, so even while small groups fought amongst themselves, rival duchies squabbled, rose, and fell, entire armies dying for a kilometer of rocky farmland.
“Countless laws and decrees tried to curb the overpopulation, but they never really worked. People’ll have kids whether they’re planned or not, and the margins were dangerously thin. When your ‘nation’ is nothing but a single city, its hard to guess what your population needs’ll be in the future. Maybe there’ll be a plague or a costly battle. Suddenly you don’t have the people needed to work the fields or guard your borders, and even if you lift all the laws against having more kids than’s allowed, it’ll take years before that new generation replenishes what you lost. Most of duchies were just city states and just couldn’t survive that long.”
“Enter Vadal Emcher, a court alchemist for some duchy or another. Most so-called ‘alchemists’ from the time were nothing more than bearded quacks who would get high off whatever they could find then decide their hallucinations were premonitions.”
“Not Vadal. Bloke actually knew a thing or two. Story goes he was walking through a plum orchard when he sees a tree with two different colored fruits. Asks a field hand and they explain to him how it’s grafted. Vadal latched onto the idea and wanted to know more, so he started off doing experiments with roses and the like. Guy was obsessed, stopped responding to summons and locked himself away. Pretty soon he lost his position in the court and basically became a pauper, but he still couldn’t let it go. Years of failures passed until one day he tried grafting pulsevine with arrowhead. He’d used pulsevine before but this time he spent every last cent he had left chartering a ship to take him into the mists.”
“About a klick down the graft exploded with pulse, sealing the joint and adding a whole foot of growth. Except it wasn’t just pulsevine anymore, and it sure wasn’t arrowhead either. Wait, I should probably tell you about arrowhead. It’s –”
I don’t really care.
“Your loss, it’d later be the graft that led to the bag.”
Even more reason to skip it. Thanks to me you can already breathe at altitudes where those ridiculous masks stop working.
The wyrm zipped before his vision, mouth stretched in an exaggerated yawn. Korin snarled but could not help himself as his own jaw wrenched itself open in an involuntary movement, fatigue shattering his focus.
“Stop yawn that! You’re supposed to be helping me stay awake!”
I just can’t help it, their lips peeled back into a devilish grin, It’s so fascinating. You just . . . copy me. It’s like magic, you can’t even help it.
“Magic’s supposed to be fun. This is just another reason in a long list of why you’re a bully.”
They huffed, I’m having fun, does that make it count as magic?
“Nope, just means you’re sick. Can I keep going? It was getting to the good part.”
Sure, another slight yawn followed by a chuckle, If it helps. Honestly, I’m surprised you know all this. You’re usually so resistant to anything that requires studying.
“History’s not something you study,” Korin scoffed, “It’s just history.”
Your logic never fails to astound.
“It’s different, trust me. History’s actually fun, which by its very definition means you can’t study it. Everyone knows that.”
I’ll file that away with the “things humans know”, right beside “grabbing a puckle with your hand is a good idea” and “Business before bath.”
“We’re not doing this again.”
All I’m saying is that realistically lots of things have defecated in your bathwater before you came along and decided to claim it, so adding one more really doesn’t make nearly as much of a difference as –”
“Almost overnight Vadal’s discovery was all anyone could talk about. A slew of other alchemists calling themselves floramists – and even later floraficer – built off his work and started making discoveries of their own. Pulsevine grafted onto sage grows that stringy stuff they put inside bandages. Use flax instead and the oil you get from pulping the vines burns almost as long as glorm oil – cleaner too.”
“But the real show didn’t start until Vadal’s protégé showed up: Emara. Genius of a kid, had half a dozen grafts to her name by the time she was my age, but no one really cares about those. Only thing she’s known for is when she tried a splice with some type of weed – Himdome? Rhisone? – whatever, doesn’t matter. When the new graft was flown into the mists the whole thing exploded with so much growth it nearly sank the ship. Several tons of these woody roots encrusted the hull in about as much time as it took the captain to breach. No one had ever seen so much material come out of so little pulse.”
“At first they tried to use it for construction materials for houses and the like – but while they could make a lot of it the stuff it was still just intertwined roots: full of holes and too light to be used in anything structurally important. After a couple years of failed attempts to find a use for it other than mulch most people forgot about it.”
Your tone says your about to introduce some other dead human’s name, and I’m telling you right now, I will not remember it. Intentionally and habitually.
“Fine, that was until an absolute madman of an engineer came up with the crazy idea to try and make Gaia bigger. Using Emara’s graft he suggested building hundreds of kilometers of scaffolding and growing the roots all over them, then taking these long root ropes and trailing them out behind Gaia as she floated through the great currents. Whenever she crossed paths with a smaller island on its own journey you take a bunch of these ropes and connect them to it as it passed. Gaia’s weight does the rest and, assuming the ropes hold, humanity has a new plot of land.”
“Of course something had to keep the towroots from falling into the mists so greatvine cuttings were seeded every kilometer or so act as supports so the whole thing stays in the air. But people being people everyone thought the engineer was insane and he was long dead before the first towroot was actually grown. It wasn’t until towards the end of the unification wars Queen –”
Don’t care.
“Had more money than sense and decided to give it a go. Little more than a thousand years and a hundred forty–nine islands later, humanity has more landmass than any other known cradle.”
Congratulations, they started another yawn but Korin managed to look away in time, You managed to put someone who’s physically incapable of unconsciousness to sleep.
“Why are you so adamantly against hearing about this? You love random facts.”
Useful facts. I can’t even begin to fathom the thought process behind writing down – let alone reading about – the lives of long dead humans.
“Weren’t you telling me how Snaps were able to see better? How’s micro-whatits in their eye goop anymore useful or interesting than history.”
Because it’s about me. Or at least others like me. It’s another reason why humans would be little more than animals without us. Especially you.
“So you only care when you’re involved?”
Do my words mean what I think they mean? Yes that’s exactly what I said.
“So many things make more sen –”
Shh.
“Did you just –”
Shut up! Is that it up ahead?
“Huh, really?” Korin squinted, straining to see anything in the dark. Looking away his peripherals could barely see a glimmer of light far ahead.
“Ah,” he sighed, “Just a knot village. You remember how I said the towroots are held up by greatvines every few kilometers or so? Sometimes the seeded cutting gets a little bigger than expected and makes a tiny spot of land big enough for settlers. There’re thousands of little fishing villages spread out along the towroots. It’s still far too early for us to see the light from Port Grove.”
Can we make a quick stop anyway, find something that’ll keep you awake better than boring stories?
Korin chuckled, “I doubt they’ll have coffee. Or tea. Or another blackblood shot.” his limbs tingled, a dull numbness holding the pain of pulseburn at bay.
“Besides,” he continued, “It’s probably a delver knot. Uniform like me shows up all alone I’m likely to get knifed. It’s better if we don’t stop. Now, let me tell you all about the unification wars and the fall of the Shailic church.”
–––––
“Waypoint in two,” Glispin echoed with Lore’s voice, “Stow your stuff and find your seat. Ready on the core, Revan, mooring with half tick draw.”
Her body stirred as it hung from the roots of the helm. Distantly she could feel her limbs shudder in anticipation of movement. How many hours had it been?
It matters little, he said.
I care, Lore griped, I’m the one that has to deal with the soreness because someone refuses to give me a hand.
I don’t have hands.
You know what I mean.
Pain is important. It tells you when you’ve done something you shouldn’t, like drink twice your weight in beer or spend eight hours at a helm that doesn’t need your attention.
Lore mentally winced, Eight hours? You sure you couldn’t just take the edge off?
My answer is known.
It’s not like I was wasting my time steering. Every ship takes time to get to know, and this one’s chock full of personality. Just this once?
No.
Well, you know I had to ask.
You didn’t.
Taking a moment to look through her body’s eyes she could see the glow of the waypoint through the helm viewports straight ahead. A soft, pale blue light bleeding through the mists. She had sensed it nearly an hour before, a knot of twisted pulse marring the otherwise smooth flow of the current through which they flew.
Now that it was visible the glow grew stronger by the second, the shape of the waypoint slowly sharpening as they approached its craggy surface. An island, forever caught in the current and slowly floating through the mists came into focus. Forests of vines fluorescing in the surrounding pulse gave the massive lump of rock it’s eerie glow, and the only way Lore could navigate her way towards the docks was to sense where the vines had been cut away.
Pulling in the sails she engaged the core, maintaining the flood of pulse through Glispin’s web even as she flared scale-like airbrakes on the outside of the hull. Unlike with their wind powered counterparts, pulsesails did nothing to drive the ship forward. Little more than sheets to gather the surrounding pulse, the thrust originated from the web. Starting at the core and grown entirely throughout and around the hull, suffusing the vines with pulse made the ship buoyant. Forcing even more power through the vines gave them thrust. But despite how it looked from the outside, the web was not a cohesive whole.
Unless she consciously redirected the power, each sail only powered the part of the web that was closest to it. Currents were nothing more than hollow tubes of pulse twisting through the mists. When Glispin was directly in the middle, her shape and the orientation of the sails made it so that pulse was gathered equally from all sides, keeping her straight even when Lore was away from the helm. If the current started to turn, the sails closest to the edge would dip into a layer of denser pulse, pushing more through their side of the web, and correcting the ship’s course without any need for human input.
But now was not the time for automatic adjustments. With the sails stowed Lore personally poked and prodded the web, drawing from the stored pulse in the core and applying it where she needed to maneuver Glispin with perfect precision. The silhouette of docks chiseled into the stone swam into view, outlined by loosely woven cords of glowing vines. Easing Glispin into position landing struts unfolding from below in the final moments before touching down. A final breath and she released the core, a terrible silence engulfing the ship as the web fell silent. Retreating back into her body Lore squirmed as a shiver ran down her spine.
We are safe, he murmured, reassuring.
Lore shook her head, “I know. Still makes me nervous. Sounds like death.”
Her disquiet was forgotten the moment she took her first step. Every muscle screamed in agony, protest at having been still and standing for so long. Lore winced all the way from the helm as every movement sent a new tongue of fire through her limbs.
“Too long,” she winced, “It’s been way too long since I did a full shift. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Would you have listened?
“No, but at least I wouldn’t’ve blamed you.”
Doubtful.
Easing her way through the hatch into the commons Jules greeted her by shoving a coat and two packs into her arms. The first was nothing more than a large satchel with a long, cracked leather strap speaking to years of use. The other was much smaller, and made Lore’s mouth twist in distaste.
Nicknamed “the bag”, apparently it had once been just that. Thankfully Lore had not been alive during those times, else she doubted she would have become a sailor. Worn in front on the chest the bag was a small pouch made of multiple layers of a thin, fine cloth. Woven from the fibers from a graft of pulsevine, it allowed gas to pass through it while trapping any oxygen inside. A mask attached by a thin string of the same material fitted over the face and allowed its user to breath so long as there was enough oxygen in the surrounding air to make such a thing possible. A far larger version of the bag sat in the bowls of the ship - called the lungs. Holes at the bow and stern flooding its chamber with mist.
“And here I was thinking I wouldn’t be needed for this run.”
Jules grinned, “You know how it is. First waypoint, need as many backs as we have to stock up the stores.”
Lore groaned, “You mean they’re empty? It’s a gambit run, the captain could have splurged a little so we didn’t need worry about food these first few stops.”
“This isn’t Draken. No rockhopper’s able to afford a whole hold of rations. And even if we could, why waste the coin on what we can hunt?”
Grumbling Lore pulled her arms through the coat sleeves, sucking air through her teeth as its weight settled on her sore shoulders. Stowing the bag in a thin mesh pocket purpose built into the garment she let the mask hang as she followed Jules into the back and down the ladder, past the core, and into the cargo hold.
The three men were already waiting, masked and bundled. Looking past to the hold beyond Lore sighed at the depressing sight. Aside from a couple boxes of emergency rations, some spare tools, materials, and vital system replacements it was completely empty. At least the water tanks were full.
“Nice landing,” Ivan remarked eyes smiling behind a wholly scarf, “Didn’t even need to use a handhold.”
Revan said something that sounded like an attempt at a counterpoint but it was far too quiet to catch. Beside him Jules dug into a belt pouch and pulled several brilliant green tendrils from within. Handing one to everyone the tendrils slowly curled and wiggled on their own, silklike threads at one end undulating like whips.
“Grew them just this morning. Strong crop, should have a range of a couple, maybe three kilometers.”
While the others groaned Lore happily took hers and fed it into her left ear. Nobody liked the graft nicknamed “the worm”, but she could not fathom why. It made your ear feel plugged for only an instant before it was locked into position, and the moment before the small hairs stopped writhing it felt like they were scratching an itch she had not even known she had, and never could have reached.
Hand on the release for the loading ramp Petal eyed Lore up and down, “No weapon? This island may be tame compared to what lies ahead, but that’s no reason to grow complacent,” unclasping his coat he opened one side to reveal a small armory of blades and short spears, “If you don’t have one, I could lend you one of mine. Perhaps even the crossbow if you can lift it.” He motioned to a massive piece of artillery slung over his broad back. It looked more a small ballista than a crossbow, the holster of projectiles beside it better described as a pod of spears than a quiver of arrows.
Lore smiled, “No need,” she held up her hand over which she grew a layer of bark, roots like cruel claws slowly lengthening from her fingertips, “I prefer my own.”
Nodding in approval the hunter disengaged the locks and heaved at the wheel, lowering the ramp. Cold mist rushed into the room, first covering the floor, then the entire hold in the dense fog. Beyond several windowless stone huts hacked free of vines waited beyond the dock, the footpath to them cleanly kept and outlined with tightly controlled foliage.
“Something’s wrong,” Jules voice sounded clearly through the worm and echoed again behind Lore’s back, muffled behind her mask.
“I feel it too,” Petal joined it, “A difference.”
Lore looked out from the hold, unable to see anything out of the ordinary. The group stood in silence, ever member lost in thought.
Ivan broke the silence, “Did anyone’s ears pop?”
Everyone sighed a collective “Oh!” as the tension eased out of the situation.
“My bad,” Lore laughed, “I slowly raised the cabin pressure on our approach. Makes opening the hold seal more comfortable. Didn’t think I’d need to mention it.”
“And that,” Ivan sounded like he was grinning, “Is what comes from hiring a professional.”
“I still think I might feel a little dizzy,” Revan pipped up.
Jules scoffed, “We’re not nearly deep enough for that. If Carver’s not getting out of this trip neither are you.”
Leading the way to the nearest hut Petal disappeared through an empty door frame, only to return moments later with several chain nets filled with traps and tools, each displaying varying degrees of rust. Dumping the contents in a pile in the middle he motioned for all to join as he started pawing through it, inspecting each piece of equipment. Once more feeling her soreness Lore slowly settled on her haunches and set to work.
Jules said what Lore was thinking, “Honestly, we’re still on Lee’s current, some other crew had to have been here recently. They probably did a good enough job checking for us to skip this part.”
“Its you,” Petal glared at her from across the pile, “People like you that are the reason behind this,” in his fist he shook a hunting trap that was more rust than metal. He tried to put it down but the violent treatment finished what time had started, and it fell apart before reaching the ground.
“Look at it,” he sounded close to tears, “Perfectly good equipment ruined by neglectful, wasteful, careless –”
Jules cut him off, “Then let’s just use ours. No need to bother with these pieces of junk when ours are so much better kept.”
Ivan’s face scrunched together and he whispered a quiet “Well” before Petal spoke over him.
“And add unnecessary ware to tools we’ll need for the next decade? Tell me, if one of ours breaks a year from now because you insisted on using it at every waypoint, how will we fix it?”
Ivan was still muttering to himself, faithfully transmitted by the worm, “. . . ‘Better’ is a little generous . . .”
Jules was getting louder, “Just do an iron run, grab the ore to fix it up.”
“And tell me, floraficer,” Petal’s eyes flashed, “What blacksmith using what forge will make these repairs? Or do you think you just hit a rock with a hammer and a tool just pops out?”
“. . . even ‘adequate’ might still be a bit of a stretch . . .”
“How should I know? My stuff just grows, like tools should.”
Lore felt the need to join in, “I mean it’s not as good as iron but I could grow you something in almost any shape out of vinewood.”
“ . . . pretty sure some of the teeth are chipped. . .”
“Wood!” Petal’s voice cracked as rattled the pieces of broken trap in her face, “You want to try making one of these out of wood? This is strong enough to crack the shell of an adult kruop and you think you could make one strong enough out of wood?”
“Well, surely not that one,” Revan spoke yet no one paid him any mind.
“ . . . couldn’t have afforded much more . . .”
“I wasn’t saying it would or wouldn’t work, but if it helps I could –”
Jules cure her off, “Don’t apologize to him. He’s just upset because I suggested we don’t waste hours on something he’d spend all day on if he could.”
“I wasn’t apologizing I just –”
Petal bellows echoed around their stone surroundings, “When we die of starvation surrounded by shattered wooden equipment and useless lumps of unforged iron ore I hope –”
“Wait hold on, what?”
The yelling cut as all eyes turned to the captain, mouth open, his next words dead on his lips.
“Huh?” he asked, the picture of innocence.
“What was that you just said? I could have sworn I heard the words ‘docking’ and ‘pay’ in the same sentence.”
“Uh,” more moisture than could be blamed on the mist beaded on his brow, “Are we using our tools or the communal ones?”
“The communal,” Petal said with a note of finality, putting an end to the argument.
––––
That has to be it.
Korin wiped the condensation from his face, squinting through the clouds. Half an hour before a thick layer of clouds had blown in from the west, obscuring the towroot and forcing Korin to fly dangerously close to the bridge of roots, lest he lose his way.
Following the wyrm’s gaze Korin released an exhausted sigh of relief, worry and tension leaking out of him. Even through the wall of grey he could see the fierce glow up ahead, a sea of light bright enough to reach him.
He tried to give a whoop of excitement, but managed only a pitiful gurgle that bubbled in the back of his throat.
That’s the spirit, finish strong.
“I don’t need the encouragement.”
Keep telling yourself that. I’m the one that feels like I’m tied to a boat with more holes than hull.
Korin wanted to reply in kind but his mind refused to cooperate. He could feel the blackblood wearing off, every moment he kept his body in the air feeling like he was pulling a mountain. Even so he climbed, punching through the clouds to the clear air beyond.
Port Grove hung before him, a dizzying mess of lights and activity even in the late evening hour. Legions of oil lamps lined the streets, setting the sky above the city alight with the smoldering fire. Free from the night’s oppressive grip the docks bustled with bodies crowding on and around a fleet of ships heralding from every corner of Gaia’s web.
Eyes drifting past the docks, he searched for something he had never before seen and been given only the barest of descriptions.
“Crenels. What kind of description is that? Something with crenels? Everything has them! Who built this town?”
She also said it was far too big for one person.
“Like that helps,” Korin swerved to dodge a mast, heads tilting up and shouts ringing out as he passed, “An outhouse is can be too big for someone if you’re small enough. So we’re looking for something with crenels along the roof and either the size of an outhouse or mansion.”
You’re making this harder than it needs to be.
“You’re right. There’s an easier way.”
Falling from the air Korin landed with a thud on the deck of a small caravel. Sailors jumped in surprise, one nearby falling over in his haste to back away.
“You,” Korin jabbed a finger at the first sailor he saw, his voice a rasp from talking himself awake for the entire trip, “Where’s the governess’ house?”
“I – um – it – um” his eyes looked everywhere except at Korin, his feet shuffling as he stammered.
“Before we die of old age, please.”
“It’s – um . . .”
“It’s that way, sir” another man with a nasally voice spoke up from behind him, his finger pointing towards the eastern quarter of the city, “Take Turner street to –”
Korin cut him off, “Not taking streets.”
“Right,” the man flushed, “Right, uh – it’s got a wall? Grey cobble, I think.”
“And a big garden,” another shouted from the rigging, “I seen it. Trees all overgrown with vine glowin’ brighter than the lamps.”
“That’ll work,” Korin limped to the taffrail, the bruises down his legs making his movements unwieldy and stiff. “Thanks for the directions,” he called over his shoulder before rolling over the wooden rail back into the sky. He could hear a thunder of steps rock the deck as everyone rushed to one side, but by the time they had reached it Korin was already lost to the night.
“See, easier.”
You just bought their drinks for the next week with that story.
“It’s not like they’ve never seen a bonded before. Probably more than a couple dozen ships from some of the larger companies docked here that have a couple dozen as guards.”
And how many of those have they talked to?
“I couldn’t begin to guess.”
You don’t have to, the answer’s none. And are you telling me there’s no difference between a military bonded and a civilian?
“No, of course not, that’s not what I was saying, it’s just the way you said that made it sound like I was the only one for kilometers.”
You chose to hear that, and you were wrong. I can’t help you being wrong.
Korin ignored them, “Down there. Think that’s it?”
Grey cobble wall and a garden that looked like it got puked on by the mists? Yeah I’ll bet that’s it.
Banking right Korin stumbled as he landed on the front step, collapsing into the door as he his legs gave out beneath him. The racket was a serviceable knock, and by the time he managed to regain a semblance of his balance the door had opened to reveal a woman in a starched vest and pants. The master servant’s mouth was set in a thin line below a scowling brow topped by slate grey hair held back in a simple braid.
“What is the meaning –” she paused, seeing Korin’s uniform. Her eyes wandered over the rank on his left shoulder – a mere airman – then down to the insignia encircling both of his sleeves: a serpent biting its own tail, stitched in bronze thread and crossed by a single thunderbolt outlined in silver.
“Can I help you?” She began again, still blocking entryway.
At least she didn’t close it.
“Sorry for the late hour, ma’am,” Korin gave a slight bow, unsure of the proper decorum. “But I have a message for the governess,” she said nothing, so he added, “An urgent message.”
“The mistress is currently abed,” her voice was curt, “Give it to me and I will decide whether or not it is worth waking her.”
“No.”
Smooth.
Her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply, preparing to speak, but Korin cut her off, “Apologies for my rudeness, but I’m too tired and this is too important for manners. Either you fetch your mistress immediately, or I’ll wake her myself by flying through each and every window on the top floor until I find her bedchambers.”
Half a minute later Korin stood before a wide, oak desk as a small woman in an evening gown squinted at a piece of paper, eyes still clouded with sleep. Curtains of unbrushed, mousy hair fell before her face, yet she seemed not to notice as she read, captured by the message. In the silence Korin eyed a nearby couch, thoughts of curling up on its cushions making his heavy eyelids sag. After a moment’s deliberation he decided even the floor would suffice.
A shuffle of parchment and the governess carefully placed the general’s message before her, eyes distant. Yet when she spoke her voice was steady.
“Juana, would you be so kind as to pen a missive for me?”
The master servant had a stylus and parchment in hand before Korin even bothered to look.
“By order of Governess Kersh and under recommendation of Brigadier General Barlow, Port Grove is placed under a state of emergency, effective immediately. In accordance with article three of the Social Accords, all ships and manifest cargo, excepting items detailed under section twelve, are now military property. Captains are ordered to jettison all non-flammable cargo, excepting anything under protected classes “a” through “c”, and set heading for Fort Hearth with all possible haste. Lost tonnage will be reimbursed at three-fourths markup as per article seven of the Merchant’s Act using the most recent manifest filed with the Port Grove Registrar.”
“Civilian bonded are hereby drafted and given the rank of recruit and must report to command at Fort Hearth within twelve hours or be charged with desertion and insubordination.”
“Failure to comply with any orders given by the port guard or city militia will result in immediate incarceration and forfeiture without reimbursement of any assets in question.”
“Signed,” she finished, “Governess Kersh.”
Reaching into her desk she withdrew two seals. One was nothing more than a simple stamp which she pressed into a globule of candle wax Juana dolloped onto the bottom of the paper. The second was a larger, a wooden cube with the same seal raised on one side, edged with steel. Handing this seal to the master servant the governess rolled up the missive and tied it with a bit of purple ribbon.
“Take these to the nearest press and have them start making copies,” She ordered, “I don’t want a particular number, just tell them to keep at it until they run out of ink. While they’re preparing the typeset wake the rest of the staff and have them scour the city, I want every crier and urchin with a pair of lungs on every street corner holding a copy of this.” Sending the master servant on her way the governess turned to Korin, “Solider, name?”
Not a soldier, he thought, although at the moment it hardly mattered.
“Airman Ashfall.”
“Can you still fly?” she pointed at his hands. Small black tendrils reached out from beneath his sleeves, fine bruises outlining his veins and curling around the back of his hand. Korin cursed, hiding his hands behind his back.
“Yes.”
“Good,” she turned away from him, taking another sheet of blank parchment and slopping wax haphazardly down its middle. Another press of her stamp and she was pressing the still hot seal into his hands, “Take this with you and find the belltower west of here. Show this to the monks and tell them to keep at it until the sun’s up. Make sure they send word to the other monasteries as well, I don’t want anyone sleeping tonight.”
She paused, the flurry of orders leaving her out of breath. When she spoke again it was much quieter, less sure.
“Are you religious, soldier?”
Korin grimaced, “Not in any meaningful way. If any of the stuff the monks say is out there really exists, I doubt they’d want to listen to me.”
The governess nodded even as she frowned, “Then if you would, while you’re there, ask them to float every prayer of fortune for me? Tell them to use a placard of cedar.”
Korin arched an eyebrow, “Pretty hefty for a simple fortune. Sure you don’t want anything else on it?”
“I fear,” she shivered, “Asking for good luck may already be too much.”
–––––
Lore sweat as she worked, the collar of her coat unbuckled to let the frigid mists cool her sweltering neck. Revan labored beside her, grunting as he helped lay the trap. Even beneath his coat she could hear his pendants clicking together as he worked. They were alone beneath the canopy of vines, the other three having left with different equipment for other hunting grounds. Jules had been right, the worms were a good stock. It had taken nearly an hour before the distance between the two groups had become too great and they had lost contact. A final heave, a click, and Lore stood, wiping her brow and surveying their work.
“It’ll hold, hopefully.”
Revan nodded, “And if it doesn’t, Petal doesn’t need to know. Someone just missed the spot of rust that led to it breaking.”
She huffed, “Right. How many left?”
The tech reached to his back where a limp chain net swung freely, “That was it,” he said, holding up the nearly empty bag. Though there were some spare parts none added up to a full trap.
“Back to the start then. Think it’s been long enough?”
“Hopefully not,” he griped, “Could use a spot of a break.”
Lore grunted in agreement, though it held more annoyance than she cared to admit. Any other Navigator would not be half as tired as she was right now.
Her bondmate stirred in her mind, feeling her irritation.
No.
“Did I say something?” she muttered, too quiet for Revan to hear.
You did not have to, his words rumbled back as a deep purr, You must rely on your own body rather than on what our relationship affords.
“Thanks for reminding me, I’d forgotten you felt that way,” she grumbled, “Just once I’d like to hear something different. ‘Sore muscles? That sounds awful. Here, let me just soothe those away for you. Oh, are you sniffling from a cold? Of course I’ll fix that right up. After all, we live in the same body, so it’s in both of our interests if I help keep it healthy and comfortable.’”
*Your body would grow weak if I fought off every illness, eventually unable to withstand even the slightest malady without my intervention. *
“I’m not asking for every illness, just the annoying ones.”
That is every illness.
“What’s his – her? – name?”
Lore’s eyes snapped up from the ground, looking to Revan. Apparently she had not been as quiet as she had thought. Over the past hour the thin man had lost the air of awe he’d had upon meeting her. Now that she thought about it, even at the onset there had been less groveling. What had changed was a mystery to her, one she did not care enough to solve. Either way the result was welcome – ten years of adoration would have made the trip unbearable. Still, she would have preferred he had not grown quite so comfortable so quickly.
“That’s a rather personal question.”
Revan shrugged, “We’ve got ten years. Today I woke up to the sounds and smells of you destroying the privy three meters from where I slept.”
Ah, she thought, mystery solved.
“By the end of this we’ll know each other better than our own mothers, so the way I see it it’ll be easier if we just get all the personal stuff out of the way sooner rather than later.”
“Your analogy doesn’t really work. Both my parents are dead.”
“Oh,” he fell silent for a moment, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Neither of them were Navigators and they were already in their mid-thirties when I was born. Barring any accidents, I was always going to outlive them by centuries.”
Revan nodded, still subdued, “Was it peaceful?”
“It was. Both in their sleep, about a week apart.”
“Small mercies, then.”
Several minutes passed, the only sounds that of their boots on the bare rock. Vines twisted on either side of them, trimmed back to outline the path like glowing hedges, cultivated by generations of previous delvers who had come before. Due to its relatively high altitude and prime placement along a major current, this waypoint was a guaranteed stop. Deeper in the mists the waypoints were sporadic, transient islands thrown up by the churn and wild in every way. Compared to those, this waypoint was effectively permanent. Perhaps a few centuries from now the vines that held it so high would die to some twist of fate, but for now, it was the next best thing to a delver home. Communal tools and traps housed in stone huts purpose-built to offer some protection from the mists, caches of materials for repairing ships, hunting paths marked by vine hedges, everything a passing crew might need was plentiful and within easy reach. It was safe.
And boring.
“Still waiting on a name.”
Lore smirked, “Thought you’d forgotten. Talking about my parents usually kills most conversations for at least a couple days.”
“Probably would’ve worked on someone with propriety. Just your luck though, I ran out this morning.”
“Never met a delver who hadn’t.”
Revan chuckled, “Stop stalling. Their name.”
“Thalicivus, although I just call him Thal.”
Revan whistled, “Lotta syllables to remember. Why pick something so long just to shorten it?”
“Didn’t pick it. After we bonded that’s what he said his name was.”
He arched an eyebrow, “That how it works? Thought you were the one to pick it.”
“Me too,” she admitted, “And from asking around it seems that’s how it’s worked for everyone else. Not me, though.”
Revan scratched the thin layer of wiry stubble on his chin, perplexed.
“It’s a shame really,” Lore continued, “Given a little time to get to know him, I would’ve picked something far better. Curmudgeon, maybe. Cur for short.”
“Sounds like you two get along.”
She gave a warm smile, “Only in the best ways.” The placid walk had wicked the heat away from her skin, living only the oily film of dried sweat in its place.
“So,” she picked up the end of the conversation, fiddling with the buckles of her collar, “You’re turn. Why take this job?”
“Why does anyone take a gambit job?” he countered, “Money.”
Lore barked a laugh, “Lots of ways to earn money that don’t take up a decade of your life, and every one of them’s safer.”
“Maybe in the short run, sure, but ultimately? We make it to the end the hold’ll be so full of motes and silver none of us will ever have to work another day in our lives, maybe even you.”
“Silver sure,” Lore held up a finger, “But don’t expect me to find that many motes. We come out of this with enough to fill a coin purse I’ll be ecstatic.”
“With you at the helm? Can’t blame me for being optimistic. And sure, it’s long, but if I tried to make that much the usual way it’d take my whole life, and there’d still be a chance I’d die a pauper. Way I see it, this is the short route.”
“That much money’s not as great as you’d imagine,” Lore mused, “Before you have it you think there’d be nothing better than sitting on your ass all day. Then a week passes and now you’re willing to take a job on an icerunner with more holes than hull just to feel the mists again.”
Revan snorted, “You and I are very different. I’d give anything to never see this again.” He spread his arms, waving them across the rocky landscape.
“So what, you get your cut and spend the rest of your days getting fat in the sun?”
“I’m no prug,” he spat. Lore raised an eyebrow at the slur for islander, “But just because I don’t want to get eaten by a spinehusk doesn’t mean I’ll never breathe mist again. I had that kind of money I’d build my own ship. Have ideas for a custom core, even tried a few upgrades on Glispin.”
“Is that why the engine room looks like pons?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled, “Didn’t really have the underlying infrastructure I needed to make all the adjustments, so had to get used to a little clutter.”