After a lovely Week 1, we're back for Week 2! This week features several ingredients that haven't been featured in previous challenges!
If you've never seen Chopped, it's a cooking competition where the chefs open a basket full of wacky ingredients like seaweed and cake balls and have to create a delicious dish.
We want to apply the same idea to making levels! Each week we'll pick 1 style (SMB, SMB3, SMW, NSMBU, SM3DW) and 4 elements from it and you'll have a week to make a BRAND NEW LEVEL. You're allowed to use any elements you'd like to make your level, but you must include the weekly ingredients! Some elements will be the star of the show, might just be a garnish and that's OK!
Alright, your Week 2 style is.. (click to reveal!)
Super Mario 3D World - The fancy one
And your ingredients will be..
Boomerang Flowers - I'm pretty sure boomerangs are magic
Banzai Bills - They're so BIG
Spinies - Very pointy turtles
Warp Boxes - Where will you end up!
Which ones stand out to you? Don't be afraid to get weird with it!
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Let's go over a few important bullet points

• This is not a competition! This is about getting out of your comfort zone and also showing what you can do as a maker!
• Make whatever kind of level you want! Traditional, speedrun, troll (but you're too nice for that right? : D) , puzzle, whatever!
• You can submit your course at any time, even after the week is over (sometimes a great course needs a little more time in the oven)
• This should be a BRAND NEW COURSE THAT DOES NOT EXIST AS OF READING THIS POST.
• Any variation of the ingredients is fair game. (Banzai Bills, CAT Banzai Bills??)
• Again just to reiterate you can use any elements you want, but you must include the 4 weekly ingredients! The theme (underground, desert, sky, etc) and day/night is all up to you!

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• If you have ANY interest in participating leave a comment below saying so! We'd love to know we have lots of awesome levels coming!
• Stop by the stream to see your level played, and join the newly awakened Chopped discord community!
• Submit your level in the comments here whenever you're finished! And please NAME your levels!
• Turn In Your Level Day is Sunday April 2nd, but we will accept late entries (we're cool like that).
• Then tune in on Tuesday April 4th (Chopped Chuesday of course) and we'll see what everyone came up with!

Ok, that's it, you got this! Happy making!

This happened last year but as prom season is approaching, it was brought up again.
My husband and I have been married for 9 years. He has an older daughter, Hannah, who was 18 when this happened, 19 now. Together, we had two kids, Savannah who was 7 when this happened (now 8) and Billy who was 5 when this happened and is now 6.
Hannah and her friends got ready for prom at our house. The plan was also to take pictures on our property as we have a lot of land and some cool stuff there. As it turns out, most of these girls have a lot of siblings that are significantly younger so they had the idea to take a group shot with all of them. At first, Savannah and Billy were all for it.
The girls and their dates started taking pictures. The other parents and the younger siblings were starting to arrive. That’s when Savannah asked me if she could have a friend sleepover that night. As it was getting quite late and we already had so much going on, I told her she could have one next weekend.
Well, this set Savannah off. I really think it was a combo of having so many people over, being overstimulated, a long day of school prior. That was just the cherry on the “it’s hard to be 7” cake. She had a meltdown and stormed into her room, refusing to come out. Both my husband and I tried but she was just not in the mood. We explained this meant a lot to her sister, her friends were down there, no dice.
We only had a few minutes to make a choice. Force Savannah downstairs and she’s miserable, potentially ruining pictures. Or, we let it go.
So, that’s what we did. Billy happily took the pictures. We didn’t elaborate at first as to why Savannah wasn’t there, not wanting to ruin Hannah’s fun. She didn’t seem to mind.
The next day, she asked what happened. I explained. Hannah got upset and said we should’ve made her come downstairs. I tried to explain that would’ve been a bad idea but she insisted that we were wrong.
Savannah, on her own, did apologize. All Hannah had to say is she only gets one prom. I offered to retake the photo but Hannah said the moment had passed.
It blew over, everything was fine. Hannah and Savannah get along great.
And now with prom season coming up, Savannah has seen ads and dresses, etc. She recently asked me, in front of my friend, “remember how I didn’t take a picture with Sissy? I wish I had.” Friend asked me to elaborate, so I explained. Friend told me I was absolutely in the wrong and I should’ve had Savannah come down. If she scowled, fine, but at least she’d be in the picture.
AITA?

I drink maybe 12 beers per night right now. That's cut back from 5 or 6 strong, and I mean strong, rum drinks on week nights. Usually all day drinking on similar pours on the weekends. Switching to beer helped sorta, but when I would run out I'd drive to get more. I've stopped that since.
I always liked the sauce and my tolerance has always been high. Went back to college late in the game and that didn't help.
Candles on the cake, my fiance cheated on me with a friend of ours, this well before it became a problem. Left with him that night and I basically never heard from her again. Told me she got cold feet. She claimed my favorite bar so I couldn't even go there or they would walk in at random. Rather avoid it.
Spent the next six months high and hammered 24/7. Happened to start my first real job right about then too. No idea how I didn't get fired. Spent 8 months hammered there and even got a promotion. Got a job offer making about 45% more in Florida and took it. Job was shit, paid more but not enough for how much hair I lost to stress. Drank occasionally, but probably not problematically.
Christmas Eve this year my ma got the news that she had cancer. Started at stage one and progressed to stage 3a within 3 months. I picked up bills and the bottle again. She is now at 3c.
I got another new job making another 40% bump that allows me to work from home so I can take care of my ma. It's a dream job for a space agency too. High level position that I always wanted and never thought I'd get. Terrified that I am going to fuck this up and destroy my life and squander my luck.
Anyways AMA
tldr: pretty sure I'm an alcoholic that leans on booze during stressful times and I have a feeling it's going to ruin my life.

Part Six
We’d made it back through the maze of downtown to the side opposite from the gym, but it didn’t matter. Not only were the ones from the gym still after us, along with a few more dreamers they’d picked up along the way, but up ahead was another group of fifteen or so men and women were running towards us with impromptu tools and manic grins that both flashed murder with each bouncing step closer. They were practically skipping towards us as they guffawed and giggled, and it might have been funny if not for the dead ice in their eyes.
“Jesus. We…In here!” I’d spotted the garage door of an old-fashioned service station across the street—it was propped open a foot by a cinder block, and while it might have been a trap set to lure us in, I didn’t really think the people of Braxton had had the time or the sense to arrange it so quickly. These people…they didn’t move or look right, and not just because they were crazy and trying to kill us. They all looked off somehow. Maybe it was the way they moved, or the loose way the skin hung on their cheeks, even when pulled back with their fishhook smiles. They were becoming something different, though whether it was less or more, I couldn’t say.
All of those thoughts were in the back of my mind as we rushed over to the door and I tried to pull it up further for Mrs. Graves and Mr. Holliman to crawl under. The door only budged a few more inches before it let out a protesting rusty squeal and would go no further. Graves had already rolled through the gap, leaving a smear of blood in her wake, and Holliman was grunting as he sucked in his stomach and pulled himself past the door. Gasping with exhaustion and terror, I looked over my shoulder to see how far away the crowds were. The one cutting us off was still some distance away, though they were moving fast, but the ones behind us since the gym were thirty yards at most. I dropped to my belly and rolled through the gap, kicking the cinder block free as I went.
It all happened in a few harried seconds, but as I was getting to my knees I already realized the problem. The block had been so easy to kick away because the door hadn’t dropped back down when I let go to scoot under it. It was stuck, and as I stood up and started pulling on the other side, it immediately became clear that neither me nor Holliman’s frenzied yanks and kicks were doing much good.
“Back here! There are tires! Wedge them under!”
Mrs. Graves’ voice was soft but strident, cutting through my panic as I followed her words to the back wall of the garage. There were several stacks of old tires back there, including several truck tires big enough to block the door gap if put end to end. Holliman ran with me to the back, yanking tires down and sliding them across the concrete floor to jam them into the space between the ground and the edge of the door. They were on the other side, clawing and pounding and laughing their heads off as they told us to let them in, but either they didn’t catch on that we were plugging the hole they could crawl through or they just didn’t care. A couple of minutes later we had five tires jammed across the opening, with the last bit of space partially blocked by a heavy-duty hand truck we stuffed into the corner and ran through with chain to the last tire so it wouldn’t be easily removed.
Yet for all that, I knew it would only take a few minutes for the mob to dismantle our defenses, and that’s assuming they couldn’t force the door up themselves. I looked over and saw the same worries on the faces of Holliman and Graves.
She looked past me and nodded towards the far corner. “There’s a door back there. You better go close it in case they come in that way.”
Turning fast, I saw what she meant—an open door that seemed to lead to the store part of the gas station. Heart in my throat, I went to the door and peered through it. The store itself still seemed empty and intact, but I could see more and more people gathering outside. I jerked backward, afraid they might see me through the glass despite the darkness inside the store, but peeking back out a few moments later, there was no sign that they had. Still, they’d seen us go in here, right? Why weren’t they coming in after us?
Stepping back through the door and closing it behind me, I quietly slid over a mechanic’s creeper and propped it under the knob before turning back to my employers. Holliman had managed to tourniquet Mrs. Graves’ upper arm with her belt and bandage her forearm with a strip from his shirt, and while the strip of cloth was already turning red with blood, it was definitely an improvement from how she’d looked a few minutes earlier. Other, of course, from the fact that she looked as terrified as I felt.
I walked back over to them, keeping my voice low. “Why aren’t they coming in? There’s more around on the store side, but they weren’t even really looking in through the windows. It’s like they forgot we’re in here.”
Holliman grimaced and gave a nod. “That’s probably exactly what has happened. We need to be very careful to not make noise or let them see us.”
I frowned at him. “But how does that work? Are they like so crazy or brain-damaged that they don’t remember chasing us in here just now?”
Graves shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Based on what we’ve seen and what we know, they may be insane, but they retain a large degree of sophistication. I think this is just…well, a measure of protection we’re being provided by our service, even here.”
I felt a flare of anger at her carefully chosen words. “Oh, so more magic from ‘our service’? And what exactly do we serve again? Because I seem to always miss out on that part.”
Holliman started turning red. “Clint, now is not…”
I raised my hand and cut him off. “Fuck it. Just save your bullshit. You’re actually right. We’re about to die, and I’d rather focus on that not happening. Any ideas?” I glanced between the two of them. “Either of you?”
A look passed between them and then Holliman glanced toward the shadowy back corner of the garage. “I don’t think there’s another way out of here, but even if there was, they’d just be after us again as soon as we ran. But if they’re that discombobulated…Clint, how many do you think are out there right now?”
I shook my head. “Shit, I don’t know. There were probably thirty or forty following us, right? And another twelve or fifteen trying to cut us off.” I glanced back toward the store side of the gas station. But when I was closing the door I could see out the windows pretty good and…yeah, there are still more coming.”
Holliman fluttered his hand in frustration. “Yes, I understand. But how many? By your best guess?”
Scowling, I gave a shrug. “I don’t know. Probably a hundred or more if none of them are leaving again.”
He gave me a grim smile. “Good. That may be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
Wiping his forehead, he gestured up at the fluorescent light sullenly illuminating the dingy garage we were in. “Have you wondered about the electricity? Not every place has power it seems, but some do. And where is that coming from? Is there an active power plant within the bubble of this place, filled with giggling electricians and engineers that are keeping the lights on? Or are there power lines running outside the bubble to where time and nature move differently? Some kind of life line to the world outside this…” he waved around at the garage, his face contorted with disgust. “This insane hell?” He waggled a finger. “No. Neither. The thing that has taken this place and its people is keeping the lights on. Keeping the people asleep until now, feeding on their dreams and using a bit of that power to maintain certain things for whatever reasons. Perhaps to more easily lure in the occasional traveler, though that’s just a guess. And it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it takes resources, and the more dreamers we take from it, the weaker it will become.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, no shit. But I don’t think these fuckers are going to let us get near them with the eyedropper. And they don’t look too sleepy either.”
Holliman started to give an angry reply when Mrs. Graves put a hand on his arm and my own. “When they were in that dream state, the Elixir was the only way to end that connection. If we had simply gone around and killed them, their deaths would have provided a powerful boost to this thing, perhaps more than just letting it feed on them until they could no longer be sustained. It would have been akin to a ritual sacrifice.”
I felt my stomach twist as I saw where this was heading. “And now?”
She let out a long, tired sigh. “Now? Now it has had to wake up part of them. Sacrificing the power of their dreams to create a standing army to eliminate a threat—us. Unless and until they sleep again, that power is lost.”
Holliman cut in. “And if you’re right, and there are a hundred or more out there, and given those we’ve already dosed, we could move past the breaking point in one fell swoop.”
I stared at her. “You’re talking about killing them, aren’t you? Murdering a hundred people.”
Graves shook her head. “No. Not murder. Self-defense. They will kill us eventually, and in horrible ways. This place…we’re trapped here. Hard as it may be to hear, it’s going to be either them or us.”
Holliman snorted. “Enough of this. We can moralize after we’re no longer in danger.” He pointed to the abandoned sedan sitting in the far corner of the garage. “Clint, go look for gas and oil. If you can’t find much, see if you can syphon some from that car. I’d guess we’ll need at least twenty gallons to spray them all down.”
I backed up a step. “What’re you talking about? You’re going to walk out there and what? Spray them down with oil and gas and set them on fire?”
He chuckled. “No. That’d be suicide. Don’t be an idiot.” He pointed to a skylight above the sedan. “I’m going to have you pry that open and we’ll go onto the roof and spray it down on them. If we’re careful and they don’t see us, they may just let us do it until it’s too late. But first you need to find something liquid that will burn.”
I looked back at Graves. “And you’re okay with this?”
She looked on the edge of tears. “I’m not okay with any of this, but we don’t have a choice. We have a job to do, and they will kill us otherwise. Please Clint.”
Holliman looked ready to argue further, but I cut him off. “Save it. I’m doing this because you’re both right, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that. I feel the same way. Will you please go find us some flammables while I stay with Gracie?”
“Sure…I…yeah, sure.”
The garage was big enough to hold two cars at a time, but with only the one slot occupied, I didn’t think there’d be much to really search. Most of the walls were lined with tools, and there were miscellaneous pieces of equipment along the perimeter, but it wasn’t until I started around the car that I saw something of interest.
It was a pair of feet.
I let out a gasp and started to back away, but something stopped me. This…wasn’t right. The feet were laying at a weird angle and looked…lifeless. Taking a couple of steps forward, I could see more of the man’s body.
He had clearly been dead awhile, though it was to tell how long in this place, and it wasn’t hard to see how he’d died. A box cutter still lay clasped in his withered hand, stained from the gash he’d put in his own neck at the end. I thought about the cinder block at the door and wondered if he was the one that had put that there, maybe hoping someone else would come along and rescue him for a time before he gave up hope.
Tears springing to my eyes, I looked over at his other hand. It was a plastic grocery bag, and inside were the dried ruins of what had probably once been half an ice cream cake, along with plastic plates, candles, and other party supplies. Jesus. This looks like he was going to his kid’s birthday party.
I stumbled back a step before my eyes caught on a large metal drum in the corner. Black painted letters were stenciled along the side, with the first line saying “50 gal”. Below that, was a longer line. “Waste Oil.” Stepping cautionly by the poor dead man, I gingerly rocked it. It felt most of the way full. Sighing, I looked back down at the birthday bag.
When I came back around, Graves and Holliman were looking at me with expectant desperation. I nodded. “I found a drum back here. I think it has like thirty or forty gallons of old oil in there.” I threw a small plastic bag at Holliman’s chest. Flinching, he fumblingly grabbed it and looked at it before giving me a sullen stare.
“Party balloons?” His face split into a grin as he began to laugh softly. “Oh, I see. Yes. That should work well. Yes, yes.”
“Yeah. Let’s just…let’s hurry and get this done. Come help me get the barrel out.”
Easing up from his spot next to Mrs. Graves, he bustled over past me, still chuckling. “Sure thing, chief. Time for a fire tonight!”
Frowning at him, I turned to look back at Graves, her eyes wide and more fearful than when we’d barely escaped the mob outside. She was mouthing something to me, lips trembling as she tried to enunciate each word clearly across the shadowy space.
"We’re…losing…him."

“Just going for a walk Em. I’ll be back soon!” I hollered down the hallway as I stood on the edge of the doorway, leaning on the front door with my keys in my hand.
“Alright, I’ll get started on dinner. How’s salmon sound?” My wife called back from the lounge room.
“Sounds delicious love!” I said, swinging on my jacket and walking out the front door and shutting it. I strolled down my driveway and onto the footpath. Turning around the corner to make my way to the walking track near my house, I inhaled a big breath of fresh night air. The sky was clear, and I had a stellar view of the stars. I felt so calm and the neighbourhood felt so serene. Ambling down the road, I nodded hello to anyone passing by me.
A couple blocks away from my home and only 50 metres from the walking track, I saw a guy who looked to be in his early-mid 30s dressed up in the most vibrant and flashy activewear I’ve ever seen. Even though it was mostly dark at this point, I was able to make out every detail simply due to how gaudy it was. It was like someone had taken a picture of normal sports clothes and turned the saturation up by 100%.
As I was ruminating on how in the actual hell this guy had bought clothes this bright, he almost walked head-on into me. I did an awkward shuffle to my left to let him pass by me, raising my hand in greeting.
He barrels past me, almost knocking me over. I stumble and regain my balance, straightening up and swiftly turning around, only to see him turn the corner. Slightly surprised by how fast he was walking, I try to push the rude encounter out of my mind, brushing imaginary dirt off my jacket. My hand caught on something, and I dug around in my jacket’s pocket only to pull out a crumpled piece of paper.
I unfolded it to reveal what looked like a rule set. Uneasiness crept into my stomach and I got a strange sense of deja vu. For the life of me though, I couldn’t imagine what could even make me feel deja vu like this. And then I remembered the creepy swimming pool rules and that Reddit post. I’d managed to forget them, but it looked like the rules weren’t done with me yet.
How’d this even get in my pocket anyway? The man in impossibly bright active wear who’d brushed past me earlier had barely touched me for more than a second. There was no way he’d managed to put that in my pocket, but there was no other explanation.
I honestly don’t know. I have no idea why this piece of paper immediately filled me with dread and why I was reacting so strongly to it. I’m normally a pretty level-headed person. I sank down onto the curbside, my legs feeling unsteady. I started to read it.
Hey, to whoever’s reading this. I’m sorry I can’t explain this in person, but I can’t take the chance that you may be someone who means me harm in disguise. That’s why I thought up this (genius, if I do say so myself) system where I write the rules down and print them out to hand around to anyone I see walking. Copy the rules if you get home and make as many duplicates as you can to hand out to other people. Of course, keep one for yourself, remembering these off by heart isn’t ideal.

1. Wear the brightest and most colourful clothes you can, it hurts their eyes to look at you. (Yes, that’s why I look like a parrot.)
2. Try not to walk alone (unless you’re experienced like me), you seem like less of a target that way. And if they do attack, it’s 50/50 whether they go for you or your friend. I like those odds a lot more than death, don’t you?
3. Keep your walks of a medium length. Don’t stay out for too long, and don’t be too short. Try to find that sweet spot in between. Making it too short makes them act desperately, they think their meal’s getting away which makes them more likely to attack and thus, it is more probable for you to die. Too long, and they get bored. Plus, who has time for a long walk?
4. Don’t run at any point. This turns your walk into a run, which has a different ruleset. I can’t help you there, sorry. I’ve never run (for a hobby) before.
5. Have a shower before walking. If you’re sweaty, you smell more appetizing.
6. Walking to your car, or across the street to visit your neighbour isn’t considered a ‘walk’. In my experience, it seems to be that walking for 300m or longer starts the ‘walk’.
7. You may run if you are within 100m of your home (and something is chasing you. No use starting up a ‘run’ for no reason). Any further and your walk turns into a run as I said before.
8. Learn to speedwalk. There are times when you need to get away fast, but can’t run. Watch some professional walkers on YT or something. There’s also the Olympic event, I find it more entertaining to watch than some rando on YouTube. But definitely watch how to get the proper form first for speedwalking, though.
9. Trust your gut. Good advice for life, really, but goes doubly for walking. If you feel like something’s off, it probably is. And best you end your walk early than face the consequences of seriously misjudging a deadly situation. Better safe than sorry, as I always say.
10. Don’t listen to music or podcasts. You need to be attentive at all times.
11. Try not to seem nervous. They read body language very well and this just makes them itch to hunt. They’re predators and any skittish behaviour immediately makes them classify you in their head as prey.
12. Don’t mistake them for dumb, big predators. They are very intelligent, for one and are much, much more than some stupid carnivore. Thinking like that’s just underestimating them, and misjudging them is such a dumb way to go.

Hope this helps you out and I wish you an awesome life stranger. Stay safe.
The paper shook in my hands and my vision blurred. I buried my head in my hands and felt my fear begin to overwhelm me.
“Why?” I murmured. “Why me? Why’d this have to happen to me? Why is this even happening?’’
Shaking my head to clear my mind, I tried to focus. Breaking down wouldn’t help me. I needed to figure out how to get home safely. The rules had probably kicked in by now - I’d definitely walked far enough - and walking home would probably be a death sentence in my state. I wasn’t focused, and I knew I could never follow the rules properly like this. I was only a couple blocks from home though, so maybe I could make a break for it? I could probably maintain a sprint that long. And if I couldn’t, I was sure adrenaline would be able to pick up my slack.
A stupid idea in retrospect.
Taking a few deep, calming breaths, I managed to compose myself. Forming my fists into a tight ball, I rubbed my eyes to clear them. I inhaled one more time and sprung to my feet, ready to run. Dancing on the balls of my feet with nervous energy, I realised that however anxious I was, I couldn’t let it show. Forcing my tense shoulders to relax, I spun on my heel to face back towards my house. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of two eerie glowing orbs, just observing me. How long had that thing been there? Had it been there from the start? Or had it only just appeared?
Had it always been there and I’d just driven past it on my way to work every day without the slightest clue?
These thoughts managed to shatter any semblance of composure I once had. It wasn’t hard, honestly, I was so tense and wired that even breaking a twig could’ve caused me to snap and lose my cool.
I ran. I ran for all I was worth, and then some. I flew home, absolute terror fueling each step I took. I’ve never run that fast in my life, and I doubt I will again. I was tiring fast, after all, I’ve barely run since high school, when I heard frantic stomping behind me that was almost like human footsteps but way too heavy for it to be that. I definitely could have been imagining them, but somehow I don’t think I did. I increased my speed, finding an extra reserve of energy deep within my body and pumped my arms even harder, my legs working overtime. It seemed to work for a bit. The footsteps faltered but then doubled in speed. Despite my best efforts, the plodding footsteps behind me seemed to be gaining. Whatever it was seemed to realise that too, and it slowed minutely, matching my pace so neither of us was gaining on the other. It was toying with me. It knew I couldn’t keep this pace up for much longer and that it had all the time in the world. I swore those footsteps sounded almost predatory.
I almost lost hope then. I almost stopped running and just gave myself up to it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I won’t do that to Em. I resolved to keep running until my inevitable end.
Somehow, someway, I made it to my street. I skidded around the corner and almost fell over when I saw what greeted me. Construction workers. Shit.
In my ignorance and desperation to get away, I’d ignored the rules for running. And in doing so, I’ve cornered myself between death and… death. I was completely screwed. I needed to run past the construction workers (that had definitely not been there when I’d left so they were 100% of the supernatural kind) to get home.
My shoulders slumped. I dropped to the ground in absolute despair. This was it. I’d never see my wife again, never see her smile or laugh or groan in familiar exasperation at one of my puns. Never get to eat that piece of cake I was saving for later. Never experience the rest of my life, or even return to my monotonous office job.
I lay on the ground, all the fight sucked out of me. I waited for whoever would get me first, the thing chasing me or the construction workers, whatever they really were. I kept waiting. At one point, I wished that one of them would just hurry up and get it over with. I hated the suspense. After a while, I just lost all sense of time, wallowing in a pool of self-pity, laid out on the ground. At some point, I think I came to the realisation that at least, the thing that had been chasing me earlier was gone. Maybe it was afraid of the construction workers and didn’t dare approach closer than I already so stupidly had. I didn’t really care, as long as it was gone.
And as I came to my senses, an ominous clanking and rattle of hammers, drills and various other tools filled my ears and drowned out any other sound. I realised that this had been playing in the back of my head the whole time I’d been on the ground and I’d just been tuning it out. Now, all I could hear was the clang of metal on metal. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tune it out as I’d previously been able to do. And now that I was aware of it, it had some kind of hold over me. I couldn’t ignore it to the slightest degree.
I stumbled away, cradling my head and blocking my ears, wishing desperately that the sound would just. Go. Away.
I felt unsteady, almost like I was drunk. I stumbled about walking in a random direction, not caring where I ended up. I don’t know for how long or how far I walked, only that I wanted those godawful sounds to stop. My head spun and I collapsed on the ground, the sounds of a hammer striking a nail still ringing throughout my head.

I have a plan. Whenever I’ve tried to commit suicide in the past or even had the idea of doing it…I never had a plan. It was always something stupid and impulsive. But this time I have an actual plan. And it honestly is scaring the shit out of me. I have over 750 pills that I have overdosed on before, and someone saved me from it. These pills will cause me to have seizures, and stop my breathing. I plan to drive to a bridge and jump off within 20 minutes of taking the crushed pills. That’s how quickly I began overdosing. I will be so drugged I won’t be able to swim. If my breathing and seizing does not stop from the pills, I will certainly drown.
Part of me doesn’t want to die. But the other part of me feels so lost and broken and scared that I can’t do this anymore. All I wanted was a happy life. But in the last two years alone all I have done is made every wrong decision and lose everyone I love. Everything in my life is falling apart at once. I mean that literally. I have no friends, my family is abusive if I turn to them, my husband just left me and told me he hates me after we just bought a house in October, I now live in a town I cannot stand, my health has declined rapidly and continues to decline, I hate my job so much I go home crying everyday, I apply to jobs daily only to get rejections and no call backs. The list can keep going.
Losing my husband though has been the worst thing. I need him. Things became somewhat toxic between us in the last 4 months. But, I know it could be better now that I realize what I was doing wrong. I want him to love me again. He’s my best friend, he’s my rock, he’s all I have. I feel so lost without him. I feel like half of me has been literally sawed off. I miss him so much. But he hates me. And has turned to drugs instead. I’m not trying to say he’s the reason I’m going to hurt myself but he’s the cherry on the cake to a bullshit life. I don’t mean this in a manipulative way either. I am genuinely so sad I can’t get out of bed.
I can’t do all of this on my own. I have amazing animals that are my world but I cannot even look at them right now. And if I had to give them away to get through this, I would kill myself. I would rather kill myself not knowing who takes them next.
I’m selfish. I know. My pain is overwhelming and I truly feel so fucking alone. I wanted to get help but I have no support or finances to go to the programs I need.
The only thing that could keep me here is hope that I could get my life back. That my husband would come back. That my little family of animals and husband and I will be whole again.
Without that hope, I have nothing.
I’m fucking scared of myself and my impulsivity.

I do not consent to have my story told/shared anywhere else.
Hey all. Long-time lurker, and I've finally been giving the OK to post here due to JNMIL moving out. A lot has a happened, so I'll give a little context. I've been with DH for 10 Years, we're high school sweethearts. JNMIL and I had a rocky start from the beginning. DH felt suffocated by her and tried to hide our relationship at the start, which we were then found out about due to some… sexual incidents that had both parents involved. So, from the very beginning, she saw me as someone who was leading her baby boy astray and tearing him away from her. We've been at odds ever since, or so I thought.
We both got an apartment around 5 years ago, then after 2 and a half we moved back with his family. I've got 10 years of things I could say here about her behavior, but this is just about the most recent issue that we cannot do anything about due to a family member being involved that we want to keep safe. We can't even confront her about ANY of this because of possible retaliation, at l;east not for another year and a half. Anyway, onto the grit of it.
I started developing major health issues around early 2019, and since then, have been scheduling appointment after appointment. I filled for disability, was successfully approved, and have been trying to manage several medical conditions at once. I am in the process of being diagnosed with MS, as it runs in my family. My neuro is about 99.9% sure I have it, I just need to go in for some MRIs and possibly a spinal tap.
If you don't know anything about MS, (Multiple Sclerosis) It's a harsh disease, and It's taken a lot from me and my family. The ability to walk, use the bathroom, speak, just so many things that pile up on you. The thing about MS is that you can get flare-ups, then be okay for a while. They're called relapses and remission periods. This means some days I need a cane, a wheelchair, or I can move around without either. It just depends, as is the way of MS.
Well, after we moved in about 3 years ago, JNMIL and I agreed to be amicable and start over. By this, I mean my JNMIL approached me with the idea of starting over, forgetting the past and trying to strengthen our relationship with each other. Looking back I realized she never apologized, just told me to move on and start over. I should have known what this would have led too. DH had always been trying to just keep the peace, and begged me over and over to just ignore the things she said, to try to look past it over the years. I knew how we both saw this as a great change, so we took it. He now regrets it, and feels terrible for not putting his foot down sooner. I can't fully blame him, and we've worked through a lot of what she's done to both of us. His spine is finally very shiny, as is mine.
Well, shit blew up the last 2 months with his family. JNMIL is divorcing FIL, who doesn't deserve any of this. She finally moved out, and is now a sweet, sweet 12 hours away from us. It feels like we have some breathing room.
Onto my point. After she began to pack her things, I had heard from some people that apparently, the last 3 years have been A COMPLETE LIE.
She still hates me, and everyone in this house and basically the neighborhood knows she hates my guts. I'm talking, shit talked me as soon as I would leave a room, kind of hate. I would use the bathroom without my cane, and she would immediately make remarks about how funny it was that I didn't need it, and that I was embarrassing for faking a disability for government money. This occurred anytime I entered a room while she was in it. I always had a gut feeling I didn't belong, but I brushed it off due to our history and my anxiety issues. Turns out I was right all along, trust your gut kids. She was one of the people I went to ask if I even SHOULD apply for disability, and she ENCOURAGED IT! Yet here I found out the entire time she never believed me, mocked me behind my back, while we lived in the same house.
The icing on the cake? Apparently, everyone knew but me and DH. Everyone in the house knew how much she hated me, and assumed we knew. Why would we have chosen to live here if she hated me? Why would I or DH subject ourselves to that kind of two—faced treatment? I honestly thought I had truly strengthened my relationship with her. I started to actually see her as a second mother. I cried on her shoulders when my mother was hospitalized and almost died. She promised me I would always have a place in their family, only to find out it was all a fucked up lie??
I'm beyond betrayed, heartbroken, but a part of me isn't even that shocked. DH had a final conversation with her over dinner, to find out more about the divorce, and when he asked about me, all she could say was, "I accepted your choice in partners a long time ago." DH didn't even have the chance to respond because she switched the topic back to herself.
3 years of being lied too, of believing we were doing the right thing and that I finally had a place with her only to be spit on. DH and I are heartbroken, and he's truly done with her, as am I. I guess I just don't know what to do from here on out. At least everyone knows now how much of a terrible person she is. I got an apology from some of DH's family because they all thought I knew. The entire family at least knows now how much of a narcissistic piece of work she is, and she has no one to fall back on. I think it's the only retribution we're getting right now for what she's done. I just feel so stupid for even trying to trust her again. The only solace both DH and I have is that we tried to be the bigger people, and that wasn't enough. Nothing will ever be enough for that vile woman.
I have hundreds of stories about this creature of a woman I might post later, but I just had to get that off my chest. Thank you, if you read through it all, I'm just so exhausted.

2020 NOVEMBER
i WRITE WHAT I SEE IN MY MIND
ALL I SEE IS BREAD
SPAGHETTI TELLING YOU GET ME NO BUT TELL ME IF GET ME
CHAD THIS SENTENCE KIND OF HIT ME
HARSHLY HARSHo
THIS ISN'T SPARKLY MARSH
IT'S THE JUNGLE
HOLD UP BABIES WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
WHERE THE PREY ARE PREYED ON IN BUNDLES
STAYED PRAYED PRAYED UP ASKING FOR MORE REASONS TO BE HUMBLE
ANYWAY TO GET UP OUT OF THE JUNGLE
ON ANYDAY DESPITE WHAT THE SAY
LISTEN TO THE PLENTY
THE ONES THE PLENTY SUMS
MANY UM, DIVIDENDS, GLISTENING WHILE MENTIONING.
​
1:47AM EST -
10.2.2020
​

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY 

​

DEAR QQ, NOW IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE MONEY 

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TAKE THE MONEY
HAVE TO PUT IT IN THE OVEN YOU HAVE TO EBAKR THE MONEY
WHEN IT COMES TO THE $$$ YOU'RE THE BAKER
YOU'RE THE MAKER NOT THE TAKER
YET IT IS STILL MAKE IT TAKE IT SIR
YOU HAVE TO LEARN THE WAYS THE MONEY CAN BE MADE SIR
IN ALL OF THE CLEAN AND LEGIT WAYS
WHAT THE GITS SAY
WE THE SENSEI
WE'VE BEEN HEY
NOW WE IN PLAY
IT IS SO EASY
BELIEVE ME
TO TURN THE DOLLAR INTO HE HE'S
TO TURN THE DOLLAR INTO GRAFFITTI
TO CHURN THE DOLLAR LIKE RAFIKI
THE DOLLAR IS REALLY SILLY
THE DOLLAR REPRESENTS NO FREEDOM REALLY
THE DOLLAR REPRESENTS FORCED TAXATION
MORE TAXATION
THROW IT IN YOUR FACE LIKE A VACATION
COMING TO YOU LIVE FROM AN INST GRAM STATION
THE DOLLAR IS THE WATER BALLOON
LEAKING SOON IT'S GOING TO FILL THE ROOM
BETTER ZOOM ZOOM
TOSS THE BALLOON UP IN A JAR
I'M TALKING THE MAGIC JAR
THEN WATCH THE JAR TRAVEL FAR
​
2:12AM EST -
4:19PM EST - 4:52PM
10.6.2020
​
DEAR KIDS
MONEY IS FAKE
SO FAKE IN FACT
THAT'S PLASTIC FRUIT UP ON THE PLATE
SO TELL ME WHAT DO YOU SAY?
CHASING MONEY
MIGHT DO YOU WRONG EMOTIONALLY
I'M QUOTING ME
JUST ASK THE BANKS
THEY ACT SO STANK
THEY WON'T EVEN TELL YOU
ANYTHING OTHER THAN THEY SMELL YOU
ASK THE BANKS WHERE DOES YOUR CASH GO?
AFTER YOU TRANSFER YOUR CASH FLOW
THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY
OVEN BAKE YOUR MONEY
THEN THEY MAKE YOUR MONEY - MONEY
TWICE
ALRIGHT PAYING OTHER GUYS
TO SWAY IN THE MOTHER PRIZE
WHILE IN THE BED YOU LIE
OR LAY THEY GET PAID AND YOU DON'T 5% INTEREST PER DAY
WHOA THAT'S NOT NICE
YET THIS IS HOW THEY PLAY
ON ANY GIVEN DAY
THE MARKET OPENS UP ON SUNDAY
ACTUALLY WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO SAY
ONE MARKET OPENS UP ON SUNDAY
IT CLOSES FRIDAY
5PM BOTH DAYS
LIGHT SAVINGS TIME DAY BEFORE AND AFTER MAY CHANGES THE TIME OK?
ANOTHER MARKET OPENS UP ON MONDAY
TELL ME HOW DOES THE MONEY PLAY - PLAY OUT
PER SAY
AT THE START IT
GOT US FAR AND
​
6:04PM EST - 6:14PM EST
10.6.2020
​
WE ARE JUST GETTING STARTED
IT'S SUCH A GREAT TIME
I JUST WNATED TO SHARE THE GREAT TIMES
I JUST WANTED TO GLARE INTO THE MIND
AND IN TIME
MAYBE YOU WILL FIND
I THANK MY MOTHER
I THANK MY MOM
I THANK MY MOMS'
FOR KEEPING ME CALM
FOR PETE'S SAKE
FOR PETE, LET PETE EAT THE CAKE
AS WE BATTER BEAT THE BEAT ANDE THE CAKE
RIGHT AS WE SPEAK THAT'S ALL WE CAN SAY
PLAYING TO WIN HOW WE PLAY
ALL DAY AND ALWAYS IN THE SCHOOL HALLWAYS
IF IT WAS EVER A CHOICE, CHOOSE HAPPY
WHEN YOU DO NOY INVEST YOUR MONEY
LIFE SEEMS CRAPPY
BE LESS EMO ABOUT THE MONEY
YOU WANT TO SEE MORE
IN ALMOST EVERYTHING YOU CAN SEE THE FUNNY
IF YOU ONYL LOOK DEEP ENOUGH
WITHIN
LISTEN
TO THE INTUITION INSIDE
AS IT IS WHISPERING
Y0U SHALL SEE CHAD LISTENED TO HIS WHISPER INGS
YOU JUST NEED TO PEEP MORE
BELIEVE MORE
BELIEVING IN YOUR SELF
WHOM YOU MUST ULTIMATELY ADORE
I LIVE ALONE I MUST DO MY CHORES
FORE
THE BALL IS HEADING TOWARDS YOU
FOR YOU
BOUT TO TOM BRADY PASS THE BUCC FORWARDS FOR YOU
FOR YOU ARE ADORED BY ME
SO I SPIT SOMETHING CREATIVELY
SHOWING YOU I ADORE YOU - YOU SEE
STEVE COHEN AND WE GOING
​
4:20PM EST - 4:36PM EST
SATURDAY OCTOBER 10TH,2020
10.10.2020
​
DEAR MALIAH,

DEAR MALIAH 

MONEY'S THE LIAR
I'M HERE TO TRY A
DIFFERENT WAY UM TO INSPIRE
IGNITE THE FIRE
IT'S YOU I ADMIRE
SO I ADDED FUEL TO THE FIRE
THE FIRE OF YOUR BURNING DESIRES
CAN YOU FEEL HEAT DEEP DOWN IN YOUR SOUL
THAT'S THE BURNING DESIRE NOW WATCH IT UNFOLD
TRUTH BE TOLD YOUR MIND'S WORTH GOLD
JUST CONTROL THE THOUGHTS AND THE POWER THEY HOLD
USING THE MIND TO FIND WHAT'S WORTH MORE THAN GOLD
IN THE FORM OF IDEAS MY DEAR AND SO BEHOLD
THE BREAD TO WIN LIKE SEAGULLS
EVEN THOUGH YOUR BACK'S AGAINST THE WIND
EVEN WHEN YOUR BACK'S AGAINST THE WALL
YOU'LL BEGIN ENTERING THE VEND
THE VENDING MACHINE
WHERE WE BEND THE CREAM
​
​
5:00PM EST - 5:35PM EST
10.10.2020
​

YOU LOOK AT IT LIKE SAVING MONEY 

BECAUSE WHEN YOU ARE SAVING MONEY IT'S ONLY A BALLOON DEFLATING
WHAT EACH DOLLAR IS WORTH LESSENS EVERY YEAR HONEY
AND THAT'S NOT FUNNY
I SAID THE BAG OF THE MONEY
IF YOU DON'T DO SOME BUILDING
WITH IT MY DEAR
THE BAG OF MONEY WON'T BE A BAG OF MONEY NEXT YEAR
THE FINANCIAL GAME IS MEANT TO SACK YOU
SET UP TO HACK YOU
STRAIGHT UP ATTACK YOU
YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT SMART
DOING MORE THAN PLAYING YOUR PART
PLAY TO WIN FROM THE START
YOU PLAY TO WIN BY WINNING AS YOU PLAY
AS YOU WIN DAY BY DAY CASUALLY
OK OK ANDALAY ENDELAY ENDALEY
IT'S WEIRD TO EXPLAIN
WHAT I SAY HERE
WILL SOUND PLAY WEIRD IN YOUR EAR
BUT LET ME BE CLEAR
YOU'LL SEE ONE DAY MY DEAR
BABY YOUR MY NIECE
BLOODLINE SO TO SPEAK
FAMILY ALL WEEK
FAMILY ALL DAY
I'LL LEAVE YOU ALL PAID
AND TELL YOU HOW I DID IT
REAL TALK
ONE DAY YOU'LL WANT A HOUSE
MAYBE TWO OR THREE
AND THEN YOU RENT THEM OUT
DAILY USUALLY AIRNB
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
​
7:15PM EST - 7:35PM EST
​
MONEY IS SOMETHING I USED
TO HOLD FOR YOU
IN THE FORM OF ASSETS
SOMETHING GROWING THE FASTEST
AT THE END OF THE RAT RACE YOU CAN CASH IT IN
CASH OUT
THAT'S WHEN THE ITSY BITSY PROFITS DROPPED OUT THE RAIN SPOUT
I TOOK MY CASH
AND MADE SURE IT LASTED
INVESTED IT IN AMERICAN BUSINESS
THE FASTEST
COULDN'T SAY I WASN'T WITH THIS
THE SUBJECT OF ECONOMICS YES I GET THIS
WHILE WE USE THIS INFO TO LIFT US
WITH THE GIFTS GOD GIFTED US
SIFTED THRU
MAKE SURE YOU UPLIFT WITH THE GIFTS GOD GIFTED YOU
YOU SEE I HAD MUCH FUN
BEING THE ONE
TO BUY THESE SHARES
I BOUGHT SHARES
'CAUSE I THOUGHT CARE
​
2:15AM EST - 2:29PM EST
10.11.2020
​
SUNDAY OCTOBER 11TH, 2020
​
I SAY WE ARE SAVING MONEY
IN U.S. SECTORS
AMERICAN BUSINESS
ASK HECTOR
AMERICA'S IN IT TO WIN IT
IPO'S AND GOING PUBLIC
WHEN ANOTHER PERSON DRUG HIS
NEW COMPANY THRU THE MUD IT'S
PERSERVERENCE THRU THE CRUD IT'S
JUST GOING TO TAKE A COUPLE MORE BUCKS
TO GET THE UPHILL JOURNEY UNSTUCK
IF YOU THROW YOUR BUCKS IN THIS BUCKET
BEFORE THE MOUNTAINTOP IT TOUCHES
YOU WITNESS THE PROFITS RUSH IN
IMAGINE ALL OF THE GUSHERS THEN MY FRIEND YOU CAN HAVE GUSHING
NO DISCUSSION
2:37AM EST - 2:47AM EST
​
FOR ME HONESTLY
INVESTING MY MONEY IN THE AMERICAN BUSINESS SECTOR WITH HECTOR GAVE ME THE SEPTER
NOW WITH THE SEPTER I'M THE COLLECTOR
OF ALL OF THE EMERGING SECTORS
SECTORS AS IN THE INDUSTRIES
THE TYPES OF COMPANIES
THERE WERE ALWAYS MANY TYPES OF COMPANIES
BUT OVER TIME LIKE TEN YEARS APART
A DECADE, EVERY DECADE NEW COMPANIES START
PLAY YOUR PART AT IT'S START
DRIVE OFF THE LOT IN THE MONEY CART
​
8:07AM EST - 8:17AM EST
TUESDAY OCTOBER 13TH, 2020
10.13.2020
​
DEAR QUAN,

SLAPPY BOY PUT THAT T.V. REMOTE DOWN 

BEFORE IT TURNS YOU INTO A CLOWN
YOU NEED A JOB BOY NOW GO OUT THERE AND MAKE SOME MONEY
YOUR POCKETS LOOKING FUNNY MAN THEY'RE CRACKING JOKES
NOW LET ME TELL YOU FOLKS
WHO DON'T WANT TO END UP BROKE
EMPTY POCKETS, EMPTY STOMACH MAKE YOU CHOKE
DEAR QUAN, WOULD YOU LIKE A DOLLAR?
WELL I DON'T HAVE ONE FOR YOU NOW GO AHEAD AND HOLLER
YOU GOTTA GET PAID BOY
I KNOW YOU WANT SOME WAVES BOY
YOU WANT SOME NEW PLAY TOYS
STAY AWAY FROM GAY BOYS
I'M GOING TO GET YOU PAID BOY
LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY BOY
WE PLAY TO WIN FROM THE ENTRANCE BOY
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE INTEREST BOY

Hi! Would love to have more experienced bakers help troibleshoot what went wrong with this. I tried making the chocolate chip cooking cake from Sally’s Baking earlier today. I have made this probably 5-6 times before without an issue, but today it was a disaster. The top looked somewhat like a cookie but beyond the tiniest sliver of cookie appearance on top, once you cracked through that layer, it was pure chocolate gunk. Absolutely nothing cookie like.
I am a pretty careful baker, but figured it must’ve mis -measured my ingredients so I tried again with the same disastrous results. I know it isn’t the recipe, so I’m trying to figure out what went wrong.
Could it he bad/ cheap butter? The rest of the ingredients I have used just in the past few days without issue but I just bought new butter (on sale at ALDIs for 2.49). Could this be the problem?
I know oven temp could be a potential culprit, but my oven has a built in thermostat (and I use the oven daily with no issues).
Any other ideas?? What else could I be doing wrong? Is the sale butter to blame?

I was raised by a single mother whose behavior grew odder over the years. I never doubted that she loved me, but I could tell she was changing. A couple of months after my 13th birthday she began appearing more sluggish. Falling asleep on the couch often, making confusing statements, and being generally groggy. Simultaneously she became more forgetful, asking about friends I hadn't talked to in years and being unable to remember my interests. My mom was fairly young so I didn't understand why she was losing her memory so fast. Whenever I questioned it she would get defensive, saying that I was the one who was out of sorts.
At one point she even berated me after I told her that I was getting worried. Naturally, our relationship soured as her negative behaviors outweighed her positive ones. It hurt to watch, especially because I could sense how hard my growing distance was impacting her. I even blamed myself for her state to an extent, which I realize now I should have never done. One thing remained good though, she was great at making butterfly pea tea. She would prepare it for me every morning and afternoon once I was home from school. It was a sapphire blue color that turned into a light purple when something acidic was added. It was simple but it always hit the spot. It helped that blue was my favorite color, so it was aesthetically comforting as well. Outside of the previously mentioned struggles with her, I lived a happy life. I got good greats and had reliable friends. It was mostly smooth sailing until the incident that changed my life.
I was fast asleep when I felt my bed-sheet get swiftly torn off me. Naturally, I realized it was my mom since no one else lived with us.
“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked in response. She gave no reaction apart from a strange high-pitched gasp. Not knowing what to say I sleepily rolled towards the electric clock. The numbers appeared as a reddish blur until I opened my crust-coated lids. Letting out a small irritated breath once the mucus cracked. I wiped the substance off and refocused on the time, finding that it was only 2:00 AM. I pushed myself up and reached for the lamp when my wrist was gripped tightly. I groaned with annoyance, rolling my eyes.
“Okay, you're starting to freak me out, seriously what’s going on?!” I spoke with as much defiance as I could muster at that hour. My mom remained silent, stepping forward with a notable thud. Her grip grew stronger, which made me start to panic. She'd had moments where she seemed out of it before, but it never got physical. She gave a wet cough before finally speaking.
“You forgot to wash your face, you always remember to do that, what went wrong?” she questioned sternly. I scrunched up my face, she’d gotten up at four in the morning just to berate him about skincare?
“I was tired, I just brushed my teeth to be done with the day.” I felt my justification was sound but my mom practically barked her response.
“Dammit! I told you it needs to be applied once a day, now you'll have to use it two times to make up for this!” My heart skipped a beat, surprised at her volume and harshness. It made me wonder if she was upset about something else but was letting it out on me. She was getting particularly stressed from work around that time. My mom sighed and relinquished her grip. I rubbed my wrist, hoping she'd get through her outburst soon.
“Please get up,” she said softer than previously, taking a couple steps back. I obliged, getting out of bed. When my feet touched the ground, confusion wafted over me. my socks quickly dampened as I realized that liquid was seeping through the carpet.
“Hey did you spill something earlier?” I asked, stretching my arms.
“No, I didn't.” she started plainly.
“Oh, well I think I might have stepped in some type of liquid,” I motioned to the lamp, but she quickly pulled me into her arms by my shirt.
“Let’s not worry about that Blue Bird, same goes for the lamp, you don't need light right now, you'll have it soon,” she assured me with a hint of excitement, I squirmed out of her hug, accepting the odd rules she set in place, I didn't want to argue with her.
“Just follow me,” she patted me on the shoulder and held my hand as we walked out to the backyard. It was almost impossible to see anything in our home with the moon being the only source of light, I didn't have a clue about how she navigated the space without bumping into anything. Still, I remembered how our home was set up and could tell that we’d already passed the bathroom. My nerves heightened with each step, I had so many questions. Why were we going into the backyard when my face wash was inside? What did I step in? What was wrong with wanting the lamp on? Those questions rang strongly in my mind. Nothing felt right, things had felt off before but never quite wrong. The anxiety of the situation gave me an uncomfortable rush of energy, I couldn't sleep now if I wanted to. When the sliding door opened the humid air hit my body with an unrepresented strength, something my mother didn't pay any mind to. I continued to follow her, even though I was scared.
“Go ahead and sit on that chair.” she motioned to a green plastic kiddie chair that fit me despite its childish design. I went along with her instructions, seating myself. My mom appeared in front of me and I realized she was wearing something on her face. It had the shape and construction of a surgical mask but it was woven with dying flower stems and grass. Before I could say anything she picked up a mug off the ground to my right. She smelled it through the mask, lovingly holding it to my face. I observed the steam and realized the vapor had a bluish tint.
“Go ahead, drink it.” she smiled with especially groggy eyes. I would have described them as bloodshot if the veins running up her sclera weren't sapphire. I leaned away from her and the beverage. Hiding it as another stretch, pulling my arms above my head while yawning.
“Well isn't that wonderful! Keep your arms there, I’ll feed it to you, it'll be like when you were an adorable baby, drinking out of a bottle in my stroller!” she said gleefully with an uncharacteristic giggle. I was now thoroughly unnerved, putting my arms down and pushing away the drink.
“God, what’s going on with you! And why are you wearing that mask!” I yelled out getting up from the chair. My mom groaned at my attitude, putting the cup up to my face again as I attempted to walk off.
“Nothing is going on with me, don't worry! I just thought this mask looked nice. I made this nice cup of tea and it would warm my heart if my baby boy drank it! You're growing into such a handsome man and this will help your complexion!” her enthusiasm grew as she pushed the hot cup against my lips. I whined from the sizzling heat, pulling back.
“Why are you so insistent on this?!” I shouted with a growing sense of anger. I despised the way she was speaking to me. Whenever she used baby talk around me it was a set up for something manipulative. An example being when she used it to guilt me into sleeping in the same bed with her. Saying I owed her since I was her baby. Sure she apologized, but it wasn't the last time she would do something like that. I couldn't even buy her excuse that it would help with acne. I’d had the tea many times before with her and we both knew it was unhelpful in that regard.
“Because it needs to be done for your sake!” Her shoulder cracked loudly as she spoke in a deeper, raspier voice I didn't recognize. I took a couple of steps back, reaching into the pocket of my sweat pants before remembering my phone wasn't on me. I swore under my breath as I looked at my mother with concern. I took my hand out and she pounced on me, spilling a majority of the hot liquid onto my left arm. I screamed at the sensation of the steaming beverage hitting my flesh. She held me down tightly with both arms. Her eyes glistened with a holographic finish that lit up amid the night. I had never seen her like this. At this point I stopped caring about what made her act this way. Regardless of what was causing her behavior, it wouldn't justify her current actions. I squirmed beneath her, screaming at her to let go. I still couldn't bring myself to fight back, so I resorted to begging.
“Mom please stop! I’m sorry for every inconvenience I’ve caused! We can go get you help and make up, just please get off of me!” I pleaded whilst trying to push her away.
“You're the one who needs help here! You’ve been going through life as a husk for years now! It hurts my heart to watch you deteriorate like this and I can't let it go on!” she grabbed onto the sides of my head and slammed it against the ground. I cried out in pain. The pressure pounding in my skull began in the center and spread down to my teeth. The agony pulsated through me stronger than anything I’d felt before. My mom removed a hand and pulled out a sippy cup from the pocket in her pajama shorts. It too was filled with butterfly pea tea. Taking this as an opportunity, I pushed past the damage and bit her arm. I felt awful attacking her, but my fear surpassed my guilt. As uncomfortable as it was I sank my teeth in as far as I could. She let out a throaty gurgle in response to the attack. I attempted to crawl out from under her, using my legs to pull myself up across the grass. I moved frantically, praying I could keep up the momentum. She clutched my thin hips with her legs to keep me down. I continuously smacked the container away with my free arm while I squirmed, my back smashing against the ground in my attempts. My mom covered the cap of the cup and rolled her eyes, pushing her entire body onto mine. Covering my face as I screamed for help.
“STAY STILL!” she screeched as a viscous substance seeped through her mask. Directly pouring down my forehead, making me tremble from its cold. Before I could plan another move she shoved me to the side. My face, experiencing a burn from the grit and speed. She ran to me, kneeled down, and forced her fist into my mouth. I coughed and cried while she pulled on my tongue. I wiggled it but her grasp only hardened with each movement. Her sweaty skin overloaded my sense of taste. I kicked around but nothing deterred her, even when she was hit. I couldn't focus on anything but how much I hurt, none of what was happening made sense.
She frantically opened the sippy cup, pried my mouth open, and made me guzzle down the drink. It was boiling and I screamed in ways I didn't know I was capable of. My entire body bent in all directions as I looked into the eyes of the thing before me. The initial blue glow transitioned further into a shining violet every time a new drop was swallowed. I felt powerless in the arms of my mother, I couldn't understand why she was torturing me like this. What did I do? Was she always like this and I undermined the signs so I’d live with a greater sense of safety? I continued to sob once I’d finished the tea. The burning made it sting every time I breathed.
My mom stared at me and for a brief moment, I saw a glimpse of the parent I was used to. Underneath the murky cool layers, I saw a speck of guilt. A single leaf in an empty pond, rippling through the surrounding water no matter how small. My mother sighed with a hint of sorrow, closing her eyes. Once she did, my energy died out, my cries grew softer, my body grew limp, and the world blurred. I couldn't even conceive a cohesive thought by the time my body slumped to the ground. All I was left with was confusion and a trace of dread.
“I’m sorry for earlier” rang through my ears once I regained my sense of touch. I grabbed the ground tightly, despite the presence of grass I knew I wasn't in our backyard. This grass was far too damp to be the dry patch I last resided in. I slowly opened my eyes, fearing where I’d find myself. I expected to be shrouded in darkness, laying in a stuffy deep hole in the ground, but I was met with the contrary. A perfect blue sky, a bustling variety of greenery, and a fresh breeze. I took a sigh of relief, still confused at where I was but happy it didn't appear threatening. I glanced ahead, finding a cluster of my favorite flowers at my feet. The smell of Jasmine and Orchids was heavenly, sweeter than fresh vanilla cake. Though the pleasant scent re-instilled unease in me. All of this was far too good to be true, and I still had no idea where I was. Did my mother take me here? If so, why? Was she somewhere here or had she abandoned him? I sat up delving headfirst into the flowers, groaning with frustration. The petals were soft, and damp like the grass, the water on them cool against my face. In any other situation, this would be a dream, but it only made him more nervous. Something this perfect had to be a setup.
“Blue Bird!” my mother happily exclaimed, I lifted my head, finding her standing over me. She was now wearing a polka-dotted dark blue dress instead of her nightwear. I shuffled myself back from her, her pupils had vanished and her mask was wilting.
“Mom, you're scaring me, I don't get what's going on. What are we doing here?” I asked shakily, she sighed and knelt to make direct eye contact with me.
“We're in a special place, a lush land that‘s available to very few. You don't have to worry, I just brought you here to rid you of your emotional pain.” her answer only confused me further.
“Emotional pain? Mom, I'm fine, the only thing causing me emotional distress is what’s happening right now. This place is nice but you're freaking me out.” I attempted to get up but something grabbed my legs. I shrieked as two bright green vines wrapped around my limbs.
“MOM WHAT THE HELL IS THIS! GET THESE THINGS AWA-” I was cut off by a much thicker vine logging itself into my throat. My eyes once again welled up with tears while multiple tendrils clenched onto me. Every time I moved another one would grab hold and the present ones would tighten. Nevertheless I continued screaming.
“I'm sorry my child, there’s something I've avoided telling you. I feed off the life force of living things. Cats, pigeons, people, as long as they’re not close to their death bed I can consume them.” I didn't fully understand what she was saying, but it only made my fear increase.
“Every time I take something from someone, I take them here. I've avoided taking things from you since you're the most precious thing to me. But my sweet baby boy, I've gotten so, so hungry.” Her pitch dropped while developing a defined rasp. I winced further from the nickname.
“I've tried to live off others, but I couldn't resist you anymore when you're so readily available. You’re so full of life, it's been hard not to contain my urges.” she stroked my cheek, frowning at my devastation.
“If I don’t get the nutrients I need, I'll turn into an awful thing. A monster incapable of complex thought that does nothing but destroys.” There was now a vine holding down every joint in my skeletal system, down to my fingers. Multiple small ones had been twisting themselves around my stomach, now making me struggle to breathe.
“Blue Bird, I have given my life to raising you, so please understand you have to give something back to me.” she explained solemnly.
The woven mask snapped off, quickly unraveling the horrifying contents beneath it. My pupils shrunk to pin drops, my screams of agony lessening from shock. My mother’s entire jaw had been dislocated, hanging onto her face by a couple of fleshy threads. The inside of her mouth was a bright blue with scaly gums. Her murky entirely cerulean eyes watered as she began panting. She extended her tongue to an inhuman length, thick saliva rapidly dripping down it. I wanted to believe that she wasn't going to hurt me, through all this she was still my mother. Yet I couldn't convince myself of that. Not when I felt multiple vines move through my body, entering through my mouth, eyes, and nose.
I couldn't bear to look at the thing I once called mom any longer. My ears buzzed while my eardrums were compressed by an increasing number of tubes. Their weight was breaking down the layers of skin and muscle preventing entry into my skull. Every orifice I had was on fire from pressure, yet I could tell this was only the lead-up to a crescendo of pain. A sharp fang poked through the tip of her and stabbed itself into my forehead. It punctured my skin, dragging in a curve. I twitched from the spike circling around my skull, extending my gash. Blood dripped on every side of my head, stinging harsher once the wind's currents grew.
By this point, I’d rather be in a wood chipper than deal with the cascade of agony invading every part of me. The blue-eyed thing licked up the gore flowing down and I wondered how I’d managed to go this entire time without throwing up. Her tongue was akin to sandpaper slathered in chili oil. In a last-ditch attempt to gain some power over the situation, I bit down into the vine as hard as I could. Which only worsened things when a miniature yet equally as strong vine sprung from the one I bit and wrangled my teeth. Forcibly spreading my jaw open further, making room for more to be stuffed in. A couple of tiny ones even slid between my front teeth. Thankfully, no more came after since the goal of the plant had been reached. The dam between the organic tendrils and my brain broke open, allowing each one to set roots in the vital organ. Each crevice of my intellect was invaded by a slithering, rough, nature. The impact was too strong and my senses shut down once more. My struggling limbs stopped what little movement they were capable of. My breathing slowed, my screams fell silent, and my eyes closed with tears still laying behind them. I didn't even realize I was shutting down, it just happened.
I was unconscious for an amount of time I can’t measure but knew was long. When I awoke my body felt infinitely more hollow. A loud ringing permeated my ears as I slowly took breaths. My jaw ached, my throat was painfully dry, and I could feel how cracked my lips were. My body fought with itself to not pass out, desperately trying to hold together.
“It’ll be all better soon,” My mother comforted while grabbing a sharpened knife. I was laying on her bed, but there were towels in place of sheets. Once she pulled my shirt over my head, I started to panic again.
“No, stop,” I mumbled, barely recognizing my weakened muffled voice. She made a series of meticulous cuts on my torso. Once the wound was opened she would squeeze as much blood as possible out of it and bag it away. I looked down, further horrified by the fact my blood was blue.
“I know it hurts, but it’ll be worth it,” She calmly told me as I bled out. The process went on for hours, resulting in me being unable to sleep for days after. I didn't feel safe in my house anymore, I locked myself in my room more than ever. Joining the longest after-school programs and visiting my friend’s house whenever I got the chance. Something my closest friend noticed most, he asked me what was wrong, but I told him it was nothing. I didn't expect him to believe anything about what happened, and the event was too awful for me to bring up. Meanwhile, my mother kept telling me I had a bad dream and that I was just moody. I showed her the scars as evidence but she accused me of making them myself to make her look bad. The next few years were tumultuous and before I knew it the initial incident became one of many. Every year she’d do it more often than the last, and each time it would take longer for me to recover.
It got to the point where the mere sight of gardens would scare me. The scents of my once favorite flowers grew sour, I didn't want to touch butterfly pea tea, and eventually, I couldn't even handle consuming things that are blue. It took me a long time to write this, as I’ve cried at multiple points by recounting what happened. There is a long road to recovery for me, which is even harder since everyone I’ve opened up to has called me crazy, but I'm done letting these memories fester and consume my life. I'm more than the worst things that happened to me.

So I (26f) was working with a company for over a year, it was a small mom and pop shop and so out of the goodness of my heart towards the beginning of me there, I told them I was gunna make an Instagram for them and post to try and get us on the map, cuz they made all kinds of promises of growth and other things which were broken as time went on. I would post a mixture of things, stuff they did, but mainly it was stuff I was making (cakes) to try to get it out there so people would order more.
Fast forward I was the only one that had access to this account since I was the one that made it, it was tied to my personal email and even has my birthday associated with it (idk if you can change that) and eventually I changed the email to one I had made for them. Eventually I gave the password to another employee cuz I hadnt posted much anymore cuz I was busy and the owners started getting mad I wasn't posting anymore. Recently I quit and it has not been a peaceful ending , they don't want to release my sick time, I hadn't been paid properly in about 6 months (since September) not recieving any checks tubs showing withholdings but they said they were withholding amount, and I haven't even been able to file my taxes because there is no w-2.
So with all of that, I decided to quit, and so I was originally going to delete the whole Instagram, but instead decided to be nice and let them keep it, but instead would just remove my content. my work and the owners work are two completely different styles, and she cannot recreate my work so it would be false advertising anyways. I left the cakes she made that I posted and anything that was their idea or any of the other products sold I left posted even though I posted everything and took pictures of all of it. I only removed the cakes I worked on and designed myself.
I wanna make note that I never signed a nondisclosure agreement nor contract of any kind stating that my work belonged to them. They always told me my work is my work. It's my name that I'm building up to be big is what the boss man always told me (come to find out they had been claiming it was the wife's work to customers) and when I created the account I was not obligated to nor contractually obligated to them with it by any means. I posted when I was off the clock , at home, on my days off, very rarely did I post on the clock.
Well I took my stuff down, and then later I got notice via email they were trying to change the password, but at that time I was gunna let them because my stuff was no longer on it, and then eventually they changed the email (I got the email saying an email change was made and if it wasn't me I could secure my account because again I was the one that made it) and I left it alone... Come to find out, they posted my work again claiming it's shop property and also posted a cake that was a personal cake and had nothing to do with the shop claiming it as theirs and saying they recently had their posts illegally deleted. and so now I'm like wtf. I restricted that page from accessing my personal content from my 100% personal baking account that I've had since 2018, so the employee had to have accessed my content via their own personal Instagram account and then proceeded to screenshot and save/download my stuff.
As the original owner of the account, what should I do. Can I do anything? Cuz I can still recover it, a part of me wants to delete the whole account, but idk what to do. I didn't illegally delete any posts , it was my account, I was the one who made it, whose phone the account was on, and I'm the original owner. I was the one that created it, and solely ran the account for almost a whole year (like 11 months) majorly off the clock. And I was with them for a year and one month .. what legally can I do.

Getting Rid of Most of My Flavors, Part 39
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Starting flavor count: 2,514 (down from 2,972)
TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.

FLAVORS EXPRESS

Green Tea
No bad, mostly green tea, but pretty floral. If I had to name it, I’d say it tastes a bit like wildflowers, maybe the way dandelions smell, but the flower, not dandelion greens. It doesn’t quite taste just like jasmine which is a little more common of a floral to find in tea. So it tastes a little weird, but mostly ok. Floral increases with more concentration, but can be tamed a little with creams. I remember a time when this was the best green tea we could get, way better than TFA or FA green tea flavors. But then Flavorah came out with Eisai Tea. This Pure Green Tea recipe looks great if you really want to vape just straight-up green tea, but since I don’t want to do that, I don’t have a use for FE Green Tea. TRASH 1
Guava
Tropical red flavor. Tastes like the tropical version of the color red made into a flavor. Thick, heavy, very sticky sweet syrupy flavor. Maybe a guava candy or strawberry-watermelon-guava candy, but not a realistic type of guava. It’s a little tart and there’s a light funkiness to it, enough to lend it a tropical vibe, but still tastes pretty candied. Could be a sweet base for a tropical punch or an enhancer for strawberry, watermelon, or other red fruit hard candy. No throat hit but it does get a little dry at the end after vaping it for a bit. Enough to make me thirsty; tastes like it should be mixed with something juicier, like some Cactus or FA Pear.
I’m excited to try Crazy Town, a 3-ingredient recipe that uses FE Lychee (love) and FLV Cream (love) with FE Guava. TASK 1
Kiwi
Candish with a distinctly lemony tartness, very sweet, with even a hard candy type of sweet body, but also a little off. Like it’s trying to have a hairspray type of off note but it isn’t quite strong enough or clear enough to be hairspray just yet, it’s just a slight chemical weirdness. Could make a pretty great lemony kiwi candy if that off note is overflavoring at 2%, or it needs a steep, or that could be covered up. I have other kiwis I’d rather use, though. TRASH 2
Lemon
Probably the best lemon out there or certain uses. It’s a bit sweet and a bit more of a candy lemon standalone but it is a more natural lemon than most of them, and it does two things really well - it mixes well with bakeries - really seems to soak right into them - and IT DOES NOT FADE much or change with steeping. Not harsh. No off notes.
I use it in Viserion but really, with that little of it just to make the blueberries pop a bit more, just about any lemon would do. Also for Long Gone Lonesome Blues. I also need it for Manson & The Pebbles, for and Blog Day, which is an old favorite I haven’t had in a while. TASK 2
Several recipes I already plan to try use it, they are about to be joined by a bunch more. Just look at this stuff!
Sadboy Butter Cookie. Creamy lemon filling smashed between two Golden Oreo style cookies. Do Want. TASK 3
Lemon Tart Cheesecake. I love a good lemon bakery and this looks like a good one. TASK 4
So does MlNikon Lemonade Cookies, even though it’s just a simple 1-2-3 recipe. TASK 5
And this Lemon Cream Pie TASK 6
Backwoods Lemonade Forest fruit lemonade, looks like an oldie but a goodie, especially in summer. TASK 7
1-2-3 Forest Blueberry Mix is another simple recipe using both FE Lemon and FA Forest Fruit, this time with TFA Blueberry Wild. TASK 8
Blushing Lady another three-ingredient recipe with FE Lemon, the other two are INW Grapefruit and FA Pomegranate. That FA Pom can be tricky but I bet it’s great in this one. TASK 9
This Lemon-Lime Cactus looks like it might be a great refreshing summer vape, too, if the cactus isn’t too much. TASK 10
Simple Lemonade. It’s just VT FIzzy Sherbet, FE Lemon, and some CAP SS. But that sounds simply delightful to me. TASK 11
Dumbledore. Another one that uses both VT Fizzy Sherbet and FE Lemon, this one in a sweet-and-sour lemon candy. TASK 12
And other with those two flavors, plus sour apple. Sour apple lemonade. Pucker Butt Lemonade. TASK 13
And of course, another blue razz recipe. Razul - I’m really interested in how the CAP HIbiscus and CAP Sweet Candy work with this combo of blue razz flavors. TASK 14
Lemonade
Weirdly warm sweet lemon. Like that kind of weird warmth that makes you check to see if you’ve accidentally bumped your wattage up. Not sure what’s up with that. Also something like a vague, soft spice note to it. It’s not bad tasting to me, but it’s not what I want from lemonade, either. TRASH 3
Lychee
This is actually my favorite lychee. I’ve had a lychee hard candy from Taiwan that I’m certain was made out of this. The flavor was identical. Very subtle rosy floral upfront, sugary sweet flatter more artificial base with a subtle funky ripeness to that white grape plus grapefruit tartness that lychee does. Strong, punchy flavor. I’m not sure if there’s actually some hard candy body here or if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me because of how much this tastes like that lychee candy. But it’s even sweeter than more syrupy flavors. Drier floral at first, but overall mouthwatering. Very bold, full-flavored.
Love it. It’s in a couple of things I already plan to mix. Really excited to try this Lychee Candy recipe too, it looks fantastic. TASK 15
If the combination of CAP Sweet Lychee and FE Lychee isn’t a lychee overdose, I bet this Lychee Apple Hard Candy is great, too. TASK 16
Mango
Fades very badly. At first it’s funky, juicy, complex, and most of all very vibrant and pretty much perfect. Unfortunately after just a few days it starts changing from this super vibrant mango flavor to something duller and flatter, shedding all of those bright top notes and even some of the funkier ones and basically leaving behind a dull slightly tropical mediocre peach. I don’t know the science behind why this works, but I’ve had it stick around a bit more in a mix with creamy things than without, but it still loses much of what makes it so great at first and as such I can’t recommend using it, unless you’re after an amazing mango shake and vape and aren’t making more than you can vape in a couple of days; in which case, grab some of this and mix it up at 2.5%, it’s really good. No task or trash with this one, it’s not included in my original flavor count because I used it all up and decided not to replace it before starting this flavor-hoarding recovery process.
Melon
I don’t think I’ve tried this one yet. Will mix a 2% sample and see what it’s about. TASK 17
Meringue
Does not taste like meringue. Sugary sweet but has a butter flavor under it that tastes a kinda fakey, like butter mixed with a little movie theater popcorn butter. Thick, creamy mouthfeel, very smooth. Not dry, almost oily with the butter. Lingering sweetness. FE meringue tastes like it might make a better, less waxy replacement for CAP Butter Cream at a lower % than the 2.5% I tried it at. Say 1%.But I did not see a recipe that used it that way - or any way for that matter - and because of that fakey butter taste, I’m not sticking my neck out for it. TRASH 4
Migua (Honey Dew)
This one is interesting. Not interesting in a bad way, but more of an I’m not sure what to do with this way. Sweet candy honeydew flavor with no real sense of juiciness. Really top heavy flavor in a sense, with all the honeydew packed right up front, comes across as artificial but not in an offensive or unpleasant way, on top of a very sweet but bland sort of candy body. The sweetness is really interesting here. It’s heavy, dense, and sticky feeling like hard candy, different from cotton candy or sucralose sweetness. Somewhere between syrup and hard candy, really quite sugary without having the grit of raw sugar. Bit of a dry finish versus the juiciness you probably want from a honeydew, but more sticky dry than full on Sahara desert dry. Can’t find a good-looking recipe that uses it, I’m going to let it go. TRASH 5
Mile Seven
Tastes more like a recipe than a single flavor, very complex. Unlike many other nutty tobaccos that are mostly nut, this one has a fairly good balance of roasted peanut and mild, generic tobacco. But I also get hints of caramel, vanilla, and chocolate. Lots of flavor from top to bottom, very full-bodied. I could have a lot of fun with this, like by enhancing the tobacco and boosting one of those accents, could probably make a delicious three-flavor sweet tobacco recipe out of this. My first thought is FLV Red Burley to play on both the nuttiness and the chocolate while driving the tobacco home, but a caramel or vanilla tobacco or separate tobacco and vanilla or caramel flavors would play well too.
There is seriously not a single recipe on ATF using this super-interesting flavor? Ok. I’ll mix something simple and think about where to take it from there. In the meantime, people who like INW 555 Gold need to get on this.
Mile Seven Experiment V1 TASK 18

Co.	Flavor	%
FLV	Red Burley	1.75
FE	Mile Seven	2

Milk Chocolate
Comes pretty close to milk chocolate. Lighter milk chocolate flavor, thick creamy feel. Very sweet, noticeably sweet above and beyond the sweetener put in my base for testing this. Some issues - it just isn’t super flavorful, and has a very slight chemical taste at 2%. Four percent brings out that chemical unbearably and makes that sweetness run a little fruity, 1% is just weak. 2% is too weak to pull off all the milk chocolate flavor of something like a candy bar, but maybe it could help move a darker chocolate flavor into more of a milk chocolate direction?
All five of the recipes currently on ATF that use it are by the same mixer, Sorteal. I’m going to try the three of them that look best to me.
3rd Wheel V2 I get a strong hazelnut taste from MB Glamour Chocolate but the Peanut Butter in there might swallow it up, and this one has a couple of shining reviews. TASK 19
Angelic Toffee this one not so much for anything I see in the recipe but for the food it’s based on - torn angel food cake mixed with whipped cream and crushed chocolate-covered toffee bars. Get in my belly! TASK 20
And Chocolate Overdose Custard V2 which looks like an improvement from V1 and appears to have been obsessed over to the point that it’s got to be good. TASK 21
Oak Milk
Y’all. This stuff is delicious. Maybe not “go to Flavor Jungle and buy it right this second” delicious, but if you’re already buying stuff at Flavor Jungle or some other place that sells it, definitely pick some up.
I’m not sure what “Oak Milk” is supposed to taste like, but FE Oak Milk mostly tastes like thick, rich, sweetened condensed milk, but it also has a fairly prominent soft caramel to it. Like you started making dulce de leche out of sweetened condensed milk and stopped halfway through. There might be something a little oaky hanging about in the background of that caramel top note, or that might be the power of suggestion from the name. The base is really clearly sweetened condensed milk, and then a softer caramel comes back in the finish and lingers. It’s thick and extremely rich and silky smooth, without any kind of butyric yuckiness.
I found FE Oak Milk to be a fairly complex concentrate that’s pretty satisfying even as a single flavor, but it seems like a lot of fun could be had with it. The caramel makes me want to do a creamy RY4 type of recipe. But it also seems like it would be good with any kind of fruit in a fruit and cream situation, or part of milkshake, or malt since that thing that might be wood tastes a little malty, or mix with nuts or chocolate. This plus VT Devon Cream and a little VT Chocolate Mousse would be amazing. I could also see putting some vanilla and bourbon flavors with this and using it to make something like a bourbon cream sauce. It’s just really, really delicious.
I already plan to mix The Baker’s Pipe. Happily adding Just Search Ass to the list. TASK 22
Oatmeal N Milk
This needs a steep. Even a week in, it’s alcoholic. It’s thick and rich but there’s more than a little alcohol in there that did not steep out over a week. Freshly mixed, it tasted like taking a shot half-vodka half-oatmeal with heavy cream and sugar. After a week, I still get a trace of alcohol. Other than that, it tastes sort of like oatmeal with lots of milk, more milk than oats really, and the oats are maybe a little overcooked and lacking texture beyond thickness. They’re also a little...the word that comes to mind is “gamey.” It tastes like it could be great in a cereal and milk recipe with the cereal flavor providing the texture (after a long steep). I wouldn’t use it as an oatmeal when there are other oat flavors as options. TRASH 6
Passion Fruit
Sweet passionate dryer sheets. Candy sweet but with a somewhat bitter floral top note. Fresh passion fruit should be a little floral, but this is a bit too much and also not quite right. Nectary sweetness, thinner than syrupy. A lot like sweetened and watered down passion fruit juice or thin passion fruit syrup mixed with some sweet guava nectar. Much less tartness than it should have. Instead, where more acidic tartness should be, there’s a bit of a perfumey floral that kind of reminds me of FA Summer Clouds (aka FA Dryer Sheets) but not so oppressive and blatantly dryer sheet-y as that and not something that would keep me from trying a recipe that uses it. Some mild throat hit, but nothing like FA Passion Fruit (aka FA Throat Razors). It’s not a bad flavor, but it’s definitely one I can live without. TRASH 7
Rainbow Sherbet
Tastes a bit like Rainbow sherbet, but mostly like tart and sweet raspberry-orange candy with a considerably floral top note and weird bitter sort of chemical or medicinal finish. There’s a bright, tart raspberry upfront that goes floral or perfumey as raspberries can do, at least at 2% after steeping for almost a week. After that it’s just citrus, mostly orange.
There’s supposed to be lemon in FE Rainbow Sherbet according to Flavor Jungle and I don’t really taste lemon, but the orange is more tart than it should be and I guess that’s a lemon? There’s not really a creaminess here. The orange is full-bodied right after that raspberry but the finish thins out and is a bit sweet and dry. And weird. It finishes weird, like with the bitterness of a floral perfume without that much of the actual perfume taste, more like medicine. It’s not fun.
Maybe you could fix it with some cream flavor, like maybe Vanilla Swirl will eat FE Rainbow Sherbet’s sin, but I don’t know, and I’m not going to stick around to find out. TRASH 8
RY4
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t RY4 supposed to be caramel-vanilla-tobacco? This one tastes much more like a caramel-nut-tobacco, but the caramel is a bit sharp and raw brown sugary, not especially rich or creamy. Vanilla is present but not creamy, more like a slight hint of darker vanilla bean. The tobacco is extremely nutty, like roasted toasted nuttiness, and that makes up more of the body of this flavor than the caramel. Overall I really like this flavor, it finishes quite drier than some of the others in the RY4 category, but I’m ok with that in a tobacco vape, and it still manages to be rather smooth. 4% seems to really be pushing some of the raw brown sugar here and I’m thinking it probably fares better at 2 or 3%. Anyway, it’s a pretty good flavor, but there are three recipes on ATF that use it, one has a flavor I don’t have in it. The other two both otherwise look good to me but contain a level of FLV Connecticut Shade I’m not comfortable with.
However, FE RY4 and the Super Concentrates (SC) RY4 that used to be sold by Bull City are the same thing, and this Coastal Wolf vanilla custard tobacco that calls for SC RY4 looks fantastic. TASK 23
RY4 Double
Tastes more like caramel coffee than caramel tobacco, and it’s a little green, like extra extra light roast coffee or maybe half coffee/half green tea. Sticky-sweet caramel and light vanilla is at least half of the equation, but that green coffee thing, while not terribly off-putting, is very odd. I’m so close to tossing this, but here’s a recipe harnessing that coffee aspect: PSL. I don’t expect it to be a “keeper” because it’s a “live mixing” thing and not a recipe meticulously crafted over time, but I really want to see how that worked out. TASK 24
Strawberry
Perfectly serviceable but fairly boring strawberry. Reminds me of FW Strawberry except more concentrated. Tastes fairly natural but again there’s that out of season or heat lamp strawberry that just doesn’t have that much flavor, with just a little artificial bump to it. Has a tartness to it -- also similar to FW Strawberry but a little sharper and less soft than FW’s - but similarly doesn’t have a lot of other complexity. It isn’t a very deep flavor but isn’t top heavy, it’s more just in the middle, without much of that brighter top note or ripe, juicy depth. TRASH 9
Sun Seeds
Overly sweet, under-roasted, and only almost salty, but otherwise tastes like sunflower seeds. The top note tastes like kind of green but not quite raw shelled sunflower seeds. Base is where it gets overly sweet and more of an indistinct, almost creamy nut flavor more than the distinctive seedy top note. Saltiness is there but light, more of an impression than actual saltiness, and more in the aftertaste than the vape.
There’s only one recipe with it that interests me, this chocolate peanut butter, but the problem with that one is that it’s 4 years old and I can’t remember if that means the old LB Lava Cake or the new one, and at 3%, I’m pretty sure that matters. Tempted to steal liberally from that recipe to make my own chocolate PB, and I still might eventually, when it comes to using it at an additive level like that, I don’t believe FE Sun Seeds can do anything that FLV Beer Nuts can’t do better. TRASH 10
Sweet Bread Crust
Mostly tastes like peeling the crusty outside off a baked Kings Hawaiian roll. Like those rolls are great just out of the bag, but this is the crust from one that’s been put in the oven until the outside is a little crisp. Essentially, the perfect top note for something like a bread pudding. Not yeasty, the only “off” note I’m getting is a light and pleasant but weirdly dark, chocolatey caramel in the finish, like a very watered down melted Rolo. I know from two recipes I tried that it can be covered up fairly easily, as neither of the recipes have any hint of chocolate, though I kinda wanna lean in to that and hit it with some VT Devon Cream and maybe another chocolate, WF Salted Caramel, and come buttery custard like FA Custard Premium and see if I can do like a chocolate bread pudding with salted caramel sauce. But, that sounds like a lot of work, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.
This Bread Puddn V3 recipe by Enyawreklaw is, believe it or not, awesome. I think I can make it even better, though. Going to swap the CAP Super Sweet out for FW Sweetener, same amount, and drop in 0.1% FLV Rich Cinnamon. TASK 25
Sweet Grape
There’s a crisp, slightly tart but very sweet white grape underneath there, but it initially and mostly tastes like I’d just been vaping hair gel. I can’t remember the brand, but back when I had hair I definitely used a hair gel that smelled exactly like 75% of this flavor. Mix it with some white grape juice and you have this. Graham (RIP) once said it was the worst flavor he’d ever tried and was more offensive than a Hitler action figure. I’m much more offended by barf flavor than weird chemical off notes so I’m not going to say it’s anywhere near the worst. But it ain’t good. TRASH 11
Sweet Orange
It’s a vibrant and juicy mandarin orange, I personally love this one. It also tastes like canned mandarin oranges more than it tastes like anything, but at the same time it does have some orange peel and zest in the top notes, though they’re understated. The body is very sweet, like canned mandarins in syrup, but still bright. It’s little thin at 4% but starts to get a little waxy to me at 5%. It’s smooth for a citrus. Tried working with it quite a bit and had trouble with it not showing up behind other ingredients as much as I want it to, and with it needing help in the thickness department to actually pass as juice, but it certainly tastes great compared to a lot of other mandarins, oranges, and tangerines.
Already planning to try 3 days 2 nights that uses it. I love the idea of a POG Milkshake but couldn’t possibly enjoy that because of the TFA VBIC pepper thing. Instead I’ll take a recipe a made a couple years back, Creamsquat that’s dead now due to no lemon mix, and see what happens if I replace the Kumquat 3.75% and INW Lemon Mix 0.25% with 4% FE Sweet Orange for a more traditional but still coconut-milk-based dairy free vanilla filling orange creamsicle. It if blends too much (Kumquat and Lemon Mix were great at separating from cream into a distinct layer) I’ll probably just have a tasty orange-coconut-vanilla mess on my hands, and that’s ok. Might go back and add some passionfruit and guava later. TASK 26
Sweet Rice
Freakishly authentic fragrant plain white rice, like jasmine rice, for a week or so, then devolves into much more of a bland starchy body like a stale flour tortilla. Before devolving, nice rice texture on top, finish is quite creamy but still rice-tasting. Very thick, full mouthfeel even while the flavor is more subtle, again accurate to rice.
Mixing with VT Rice Base helps with the fading issue considerably.
I need it for Clouds of Buddha. I also love the idea behind Broke Breakfast, because been there, ate that. Still miss it sometimes. But I think I can do it better than that. Also my family wasn’t quite as broke as Gachatay’s apparently, we got a little pat of butter on our hot rice before pouring milk over it.
My Broke Breakfast V1 TASK 27

Co.	Flavor	%
FE	Sweet Rice	4.5
VT	Rice Base	1.25
FA	Meringue	0.75
FA	Milk	1.25
FA	Cream Fresh	1
VT	Butter Base	0.75
FLV	Rich Cinnamon	0.13
FW	Sweetener	0.5

Sweet Strawberry
Weird, darkly sweet strawberry with a strange funky sort of tropical flavor. Full flavored but almost overripe, while at the same time fairly simple without too much else going on, almost like a candy flavor in its simplicity. Not a clue what to do with this stuff unless mixing with a tropical flavor that isn’t funky enough. TRASH 12
Turkish
Very vague and very light spice notes, light to medium tobacco base, and just a touch of brown sugary sweetness. Woody, with some nutty tones. Peanut, specifically. Like tobacco mixed with peanut shells. Pretty solid amount of flavor at 2%. Pretty good depth, medium thickness. Can’t say I enjoyed it a whole lot by itself but I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to mix a tobacco recipe that uses it. Unfortunately, I did not see one. TRASH 13
Whipped Cream
Terrible. It tastes like whipped cream, but also tastes like it has lemon dish soap in it. If you’ve ever used Lemon Joy to hand wash dishes, it’s a pretty recognizable thing. Tastes like I wanted to make vanilla whipped cream with two tsps of vanilla but I only had one tsp of vanilla, so I subbed in Lemon Joy for one of the tsp because I was dropped on my head and fed lead-based paint chips as a child. I can’t understand how this gets manufactured and sold to people, it’s so bad. TRASH 14

FLAVOUR ART

7 Leaves Ultimate
Woody, dry tobacco, very light spice, like an autumn spice with the slightest hint of anise, not enough to be licorice-y. It’s not perfumy, but it’s kinda cologne-y in that wood and spice combination and hint of tobacco, kinda tastes like it could be a men’s cologne. The woodiness is similar to sandalwood but not exactly sandalwood. It’s definitely not pine or oak, though. Very distinctly brown sugar sweetness. That’s mostly what I get, wood and brown sugar, with spice. Not much tobacco really, just a leafy hint of it..
I need it for Chem Twista Lime. TASK 28
Almond
Definitely not trash. If you forced me to keep only one FA flavor, it would probably be this one. It’s a clear, clean, almond flavor. It mostly tastes like a raw almond. Slightly sweet and extracty, but dry, rich, and woody enough to come across as the actual nut in a mix, while being smooth enough to be the almond taste in almond milk. Medium body, not thin and top heavy. Rich and creamy but not too thick and basey either. It really is the quintessential and most essential almond flavor and it can be used in so many ways. If you don’t have FA Almond already, get it now.
I need it for a bunch of favorite recipes, such as Mango Blossom Macaron, Vanilla Almond Milk, Saturday Morning Macaron, Big Papa’s Macaron, Blog Day, Goddaron, Stoned Alone, Dummies, and Sandy Pineapple, not to mention a dozen or so new-to-me recipes I already plan to try.
Here’s a couple more that look too good to pass up:
High Society. Butter. Almond. Custard. Tobacco. Going to sub FW Sweetener for the PUR. TASK 29
Spandauer. Danish puff pastry. TASK 30
Amarula
I don’t know what Amarula is supposed to actually taste like, but this one can best be described in a word as “interesting.” It’s very rich and creamy, with a flavor that reminds me of Irish Cream with that slight mocha coffee-type note, but it also some really bright, citrusy grapefruit-esque thing going on, just thinly laid over the heavy cream. It tastes like something you couldn’t enjoy in real life because the acid would curdle the cream and make it nasty. It also tastes like FA Irish Cream and FA Grapefruit mixed together. It’s a little boozy, but not at all strongly so. No clue what the heck to do with it, but it’s interesting. There’s not a single recipe on ATF that uses it, so this seems like a good chance for me to go ahead and expunge something weird from my stash. TRASH 15
Anise
Brighter, spicier anise with some woody accents and a light but almost creamy base. No off notes. If I saw a recipe using this that I really wanted to try, I’d keep it, but seeing none, TRASH 16
Apple Pie
I really just get pie crust from it. No apple. Just the slightest bit of fruity sweetness. No spice, not really, maybe they like wave some cinnamon over the vat of the stuff at FA HQ but don’t actually drop it in. But it’s a really solid pie crust, probably the most solid. It’s strong and shows up in a mix and tastes like buttery if a bit doughy crust. Very full and dense crust, no off notes, just missing ones.
I need it for my 1-2-3 Butter Pecan Pie. TASK 31
But I will be mixing that and tasting it with the intention of trying to make it better, and this Butter Pecan Crumble looks like about where I would have wound up, so I’ll go ahead and try that and see if improving Butter Pecan Pie is something I still need to do or something that’s already been done for me. TASK 32
Also, here’s a recipe that specifically states that the mixer has already done that for me, so of course I have to try Butter Tarts - it looks amazing. TASK 33
I have already planned to mix other recipes that use this, too.
Apricot
Very nice, authentic apricot. It’s one that everyone should probably own. It tastes much more natural than candied and not overly sweet. Top notes are mild, subtle yellow peachy-type of flavor. Pushing it higher doesn’t really make it less weak, it’s just a gentle type of fresh fruit flavor. A little dry, or at least not especially juicy, but not too dry. Of note, I’m aware some people think it is aggressive and does stand out in a mix, but I’ve never had that issue using it with bold fruits. Not a dried or cooked type of flavor at all. I don’t get any sort of harshness from this, overall it’s just a smooth and gentle flavor. Its exhale starts and finishes weaker: it’s more of a middle-range flavor, with a nice full fleshy body like you’d expect from a fresh apricot. Hence why I like to use it to help fill out various other stone fruits - peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries - and it even works for some tropical fruits like mango and papaya. It’s not very aggressive or prone to standing out too much in mix with other fruits, in my experience, although I’ve had a tobacco recipe that used it at 1% and I didn’t think it would show up at all, but it definitely did. . So, mixed results. Works especially well with flavors that have their own aggressive top notes and you want to make it a fuller bodied fruit without pushing those flavors higher and getting more harshness or having them run floral on you, like peaches, or for filling out a cherry without letting it get too mediciny if you want a fresh natural cherry flavor.
I need it for Counter Punch TASK 34
Impropapiety (papaya sweet tea recipe I created) TASK 35
Apricaught Me Slippin (the aforementioned apricot 1% tobacco recipe) TASK 36
And a couple of other favorites that were added to the to-mix list too recently to repeat just yet.
I also want to try Cookie-On-Me,. A fruit-filled cookie recipe that has some of my favorite ingredients in it - with the exception of FA Cookie (I’ll just JF Cookie instead) and CAP Super Sweet (which I’ll replace with FW Sweetener because 0.5% CAP SS seems like a lot for a cookie recipe). TASK 37
Arctic Winter
It’s just menthol. The only reason I would keep it over any other just plain menthol is a recipe using it that I want to make, since I’m not exactly sure how much of a different menthol to sub in.
Unfortunately for my getting rid of flavors project, there is one such recipe: Spiral Out, an orange, papaya, menthol mix. TASK 38
Aurora
Heavy, realistic lime zest top end with some bitterness and a much softer but sweet, limeade-type body that almost feels effervescent. Perfect for the “twist of lime” in a cocktail because of that zesty lime and sweeter body.
I need this for something I’m working on. I also want to try Strawora Limealis, though I imagine that if I love it I’ll soon be trying it again with a rum flavor or two or FLV Tequila Agave added to it. TASK 39
And Peyote, which looks weird. But it might be amazing weird. TASK 40
Banana
Very typical FA Flavor. Realistic, sightly underripe banana, all thin, dry top notes with essentially no creamy base at all. 1 to 2%, beyond that, overly dry to the point of added throat hit,, also candyish, but not in a good way like LA or TFA Banana Cream, because that underipeness also ramps up and just gets weird. Also, at 3%, it tastes almost like there’s a bit of clove in here. Sounds like a negative review, but I actually used to love 1.25ish % of this on top of TFA Banana Cream because it creates a more realistic banana. The problem is that we have quite a few better bananas now. I think I’ll be ok without this one TRASH 17
Banana Candy
When WF came out with a banana candy, I really appreciated the embracing of the candy, since so many other bananas taste like banana runts or banana laffy taffy but don’t just come right out and admit it. But then Chef’s Super Concentrates (RIP) comes out with one that’s super potent and spot-on banana runts but the “at least they’re honest about it” novelty starts to wear off. Then FA’s comes out and by now, I’m not interested in candy banana. But there’s nothing wrong with this one. It tastes very much like those banana puffy candies, but with a little less punch of flavor than those have. If you’re really into those foamy banana candies you might want to pick this one up, but I don’t feel a need for it personally. TRASH 18
New Flavor Count: 2,496

My sister (24f) got married last week. Her wedding was very well planned out- we recieved invitations 6 months before and my sister poured about 10,000$ into this wedding- and that's without catering costs added. She also invited over 100 people- it was an ethnic wedding, so there were some friends of friends.
The ceremony was beautiful. There were so many pictures taken, everyone was having a great time, I dream of eating the food I ate there just once again in my life. Even the rehearsal dinner a week before was magical.
The issue came after my sister and her husband said "I do"- it was the reception. The cake was cut, and everything was great. They were laughing and having a good time, and then they went back up and said their speeches. Her husband's speech was touching with a humourous twist. When it came time for her to say hers, however, things went south.
She started off great, making a few jokes about a few family members. Nothing harmful. But then it got to me. She made a joke about considering having a dry wedding because I was "such an addict". To clarify, I have struggled with an alcohol addiction, and she is well aware.
She was never really supportive of my recovery journey because she always saw me as an addict. My sister has this idea that once you struggle with an addiction, you go crazy and lose control if you get the chance again. No matter if you recover or not, in her eyes, you're always an addict.
Everyone laughed and I felt humiliated. She was laughing too and then continued. I didn't want to interrupt her so I just waited. I felt like crying and screaming at the same time, it was a rage yet sadness I'd never experienced before.
After her speech, I spoke up. I brought her somewhere private. I told her that I didn't appreciate her joke and it wasn't funny, and that I felt she humiliated me. She got so angry and started yelling, things like "I have a whole wedding waiting for me back there, who do you think you are to bring me here and waste my time" and "It's just a joke, don't be so pissy". She accused me of ruining her wedding and started screaming. She left back to the ceremony and I just stood there.
Once I came back, everyone was staring at me and my sister was sobbing in my dad's arms. My dad proceeded to yell at me telling me I ruined my sister's wedding and made a scene. I yelled back and when I noticed a lot of people were watching, I got angry and left.
Now all my family's mad at me and they won't stop sending me texts telling me I should apologize. I don't want to. AITA?
EDIT: Based on the comments, I would like to clarify a few things. I think I may be the asshole because once I left and saw my dad, he started yelling at me and I yelled back. If i'd just left, i wouldn't have caused a scene. I also would like to say this is not the first time my sister has made a distasteful comment about my addiction struggles, and my parents excuse her every time. They tell me they don't agree with her but I should "put up with her" and "understand her". Lastly, the wedding and reception was still going on- I pulled her away immediately after so people were looking at us. I think her reaction was because she was anxious since people were looking and she didn't want to leave such a special moment.

People have been going missing in my hometown ever since I moved back. And things don't really feel the way they did when I was a kid. I don't know if those two are related.
This has been really nagging at me lately. I had no idea where to post it to get some help or peace of mind. I just really need some support right now before I drive myself crazy over it. Maybe I'm overreacting because it's been a stressful few months since my parents died, or maybe someone can shed some light on the events that have been happening and show me that I am just being crazy...
I guess, I should probably start by introducing myself? My name is Jeremy Coleridge, as a kid I used to live in a very small coal mining town of about 7000 in a desolate area of the north called Calkirk. Picture every single midwestern small town Podunk you've driven to on your way to a bigger city, and you would be pretty close to what Calkirk looks like
I was there until I was about 17, when I decided to live with my aunt in New York, where I threw away a lot of money going into journalism which, if I have to be honest, was probably the worst decision of my life at the time. But, with my parent's kind of disowning me for not agreeing with their very strong religious devotions I kind of had no place to go. My aunt pushed me to attend college a year after I graduated high school because I really liked writing and investigation, so what better to study than investigative journalism right? Plus; she said I had to be in school if she was going to let me stay with her. Well, do you want to know how many investigative journalists are in New York?
The answer is: A lot.
So, a few grand down and four years of school wasted, I can’t get a job with that degree. I ended up living in a 2-bedroom apartment bunking with another dude while I work 50 hours a week between two part time jobs because that’s all anyone wanted to offer, and I was struggling. My aunt Clair moved back to Calkirk to take care of my mom who was diagnosed with some rare disease that she wouldn’t tell me about. Now, I’m 24, my mom passed away 3 months ago from whatever disease it was that she had gotten, my dad committed suicide the next day…
My aunt paid for me to fly back to Calkirk for the funeral and the Will reading. Being their only kid, I guess my parents willed me their small 3-bedroom one bath house in the town and with that, a small inheritance that basically would pay my student loans off and still leave me a few grand of left over money to put in savings. The life insurance my dad had from working at the Calkirk mine for almost 40 years paid everything off. I wouldn’t owe a cent on a single thing except my utilities and food.
I had to go back to New York for a few weeks to get my assets in order. I waited for my roommates to find some new, desperate fool to move in, sold my old buick, sent off the final check for my bank to cover my loan, flipped off one boss as I walked out of one job, and gave a respectable 2 weeks notice to the other, then I paid a company to pack up my small amount of crap I had and bought myself a plane ticket back to Calkirk.
Well, I say “to Calkirk” but as you may or may not know, a town of 7000 doesn’t usually have an airport so I had to fly into a city about two hours from there and get my aunt to agree to pick me up.
Two weeks living in the house, I got bored sitting in the place alone and decided to apply for a few jobs in town. I was able to score a job at the Calkirk Times. And being the only news outlet in Calkirk, business was actually booming. But when I asked my interviewer why the position was open, he said something that sort of freaked me out.
“Well, the last kid with your job stopped showing up a couple weeks ago…his house is empty, skipped town, no one can find him...”
I was basically hired on the spot, and I accepted immediately, call me desperate. But what my new boss said gave me a weird feeling… Everyone knew about everyone in this town. How could one of only three journalists go missing and nobody knows where he went?
When I met my new coworkers Abbigale and Tommy, they said the guy, Jim Remus, was an out-of-towner from Texas who came to live here with his girlfriend, a local girl we went to school with. They both went missing two weeks ago with no sign of them anywhere. Abby and Tommy, both thought it was way weirder than what our boss thought, he denied any articles even mentioning it. He even reprimanded Tom for asking another coworker about it, saying it was personal business and we shouldn’t be talking about it at work...
The second weird thing I experienced was a couple weeks after that, when I officially emptied my parents' pantry of all the nasty old people food they had. I decided it was probably time to go grocery shopping. I got home late on Friday night after writing a pointless article about news that had come out almost a week previously in bigger outlets, but people here ate up the content like it was breaking news so, who cares. I decided Saturday would be a better time to go grocery shopping.
Now, let me explain Calkirk a little better before the next piece of my story. Like I said, Calkirk is an old mining town in the Midwest part of the United States. I’m not saying where because I don’t want anyone trying to find it and something bad happening to them.
The town sits a few miles from the highway and has one main road with everything that’s not a house on it. Two gas stations, one on each side of town, two bars barely 3 blocks away from each other, the post office, the fire hall, the grocery store on one side, the K through 12 school on the other, then there are a few buildings with random business scattered between, a small vet clinic, a photo lab, a small coffee shop, stuff like that. The jail sat smack dab in the middle of town between the two bars. The town itself probably wouldn’t be visible from the highway if the factory wasn’t billowing out thick clouds of what I assumed to be coal ash and soot 24/7.
The factory was supplied by the Calkirk Mines and a tunnel delivery system had been made to transport coal to the factory from the mine about 15 miles away. The mine sat in a deep coolie with hundreds of trees around it, near a river, and a few long dirt trails in and out. the tunnel system was a long belt covered most of the way by piping. Inside, there's train cars that run almost constantly to the factory. With only small viewing ports for maintenance every so often. All of this knowledge was thanks to my dad working there for 40 years and a few take-your-child to workdays before he and my mom basically disowned me.
I should also mention before I get too far, since I came back here about 8 weeks ago, there have been three massive dustings, which the locals call “Ash events”. An Ash event in this town is when the factory spouts out way more of its black smoke than usual and the town gets covered in layers of black soot like material, it’s easily washed away with a hose and the fire department goes around each time and uses a low-pressure hose to rinse basically everything off. I remember these events from when I was a kid, but they never happened this frequently, at least not in my memory, or maybe it was washed off before I noticed.
It usually happened overnight and if you woke up too early, you'd have to wash off your own cars if you want to get anywhere. Part of the city ordinance was no one drives in town with their cars covered in the ash. It can be met with an almost $2000 fine. And, with the amount of police officers with not much to do all day, they were posted everywhere after a good dusting, so you’d be seen.
The first Ash event since being back home happened about two weeks after I got to town, two weeks before I got my new job. The second ash event two weeks after that got my dad's truck that I had parked outside so I could work on a dirt bike in the garage when I was bored. It happened the night I decided to go grocery shopping. The third one was just a week ago as I’m writing this...
Anyway, when I woke up, I could smell the ash in the air. It leaves this really heavy burning smell like someone burning ham bones with wool. It's hard to explain, but it's one of those smells you could remember from anywhere if you smelled it again. When I walked out, I already knew what I’d see, the dark dust caked on my dad's truck. I unraveled the hose in the front yard and sprayed the whole truck down before heading to the store to get there right when they opened. And yeah, I realize most people would look at this and say, that's weird, but for Calkirk, you kind of just grew up doing that. It's a generational habit, everyone did it.
In the store, I shopped for about two hours, packed a cart full of groceries and went to the registers to check out. Two older ladies were sitting at a small booth beside the windows sipping coffee. I recognized them as ladies that live in my neighborhood that would often have contact with my parents and I when I was a kid.
“Did you see Genie this morning?” I overheard one say, the other shook her head and made an exasperated face.
“I was just gonna ask you, haven't seen her at all!”
“That’s so unlike her…”
“Do you think…” There was a pause and the other shook her head.
I listened as they went back and forth saying how this lady always met them on Saturday mornings, every year for the past 25 years, she never missed a day.
I paid, I rolled my cart over to them and said, “I Uh, couldn’t help but overhear, you said your friend is missing?”
The women gave me a skeptical look then both suddenly perked in an almost robotic manner then one smiled, “Oh, little Jeremy Coleridge, you sweet little thing, when did you get back in town!”
I responded with “Like 2 months ago…”
“So sorry about your parents dear. Hope the town is treating you well.”
I nodded, but like a lot of crap in this town, their sudden change in attitude freaked me out.
I tried to divert the conversation back to the missing friend “So Genie…”
“Oh, I remember when you were just a tiny baby waddling over to my house for candies with your mom!” One spoke.
“Yeah, I did. But I want to ask about your friend…” I began again.
“Oh worse, as a kid he would follow my granddaughter for hours outside while they played.” The other said. She waved her hand at the other, “You two are about the same age, you should remember her, her name is Abbigale.”
“Oh and what about that time Marty found him playing in the mud puddle in the backyard.”
“Listen” I said abruptly over their talking. “I’m with the newspaper now. You said your friend is missing, have you gone to her house yet!? Have you checked on her at all?”
Their moods changed again, they frowned deeply, and went rigid for a minute as if they were really mad… Then they suddenly smiled again, big wide creepy smiles that really freaked me out.
“She’s fine Jeremy.” One said in a tight-lipped smile. “Just… resting…” her creepy smile widened, her lip twitched at the word ‘Resting’. Then, she shoo’ed me away with her hand without another word. My attempts to ask after were ignored as if I wasn’t even there.
feeling thoroughly unsettled, I left the store, packed my stuff in my truck, and drove it home. I put everything away and pulled out an old phone book my parents had in the house. The only Genie I knew was Genie Carlson. She worked at the school as a nurse for a long time before retiring. I found her number, dialed it, no answer. I dialed it again, same thing. On the third ring, the ringer was cut after 2 rings and flipped to voicemail, like someone had sent the phone to the answering machine. “This is Genie Carlson, Sorry I missed you… Please leave a-” but it cut itself off. The next call didn’t go through, I just got a “The number you dialed is no longer in service…”
Feeling thoroughly unsettled, I left the store, packed my stuff in my truck, and drove it home. I put everything away and pulled out an old phone book my parents had in the house. The only Genie I knew was Genie Carlson. She worked at the school as a nurse for a long time before retiring. I found her number, dialed it, no answer. I dialed it again, same thing. On the third call, the ringer was cut after 2 rings and flipped to voicemail, like someone had sent the phone to the answering machine. “This is Genie Carlson, Sorry I missed you… Please leave a-” but it cut itself off. The next call didn’t go through, I just got a “The number you dialed is no longer in service…” I thought it was odd that her phone would go off after I had just called it three times.
I, at least, remembered where Genie lived from my childhood and decided I’d pay her a small visit before going about the day just to make sure she was okay. I mean, maybe she was sick or something and just stuck in bed, or maybe she fell and needed help? Maybe she didn’t have a life alert, she for sure did not have a cell phone, and I think she was a widow, and all her kid's left town when they turned 18. So, if her friends hadn’t checked in on her she could have been lying there alone for lord knows how long needing help.
When I got to her house it was really dark, and quiet, the only way I knew it was still her house was the name inside the mailbox lid said “Carlson”. I knocked on the door, waited for a bit, but nothing happened.
“Ms. Genie! Ms. Genie! It’s me, Jeremy Coleridge! Jan and Cals son!” There was no answer. I looked in the little window in the door, but it was dark. I stepped to the side and looked into the front window and found an empty house. Her porch had signs that the Ash Event was never cleaned up properly, but the blanket of ash was disturbed by boot marks that weren’t my own. I tried the door handle, it opened, but almost like something pulled it open from the inside.
The house was completely empty, except for large boot marks made of the black ash from the porch leading into the entryway. And a few small blood splatters on the wall beside the stairs. It was eerily quiet; the house didn’t creak the way old houses were supposed to creak. There didn’t even seem to be wind around me. The whole area, inside Genie's house and outside, was just still and silent.
Before I took another step, I called the jail and asked if they could send a cop. I told them that it looked like something weird went down at Ms. Genie’s. They told me to wait outside and not touch anything. So, I turned right on my heel and planted myself on the step of the porch. I pulled out my phone to distract myself from the scene behind me. It didn’t keep my leg from shaking though…
Sheriff Nixon showed up about 10 minutes later. He was old, looked like a corpse himself, but he had been the Sheriff in town since before I could even remember. He was always super friendly and had a smile on his face, even now while responding to a potential disappearance.
“Little Jer Coleridge. My, my son, you’ve grown.” He patted my shoulder hard, almost threw me off balance.
“Hey Pat… I think something happened with Genie Carlson…” I pointed to the door, thinking he would be more surprised than what he was.
“Now, why would ya‘ think that, son?”
I told him I saw Ruth and Beth Anne at the grocery store saying they hadn’t seen her today. I even told him about them saying she was “Resting” and how they smiled the whole time, not acting like they were really bothered by it at all.
“Well, let’s just take a look here then. Wait out here.” He went inside with a flashlight, looked around for a few minutes then came back out. He clicked the lock behind him and shut the door.
“Well Jer, looks to me Genie moved out.”
“Without telling Ruth and Beth Anne?”
He nodded and his face suddenly smiled widely, the same way Ruth and Beth Anne had done at the grocery store earlier in the day when I kept pressing them to tell me about Genie. “Looks like it.”
“But the boot prints, and blood…”
“Probably a movin’ accident.”
I shook my head at him, trying to talk some reason into him. That didn’t make sense at all. “Pat… Genie is in her 80s. Why would she just leave without telling anyone? Genie has been going to the store every Saturday for 25 years, she hasn’t missed a single day, she wouldn’t just leave without…”
“Now son…” Pat grabbed onto my shoulder and squeezed hard, causing me to pause. He raised an eyebrow at me. “I think you’re reading too much into this. I bet Genie was needin’ a change of pace in her old age, didn't want to hurt herself with the goodbyes.”
“Pat, I don’t think she’d…”
His voice suddenly dropped into an angry tone “Son, I think you’re meddlin’ in people's personal business too much.” He titled his head closer to me. One of his eyes twitched at me, just like how Ruth's had at the grocery store. “Think you need to take your investigative head and go home, forget what you saw here.” He then smiled brightly as if he didn’t say anything and patted my shoulder again. “Nice seein’ ya Jer.” He walked back to his patrol car then tilted his hat at me “I’m sure I’ll be seein’ you around, son.”
I mean, Am I the crazy one? I seem to be the only one who cares that Genie Carlson is missing... Ruth and Beth Anne don't seem to be bothered, and it seems like Sherrif Nixon couldn't be bothered. And that's not even getting into the guy and his girlfriend who went missing a few weeks ago...
I think I am going to look into it and see if I can track Genie down at least, to make sure she is okay. I have resources at work that could maybe help me. So, I'm going to check those out when I take my next break. In the meantime, I have to get back to work, But I'll post an update if I find anything out.

So my birthday is coming up. And honestly, I just wish that I could pretend that it isn't. The last time I genuinely enjoyed birthday is like 6 years ago. Ever since then, birthday for me is a time when I reflect on my life, since my time here is once again shorter.
When I reflect on my life, I basically see what I'm trying to ignore every day. That I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. That I haven't figured out what job I want to have. That I went to a collage with not the best reputation, that's not gonna help me get a job, nor does it teach me practical skills and because of that, I'm behind on most projects. That I haven't applied to any part time job in my field, because of fear of rejection. Or fear of not being able to do it correctly. (At my last job, I was yelled at and made fun of both by a customer and management.)
That due to this and other stuff, I basically waste my life away on social media and reddit, since that's my way of ignoring the anxiety.
That I practically don't have good friends, or fun collage experiences.
That my partner seems to have life figured out, works and makes planes about buying house etc. I'm of course extremely glad I have him, but I feel like I'm a dead weigh dragging him down.
I'm unmotivated. Procrastinating. I want to cry almost every day. Feeling like shit because I don't deserve to feel this bad - many people have it worse.
How the hell do I celebrate my birthday when I'm a mess right now. I don't deserve to celebrate or get gifts.
Yet I'm gonna have to pretend I'm okay before my whole family. I'm gonna bake a cake, prepare a party, fake a smile and go to a bathroom whenever I'll feel like I can't hold tears anymore. Hope no one notices there's something wrong.

I've been thinking about this idea for a while and now that TPOT 4 has come out with amazing animation for the new CAS theme, I think it's the perfect time for this idea to come alive.
For years BFDI hasn't gotten a single video made by a cartoon youtuber with 100,000+ subs, while other web cartoons like Hazbin Hotel, Bee & Puppycat, Bravest Warriors, and Murder Drones have gotten one. I think it's time for that to change.
First goal: Targeting livestreamers
As expected, we will target cartoon youtubers who livestream, such as Saberspark, to tell them about BFDI. If they want to react to BFDI, don't tell them to watch BFDI 1a since although it's the first episode, it doesn't have the best animation compared to BFDI:TPOT.
PhantomArcade saw BFDI 1a and agreed with someone in chat saying that it's flash cocomelon. We don't want that to happen again.