The time has come to try to unload my entire collection, I've been selling on here for a few years and am an experienced seller and I would love to get these awesome records to some people who will love and appreciate them! Everything is VG+ and well cared for. I will give you a better price for the more you buy! $5 shipping on all orders, US only.
Adventures- Adventures 7"-Pale Yellow-$10
Adventures-Clear My Head With You-Blue-$10
Adventures/Pity Sex Split-Red W/ Blue Color in Color-$10
Adventures/Run Forever Split-Red/ Light Blue-$10
Aeon Station-Observatory-Blue-$15
Alkaline Trio- Maybe I'll Catch Fire-Transparent Orange-$30
American Pleasure Club- A Whole Fucking Lifetime Of This-Purple/Blue-$30
Antarctigo Vespucci- Essential Antarctigo Vespucci Vol.1- Gold-$15
The Appleseed Cast- Low Level Owl: Vol 1 + 2-Jungle Swirl-$50
Archers Of Loaf- Icky Mettle-Blue-$25
Archers Of Loaf-White Trash Heroes- White-$25
Atmosphere- Overcast EP-$14
Balance and Composure-The Things We Think We're Missing-Yellow/Black Haze-$60
Balance and Composure- Light We Made-Flesh- $30
Basement-I Wish I Could Stay Here-Gold-$18
Beach Slang- A Loud Bash Of Teenage Feelings-Blue Starburst-$10
Beach Slang- The Deadbeat Bang Of Heartbeat City- Red-$10
Beach Slang- Cheap Thrills On A Dead End Street- Orange-$15
Beach Slang- MPLS-$5
Beach Slang- Skyway/Old Orchard Beach-$20
Beach Slang- Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken?-$10
The Beatles- Abbey Road- $20
The Beatles- Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band-Anniversary Edition-$30
Bedhead-Transaction De Novo-$30
Better Oblivion Community Center-Better Oblivion Community Center-Yellow-$50
Big Bite-Big Bite-$15
Big Thief- Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You-Random Color Eco Mix-$35
Black Country New Road-For The First Time-Translucent Blue-$40
Black Country New Road-Ants From Up There-Deluxe Edition-$40
Blonde Redhead- Fake Can Be Just As Good-$14
Boris- Akum No Uta- $20
David Bowie- Space Oddity- $25
David Bowie-Hunky Dory-$30
David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars-$30
David Bowie- Station To Station- $25-SOLD
David Bowie-Lodger- $25
David Bowie- Blackstar-$30
Bright Eyes- Fevers And Mirrors-$25
Bright Eyes- I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning-$30
Broken Social Scene- Broken Social Scene-Clear W/ Red-$50
Bugg- Bugg-Green- $30
Coma Cinema- Loss Memory- $50
John Coltrane- A Love Supreme- Impulse Orange- $15
Converge- All We Love We Leave Behind- Pink/Purple Mix-$50
Mat Cothran- My First Love Mends My Final Days-$40
Crash Of Rhinos-Knots-$30
Cymbals Eat Guitars- Why There Are Mountains- $15
Cymbals Eat Guitars- Pretty Years-Smoke-$25
Daniel Johnston- Fun- $15
Daylight- Dispirit-Yellow Starburst-$20
Daylight- Run For Cover Acoustic Series #3- $10
Deafheaven- New Bermuda-$15
Deafheaven- Sunbather-Yellow/Pink-$25
Kevin Devine-Brothers Blood-$20
Kevin Devine- Make The Clocks Move-Clear Brown- $50
Kevin Devine- Instigator- Red-$15
Kevin Devine- Bubblegum- Clear-$15
DIIV-Oshin-Purple-$30
DIIV- Is The Is Are- Captured Tracks Special Edition- $30
Dinosaur Jr.- Bug- $15
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm- $25
The Districts- Telephone-$15
Dogleg- Melee- Red W/ Blue and White Splatter-$70
Donovan Wolfington- How To Treat The Ones You Love-Clear- $15
Donovan Wolfington- Waves- Pink-$15
Drug Church- Cheer-Red in Beer- $70
Drug Church- Drug Church 7"- White No Sleep Subscription- $20
Drug Church- Party at Dead Man's 7"- $10
Drug Church- Paul Walker-Orange- $40
Drug Church- Swell- Clear W/ Green Haze- $25
Elliott Smith- Alternate Versions From EitheOr 7"- $10
Elliott Smith - EitheOr-$50
Elliott Smith-Elliott Smith-$35
Elliott Smith- Elliott Smith Alternate Versions- $20
Elliott Smith- New Moon-$25
Elliott Smith- Pretty (Ugly Before) 7"- Blue/White-$15
Elliott Smith-XO-Hazel Black Smoke- $100
Elvis Depressedly- Depressedelica-Black and White Galaxy-$25
Elvis Depressedly- Holo Pleasures/ California Dreamin'-Baby Blue in Bone-$20
Elvis Depressedly- New Alhambra-Purple Starburst-$15
Empire! Empire!-What It Takes To Move Forward- Sea Blue/Bone Red/ Bone-$100
Father John Misty- Fear Fun-$15
The Fall Of Troy- Doppelganger-$50
Field Medic-Fade Into The Dawn-Oxblood In Clear- $20
Field Medic-Floral Prince- Red- $40
Fucked Up- David Comes To Life - Yellow- $15
Fucked Up- Year Of The Horse- Gold-$15
Girls- Father, Son, Holy Ghost-$50
Gouge Away- Burnt Sugar-$20
Gulch- Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress- Cyan & Mustard Pinwheel w/ Purple Splatter-$50
Happy Diving- Electric Soul Unity- $20
Hot Snakes-Suicide Invoice-Yellow-$15
Hot Snakes- Audit In Progress-Pink-$15
The Hotelier- Goodness- Fawn & Field-$30
Interpol- Turn On The Bright Lights- 10th Anniversary Edition-$80
Jim James- Regions of Light And Sound Of God- Autographed Test Pressing- $150
Jay Reatard- Matador Singles '08-$15
Julia Brown- An Abundance Of Strawberries- Red- $15
Julia Brown- Library b/w I Wanna Be A Witch 7"- $25
King Tuff- The Other- Rainbow Marble- $15
Knot- Knot- Red-$15
Leatherface-Horsebox- $40
Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade- Live Frogs- Green- $40
Manchester Orchestra- A Black Mile To The Surface- Clear W/ Black Smoke- $80
Manchester Orchestra - Cope- $15
Margot & The Nuclear So & So's- Not Animal- Pink- $100
The Mars Volta- Deloused in The Comatorium-Sealed 2021 Repress- $40
The Mars Volta- Frances The Mute-Sealed 2021 Repress- $50
Melvins- Eggnog + Lice-All- $20-SOLD
Melvins- Gluey Porch Treatments- Green-$15-SOLD
Melvins- Hostile Ambient Takeover-Pink- $15
Melvins- Nude With Boots- Red-$15
The Menzingers- Chamberlain Waits- $15
The Menzingers- After The Party- Red-$40
The Menzingers- On The Impossible Past-Summer Sky Wave -$40
Mil-Spec- World House-$15
Modern Baseball Holy Ghost- Yellow- $15
Modern Baseball- Sports- Clear-$40
Thelonious Monk-Underground- 2014 ORG Pressing /2000- $50
Night School- Blush- Yellow- $15
Night School - Disappear Here- $12
Old Gray- An Autobiography- Half Pink/ Half Yellow-$60
The Orwells- Disgraceland- $20
The Orwells- Terrible Human Beings- $20
Ovlov-Am- Clear-$50
Ovlov-Tru-$30
Ovlov- Buds- Clear-$30
Ovlov- Greatest Hits Vol.II- $20
Parquet Courts- Content Nausea- $40
Parquet Courts- Light Up Gold- Pink- $30
Parquet Courts- Sunbathing Animal -W/ 7"- $40
Parquet Courts- Wide Awake! - Blue- $50
Pedro The Lion- Control- Yellow- $15
Posture & The Grizzly- I Am Satan- Green/ Milky clear split W/ Splatter- $50
Primus- Frizzle Fry- $Yellow- $45
Primus- Sailing The Seas Of Cheese- $35
The Residents- Eskimo- Clear W Black Swirl- $20
The Residents-Meet The Residents- Lime Green- $30
Rival Schools- United By Fate-$50
Saba- Care For Me-VMP- $40
SALEM-King Knight-Clear w/ Purple Splatter-$50
The Sidekicks- Awkward Breeds- Copper-$50
Sleep- Dopesmoker- Green hazy Translucent-$40
Slowdive- Slowdive- Silver-$20
Tiny Moving Parts- Pleasant Living- Red/ Orange- $40
Told Slant- Still Water- White- $30
Touche Amore- Parting The Sea Between Brightness and Me- Clear Family & Friends Pressing- $80
Turning Point- 1988-1991- Yellow- $50
Turnover- Peripheral Vision- Milky Clea Sea Blue- $50
Valium Aggelein- Silver in Clear-$50
Wavves- Afraid Of Heights- Purple-$70
Wavves- V- Purple- $50
Whirr- Around- Clear w Black Splater W/ Die Cut cover- $$35
Whirr- Distressor EP- Grey W/ Blue & White Splatter- $35
Whirr-Pipe Dreams Redux- Blue-$50
Whirr-Feels Like You- Purple Smoke $250
Yndi Halda- Enjoy Eternal Bliss- Random Color- $40

Original Post
As she begins to wake, Rowan burrows deeper into her bedroll with a groan. Goddess, why can’t I stay asleep? Everything…hurts. She slowly shifts, trying to get comfortable. Feeling bandages, particularly thick around her thigh. She swallows, wincing at the ache of her throat. My throat is so sore —
She jolts up, releasing an ear-piercing shriek at the memory of the creature that had emerged from the bones she shared the cave with. Looking around wildly, Rowan sees Bimpknotten kneeling next to the fire, hands over his ears as he glares at her.
“Vhy’z it dat every time I find ya, you’z passed out und needing medical ‘tension? Den ya vake up screamin’ like ya tryin’ ta make my earz bleed?”
Hand on her chest, Rowan trembles as she sees the skeleton, still in its — her — shackles on the cavern wall. Eyes wide in fear, Rowan focuses on the small gnome, struggling to gather her thoughts.
“Wha—I must’ve…was that a nightmare? I think…what happened, Bimpknotten? How’d you even find me?”
“Lass, I been trackin’ ya zince da day ya left. Vasn’t ‘ard ta, t’all. Dunno vut ‘appened to ya. Found ya ‘ere, t’rashin’ around liken ya vas oonder attack. Couldn’t getcha ta vake, neider, but I bandaged yer vounds just fine vonce ye zettled. Az fur vhat ‘appened, ken ye tell me dat?”
Rowan feels Bimpknotten’s eyes roam over her body, causing yet even more shivers. Why do I feel so…exposed? Unsettled, still, despite the warmth of fire and friend?
I fell outside, and sought shelter here. I was tending my wounds when I was attacked…I thought. I…there was a monster from that skeleton.” She points. "But…you found me alone? I was…it had me. You didn’t save me?”
“From a munzder? No, lass. Vas only you vhen I got ‘ere. Ye vas ‘urt, und in fever vich only broke di’zmornin’. Vasn’t zure ye’d make it — d’iz been a veek.”
“I've been uncounscious for a week?! And you’ve been here this whole time?” Panicking further, Rowan grabs her pack, digging her way to the bottom. Pulling out the tome, she runs her hands over its cover, confirming it was safe. Thank the goddess — but he didn’t act on his fear of this relic — why?
Bimpknotten just gives a grunt. “Toldja dat ye’d be needin’ ‘elp. Dat book callz trouble, even if’n ya ‘ave de best intentions. Dere’z a reazon my people ‘id it back b’fore, but…dere may be anudder dat ya vere called to bring it out now. I dunno de vill of yer goddess, and von’t risk her vrath.” Shaking his head, he continues. “Und I mean ta zee diz to de end.”
“Well, thank you for coming to my rescue yet again. This seems to be becoming a bad habit on my part.” She studies her hands, avoiding his gaze. “I-I owe you my life, twice over. And,” Rowan takes in a shaky breath, blinking away tears. “I am sorry about…before. I think…I may have overreacted. I just…this tome, it means the world to me. It’s one of the few things I have of any value, and…I didn’t handle your response well. You’ve been…the only friend I can remember, and…I’m truly sorry.”
Rowan hears Bimpknotten step closer before he takes her hands in his, his short stature allowing him to peer up at her, despite being seated.
“I’z just glad dat yer alvight. I knew ya vould be needing ‘elp, und I vas able to be dere ven it madder’d de most. Ye canno’ do dis alone, nor should ya. D’is not a slight to ya. No vun should ‘ave to be alone — iz unnatural.” He leans in closer to Rowan, and she feels him press his forehead to hers as she closes her eyes. Bimpknotten murmurs, “I found my’zelf unable to stay avay, to leave uz d’at vay. Ve vas both being unreasonable, und ye be needing ‘elp vith keeping dat book zafe. Keeping yerzelf zafe.
Eyes still closed, Rowan smiles sadly. “It turns out you were right. I shouldn’t have turned away from your offer to help, but neither did I want to disrupt the life you built.” Though you have proven yourself trustworthy.
“I ken rebuild. Vouldn’ be da first time. Probably not de last, eider. Diz iz a vorthy cause. ‘Zides, I vas becomin’ restless, it vas time for a new adventure. Just donnae be t’inkin’ I vill letch’ya be valkin’ avay from me zo eazy de next time!”
Rowan laughs. “Deal! Though you may regret being stuck with me now. I seem to find the worst places to shelter.” Glancing at the skeleton again, she frowns. “Speaking of, can we put her to rest before we move on?”
Bimpknotten shrugs. “Von’t ‘urt, donnae zee vhy not. How ya know dat’z a her?”
Now it’s Rowan’s turn to shrug. “I…just know.”
Carefully removing the bones from the rusty shackles, they bury them just outside the cave. Kneeling before the fresh grave, Rowan places a bouquet of wildflowers atop the dirt mound. “Rest well, and find peace.”

Company: Angels of Care Pediatric Home Health
Location: Tucson, AZ, United States 📍
Date Posted: June 09, 2023 📅
Apply & Description 👉 https://jobboardsearch.com/redirect?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=bot&utm_id=jobboarsearch&utm_term=www.whatjobs.com&rurl=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2hhdGpvYnMuY29tL2Nvb3BvYl9fY3BsX19fOTAxXzYyNDIwOTA3X18xOTk2P3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9MTk5NiZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWZlZWQma2V5d29yZD1STi1MUE4mbG9jYXRpb249VHVjc29u

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CAN 

ON

• AWS Xeon 8124M Build / P4510 SSDs / 40Gbe Switch and more...

QC

• SFF-8087 to SATA cables, SAS to SATA adapters

WATERLOO-ON

• HP DL380 G9 SFF

​

EU 

-ANY-

• HP Proliant ML350 G9 SuperPower
  
• RAM, CPU, RAID Controller 64GB, 32GB, 16GB DDR4 PC4 2933 2666 2400 2133 Intel Xeon Silver 4110 Lenovo, HPE, Samsung, SKHynix, Intel, Cisco
  

DE

• Dell Optiplex MFF

LOC: IE

• DDR3 RAM

LV

• USW-Pro-48 NON POE

PT

• supermicro CSE 815

​

UK 

UK&EU

• DELL POWEREDGE R420 4 x 3.5" 1U RACK SERVER CTO - 2 x HEATSINK, 2 x 550W PSU, H310, RACK KIT £75/€87.22(ex vat) Shipping Worldwide and free shipping in the UK.

​

US-C 

-ANY-

• UniFi AP AC PRO (2 of them)
  
• Lot of 4 Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SSD's MZ-77Q8T0 / Plus 1TB & 500GB SSD's
  
• US-Louisiana Multiple Servers and parts
  
• 30 Commscope Ruckus R850 ($600 Each)
  
• Networking Items (Access Points, Routers, Switches): Ubiquiti UAP-AC-M, Ubiquiti USW-24-POE, Cradlepoint CBA750B w/ MC400LPE 4G LTE Modem, Open-Mesh OM2Pv2
  
• SATA and SAS SSDs
  

AL

• DL380e G8

IA

• Dell PowerEdge R730 8x 2.5 w/ Rails

IL

• PowerEdge T630 server, shelves, rack panels

IN

• DDR4/DDR5 RAM. 20x 32GB 2933, 16x 64GB 3200, 4x 32GB 3200 RDIMMs, 6x 16GB 3200, 14x 8GB 3200 UDIMMs. 20x 32GB 4800 DDR5 RDIMMs
  
• Homelab Inventory Clean Up
  

MN

• TrueNAS or Proxmox Setup

MO

• Dell T620 x 2 / ICX 6610 48P / Hyve Zues Custom / Dell R420 LFF
  
• HP EliteOne AIOs, Laptops, Corsair PSU
  

OH

• Supermicro X10SRL-F, Xeon E5-2620v4, Xeon E5-2697Av4, and more

TN} UNIFI DREAM MACHINE PR

• [US-TN} Unifi Dream Machine Pro

TX

• Homelab Cleanup Sale: Dell VRTX (SFF) + Dual CMC + 1GB Switch Module + 1 M620 + 13 x 900GB 10K SAS disks + Extras
  
• 2x Ubiquiti UniFi Switch 24 Gen2 (USW-24-G2)
  
• Cisco WAPs, Cisco 3560v2 Switch, HP ProCurve 2920 Switch
  
• Toshiba mg09aca18te HDDs Full Sealed Case
  
• Dell Poweredge R730xd 26-Bay 2U Server
  
• Unifi Doorbell + NIB Chime, AI Theta, Steamdeck 64GB w/ 1TB SSD
  
• Homelab Cleanup - Old GPUs, Cisco Unmanaged Switch, 2.5" SATA SSDs, DDR4 Desktop RAM
  
• BNIB Intel Core i9-12900K
  

TX-CC

• Netgear FS728TP v2 24 port + 4 Smart Switch POE Managed Switch
  
• Dell Server Parts - Poweredge Bezel, Network Card
  

WI/MN

• Supermicro CSE-826, Eaton UPS, 1u/2u Chassis, Cisco Switch, Rails, etc.

​

US-E 

-ANY-

• USW-24-Pro
  
• 20GB DDR3 (5x 4GB)
  
• 4x nvidia quadro p2000
  
• (US-NY) Dell R720, Lenovo Laptops, SuperMicro Servers, and More...
  
• 16TB SAS (New); DDR4 ECC UDIMM 16GB (price drop)
  
• Presumed dead Latitude 5421 board (i5-11400H model)
  
• Sonicwall NSa 2650
  
• HP Prodesk 400 Mini G5 i5-9500t/8gb/256Gb, WD Black 8TB Ext. Hard Drive, Peak Design Tech Pouch
  
• 2x quadro k2200
  
• 3x quadro k4200, gts rx 580(8gb)
  
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DE

• H800e External Raid Card

GA

• Ubiquiti US-24-250w and US-48-500w
  
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KY

• (repost / price drop) Two Netapp Disk Shelves

MA

• Ubiquiti Switches, ReadyNAS, other MISC Gear
  
• nighthawk 3050V cable voice modem, GT-AX6000 router, Commander Pro, RTX 2060 6GB
  
• Dell PowerEdge R530 2xE5-2650 v4 12 Core 32GB RAM 8x3.5" Bay
  

MD

• Dell R720 / R730XD / Ubiquiti Switch / Extras - Homelab Turnover
  
• Dell PowerEdge R640 Server
  
• Dell PowerEdge R730 Server
  
• HP Z420 Workstation E5-2690 32GB RAM
  
• HP DL380p Gen8 8xSFF 72GB 2xE5-2650v2 with rails
  
• PCIe Flash Accelerators / SSDs: Oracle F80 800GB, SanDisk ioMemory SX300/PX600 1.3TB
  
• Qumulo QC208 36 Bay NAS
  

NH

• !PRICE REDUCED! Cisco C3164Q-40GE 64 Port 40GB/s QSFP+ Network Switches---150$ each!!!--
  
• Lenovo P520 Workstations 3.7Ghz BASE- 2666mhz DDR4, CPUs up to 18 core W-2191B available.
  
• Variety of High End LGA 2011 Xeons, 2697 V2, 2695 V2, 2667 V2, 2687W V2, etc. Perfect for Dell R720, R620!
  
• Lots of Nvidia Quadro Cards! P1000 (great for plex transcoding) , Radeon Pro WX3200! ALSO- CHEAP Low end Quadro cards for local pickup only!
  

NJ

• 10Gbe, and 100Gbe Nics
  
• Old switches - Juniper EX2200, Sonicwall NSA2600, NETGEAR GS750e
  
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NY

• Jabra Evolve2 65 Flex
  
• Computer Cases
  

PA

• Ubiquiti USW Pro POE Switches (24 and 48 Port)

SC

• Homelab cleanout - EdgeRouter Pro, Cisco switch, HP SFF PCs (RAM/SSD bundles)

USA

• 8 TB SAS drives

VA

• Dell R720xd LFF
  
• BNIB 5300 MAX 1.9TB SSD
  

​

US-W 

-ANY-

• (SF Bay Area) Tyan 12x LFF 2U Xeon Scalable server - $1400

AZ

• [Graphics Card] Nvidia Quadro P2200

CA

• HPE Samsung PM1735, PM1725, Micron 9300 Max 6.4tb SSDs
  
• Dell Laptops, Dell Servers, GPUs
  
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• Epyc 7401p 24core/48 threads, EPYCD8-2T, 128GB ECC workstation
  
• ASRock Rack E3C246D4U2-2T mATX board w/ 2x10GbE, 8x SATA, IPMI, and support for Intel Quick Sync Video - international shipping available
  
• Synology DS218+ (10GB RAM Upgrade), 2x2TB Barracuda, 2x8GB DDR4 2133P SODIMM Memory
  
• 3x Dell R330: 2x LFF, 1x SFF. Will Ship.
  
• unifi USG-PRO-4 // Ubiquiti Security Gateway Pro 4, Lutron cassetta smart light switches - price reduced!
  
• 12x32GB Samsung DDR4 2400 RDIMMs
  
• HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen9
  
• Ubiquiti Unifi US-24-250W
  
• Unifi Cameras
  

*CA *

• Lenovo M600 (j3710, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, 500GB HDD)

ID

• EdgeRouter X ER-X

OR

• Dell PowerEdge R430 LFF
  
• Dell PowerEdge R710, 2 x Xeon X5660, 120GB RAM
  

WA

• 10GBase-T SFP+ to RJ45 Copper Transceiver SFP, 32GB (2x16GB) PC4-19200 DDR4-2400MHz, RockPi NAS
  
• Optiplex Minis, Sophos XG 115 Rev 3
  
• UDM, AC-HD 5 Pack, Lenovo Thinkpads (T470p, T480), Mac mini, Minnowboard, misc transceivers
  
• R630 10Bay 4x U.2 NVME, 2x R330, 2x Brocade 6610 switches, 40G QSFP+ setup and lots of freebies with the switches and servers.
  
• Pi 4 4gb Basic Kit
  

The oil market is buzzing about the surprise cut by the KSA, who effectively said, "Take that!" to those commodity traders short on oil due to global macro economic slowing. Meh.
OPEC members cheat. Certain members can't produce up to their quota level. Certain members can't afford to dial production back. The Saudi's continue to enjoy being the swing producer in their cartel with the means to add or subtract barrels almost like operating a light switch. But. This isn't positive news for the start of summer driving season.
Let's look at other headlines. From Morning Brew, tension between bosses and workers about WFH. Excerpt:
Plus, there’s a whole lot of drama at the insurer Farmers Group, the WSJ reported. Last year, its CEO told employees that WFH was permanent. But a new guy, Raul Vargas, took over the position and last month said actually, nevermind. Vargas told staff that in order to foster “collaboration, creativity, and innovation” workers needed to be back in the office at least three days a week.
Employees Revolted
Farmers Group staff raged on internal communication sites, saying they’d made huge lifestyle changes}}&mid={{md5(profile.email)}}&mblid=32ee8aea3dfe) (like moving to new cities and ditching their cars) thinking they would get to work from their living rooms forever. Some threatened to quit and others suggested unionizing.
Return-to-office mandates have not gone over well at other companies, either. Last week, crowds of corporate Amazon workers walked out}}&mid={{md5(profile.email)}}&mblid=346b6303ed01) of the Seattle headquarters to protest a number of grievances they had with the company, including its demand for in-person work three days a week. Amazon’s response? Thanks for the feedback, see you in the office <3.
And good news for Tesla:
Tesla’s charging network adds another big name. GM CEO Mary Barra said that her company’s electric vehicles will be able to plug into}}&mid={{md5(profile.email)}}&mblid=5688739dd5d1) Tesla’s lightning-fast Supercharger network starting next year. Plus, beginning in 2025, all of GM’s freshly made EVs will come with Tesla’s charging hardware. GM’s announcement follows a similar move Ford made last month, and the deal among the three largest US-based automakers essentially guarantees that Tesla’s chargers will be the industry norm moving forward.
Possible Bad News for Alcohol Sin Stocks? This stat:
Stat: Whether they’re opting for shroom chocolates or just being hangover-conscious, Gen Z is buying noticeably less alcohol}}&mid={{md5(profile.email)}}&mblid=8681e1518818) at concerts, Billboard reported. One club owner in Tucson, AZ, told the outlet that at every event aimed at Gen Z, alcohol sales fell by as much as 25% compared to concerts for older folks. While that may be a hopeful sign for society, it’s a sobering development for smaller venues that need to make up lost revenue.
*******************
I like sin stocks. And the last time I bought alcohol at an event, it was hella expensive, but I wouldn't rush to sell any sin stocks on this tidbit. If I owned a real estate stock, I might consider other ways people are consuming entertainment and look for larger data sets. Would AI and VR be disruptive here?
From Yahoo's Morning Brief:
What We're Watching:
Goodbye, Bear Market: With the bear market finally behind, investors are continuing to ask the questions the Brief has been raising this week — will we see the strength in tech continue to the rest of the market?
What We're Reading:

• Apple tries to distance itself from Meta, competition: Apple is distancing its Vision Pro from the rest of the VAR headset pack, but it can't escape what the device is.
• SEC's Gary Gensler wanted to advise Binance in 2019, lawyers say: Binance lawyers asked for Gary Gensler to be recused from any action against the cryptocurrency exchange a day before the SEC filed its lawsuit.
• A nation of quitters? US workers aren't staying at jobs for as long as they used to: In the last decade between 2012 and 2022, the median job tenure has dropped from 4.6 years to 4.1 years.

And excerpts from an Open Letter to Ryan Cohen (link below):
...But you are failing GameStop.
And perhaps your biggest failure is the lack of communication to the average investor community.
A series of 8-minute-long earnings calls the past two years led by Furlong, with no Q&A? Are you kidding?
Not a single investor-focused event detailing your grand plan?
I get being cryptic for competitive reasons, but you are a public company executive. Investors deserve to know about the vision for a company controlled by you personally and your handpicked board.
The average investor has placed a ton of faith in you, Ryan. They have spent hours upon hours reviewing GameStop's financials, supporting you on social media, and the comment sections on Yahoo Finance, among other places.
It's time you show them the respect they deserve. The Ryan Cohen we talked with at Yahoo Finance in 2019 seemed to be someone that would at least entertain the thought of caring about the average guy.
Be that Ryan Cohen again. Investors deserve it… and have earned it by supporting you blindly for two plus years.
Note: A spokesperson for Ryan Cohen didn't return Yahoo Finance's request to make Ryan Cohen available for an interview for this piece.
******************
Ouch. Brian didn't pull his punches and he's absolutely right about the earnings calls. Eight minutes? That's ridiculous. There's no trust on Wall Street. Analysts have bosses and bosses hate surprises because investors hate (mostly) surprises.
And over at $EXPI, the stock gapped up. The squeeze continues to play out...
Have a great day and a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.
links:
https://newsletters.yahoo.net/H/2/v6000001889f99b4d5840f40f4bbcfbb48/7bd55c9a-9892-4e52-b030-2662745b2323/HTML
https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/issues/we-want-you-back?mbcid=31739241.3284175&mid=d758082b6c25bdb1acbbf5950c29d651&utm_campaign=mb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=header_signup
https://www.investors.com/news/oil-prices-energy-stocks-jump-as-saudi-arabia-rattles-short-sellers/?src=A00220
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As always, thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for the wonderful universe that is NoP
Thank you to u/cruisingNW for proof reading and helping me out of some hang ups, you're the man! Honestly LoM wouldn't have gone very far without him! If you haven't you should absolutely go read Foundations of Humanity! It's very good.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Christopher A. Dewey, Human Merchant Sailor, Venlil-Human Exchange Participant
Date [Standardized Human Time]: August 29th, 2136, Very Early Morning.
We got a message an hour ago from Videk, ordering us to report to Hangar-08 to start On-Stick training; and to bring our bags! I guess the guy had wanted to get as much out of the day as he could. That or he wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
Videk met us at the doors to the hangar, a small travel bag sitting on the floor by his side, tail swaying slowly as he watched us approach. “Good Waking, Taisa. Good Waking… Christopher.” An improvement, I’ll have to ask Taisa about that talk they had.
“This,” He continued, motioning to the shuttle parked in the hangar behind him with his tail. “Is your training shuttle: registration C1-0V3R-HR-EX.Your first On-Stick training assignment will be to follow appropriate lift off and departure procedures, plot and follow a course to The Capitol on Venlil Prime, seek permission to land from the proper authorities, and land safely and legally following those permissions. All of this, while following proper procedure and regulations. All of this will be graded.”
As he speaks the door behind him slides open, revealing a broad hangar bay, heavy clamshell doors dominate the far wall. At the center of the bay sits a stout craft painted white and black, a pair of stubby wings jutting from its sides flowing into a pair of engines flanking a singular tail. Venlil script is painted at the root of the tail and on the top of the rear ramp.
“Upon arrival in the Capitol you will have some paperwork to do at the U.N. offices with regards to your habitation. I will need to pick up some equipment from the training facility at the landing fields. After our respective errands, let’s say half a claw, we will meet up back at the shuttle and from there you will be plotting an in-atmosphere route to Shadetree, Sunward of the Capitol, to drop me off and wait for me to install and calibrate the remote instructing equipment. Once that is completed, you will plot another in-atmosphere course to Heartwood River, concluding this paws evaluations. Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head, and Taisa flicked her ears, in what I believed was a negative. “Very good, load your stuff and we’ll begin immediately.”
After a few minutes of finding places to tie off our belongings and get everything situated, I sat in the pilot’s seat and ran through the pre-flight check with Taisa. We caught a pair of faults in the starboard fuel delivery units. Videk seemed pleased we had caught them, and that he hadn’t had to tell us they were there. I could feel a slight smile tug at the corner of my mouth.
Devious little bastard makes for a damn good instructor.
Once the preflight was complete I closed the rear ramp and hailed the flight control tower. “Tower this is shuttle C1-0V3R-HR-EX requesting clearance for departure, place us enroute to Venlil Prime with planned landing zone of Capitol Shuttle Field 13-Bravo.” A Human voice came back over the line, a bit of mirth in their voice. “Shuttle, Tower, you are clear for departure, opening bay doors now. Good luck and Godspeed.”
The doors to the station hangar yawned open, filling the viewport with the void and all its stars beyond as I slowly brought the shuttle off the hangar floor, easing it out through the opening. I reached over to the nearest display and opened the Nav-computer interface, plotting our course to VP, and then on to the Capitol landing fields. Once I was confident I had the proper navigation commands and sequences set I called over Videk to have him review my work.
He gave me a quick flick of his tail before saying “Looks good, Christopher. Feel free to spool and jump when you’re ready.”
Videk’s approval given, I reached over and pushed forward on the throttles, engaging the drive and hurtling the shuttle into subspace.
It. Was. Beautiful. Everything seemed to stretch, stars in the distance turning from pinpricks of light into brilliant colorful streaks, lengthening as we bounded through the void. Lines of light far off in my periphery zip past like tracers as the ones before me feel as if they’re pulling me in with their kaleidoscope of color. The hum of the shuttle fell into the background while I became entranced by the light show in front me, picturing myself on the set of one of those old sci-fi shows I would watch with Pa on the weekends. The Future my ancestors had imagined was Here, right before my eyes and at the tips of my fingers! This view was… Hypnotic. The simulator couldn’t hope to do it justice.
Two hours. That was it.
Two hours to travel what, until very recently, would have been considered an insurmountable distance for Humanity. Dropping from Sub-space into the proximity of Venlil Prime was another astoundingly brilliant view. Scorched white deserts flowing into massive swathes of golden sands cut by the occasional streak of blue before blending into a beautiful verdant mix of turquoise and green fields, with vast lakes and rivers dotting the forests, flowing into wide marshy wetlands. Before finally, the curve of the planet fell away from its star, allowing the fading sunlight to showcase glittering city lights dotting the countryside.
The thrusters burn to life, crackling and thrumming with power as they drive us forward through the void to the beautiful marble before us. I flip two switches on the overhead, tapping the leftmost display to call up the local channel list and place a hail to the Capitol’s landing fields to request clearance and pad assignment. A quick ping, signifying my hail had been acknowledged, chimed over the console speaker.
“Capitol Shuttle Field 13-Bravo this is Shuttle C1-0V3R-HR-EX requesting clearance for landing at an available pad of convenience.” “C1-0V3R-HR-EX, you are cleared for landing, 13-Bravo, direct to pad Charlie-5.”
The Flight through the Void may have had some feeling of familiarity and nostalgia to the old Sci-fi shows at home; but in-atmo had the far better view! Rolling turquoise fields and towering thick trees, with their canopies tilted greedily towards that unmoving sun, falling away to a gargantuan metropolitan area, its architecture entirely alien yet still somehow familiar. Massive skyscrapers soar to touch the sky, reflecting light in brilliant angles and colors, the space below them populated by squat sturdy buildings and deep black roads. The Venlil going about their lives below look like ants as I ease off the throttle, taking the speed down to prepare for the final approach. The display on the viewport flags my landing area with a small pip guiding me in, slow and easy.
The cabin jostles slightly as the ship settles onto its landing gear. Videk seemed impressed; his ears up as he tapped away at his data pad! Taisa’s tail sways happily back and forth as she runs through the diagnostics of the landing, checking system status reports.
“Looks like we’re all clear. Videk do you have a time we should try and be back by?” Taisa beeps, showing the flight instructor the console in front of her.
“I just need to pick up the equipment and get it linked up, that should only take about a half a claw. Walking to and from the landing field and the U.N. Offices should put you at about the right time.” Videk turned away and made for the ramp; Taisa’s talk helped, and he was clearly trying, but he was still a bundle of nerves around me. His fur was so puffed out it looked like he was holding more static than a thunderhead.
As we stepped out of the artificial gravity of the shuttle I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. My first step faltered making me stumble down the ramp and bounce off the… soft pavement? “Oh, forgot about that.” Videk winced sympathetically, “Our gravity is about twenty percent more than earth’s, so be careful. Falls are likely to hurt a little bit more here.”
“Would’ve been nice to know first, Videk.” I groaned, rolling myself over and sitting up, luckily the visor hadn’t fallen off; I would need to add one of those new back braces and some knee compressors to that order of stuff from home. “Do you know where the U.N. Offices are? Or should we just ask around to find our way there?”
“I do not, but you should be able to get directions on your pad. I trust the two of you can figure it out, so I’m going to go get the equipment I need. I will wait for the two of you with the shuttle once I am ready.” With a parting flap of his ears, Videk turned and walked away; flicking the tip of his tail back and forth as he did.
“Alright then,” I grumbled, forcing myself up off the pavement, swaying as I found my new equilibrium. “let’s get going. Can you pull up those directions?” She nodded slightly, flicking her ears forward. “Got them up already! You alright there?”
“I’m fine.” I grunted, rolling out my shoulder a little. “Feels like I weigh a quarter ton, but I’ll get over it with time. Lead the way.”
After a few minutes of walking we were off the landing fields and into the streets of the city. My boots sinking into the pavement a little with each step, just like on the landing field. “Taisa, what is this stuff? I figured it was just to make landings a little softer on shuttles but it’s everywhere! Looks like pavement but it gives like rubber; why are your roads like this?” “Anti-stampede concrete.” She stated, matter of factly, like that meant literally anything to me. My silence must have tipped her off that I wasn’t getting it as she focused one eye on my visor. “Oh… I guess Humans wouldn’t need that. It’s to help reduce stampede fatalities, it’s the same reason the roads and buildings have gentle curves, no sharp angles.” Looking around at the way the groups of Venlil flowed through the streets I realized she was right, what I had thought was a futuristic aesthetic design was just to keep people from killing each other against walls or trampling them into the ground when they got scared. How strange… and slightly worrying.
“Weird, that sounds like some crazy wonder material. Bet we’d have a bunch of uses for it back on earth.” My eyes watched the tips of skyscrapers towering above us, “How far out does it say we are?”
“Only a little further, about one and a half kilometers.” She responded, a slight pant in her voice. I wasn’t in the best shape, cardio wise, but I couldn’t imagine getting winded after 10 minutes of walking; guess all that talk about the Venlil having less stamina than us was right.
The U.N. Office complex was a series of giant flowing buildings built on a large park area. It wasn’t any design I had ever seen so I figured it had to have been an existing complex that just got turned over to the U.N. for their uses.
Passing through the heavy glass front doors we found a wide receptionist's desk, with several Humans sitting behind it, answering questions and directing people where they needed to go. One of the receptionists, a short dark haired woman with a visor obscuring her face, beckons us over. “Hello! How can I help you today?” “H-Hi!” Taisa beeps excitedly, her tail swaying behind her confidently as she takes a deep breath and straightens her back. “We’re part of the ‘integration’ experiments, we were told we need to fill out some forms for habitation. Where do we go to do that?” “Oh! Congratulations! That would be Suite 216-B” The receptionist answered, excitement in her voice as she pointed to a room on the map infront of her.
“Thank you!” Taisa responded, turning to head up the stairs behind the receptionist's desk. Halfway up the stairs she swiveled her ears over to me before saying. “Sorry, I figure if I’m probably going to have to work with Humans other than you for this I should try and at least work on being able to talk to them.” “It’s alright,” I chuckle, patting her shoulder. “That’s a great idea and you’re doing alright!” Walking down the hallways we saw prints of landscapes from Earth, Machu Picchu, the Uyuni Salt Flats, The Grand Canyon, YellowStone, Hạ Long Bay, The Zhangye Mountains and Plitvice Lakes. I pointed out the places I had been to as we walked past them, finally stopping at suite 216-B.
The door was open so we knocked, getting a quick ‘enter’, before stepping in. A man sits behind a desk, the top covered in organized files and folders, a placard on his desk declares his name as ‘Obediah Kamara’ with a small Liberian flag stamped beside it.
His visor obscures his face as he looks between the two of us before beginning. “I presume you are…” He sorts through a couple of the files and folders before stopping on one and opening it, pulling out a document packet. “Christopher Dewey and Taisa. Correct?”
We both respond in the affirmative as he gestures for us to take the seats across from him, sliding the documents across the table as Taisa’s pad pings on her belt. “These are agreements to ensure that you,” He starts, looking at me. “Understand the rules in regards to your habitation here on Venlil Prime. I understand that part of your integration will be taking you off world to and from Earth, these rules primarily apply to your time here. We ask that you remain considerate of the provided rules and guidelines on the ship if you are carrying Venlil passengers. Taisa, those are the terms, conditions, compensations and requirements for your family to house a human when the two of you are present. Virtual signature of that document is required within the next 3 of your ‘paws’.” Taisa stiffened a little bit, likely thinking about her Mother’s response to my arrival; that was something we were probably going to have to have a talk about later. I had an idea for the short term, at least. I ran through the paperwork real quick and it was all pretty simple: don’t be without the visor or some kind of face covering in settings where you couldn’t guarantee that an unprepared Venlil wouldn’t see you, avoid aggression, speak quietly, no eating meat, animal products or byproducts, no hunting local wildlife; bit odd considering I didn’t even have a bow or a gun but rules are rules, I suppose.
“Sounds good to me,” I said, signing the indicated portions of the document. “When are my items supposed to get here?”
“We don’t expect your requested items to arrive for another week or so, for now you’ll have to make do with what you brought with you.” Obediah responded, shuffling the packet of papers back into the folder they had come from. “With that complete you are free to go. I understand you have training to complete, so I wish you good luck with your endeavor. If you have any questions or needs with regards to your habitation you can contact Sam, their details will be forwarded to your communication devices.”
I caught Taisa’s tail twitching as her ears swiveled nervously out of the corner of my eye; even with her attempts to push through it I think the amount of Humans around was starting to get to her. Still, she was doing better than I think a lot of Venlil would be able to manage. I reached over, gently tapping my hand against her paw, trying to ground her a little before motioning to go, she nodded slightly as she flicked her ears.
“Thank you, Obediah, we’ll be sure to get into touch with them once we get their contact. Have a good day!”
Taisa and I stood, exiting the room and making our way out of the building, stopping to look at another picture or two along the way. Something needed to be done about possibly not having a place to stay to put my, and more so Taisa’s, mind at ease. I figured I could sleep in the shuttle, if I had to. It wouldn’t be particularly comfortable but I could certainly do it; I’d need a mat, maybe a sleeping bag or some blankets and a pillow.
I had no clue where I was going to get my hands on those, or at least a set of them big enough for me to actually use.
Then I saw the temporary units in the field near the offices. Men and Women in U.N. fatigues were milling about the area. Barracks? That could solve the problem, if they’re willing to help out a man in need, of course.
“Hey, Taisa, I need to make a stop real quick.” I state, walking briskly towards the largest of the buildings. “What’s up?” She asks, ears focused on me as she tilts her head a little.
“Well, I was thinking, I don’t think your parents, your Mom especially, won’t, uh… won’t want me around. At least not for a little while until she gets to know me better.”
“I think you can get past it, she’s not that bad… It’ll just be tough.”
“Oh I’m sure I can get past it, but I’d rather not just sleep in the grass in the meantime.” “I don’t think she’d make you sleep in the grass…” “I like being prepared, if she doesn’t want me in her house I’m not going to push the issue.”
“I just… I hope it doesn’t come to that, I’m not going to let her toss you outside like an animal.” She sighs quietly as we push through the front door of the barrack building.
A desk manned by a napping U.N. Marine with Private ranks stuck to his shoulders filled the space beyond the doors. He stirs as the doors clank shut behind us before scrambling to throw on his Visor as he notices Taisa.
“Hello, Uh… Can I help you? This area is for active U.N. personnel only.” He starts, his voice finding its authority only about halfway through the statement.
I stand straight, trying to muster the stern demeanor I’d found in my father and his friends so often when they tried to get something on base after their retirements. “Easy, Private. It has come to my attention that my accommodations lack proper bedding.” “O-Oh, uh, I apologize…” He stammers out, searching for something to say, likely looking to find a way out of trouble for sleeping on duty.
“Sir.” I state. “What’s your name, Private?”
“A-Alvarez, Sir.”
“Alvarez. I’ll remember that, Alvarez, how about we make this quick, you get me a wrap of blankets, 3 pillows and a bedroll and I don’t find your commander to report your… lack of enthusiasm.”
The private snaps to attention before firmly stating. “Yes Sir! I’ll be right back, Sir!”
As the private turns and walks away crisply I hear Taisa whistle with laughter a little beside me. “I’m surprised that worked.”
“You’d be surprised what a hard voice, straight back and the right slacking Private can get you if you just don’t go pushin' it too far in your story.” I whispered with a wink.
After a few minutes of waiting Private Alvarez returned with a duffle bag, stuffed full with blankets and pillows, as well as an inflatable bedroll under the other arm. “Here you go, Sir. Will this be ok?” He asked, passing the items over to me.
“Perfect, thank you Private.” I took the bundle of bedding and turned to the door, before turning my head back over my shoulder, “Oh, and Private? Do try and get proper rest before duty.”
A shaking “Y-Yes, Sir.” followed Taisa and I out of the door.
The first half of the walk back to the landing field was quiet, I was scanning the skyline again, I just couldn’t get over the fact that I was on another planet. Taisa however had her ears pinned back, her paws lightly holding her tail tuft as we walked.
“What’s got ya down?” I asked, watching the herd of Venlil glide around us as we came, trying their best not to get too close to me.
“I’m… concerned.” She sighed, the tip of her tail twitching between her paws.
“About?”
“My mother, what she’ll say… What she’ll do.”
“I can’t exactly say I know what her reaction’ll be… But, whatever it is we’ll just have to deal with it. It’ll probably take time, but we’ll get by.” I soothed. She let go of her tail, placing the tip of it on my back, but her ears didn’t let up at all.
The rest of the walk to the shuttle was quiet as she fidgeted with her paws, trying to take her mind off of the subject. Videk was there waiting for us, a few crates secured to the cargo area of the shuttle that weren’t present before.
“You two ready?” He asked, flicking his tail at us.
“I think so.” I responded, stowing the bedding in an empty compartment as Taisa flicked her ears.
We ran through our preflight checklist again, finding another pre-placed failure from Videk waiting for us, this time in the starboard control surfaces. Once the check was done we radioed the tower for clearance to take off and set an in-atmo course for Shadetree to drop off Videk. It was a short hop, about a half hour of flying or so before I had to call ahead for clearance to land again.
Most of the flight from the Capitol to Shadetree had been rolling turquoise and green hills or open fields of produce growing in the everpresent light. A sudden dense forest rose from the fields, thick dark brown trees with fluttering golden leaves stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. A sudden break in the forest revealed a clearing for the Landing field, much smaller than the one at the Capitol. The city was built under the canopy of the trees, giving it a constant filtered light casting down through the shifting leaves. It was certainly a beautiful town, I’d have to come back to visit some day. Maybe once Videk had warmed up to me a little bit more.
As the ramp fell ,a small cargo truck arrived alongside the shuttle to collect Videk and his equipment. I offered to help but the Venlil driver just about ran when I started talking so I figured it was probably best to just keep out of it. Once the cargo truck departed, Taisa came back up to the cockpit, plopping down in her seat, and looked through the viewscreen at the trees beyond. The soft hiss of the ramp closing marked the finality of Videk’s departure.
“So, how are you feeling about Venlil Prime so far?” She asked, one eye on my face as I finally slipped the visor off.
“I like it! Between the beautiful scenery, interesting architecture and hanging out with you and Shamrock, here I’m having a great time!” I responded, rubbing my hand on what amounted to the shuttle's dashboard.
“... Shamrock?” She asked, her tail swaying in what I figured for amusement.
“Yea! Remember how I told you Humans like looking for patterns? Well it works on words and numbers as well. The tail number for the shuttle could be taken to spell ‘Clover-HR-EX’, or just clover for short. Clovers are a type of plant on earth that a few cultures believed to be lucky, one way or another. One of the nicknames for them was a Shamrock!”
She laughed at me.
“You are such a dork.” She said, wiping a tear from her eye as her tail whipped back and forth. “It’s a good name, usually shuttles don’t get one. I think it fits.”
I chuckled, a thought crossing my mind. “Think we could get any shuttle-grade paint? Preferably green, yellow and black?” She raised an eyebrow at me as her ears cocked at different elevations. “Oh? Someone feeling a little artistic?”
“Well, I could always paint a Shamro-” I was interrupted as the ping signifying we were being hailed sounded off. “We’ll finish this later.” I said, pointing at her as I accepted the hail.
Videk’s voice bled through the speakers. “Ok, looks like the connection is secure. Let’s go ahead and run through getting you familiar with the software, it should be quick and easy.”
It was not.
It took two hours. After a lot of trial and error, stop and go flights to test the connection and a few near misses with an especially tall tree we had gotten the system setup such that Videk was confident it would work in an emergency if he needed to step in. With that all squared away Taisa and I settled in to get on our way to Heartwood River. Sleeping on the blow up mattress or on a real bed hardly mattered at this point, I just wanted to sleep.
The overall flight time was set to be about an hour and a half, not too bad and man was the view beautiful: rolling fields, roaring rivers, pristine skies and alien forests abounded across the countryside. We had just passed over Hidden Plains when Taisa and I were just settling back into talking about her parents and our best route to try and handle them, when the hail system chimed and immediately spat out a harsh tone without acknowledgement, the same one the simulator used for distress calls.
“Mayday Mayday Mayday. Report of shots fired at residence housing humans. Need immediate medical evac at The Berrypatch Farm in The Grove, 11 minutes Night-ward from Hidden Plains. Hailing all airborn craft, we need a medical evac immediately!”
I immediately returned the hail. “This is cargo shuttle C1-0V3R-HR-EX. Responding to Mayday from the Grove. We are en-route to render aid. Hold tight, we’ll be there.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Taisa tighten her flight harness as I reached for the throttle.
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First Prev. Next

I’m smashed right now, drunk as hell, with a shit-full of emotions gyrating about my head. My mind space is a concoction of fear and anger. For the past four hours I’ve drank Vodka and orange juice, Vodka and cranberry juice, and finally, Vodka and grape juice. That’s a load of Screwdrivers, Cosmopolitans, and whatever the hell you call Vodka and grape juice- well, maybe I’ll make up my own name- the Crystal Room. Ok, that’s dumb, but whatever, it’s the Crystal Room that’s on my mind right now.
I had to drank myself sloppy just to have the courage to write down my experience. I hope to get all the details straight and not stray too far from the truth.
In 2001 the wife and I went to New York city. Surprisingly, I loved it, except for my final days there. A southerner in New York. I got the worst asinine advice and general characterizations from my buddies at work. One was, “Hey, don’t stare at anybody on the subway. They don’t like being stared at.” Well, who the hell does. I don’t want to live in a city where the people like being stared at. Creepy, if otherwise.
The people were genuinely nice. I never had any issues with anyone on the subway, but then again, I didn’t just sit there staring at people like they were exotic animals in a zoo.
Next to the last day of our vacation we visited Times Square. I was intrigued by the constant action, the incessant visual and auditory stimuli. There was so much to see and so much to hear. My mind was scattered and unable to focus. There were flashing lights, advertisements, and the constant blur of nameless faces and mindless crowds. I was enjoying it, but also a little overwhelmed. I asked my wife if we could go back to the hotel, but she wasn’t ready to end the day. She assured me that she was quite capable of taking care of herself.
“Honey, just go back to the hotel. I won’t be much longer. I can take care of myself.”
“You sure? I can tough it out.”
“No, go. Please, I’ll be fine.”
I walked to the nearest subway station and rode back to our hotel, which was at the end of the line in Flushing, Queens. When I got to our hotel I slumped down in the bed and immediately fell asleep; I was exhausted. I woke up around three in the morning, the bed empty beside me. I picked up my cell phone and called her but got no answer. There was a text message:
Honey, meet me at the Crystal Rose Room. It’s just down the street from the hotel.
The time on the message was 2:00 am.
I remembered the place. It stood out among all the other crowded storefronts, with a large neon sign of a scantily dressed woman holding a red rose. What was my wife doing at a strip club? She was a regular churchgoer, never missing and always insisting I go with her. Something didn’t seem quite right.
I got dressed and hurried down to the club. I tried to bull my way through but the bouncer pushed me back, shoving his large open palm into my chest.
“No sir. Only invited guests are allowed.”
“I got a text from my wife. She’s inside.”
“What’s her name?”
“Catherine Bressler.”
“Ah, hell yeah, Mr. Bressler. Come on in. We’ve been expecting you.”
The courteous welcome shocked me, considering that a moment before he was ready to stomp me into the ground. In a flash of a moment, I went from being a nuisance to a highly regarded guest of honor. I walked through the front door and into the past. It was an old-fashioned cabaret with the waitresses dressed in flapper beaded dresses and floral headbands. They were all wearing outlandishly large pearl necklaces. There was a pianist playing ragtime music, with a boisterous horn ensemble. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. My eyes were watering, but I felt eerily comfortable, like this was where I truly belonged.
On the center stage, dressed in a tight, short flapper dress, was my wife Catherine. She was dancing as if in a trance. A man walked up on the stage and started kissing her. My wife seemed to be enjoying it, enjoying it immensely. I ran up to the front of the stage.
“Hey dammit, get your hands off my wife.”
The man stopped, turned his gaze towards me, and smiled. His mouth was full of yellow, jagged teeth, encrusted with a thick layer of plaque. My wife looked at me and smiled, revealing a similar set of teeth, smaller, but no less hideous.
“I could no longer live a lie. I want my old life back and I know you will too,” she said to me.
“Catherine let’s get out of here. This isn’t funny. I don’t like this.”
“But baby, I do.”
Two men grabbed me and dragged me to one of the back rooms. They pointed a gun at me and shoved me in wooden chair. They turned the lights out and walked out of the room. I tried to run and grab the doorknob before they locked it, but I was too late. I heard a mechanical whirling and a pink light overhead was turned on. I couldn’t see where the light was coming from, whether it was a lamp or a fixture in the ceiling. It almost seemed mystical, coming from an unknown source. The room now looked like I was inside a diamond, with a rigid crystalline structure.
There were a thousand reflections of myself walking through the many faces of the crystal, independent of my own motions. They were alive in themselves, more than a mere reflection. One of them called out to me, “It’s time to come back to your true self.” He smiled, with an impressive row of sharp teeth, more immaculate, and more regal than what the groping stranger and my wife had. My reflection stepped out of the crystal and onto the plain hard wood floor, progressing slowly towards me, with his hands raised, the nails of which were long and sharp. The closer he got, the paler his skin grew. He was dressed in a black suit, with a collarless vest, and bowtie. Atop his head was straw boater hat.
He grabbed me by the throat and as his cold rigid hands touched me, I had a vision of a bygone life filled with murder and debauchery. I killed and drank, lapping up the warm, copper-tinged blood of many hapless victims. In my past life I was a monster, a man willing to kill anyone, constantly thirsting for blood, never satisfied.
“You trapped me here, but I knew Catherine could never stay away. I knew the memories would come back, the thrill and the passion of it all would well up in her soul again.”
I fought back, pushing him away, but he lounged back at me, grabbed my wrist, and bit into the side of my hand. I could feel the pressure of his mouth tighten as he sucked in as much blood as he could. His white skin began to fill with color. I punched at his head, knocking his hat to the ground.
“Damn you. That’s a nice hat. Don’t fight. I am who you are and you are me. There’s no escaping.”
I noticed that now there were many different people, or monsters, in the crystals. They were no longer my own reflection. They all looked hideous and weak, trapped in a purgatory by their own better selves.
He lunged at me again, but this time he flew at me head first. I dodged him and as he came closer to the opposite wall of the crystal room, he yelled in exasperation, holding his hand out to avoid hitting his head against the wall. His hand was engulfed by the wall, submerged up to his elbow. He was laying on his stomach.
“No. Pull me out. Don’t do this. Don’t you want to be a god again. The power. The power.”
I knew what I had to do at that point. He had revealed too much. I put my hands on his ass and pushed the rest of his body through the crystalline wall. He appeared on the other side of the crystal wall, banging with his fists, and pleading to let him out.
“You son of a bitch. You’ll be back. You can try to deny what you are, but the thirst and hunger is always there. It might be buried deep, but it’s always there, and soon you’ll miss your… or, should I say our Catherine.”
All around the room were trapped souls, damned vampiric souls, waiting for their better halves to come to their senses and embrace the darkness that was once an innate part of their existence, boldly committing to the passion of murder and gluttony.
They were screeching and hollering for release. I wanted to get out of the room. Visions of who I used to be were displayed across the crystal. I remembered who I was and when I was born. It was over a hundred years ago. I thirsted, I hungered. I killed and destroyed families, mostly preying on the weak and then there she was- Catherine. A murderer fell in love. I couldn’t kill her, even though my stomach felt empty and my hunger was uncontrollable. I bit her, but not to kill, only to bring her into my world to be with me forever. She hated me for that and then I found the Rose Crystal Room. I wanted to give her back a normal existence. A killer felt guilty. We gave up the demons, but at a price. One day, we would have to come back, and once again don the cloak of a murderer, but this time in his service, obeying his every whim. The world needed balance, according to the proprietor of this fair saloon. It needed hunters to weed out the weak. I remembered now. He was known as the Scarlet Shepard.
The door opened.
“You’re not quite ready, but you’ve had your time. I’m not erasing your memory. I’m not giving Catherine back either. You belong to me, but I don’t want it until you’re ready.”
I looked up to see a thin man dressed in a red suit with a long black tie. He was wearing a black tweed cap and a chain with an upside down cross.
His goons grabbed me by the arms and dragged me out of the room and in front of Catherine. There on the stage with her now was a homeless man, dressed in ragged clothes and smelling of liquor. She looked at me, smiled, and buried her teeth in his neck. He struggled but her grasp was too strong. She drank him dry. He collapsed to the floor.
“You made me. You love me and I know one day you’ll come back.”
I was thrown out on the streets, lonely and without my wife. The shadow of my former self still lives. I left New York with new and old memories; some I had hoped would never be discovered again. I drink to forget my sins, but mostly to forget Catherine. I tell myself that I killed her years ago, that she never survived, and that I never really ever loved her, but then again, I told you in the beginning that I didn’t want to stray too far from the truth. The truth is that I would kill a million souls to have her back again

Brilliant light pierced the obsidian curtain, with rays illuminating the street corners I strut to work. Old-world turrets loom over the cobbled frame of the Museum. The rosewood door carved ages ago splinters apart against my key. My footsteps echo through the archways above, carried away into the deepest recesses. I drop off my belongings in the appropriate locker and begin my shift.
As with all nights, I begin it with a search. Usually, I turn up with nothing, which doesn't bother me. It means the shift is quiet, and I can tend to the exhibits. Occasionally I'll find two or three Gnomes hiding away on a pilgrimage, a rite of passage. They will polish idols, wax the marble columns, or even organize new entries. Goblins on the other hand... They are an entirely different story, always breaking or moving items around. In my research, I have deduced that they like all mischievous spirits can be reasoned with. If I leave out copper wire or coins they will grant me peace during the night. Gnomes, Goblins, and other Fae creatures congregate here to experience their culture. It exists solely in memory or oral traditions, thanks to persecution. What artifacts or idols remain, I collect and bring to the Museum.
When the search has concluded, I will finish my night by locating more artifacts, bobbles, and trinkets to include as exhibits. Organizing them based on location, culture, and date. Sometimes I will need to journey away from the Museum to find these relics, which leaves the buildings and their occupants in the care of the public. I have doubts about going, always worried I may return to nothing. I often find even with this gnawing fear at my heels. I come back to more than what I started with. Maybe, the public can be trusted with these stories...

This is Part 2 of this write-up. Please read part 1 first. This is the link:
https://www.reddit.com/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/143r7l9/felix_vail_the_pedophile_serial_killer_caught/

PART 2:

ANNETTE CRAVER:

Born on the 7th of December 1965, Annette Craver was intelligent and creative. At 15 she was a singer-songwriter and in her senior year at a private school that specialized in medicine. Her dream was to become a midwife.
http://charleyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/vail_annette6.jpg(A photo of Annette Craver.)
In the summer of 1981, she and her mother, Mary Rose greeted people at a friend’s yard sale in the Montrose neighborhood in Houston, Texas. They had just returned from a vacation in Mexico, and Annette felt heartsick, still infatuated with a boy named Adolfo, who was unable to join her in America.
VAIL MEETS ANNETTE
While people browsed the sale, Vail pulled up on a motorcycle and spoke with Annette. He was 41 and had done some carpentry work in the area. “When I saw her, I thought, ‘That’s going to be my new girlfriend,’” he said about the 15-year-old.
In April 1982, Rose and her daughter invested in a Tulsa home that had a rental cottage behind it. Rose began renovating both. After graduating from high school, Annette joined her mother in Tulsa. Vail appeared a few days later, and convinced Annette to leave with him on his motorcycle. They lived off the $500-a-month Social Security check that she received from her father’s death 3 years prior. It would be over a year before Mary Rose would see her daughter again.
That fall, Annette (who was still 15) would fall pregnant, and Vail would force her to have a painful abortion.
Jerry Woodall, reportedly friends with Vail later recalled an embarrassing scene, where the 42-year-old Vail was in a sleeping bag, having public sex with a 16-year-old Annette, only 20 feet away from him and his then-wife Meredith McMackin. Annette grinned and waved at them. Woodall and McMackin did their best to ignore them.
McMackin would later say that Vail had “this coldness and controlling aspect to his personality. Annette was so open and alive, but I think he just totally dominated her. He would try to convey that he was this higher form of being. At first, I thought maybe he was evolved, but then I realized it was this arrogant act.”
Later that summer, police in California would arrest Vail for violating probation a dozen years earlier. Annette telephoned Woodall, who gave her $200. After Vail walked free from prison, he and Annette decided to get married. However, as a 17-year-old she needed permission.
Annette told her mother that she loved Vail, that they were already “spiritually married” and that they would travel to Mexico and get married there if she refused. Not wanting to lose her daughter completely, Rose said OK.
On August 15th, 1983, in Bakersfield, California, the couple were wed.
AFTER THE MARRIAGE
Four months after the marriage, Annette turned 18, allowing her to collect more than $98,000 ($293,500 today) from life insurance policies on her late father. Accompanied by Vail, she withdrew all the money in cash from a San Antonio bank. She bought a Fiat convertible that Vail liked and paid for his dental work.
In April 1984, Rose returned home to find Annette waiting at her door. She told her she wanted to divorce Vail, and enroll in college. She talked about Vail’s temper, including an incident where he had broken his hand trying to punch his wife. He missed and hit a wall.
A few weeks later, Vail showed up. The couple fought constantly, and Vail left after a few days. Mary Rose said that Vail was “insanely jealous” and would become furious when Annette spoke of her desire to go out with younger men.
She and Annette worked on renovating the two homes after Vail left, enjoying their time together. The 2 even started a garden together.
Annette received a letter from Vail, who vowed their time apart would fuel their love. He wrote to her: “After we hung up, I went out to a park and ran and hung and talked with God and smoked some and shot some pool and rode with the top down out through the marsh playing ‘Iron Butterfly’ [“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”] and bathing every inch of your body-spirit being with love.”
He referred to being away from Annette as “deprivation jail” and to her ego as “his jailor.”
“The idea of her cutting away ego’s “feeder roots and creating roots between your spirit and the cosmic ground of loving makes me hot for you. My mind is kissing you everywhere.”
After that, Vail would return to Annette’s life. Rose said, “Annette told me, ‘Felix is the wisest person in the world, and I can’t make decisions without him.’” His influence on Annette had only grown stronger. According to Rose, she even compared Vail to God, a comparison Vail agreed with.
After this, the couple angrily insisted that Rose move out and deed the house to Annette. Accompanied by suicidal thoughts brought on by Vail’s continued control over her daughter, Rose left for California to stay with family and friends, deeding the house to Annette for $7000 ($21,000 today) before she did.
Annette would add Vail to the deed, and a month later had deeded him both homes, leaving him as the sole owner.
ANNETTE’S DISAPPEARANCE
Mere weeks after deeding the houses to Vail, the couple told neighbors they were leaving on vacation. When Vail returned in October, he was alone.
Vail told a neighbor that Annette had a lot of money wither her when he’d left her, and that she was likely visiting friends in Denver.
Upon learning that Annette hadn’t come back with Vail, Mary Rose called him. “He told me that while they were camping, Annette had a sexual dream about being with other men in Mexico, and she wanted to go there,” she recalled to an investigative reporter years later. “He claimed that the dream made them both realize that she should have her freedom.” The next day, Vail told her he had put Annette on a bus with $50,000 ($150,000 today) but didn't elaborate.
On Oct 22, 1984, Rose filed a missing person’s report. She told the Tulsa Police Department that each person who spoke with Vail “gets a different story about the amount of money that Annette took with her and where she might be. We all believe that he knows where she is or has done something with her.”
On January 22, 1985, Detective Dennis Davis and another officer questioned Vail at his home (This is obscenely late to start questioning him). By this point, Vail had filed for divorce, citing an inability to find her after a “diligent search.” Davis said her mother, Mary Rose, mentioned her daughter had received more than $90,000 from her father’s estate. Vail confirmed this was true, saying the couple had spent much of that money traveling in foreign countries. He said they kept their money in cash because they didn’t trust banks and that he had found about $10,000 in cash when he returned home.
The next day, Vail called a lawyer, who promised to talk with the officers and tell them to “leave me alone,” as he wrote in his journal.
When Davis returned five days later, Vail had a detailed alibi: The couple left Tulsa between noon and 3 p.m. on Sept. 13, 1984, and stayed the night in a hotel in Claremont, Oklahoma. After two nights of camping on the river, Annette woke up and told Vail she had decided to leave him. He took her to the Trailways Bus Station in St. Louis and left before she bought the ticket. (There is no Trailways Bus Station in St. Louis, and there has never been a Trailways Bus Station in St. Louis.)
He told the officers that she had told him she was headed for Denver, where she planned to get a fake ID card and leave for Mexico. When asked if he would take a lie detector test, Vail said no.
After Davis left, he wrote a letter to Rose. He blamed her for the “bad things” about Annette, told her that after the couple had returned from Costa Rica Annette had been “seeing friends and relatives --- completing her relationships with them for the purpose of getting ready to drop everybody and start over.” He wrote that Annette “disappeared herself from you” because Rose kept imposing her “value system” on her, and said Annette viewed her mother, grandmother, and herself as “zero self-image whores for approval.”
He explained the 2 had no plans to communicate, he did not know where she was, and that “I also assure you that even if I did know, I would not tell you.”
When Rose returned to Tulsa in April 1985, she entered the cottage Annette used to live in, only to find almost all the young woman’s belongings were gone, including her clothes and her diary.
Inside a Barbie suitcase, Rose found a photograph of her daughter and several of her identification cards. She also located things that Annette had written, including a Feb. 17, 1984, note that contradicted Vail’s claim that the couple had spent most of her inheritance on their travel to Mexico and Central American countries.
Instead, the note detailed how they used the money to buy the Fiat, pay off all of Vail’s loans, and deposit $36,000 into Louisiana Savings. It said that as of that day, they had $41,600 ($125,000 today) in cash.
Rose shared the information with the police. Detective Davis showed up again, and Vail told Davis the couple divided the money into smaller cashier’s checks, contradicting his earlier statement that they kept the money in cash.
After a while, Davis left, and despite the (seemingly obvious) suspicious behavior of Vail, closed the missing person’s case.
AFTER ANNETTE’S DISAPPEARANCE
Rose kept calling Vail after this and was finally able to reach him on September 14th 1985.
When asked about Annette’s whereabouts he refused to tell her.
When asked about Annette’s missing clothes he said he gave them to charity.
When asked about the insurance money, Vail told her ‘That’s all she really cared about.’ Rose hung up.
Two years later, fed up with the lack of progress in Annette’s case, Rose would return to Tulsa. She spent thousands of dollars on private investigators to locate Vail. When that failed, she simply went and found him herself.
Tipped off that he was staying at someone’s house, she went there with a friend and found him sitting outside. When asked where Annette went, he replied “Mexico.” When asked where in Mexico, he said the 2 had made a pact to contact each other every 5 years, contradicting his statement that the 2 didn’t have plans to communicate. Rose didn’t believe a word of it.
The whole time Vail never looked up, never stood up and never looked her in the eye.
BETH FIELD
Some time after this, Vail began dating Beth Field. Soon the couple had began arguing, and Vail would call her a “whore.” During a December 1987 argument, he would strike her so hard he ruptured her ear drum. She told Vail there was no justification for violence, to which he responded, “If you quit behaving like a whore, I’ll quit hitting you.”
In August 1988 Beth received a call from Rose, sharing details about the disappearance of her daughter, Annette. From that point forward, Field said she began to examine Vail’s words more closely, realizing that he had likely murdered her.
Four months after the call, he entered her home unannounced. Already drunk, he accused her of “imagined promiscuity,” according to a court order. He slapped her, struck her, and threw her across the bedroom. She asked if Vail was going to kill her, to which Vail replied, “It depends on what you tell me.”
A judge gave her a protective order, requiring Vail to keep his distance. Two weeks later, the sheriff reported that Vail was nowhere to be found.
While Field was visiting a meditation center in Texas in 1990, Vail arrived. After composing herself, she told him “There is a part of you that goes off, and it’s sick and it’s dangerous.”
He looked at her and asked, “Really?” She said “yes, really.” This time, the message seemed to go through. Vail left the next day, and with a single exception about five years later, she never saw him again.
MARY ROSE LEARNS ABOUT THE OTHER 2 CASES
In the summer of 1991 (6 years after Annette's disappearance), Rose drove over 2000 miles to Canyon Lake, Texas to speak to Sue Jordan, Felix Vail’s sister. Jordan said that Vail had told her that Annette wanted to leave, that he took her to a bus station and that she left with some Mexican men, heading for Mexico. Jordan also mentioned that Vail’s first wife had drowned, which was news to Rose.
Before she left, Jordan also told her, “Oh, you know, there was another woman that disappeared. I remember her mother calling my mother for years, checking to see if they’d heard from her. I think her name was Sharon.”
After the conversation, Rose sat down at a typewriter, writing every word she could remember. She also called the public library in Lake Charles.
The librarian remembered the 1962 drowning of Vail’s first wife, Mary Horton. She told Rose that he had taken out life insurance policies on his wife prior to her drowning and that the insurance companies were suspicious and didn’t pay the full value. The librarian made copies of newspaper articles and mailed them to her.
After reading them, Rose reached out to Mary’s family in Louisiana, speaking to Will Horton. He shared her suspicions about Vail and a copy of the 1971 National Enquirer article made after Vail's son Bill reported him to the police. When she read it, she learned that Sharon’s last name was Hensley.
In 1994, she read in the newspaper about Dolores Strehlow’s disappearance from Medford, Oregon, seven years earlier. Police had just arrested her husband, thanks to the work of Detective Terry Newell. She contacted Newell, who helped her find the family of Sharon Hensley. When Rose dialed the Hensley family, Sharon’s mother, Peggy, answered. Rose asked if Peggy knew a Felix Vail. Peggy replied with "you bet I do"
THE INVESTIGATION HEATS UP… AND COOLS DOWN
The detective who helped Rose before, Terry Newell, contacted Jim Bell, a national expert in serial killings working for the FBI. When Rose talked with Bell, she felt like she'd finally gotten somewhere. He was interested in working on the Vail case if he could swing the time. He still remained busy with active serial killer cases, helping train task forces across the U.S. Vail’s son, Bill, told Rose that he was willing to testify, as long as authorities provided protection to his family. Both the Tulsa police and the district attorney’s office in Lake Charles revived their investigations into Vail, now considered a suspected serial killer.
Bell suggested the victims’ families gather with authorities at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, to share information on Vail. He was unable to work on the case and left the FBI in 1995. The meeting in Quantico never materialized, and the cases involving Vail grew cold once again.
A QUICK RUN DOWN OF EVENTS
In the fall of 1997, family and friends held a mural for Annette.
Diagnosed with esophageal cancer, Vail’s son Bill heard from doctors that he didn’t have long to live. He’s quoted saying “now I’ll get to be with my mom.” Months before passing away in 2009, Bill talked about his father in a recorded interview with his pastor at Grace Church in Overland Park, Kansas.
On Jan. 3, 2009, Bill died, and Vail wrote in his journal, “I feel a large empty hole in my being where his life presence has been for 47 years,” before writing about getting a good haircut. He drove to Kansas but didn’t attend his own son’s funeral. If he had, he would have heard the recording, with his son detailing how he had overheard his father talk about murdering Bill's mother, Mary.
When Vail learned of the recording, he wrote to Pastor Tim Howey, asking for a copy. He blamed his son’s statements on “false memories,” saying, “I have not known about it until now and am stunned.”
In 2012, while attempting to confront Vail with reporter Jerry Mitchell whom she had contacted to write about Vial, Rose was stopped by Kaye Faulkner, Vial’s sister. She told Rose and Mitchell of the recording and urged Mitchell to get a copy of it. She also said that she believed Vial had murdered Mary Horton, Sharon Hensley, and Annette Craver.
She gave the reporter Vial’s number, as well as the numbers of her other brother, Ronnie, and her sister, Beth. Vial didn’t answer those calls, so Mitchell left a message. Ronnie promised to speak to his brother on his behalf.
MITCHELL INVESTIGATES
Mitchell arrived in Lake Charles and stopped by the Southwestern Louisiana Genealogical and Historical Library, which shared copies from old city directories. He began tracking down people who had lived in the Maree Apartments with Felix and Mary.
Many described Mary’s fair of drowning. A close friend of Vails, Judson McCann II described Vial as a ladies’ man, and insinuated he was a cheater. “Many nights, his car wouldn’t be home, and Mary would be there with the lights on. When Felix was gone, it wasn’t because he was trotline fishing.”
Another close friend, Bob Hodges described Vial’s story of Mary ‘falling’ in the river as “horse manure.”
A college roommate of Mary, Sandra Sudduth Pratt, said “Nobody believed it was an accident.”
Mitchell shared Mary’s autopsy report with pathologist Dr. Michael Baden of New York City, who concluded that foul play had taken place in her death.
The report showed large bruises with bleeding into tissues on the left side of the neck, which he said suggested she suffered forceful neck trauma before entering the water. There were hemorrhagic bruises to the right calf and left leg above the knee, which he said were consistent with a struggle before her submersion. But most convincingly of all was the scarf authorities found around her neck that extended 4 inches into her mouth, which suggested traumatic asphyxia before entering the water.
“Somebody had to push that scarf into her mouth. She had to have that scarf wedged in her mouth before she was put in the water.”
A cousin put Mary’s brother Will Horton in touch with former detective “Rabbit” Manuel, who had headed up the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Office’s investigation back in 1962. He had never forgotten Mary’s death. “Felix’s story just didn’t add up. The fishing tackle was dry. The trotline was dry. The boat was dry. Even Felix’s cigarettes were dry, despite him telling the deputies he dove straight in the water to save Mary.”
He and Manuel met with “Lucky” DeLouche, who directed an elite task force unit that investigated homicides. Three young detectives took notes as they talked. Manuel shared details from the case, saying deputies (officers) wanted to prosecute, but the district attorney wouldn’t let them. Horton shared the autopsy report, Vail’s letters and his belief that Vail was a serial killer. Horton said DeLouche replied, “This absolutely fits the profile of a serial killer,” to which the other detectives agreed.
Shortly afterwards, DeLouche left the task force, and for seemingly the hundredth time, grew cold again.
After Mitchell posted a story about Vail titled “Gone” (It’s nearly 9,000 words long, and the precursor to the 35,500 word story I have drawn heavily from) a man named Wesley Turnage contacted him. He told him of a conversation he had had with Vail in 1963 during a car ride.
According to Turnage, Vail called Mary a bitch and said she thought another child would help solve their marriage problems. He quoted Vail as saying, “She wanted to have another kid. I didn’t want the one I got. I fixed that sorry bitch. She will never have another one.”
Mitchell would make another discovery. District Attorney Salter Jr. had ordered that the judge dismiss 882 criminal cases — more than three cases for each working day.
Will Horton told Mitchell the original detectives in the case told him that Salter wouldn’t allow them to present the evidence they had collected against Vail. That matched the stories Mitchell had heard from grand jurors’ families.
Horton then contacted District Attorney John DeRosier, who said he would be willing to reopen the case if there was enough evidence.
Then came an interesting wrinkle in the story. Finding Vail.
He’d disappeared, returning on Labor Day weekend 2012 to sell his property, before disappearing again. Luckily, another reader of "Gone" came to the rescue. He phoned Mitchell, telling him where Vial was. Canyon Lake, Texas.
Mitchell then contacted Enzo Yaksic, founder of the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative. Yaksic then contacted Armin Showalter, acting chief for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, which specialized in serial homicide investigations.
Yaksic shared a copy of GONE with Showalter, who in turn called Calcasieu Parish Deputy Randy Curtis, now taking on the Vail case. Curtis phoned Mitchell to find out where Vail was. A few days later, he called back to say the FBI had discovered Vail purchased property at 737 Shadyview Drive in Canyon Lake.
On Jan. 18, 2013, Curtis decided to confront Vail. He found him at that address, living in a storage shed. Curtis said he read Vail his rights before asking him about the death and disappearances of the women. Vail refused to say anything, accusing families and The Clarion-Ledger (Where "Gone" was published) of lying about him. The whole time, Vail couldn’t stop smirking.
​
Will Horton gave Mitchell the number of his cousin, who was a caretaker for 90-year-old Isaac Abshire Jr. When Mitchell sat down with the man, he shared a haunting story.
Abshire had worked with Vail and offered him a room to rent out. Once Vail and Mary were married, Vail had moved out. Abshire viewed himself as “a big brother” to Mary, calling her “a sweet little girl.”
After the marriage, Vail had become angry at work, talking about how ugly his wife was when she was pregnant, and how he didn’t like his baby. On the Friday before she was killed, the couple visited Abshire, bringing Bill, who was still an infant. Mary privately asked Abshire if he thought Vail could take her baby away.
Two days later, Mary was dead.
Abshire and two other workers went out the next day to drag the river. The next morning, Oct. 30, 1962, he returned with one of them, Jimmy May, to continue dragging.
Abshire said while they were talking, “something popped up. A guy with binoculars asked, ‘Does she have blonde hair?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s her.’”
They recovered the body, and Abshire could never forget what he saw. Her body was rigid, and a scarf was wrapped around her neck before going into her mouth. Blood boiled on the boat, everyone voicing the same opinion. Vail had killed Mary.
Abshire had kept photos from that day for over 50 years. He said he had given them to Deputy Curtis as well as a copy of the 1962 sheriff’s report, which listed 15 points suggesting Vail’s guilt.
Despite being behind on major bills, Vail had managed to pay an entire year’s premiums in advance for a $50,000 ($150,000 today) life insurance policy on his wife. He had a second life insurance policy on her for $8,000 ($24,000 today), which promised to pay double if she died by accident.
It was almost as if he knew she was about to die.
Deputies had reported witnesses claims that Vail had told them he didn’t love his wife, that she looked stupid and vulgar, and that he had had sexual relations with multiple women, and at least one man.
Vail told deputies that his wife was wearing an off-white leather jacket when she went into the water. But she wasn’t wearing the jacket when her body was recovered. Inside his boat, deputies found two life preservers. Mary had not been wearing one, despite her fear of drowning. As for the trotline the 2 were supposedly running, deputies found it still inside Vail’s tackle box.
Most witnesses the Deputies had spoken too felt that Vail was capable of killing his wife.
When asked if he believed Vail killed his wife, Abshire said “Oh, my God, yes.”
THE CHASE & THE FINAL CLUES:
Ever since Vail had sold his Mississippi property, Mary Rose had wondered if he would eventually sell the Tulsa property, the one she and Annette had lived in. He did. Vail sold it for $149,000. Rose asked the question on the mind of everyone investigating. “What is he going to do with all that money? --- He could be running.”
On April 30th Mitchell got a call saying that Vail had left Texas. He was pulled over by police in Columbus, Mississippi after hopping the fence of his now dead brother Ronnie’s property. Curtis told Mitchell that the Columbus police were sending him a photo of Vail and the white pick-up truck he was pulled over in. He once again warned Mitchell that Vail could be running.
Vail’s sister called again, saying she heard her brother was heading to Montpelier. She wondered if he was driving to the home of possible witness Wesley Turnage.
Mitchell called Turnage to let him know that Vail might be headed his way. Turnage replied “If he sets foot on my property, there won’t be no trial.” He called Mitchell back later, saying no one in Montpelier had seen Vail.
Private Investigator Gina Frenzel, who had questioned Vail herself, including pretending to be his girlfriend, called Mitchell with good news. Vail had contacted her and told her he was back in Canyon Lake. Mitchell informed Curtis.
On May 17th 2012, authorities arrested Felix Vail for the murder of his wife Mary Horton.
In telephone calls from the jail in Lake Charles, he shared his explanation of what happened the night of Oct. 28, 1962, when Mary died.
He referred to his first wife as a “coon-ass lady,” saying she was “half kneeling” on his feet when she “saw one of the float buckets that were on the line.” He said the boat was “going real slow along the edge of the bank when the boat hit a stump ... and it dumped her right out.” Vail said he shut off the motor and dove in “where she had plopped in the water. I mean, nothing. The river had sucked her right in.” He said he “dove around until I was exhausted, and came in immediately to the police station in town and reported the accident and that was it.”
This story differed greatly from his story in 1962 when he said his wife was sitting on top of a boat seat when she fell out, not that she was kneeling on his feet. Back then, he said nothing about hitting a stump — just swerving to miss it.
It also differed from the story he had told his son, where a wave from another boat had dumped Mary out.
Vail told Frenzel that the case “has been an avalanche coming down the mountain all that time, waiting to hit my head, and it finally has.”
He blamed the families and Mitchell, “an evil, shrimpy reporter,” for what had happened, calling the charges “fabricated” and insisting that “a large amount of money, hate and political ambitions are behind them.”
At Vail’s request, Frenzel returned his truck to his home and went inside to take care of a few tasks. While there, she spent 16 hours photographing all his journals, more than 2,400 pages. She also photographed letters, documents, photographs and business cards, some dating back to the 1960s. She found a collection of women’s jewelry, old buttons, pins, and even a glass dildo.
Disturbingly, if at this point unsurprisingly, she found a photograph of a naked 3-year-old girl. Frenzel later spoke with the girl, now a woman. The journals revealed that Vail had stalked her for years.
Frenzel discovered the birth certificate of Annette Craver, who had used it for previous trips to Mexico.
Mitchell and Frenzel poured through the journals she had photographed. They noticed gaps in them that lead them to believe Vail had ripped pages out, including times when he should have been with Sharon and Annette.
His journals were dominated by sex, dreams of sex and reflected an obsession with children. In a March 27, 1986, entry, Vail wrote about the visit of a woman and her daughters in his home. “The little girls were delicious --- We massaged some, hugged & kissed some & it was 12 (midnight) & time for them to go.”
On Aug. 29, 1992, Vail walked into the Wal-Mart in West Point, and as he wrote in his journal “a 1-year-old white girl looked in my eyes loving me like there was no age difference between us.”
When Mitchell interviewed Kert Germany, a co-worker of Vail in 1977 he said that Vail attracted women wherever he went, and that Vail had told him the best sex of his life had been with 2- or 3-year-old girl.
It was that this time that Alexandra Christianson, Vail’s ex-wife called Mitchell and told him her story. She also put him in contact with Bruce Biedebach, the man she had been on a date with when she left with Vail. Biedebach would tell Mitchell that during a party in 1965 that turned into a “boast-fest” Vail had boasted about something he had done, that no one else had done.
Killed his wife.
He told the men at the party that he had held his wife’s head underwater until she drowned.
Biedebach then put Mitchell in contact with Rob Fremont, who had bicycled around California with Vail when he was 13. He said that while riding with Vail, he had told him that he hit his wife on the head and drowned her. Fremont never rode with him again after that.
With as much evidence as they could possibly gather, the case went to trial.
THE TRIAL:
Vail’s trial began on August 8th, 2016.
District Attorney John DeRosier laid out the evidence clearly.
He spoke of the evidence against Vail about Mary’s murder on October 28th, 1962.
He spoke about Vail swearing to Sharon Hensley’s mother that she wanted to start a new life in 1974.
He spoke about his letters to Mary Rose, telling her he wouldn’t tell her where her daughter Annette was “even if he knew.” Vail smirked at that one.
Finally, he spoke to the jurors.
“Mary Horton Vail is gone, Sharon Hensley is gone,” DeRosier said, “and Annette Craver Vail is gone.”
“You’re going to write the last chapter, and it’s simply going to read, ‘And justice was finally done. William Felix Vail, guilty as charged.’”
Prosecutors called all three families to testify.
Will Horton told jurors of his sister, “Mary was the kind of person you would want as a friend.” He broke while talking about visiting his nephew after he death in 1962. “I just wanted Bill to know how much his mother loved him.”
Brian Hensley told jurors that he last saw his sister, Sharon, with Vail before the pair left Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1972. Other than a telephone call and letter in the months that followed, he said no one had seen or heard from her since.
When Mary Rose took the stand, Vail bowed his head.
This was the woman who had been working for 32 long years to bring him into this court.
This was the mother who had waited 32 years for this moment.
She called Annette “a huge light in my life. We were always loving toward each other.” She testified that Vail ran off with her daughter on his motorcycle and married her. She testified that Annette, who inherited nearly $100,000 and received two homes, disappeared weeks after deeding those homes to Vail.
Wesley Turnage, Rob Fremont, and Bruce Biedebach swore under oath that Vail said he killed his first wife. Biedebach said he asked Vail if Mary was a bitch, to which Vail had said yes. Vail laughed in court as he told the story.
The current coroner, forensic pathologist Dr. Terry Welke, testified that in most drownings, the body comes up in a “dead person’s float,” with the back of the head surfacing first and the limbs hanging down in the water.
After sharing a series of pictures to show it, he showed the court two black-and-white photographs of Mary Horton when her body was recovered on Oct. 30, 1962, less than two days after she reportedly drowned. Her body was stiff, with her hands over chest as if she was in a coffin.
They also saw the videotaped testimony of Isaac Abshire Jr, who had died in 2014. He said her body was stiff when it surfaced either sideways or face up when she bobbed up in the Calcasieu River.
That testimony helped contribute to Welke’s homicide conclusion. So did the unbroken grease-like stain across her Chi Omega sweatshirt, which he believed could have come from a tarp covering her. Welke concluded Mary was dead and stiff before her body went into the water, explaining why rigor had set in.
Testimony was heard of Vail not paying for his own wife’s funeral, despite having made thousands from her life insurance.
THE VERDICT
The jury didn’t even take a half hour to reach their verdict.
William Felix Vail Sr was unanimously found guilty of murdering Mary Horton. He was sentenced to life in prison.
After the verdict, the prosecutor also revealed that the FBI had found out that Vail had molested a child over 30 years ago. They were unable to put him on trial for it, as the statue of limitations had passed.
Finally, nearly 54 years after she was murdered, Mary Horton had found justice.
Finally, 42 years after her disappearance, Sharon Hensley had found justice.
And Annette Craver, with the help of her mother Mary Rose’s tireless efforts, had finally found justice after 32 years.
https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/f75084c7dce4fb08e12e45ccba5e40a1
This a photo of Mary, Sharon and Annette. I felt it was fitting to end off with. May they all rest in peace.
MY SOURCES:
https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/8284?nav
https://charleyproject.org/case/annette-michelle-craver-vail
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/felixvailgone/2016/12/29/felix-vail-gone-one-wife-dead-two-other-missing-jerry-mitchell/95895894/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5796622/mary-elizabeth-vail
https://charleyproject.org/case/sharon-hensley
https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/20525?nav

Waking up next to Stanton, our clothes were all over the floor. Blushing at last night’s activity, I checked the time. A loud scream burst from my lips, the book club was in ten minutes. Crashing to the floor, Stanton stirred awake. Panicking at the time, the floor shook as he crashed to the floor. Searching for anything to wear, he was already tugging on a black band t-shirt and ripped jeans. Fixing his hair, my hand settled on a black and white striped swing dress. Slipping my feet into my boots, he brushed my wild hair into a simple side bun. Kissing me on the forehead, he dropped a random book into my palm.
“I will hang out with the husbands to analyze their behavior. Get those hens talking about their men.” He said simply, ignoring what we did last night. “Try and drink some coffee with them. Tell them that you have a stomach sensitivity.” Focusing on the book, scarlet colored my cheeks. It was one I had written and published fifty years ago, his brows furrowing.
“You’re telling me that I have to go and sit with a bunch of women while they misinterpret what I wrote.” I groaned bitterly, wishing that he would acknowledge last night. “Whatever. At least I know the plot.” Hooking his elbow into mine, we walked across the street. The husbands welcomed him with open arms, Susie yanking me in. Pulling me into the kitchen, she slid me a cup of coffee, my stomach churning. While most vampires enjoyed it, I despised it with a burning passion. Taking a sip, the pungent taste reminded me of a bunch of pennies.
“Tell me about sleeping with him. Was it fun? My husband is so boring.” She pleaded desperately, pressing her palms together. “I also asked for you to come because you look a lot like my favorite author.” Hitting the wall, a secret shelf with every single book I wrote covered every inch of the damn space. Think of an excuse, you idiot. Stanton looked up from his own conversation outside, my lips pressing into a thin line.
“My mother wrote them.” I lied seamlessly, Susie buying into it. “She was a lovely woman.” Lie, that was a lie. My mother was a poor Irish vampire who ditched me at the ripe age of three, her next question causing me to spit my coffee out.
“When is the sound of tiny feet entering your home?” She trilled sweetly, cupping my hands. “You are the first to know that I am pregnant now. I have been trying for years. Maybe you can get pregnant soon and we can have them be best friends.” Horror hid behind my polite smile, a long squeal escaping my lips. Like hell I would go along with her sick little plan. Something felt off, my vision blurred. A purple liquid swirled on top of the coffee, my body hitting the floor. A rough darkness devoured me as coffee pooled around my head.
A yellow light swung over my head, something else feeling off. Clammy sweat drenched my skin, a fever burning my cheeks. Susie towered over me, a spike spinning in her palm. Attempting to crawl away, her heel dug into my back. Unable to move, this felt like something else. The desire to take Stanton nearly controlled my mind, the claws extended from my fingernails. Spinning another needle of the liquid in her palm, she jammed it into my leg. Extreme nausea wracked my body, the beginning of a heat cycle disabling me. Parting my lips to speak, I needed his blood to survive or that was what it felt like. Only wheezes poured from my lips, she jammed another needle into my leg. Sending me into the next stage, every touch raised an incredible amount of goosebumps. Shivering in my spot, the last time I felt this was one hundred years ago when a handsome stranger caught my eye.
“I used to be a hunter.” She bragged gleefully, sitting down on top of me. “We have to finish before the book club arrives, you fucking idiot. I meant what I said about you getting pregnant around the same time. I know the serial killer lives among us. You have to trust me with that.” My eyebrow twitched with a mixture of bewilderment and irritation, a snarl curling on my lips. All of this was too much, my knee meeting her face. Crawling onto the living room floor, my legs felt like rubber. If she hit me with another needle of that liquid I would be pregnant within the next few days. At the current level in mine, three months remained before anything had to be done about that. Stumbling out, blood poured from her nose. Struggling to my feet, my shaking fingers opened her fridge to see what I needed. The process had already begun but I could delay it for a while. Pulling out a needle full of a milky liquid, she cried out as I jammed it into my thigh.
“I am not ready for that quite yet, Miss hunter!” I shouted vehemently, fuming darkly on the stool. “How can I know that you aren’t the serial killer?” Pausing in her spot, her slender hands jammed her nose back into place. Wiping the blood out from underneath her nose, she sat down across from me. Chuckling softly to herself, her fingers drummed on the stainless steel counter top.
“They killed my sister and her family a couple of weeks ago. I have nothing to gain from this.” She informed me briskly, holding her stomach. “I am the neighborhood watch and I can’t stand that someone is slicing their way through our little piece of paradise. Revenge is in my plan but now I have to be careful.” Seeing things through her point of view, the fact that she sped up my natural reproductive cycle ticked me off.
“I figured I might kick start things for your body. The sooner you get pregnant the happier Stanley will be. I always catch him watching the families walking by with a longing look. I am only doing it because he doesn’t suck up to me which makes him my favorite stranger.” She expressed with her real smile, pointing to me. “You are a purebred vampire. Such luck should be blessed in your eyes. You can give birth without dying. I met you once when my old man came to talk to you in your jail cell. I don’t know if you don’t remember him but his name is Father Rowell.” All of my breath escaped my lungs at the mention of his name, my mind flicking through the memories of every person who had visited me. Come to think of it, a redheaded woman did accompany a priest that one time. How did I not make the connection? Laying my head on the table, several women ran in. My eyebrow twitched, the perfectly dressed woman interrupted our conversation. A sea of blonde haired women shoved me aside, a couple of them shooting daggers from their eyes. Stepping back, Susie tugged me close to her. A bout of nausea wracked me, the combination of the potion she had injected with me mixed poorly with my sudden social anxiety. Dropping a tray into my palm, her gentle touch dragged me to the four ivory walls she called her living room. A brown leather set reminded me of my cell, the tray crashing to the floor. Glass shattered everywhere, my immediate response was to run. Apologizing profusely, I bolted out the door. Ignoring their looks, I ripped off my boots. Sprinting down the street, a masked individual slammed into me. Crashing to the ground, the pavement felt cool against my face. Still weak from earlier, I couldn’t just fight them off like normal. Quivering on the pavement, a disguised voice sent chills up my spine.
“Goodnight, my dear!” The robotic voice laughed evilly, a knife slamming into my body repeatedly.” Copper poisoned my taste buds, the person whistling. A rusting van pulled up, the license plate number 568 4325 stuck into my memory while my blood pooled underneath me. Tossing me into the van, Stanton barely made it onto the street. Locking the door behind me, I leaned against the wall. Pulling out my silenced phone, my vision blurred as I turned on my location. Hiding my phone behind a dusty box, a darkness swallowed me alive.
Jerking awake once more, this trend had to stop. Groaning in pain, a yellow light swung over my head, a rough rope cut into my wrists. Struggling only made the knot tighter, the killers having to be boat owners, hunters or some sort of boy scout. Glancing around, no weapons lay around. Talk about being professional. Muffled yelling stole my attention, a filthy redhead tugged on chains against the wall. Two small children hugged her side tightly, silent tears staining their cheeks. One, a pair of worn steel toe boots came into view. Two, the other shoe appeared. Three, his masked face poked around the corner. Four, Five, Six, one of the killers were at the bottom of the stairs. Seven, he towered over me at six foot seven. Lifting up his mask, relief crashed over me at the sight of an anxious Stanton. Seconds from cutting her rope, the boss stomped down the stairs. Pulling his mask down, the boss cleared his throat.
“Cut off her fingers until she talks about how she found us.” He demanded via a thick distorted voice. “Never mind, give me the knife.” Snatching it from Stanton, he could only watch with horror as the man held my finger straight. Three red dots blinked in the corner of my eyes, the operation making sense. This asshole was running a torture to murder show, a lump forming in my throat.
“Thank you for your payment of a million dollars. We shall gut her like a deer.” He mused darkly, tracing the knife along my flat stomach. “Then I will play with the guts to please you.” A scream burst from my lips the moment the blade glided across my stomach. Fighting the urge to vomit, my steaming guts poured out onto my lap. Playing with my intestines, the money began to pour in. Choking on the blood building up in my throat, a hack sent it all over his mask. The questions were sick, a clammy sweat drenching my skin.
“We have a vampire.” He announced with wicked laughter, my heart sinking in my chest. “This is going to be fun.” Stanton held his composure, the back of the metal chair bending underneath his grip. The heat potion kicked in, one accidental touch clouding up my mind for a moment. Bending down to my level, his next words sent chills up my spine.
“The boys are coming. We have to keep him occupied for about thirty minutes.” He growled through gritted teeth, the man asking him to run the computers. Touching my shoulder one last time, the chair squealed the moment he sank down into the chair. Shoving a slender flash drive into the USB hole, he was gathering the IP addresses. Shoving my guts back in, childlike wonder brightened the killer’s tone at my wound sealing shut. Susie’s sister held her hands over her kid’s eyes, the knife sliding in and out of me. The wet noise did little to help me, the potion making my stomach churn worse than normal. The money kept pouring in, the welcome sound of chaos woke me up from my sickly state. The agents from before piled down the stairs, Stanton ripping off his mask. Cutting the rope, his touch made me jump a couple of feet into the air. Popping to my feet, every footfall echoed in the concrete cell. Assisting Susie’s sister, her arms embraced me desperately. Every emotion soaked my shoulder, another touch from Stanton resulted in a tender blush on my cheeks. Shooting me a thumbs up, his lips brushed against the top of my head. Helping the woman to her feet, Stanton scooped up the children. Bright flashes blinded me, the news crew attempting to speak to us. Climbing into a tinted SUV, the children bounced into their mother’s arm. Fishing around a bag, he held out packages of cheddar crackers. The boys accepted them graciously, the car heading towards the hospital. The door ripped open, nurses ushering the family inside. Scanning me up and down, Stanton held me by my hips. Sniffing me real quick, fear flashed on his face. Not having time, Susie smashed into me. Desperate tears flooded from her cheeks, her quaking hands cupping my face. A deep crimson painted my cheeks, a newfound respect for me glowed in her eyes.
“Thank you so much for saving them. I don’t know how I could ever thank y-” She blubbered uncontrollably, my hand raising to stop her. Smiling brightly in her direction, this reaction made it all worth it. My lips parted to speak, a nurse dragging her off before I could explain myself. Stanton dragged me back to the car, a snarl twitching on his lips. Slamming me down into my seat, the partition hummed its way up.
“Your heat is supposed to be for another year! Why do you smell like you are three months away?” He demanded hotly, the crack of my hand meeting his cheeks stunning the both of us. How dare he ask after not talking about last night! Clenching my fists into a ball, I turned my back.
“You haven’t talked about last night. We had fun and you acted like nothing happened!” I blurted out venomously, happy to have it off of my chest. “You already forced me into a marriage, and now you want me to ignore what happened last night. Fuck you. I had fun but here you are. Was it that bad? Susie sped me up so we could be pregnant around the same fucking time. Did you know she used to be a hunter? She opened right up to me. In fact she knew me.” Spinning me around to face him, an apologetic smile dimmed his features. A piece of hair fell in front of his left eye, his hands rubbing my shoulder.
“I can’t tell you why that all scares me.” He mumbled under his breath, sliding me a large emerald box. “You need to get changed into your uniform to enter the facility.” Peeling off my destroyed dress, his eyes couldn’t leave the angry scars covering my body. Flipping the box open, I pulled out a lightly armored leather number. Tugging it over my head, the onyx leather covered my arms. Hiding my bloody hands underneath the bell sleeves, the deep v-neck showed off my ample breasts. Sitting back in the seat, the A-line skirt floated away from my body. Scooting closer to me, he offered me his neck. Sinking my fangs into his tender flesh, every gulp revived my health. Curling my arms around his neck, he drank away. This time a wave of euphoria crashed over me, a long sigh pouring from my lips. Unable to stop, fright rounded my eyes the moment his hand curled around my neck. A muffled protest stopped him, an oppressive silence hung between us. The car skidded to a halt, an impressive navy marble building towered over us. Helping me out, the numb look on his face scared the shit out of me. Marching in aggressively, the way he was acting reminded me of the first time I met Father Powell. Hugging him from behind, his muscles relaxed.
“We all lose control at times.” I assured him lovingly, the tone taking over my voice for the first time. “If I can gain control, you can do it.” Cupping my trembling hands, an agent was attempting to remember the plate number. Typing it in for them with my free hand, a grateful expression met my exhausted face. My legs gave out, Stanton placing me on his back. Ignoring the jeering whispers, the rumors spread within minutes. Bursting into the interrogation room, a shaggy haired man with angry dark eyes watched him set me down in the chair across from him. An unkempt beard danced with every growl in his throat, his scarred face informing me of a rough life.
“I am not the only one in this plot. Do you remember that serial killer club on the news a couple of years ago? I am the bottom tier.” He bragged gleefully, the sweet smell of poison wafting from his mouth. “We must all die with honor.” His heart beat one last time, Stanton calling for help. Help wouldn’t come soon enough, this was a magical poison. Dragging him out of the room, I climbed into the driver’s seat. A skill I had learned the moment cars had been invented, the modern car proving far easier to drive than those things. Stanton hopped into the passenger seat, my fingers typing in an address into the GPS. Driving for too long, the brakes squealed to a halt in front of a bustling night club. Taking off his tie, the poor thing floated to the back. Roughing up his suit, he protested as I messed up his hair. Letting my hair down, a familiar face had to be spoken to. Sauntering up the door, the bouncer let us both in. Loud music worsened my migraine, a scantily clad blond guided us up to the office. Opening the door, my fingers curled around the neck of my old friend. Pinning him to the wall, his scarlet curls bounced around. Ruby eyes glowered back at me, his garish velvet suit irritating me further.
“Who are you selling your poison to, you fucking idiot?” I interrogated him intensely, Stanton yelling at me to calm down. “I know what you sold to Susie. That I can let go but sell some sort of poison to a serial killer after school club! You are playing with fire.” Cocking his brows, he slammed his knee into my chest. Every rib shattered upon impact, all the breath leaving my body. Coughing on the floor, he picked me up by my hair.
“I refuse to let a runt like you run my life. I sell my magical drugs and that is that.” He snapped hotly, my bones fusing back together. “I don’t know or care what they do with them.” Wicked laughter rumbled in my throat, the heel of my bare feet slamming into his jaw. Raw energy built around my fist, his bones shattered upon the impact of my fist. Sliding down the wall, my bruising fingers picked him up by his collar.
“I don’t care that you make drugs. That isn’t my department but when they are used for suicide I have an issue. Who ordered it!” I screamed furiously, a glob of spit landing on my face. “Just answer the fucking question. I will break every bone in your body. You still owe me for you selling me out. I fucking let you keep the reward money.” Clicking his bones back into place, he struggled to his feet. Unlocking his cabinet, he pulled out an ancient ledger. Dropping it into my palms, he sulked to his desk.
“Take it. I have to start another one anyway. I will call you if somebody uber weird pops up.” He commented kindly, pulling out a new one. “Don’t charge me, ‘kay. I provide loads of hunger suppressants for the monsters in the area. I also help monsters get pregnant faster. The poison was only meant to be sold for someone who was going to die. You know that I can see reapers as well as you can. Watch your temper with that heat potion coursing through you. Your powers are going to be a little wacky for a bit.” Mouthing a silent thanks, a triumphant grin spread cheek to cheek. Walking through the club, another discussion had to be had once we got into the car. Climbing in, dread bubbled in my gut.
“Give up why you were in prison.” I demanded sternly, leaning on the steering wheel. “Don’t lie. I can sniff that shit out.” Tears welled up in his eyes, a lump forming in his throat. Storm clouds rumbled to life, heavy raindrops crashed to the top of the vehicle.
“You weren’t my first partner.” He uttered bitterly, chewing on his lips. “I had a romantic relationship with her and she turned out to be the serial killer. The bodies piled up behind me, and I didn’t even know. We were incredibly intimate. She lied with the biggest smile on her face. I enjoyed our evening together and that you only drank from the serial killers to survive. She was what the agency calls a binge eater. Devouring person after person and I was the one to put her down. The difference was that I didn’t love her like I love you.” Covering his mouth, a further explanation needed to be heard.
“What do you mean by love me?” I asked politely, attempting not to lose my cool while pulling into a Cally’s. “Don’t lie to me. I have been through enough hell today.” Refusing to look in my direction, my hands cupped his face. Gritting his teeth, his hands cupped mine.
“I observed you for months and fell in love with the way you helped the prison when you could. I loved it when you would spend weeks buried into an inhumanly huge pile of books.” He choked out awkwardly, fresh tears flowing from his eyes. “I sound like a creepy stalker but I needed to make you my mate from the instant you met me.” Nodding my head, my lips kissed his hungrily. Scarlet colored his cheeks, his hands falling to my flat stomach.
“I love you too.” I choked out just as awkwardly, hoping not to upset him further. “Watch this book, I will be right back.” Swiping his wallet, I ran into the department store. Ignoring the bright lights and horrid smells, I paused in the baby section. Closing my eyes, the sweet sound of my mother singing an Irish lullaby soothed my nerves. Snapping awake, a tiny girl had crashed into my legs. Instead of crying out in fear, she began to giggle.
“You are so pretty.” She sang adorably, her horrified mother scooping her up and running away. Getting a couple of packages of toy cars and a beautiful bouquet of white roses, hurt dimmed my eyes at the cashier watching me in pure terror. Paying for the items, silent tears stained my cheeks. Not saying a word, I punched in the address for the hospital. Cursing to myself, we were four hours away. Setting the stuff in the back, I chose to turn on the radio to drown out the chaos in my mind. Sobbing the whole way back, this world was no different. The only thing missing was the torches that had hunted my mother down. Getting there in record time, I ditched my partner to catch up to me later. Stopping at the desk, the nurse didn’t show the same fear as the people in the store. Tucking a loose piece of caramel hair behind her ears, her gray eyes twinkling with joy.
“Thank you for bringing them in.” She returned with a genuine smile, pointing to the last room down the hall. “Visiting hours are over. Surely, they want to see their hero. I will pretend I looked the other way.” Winking in my direction, she turned her back to me. Running to their room, an exhausted Susie lay on her sister’s bed. The children perked up at me, smashing into my legs. Crouching down at their level, I presented the packages of cars. Pecking my cheeks, they ran off to go play with them. Rising to my feet, I presented her with the flowers.
“How does your sister like her coffee?” I inquired with my genuine smile, the mother’s expression softening into a gracious smile. My lips parted to speak, the woman’s head shaking. Coughing a bit, blood covered her hand. Seconds from pushing the nurse button, her raspy voice stole my attention. Stanton hovered in the door, the mother’s heart monitor going nuts. Looking closer, a bony hand rested on her shoulder. Following the arm, a reaper held her shoulder. Death had come to her, the option not working for me.
“Is there anything I can give you in return?” I begged with my palms pressed together, knowing that those kiddos needed their mother. “How about this?” Snapping my fingers, my stolen reaper’s scythe rested in my palms. Snatching it from me, the cold hand curled around my neck. Gasping for air, his yellowed skull hovered inches from my face. Biting down on my arm, he gulped down enough to figure out who I was.
“I recognize your stupid face.” A chilly voice thundered evilly, the other finger playing with my hair. “You vampires are the bane of my existence. I can’t take your souls when there's none to take. I will spare her this one time but she will have to go next time regardless of what you have.” Dropping me to the floor, he was gone. Coughing up a storm, one of the kids hit the button. A look of horror dawned on his face, his tiny body smashing into my legs. Crouching down to his level, he shivered in my arms.
“Was that a reaper?” He stuttered brokenly, my head nodding. “Will they ever hurt me?” His tight red curls tickled my face, the other twin watching from a distance. Their emerald green eyes watched me as the nurse brushed past me.
“No, they won’t.” I promised them warmly, taking him to the waiting room. “Let’s go play while they take care of your mom, ‘kay.” Susie snapped awake, picking up her other nephew. Crashing into the nearest chairs, they played with their cars. Susie rested her head on my shoulder, snores echoing in my ear. Letting her sleep, I was thankful for my current life.

Opportunity for someone interested in PT to gain some experience working with SCI, adaptive sports while also getting to travel for free. I've done this before with PT students and they have learned a lot about spinal cord injuries, mobility equipment, transfer techniques, etc.
Position: Wheelchair Rugby Travel Assistant
Dates: June 10-30, 2023
Location: Richmond, VA to Tucson, AZ
Description: C-5,6 complete quadriplegic wheelchair rugby player looking for a female travel partner to accompany to University of Arizona for training with U of A Wildcats Wheelchair Rugby team. No skilled nursing care or knowledge needed. Explanations and teaching can be given for each task.
Flight and room cost is covered.
Requirements:
- Available to travel from RIC to Tucson, AZ ****June 10 - June 30, 2023****
- Ability to transfer 100lb person- Comfortable taking direction- Driver’s license
Tasks & Responsibilities:- Assisting with personal care (dressing/bathing)- Transfers to/from wheelchaibed- Driving my accessible van to U of A for training at the Adaptive Athletics gym.- Assistance getting up in the morning (7am) and getting in bed in evening (9pm)
Contact: message me through here and I'll give you my contact
Note: Great opportunity for someone interested in working with SCI, PT, OT, Nursing, or Rec Therapy and experience adaptive sports through wheelchair rugby. Willing to write recommendation letter afterwards.
Thank you!!

I am a VCU alumni and I have an opportunity for a VCU student to travel with me and get some experience that may help in their career path.
Position: Wheelchair Rugby Travel Assistant
Dates: June 10-30, 2023
Location: Richmond, VA to Tucson, AZ
Description: C-5,6 complete quadriplegic wheelchair rugby player looking for a female travel partner to accompany to University of Arizona for training with U of A Wildcats Wheelchair Rugby team. No skilled nursing care or knowledge needed. Explanations and teaching can be given for each task.
Flight and room cost is covered.
Requirements:- Available to travel from RIC to Tucson, AZ June 10 - June 30, 2023
- Ability to transfer 100lb person- Comfortable taking direction- Driver’s license
Tasks & Responsibilities:- Assisting with personal care (dressing/bathing)- Transfers to/from wheelchaibed- Driving my accessible van to U of A for training at the Adaptive Athletics gym.- Assistance getting up in the morning (7am) and getting in bed in evening (9pm)
Contact: message me through here and I'll give you my contact
Note: Great opportunity for someone interested in working with SCI, PT, OT, Nursing, or Rec Therapy and experience adaptive sports through wheelchair rugby. Willing to write recommendation letter afterwards.
Thank you!!

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There are some deeds, some crimes and horrors even our Mother, the Universe itself, loathes beyond all. And when this is the case, neither time, nor space, nor reality itself can deny her vengeance.
Because time is a flat circle... and we all dance on its twisting disk. - kwong879, Pukan philosopher, Post Second Precursor War Reconstruction Era
For three days and three nights did the Lady Lord of Hell, the Detainee herself, in all of her fearsome matronly glory, tempt the First Biological Disciple, Daxin Freeborn, Enraged Phillip.
And for three days and three nights did he deny her.
And thus did he pass into memory and legend. - The Book of Telkan
And before I took the lives of the damned, He did appear before us and commanded my hand still.
His glowing blue form a radiant mercy. For us.
For them. - Glory, Failure, Temptation, & Redemption, Magnus Oathsworn
There is no doubt of the fact of malevolence. The very universe itself reaches out to crush what she has birthed in an eternal struggle of hatred. There are, however, some sins which even in the face of annihilation cannot be countenanced. Some acts which even this malevolent universe will not tolerate. Protect the infants at all cost, for they are survival, and to sacrifice survival for the sake of survival shall bring only suffering and doom. - Wisdom of the Traveler, Tribulations, Chapter 5 Verse 1.
In the Age of Paranoia, Humanity's leadership ordered terrible things done. Not because they knew they were necessary, but because they might become necessary. Never realizing that the existence of those terrible things would drive them to find a reason to use them. — Prof. Kuruka N'anga, University of the Sacred Bough, Terra Nuevo
While many things enrage the Lady of Hell, in fact most things seem to, certain crimes and sins earn her personal wrath. The many men who took everything from her. The idiotic creatures who thought themselves masters of everything. And those who commit cruelties upon the innocent. For she sees all of mankind's many many sins and knows very few are clean of them. Wise beings fear when cold gray eyes turn upon them.
We were desperate, and in our desperation we reached for things that will haunt me for all eternity. We could have stopped at anytime, we should have stopped before it was too late. We ignored the warnings, in our hubris we were assured that what we were doing was necessary. We were right, but it was still wrong and there is not enough time in the universe to pay for what we did. We ignored all the warnings and applauded ourselves on our success...only moments later the shouts of joy and celebration became screams of terror as the gray-eyed one illustrated why the warnings of these dark sciences should be heeded. --Words found in a blood-soaked journal at dark site research station, this was the only document recovered. Site glassed and all traces of the research were redacted.
It was misty, with a little bit of rain. The anomaly was hidden behind artificially generated cloud cover so that it looked more like an overcast sun than the strange globe of psuedo-reality it was. The starwalk station was empty, no bones, no shades, no scars from the furious fighting that had taken place after the Glassing had driven the SUDS personnel insane.
Holos flickered, some advertising restaurants or stores, others with directions, some with safety warnings, and still others with just public service holograms. The mist made the holograms flicker and fade in and out as the focused laser systems were scattered by the tiny water droplets suspended in the air.
There was a beep and the gate opened, allowing Surscee to step from the starwalk to the platform. She was wearing revealing leathers, a bustier, a short skirt with copper strips for reinforcement, tight weave fishnet stockings, and polished black leather boots with silver buckles. Around her shoulders was a gauzy sheer cape that shed the moisture even as it gleamed and sparkled.
She stopped to examine a few of the public service announcements. Some making her smile, others making her shake her head.
"You are a window to the world of my ancestors, nine thousand years gone," she said softly, touching the base of the holo. She moved to another and watched it. "We are not so different, you and I," she said, her voice full of wonder. She watched a PSA to remind everyone not to bring plants from Earth in case of seed contamination. "Your lives were full of danger that eventually became mundane," she said softly.
"That's humanity in a nut shell," the voice from behind her was low, rough, a woman's whiskey and cigarettes voice.
"Although ever changing, thus, we are," Surscee said, straightening up. She turned around and looked over the short matron in her dark charcoal gray skirt and blouse. "Greetings, fearsome one."
"Greetings to you, sorceress," the Lady Lord of Hell said. She looked Surscee up and down slowly. "Huh."
Surscee raised an eyebrow.
"Nice to see the Great Value Red Sonja look isn't just an act," the Lady Lord of Hell said, turning and walking into the mist. "Magic, science, mysticism, technology, all the same to the ignorant." Her voice faded as she walked away.
Surscee watched the short woman walk away, then turned and went back to following the path.
She was startled to discover that the vending machines were not VI driven, but just mechanical with a few holograms.
One of the vending machines that normally dispensed energy drinks and fizzybrews was ripped open, like someone had hacked on it with a blade. Surscee noted that most of the Liquid Hate was gone.
She got a lemon-lime fizzypop and followed the softly glowing holographic line of the ground until she finally came to a small park.
She stopped at the playground, leaning against a cement post, and stared at it.
The swings moved slightly back and forth at the almost unfelt breeze that stirred the mist. Droplets of water ran down the slide. The swinging rings just rocked slightly in the air current. The seesaw and the spring horses, the jungle gym and the wooden playhouse all sat quietly, damp from the mist.
Surscee closed her eyes, cocking her head slightly, listening for any echoes of happiness gone by.
"I would bring them here to play, once I had soothed their trauma to where they could interact with one another, to the point they could do more than run and scream and claw at themselves," the voice of the gray eyed matron sounded behind Surscee.
The sorceress turned, seeing the darkly clothed matron standing under a tree, barely visible in the fog, lighting a cigarette.
"I recreated it in Hell, just for them. To let them be children again, to remember," her voice said. She took a drag off her cigarette and Surscee saw the stern planes of the smaller woman's face illuminated for a moment. When she exhaled smoke, Surscee could still see her gun-metal gray eyes.
"I set fallen angels to watch over the park with sword of burning sin and tridents of icy treachery," she said, then turned and walked into the mist.
Surscee frowned as the matron vanished into the mist.
She waited a moment, but the other woman was gone.
Surscee moved on, making no sign of effort as she brought up her defenses. Her fingernails twinkled slightly as the microscopic piezoelectric systems came online. The targeting reticles and the HUD elements appeared in her vision. She brought up the passive acoustic mapping and changed the hardness of the heels of her boots so that her boots clicked with each step.
The fog muffled the acoustic map slightly, the water droplets absorbing and redirecting sound, making the map fuzzy here and there.
She passed by a vending machine and smelled cigarette smoke. The onboard systems broke it down for her, putting it up in the tiny window beyond her left hand peripheral vision. No manufacturer signature, no trace elements from other worlds. Her onboards told her that it was Old Earth brand, the tobacco lacking any genetic engineering and the cigarette containing nothing but an asbestos filter, paper, and tobacco. No flavors, no genetic smoothing, no flavor enhancements. No record in the database she always carried loaded.
She frowned slightly.
"You are unmoved by human suffering, making you suitable for this task," a tired sounding man said from just past a set of benches. He was leaning against a fountain. He had shaggy cut dark hair, a simple pair of pants and shirt without decoration, and dark circles under his eyes.
Two steps and the figure vanished.
The echolocation acoustic mapping told her that there was a solid bipedal humaniod form there for a split second but it vanished just when she got in range of it.
Surscee followed the arc of the path, curiosity filling her.
She knew if the being that had manifested as a five meter tall demon with bat wings and a whip of burning warsteel links woven with barbed wire, or the short matron with the nasty steel knife, wanted to kill her, the being simply would.
Surscee was curious what the purpose of this was.
"Enemies never rest. That's why they're called the Enemy, you blithering morons. I swear, dealing with the two of you is like dealing with particularly naive and ignorant children who are shocked, shocked I tell you, that they can't ziptie a plastic bag around their head and dance in the middle of the Interstate during rush hour," the matron's voice was cruel and full of disdain. "Of course millions are dying, that's what happens when you act like atomic weapons are no more dangerous than sparklers."
Surscee didn't bother to look around, her onboard bioware systems letting her know that the point of origin for the voice kept moving and shifting.
A trivial trick with nanites and one she had used often to confuse and harry foes.
"Your weakness disgusts me," the woman's voice hissed from between two food vending machines. "If you spent less time crying and more time fixing the system you'd be done by now, you pathetic puling weakling."
Surscee smiled slightly.
The voice reminded Surscee of her mother mocking her lessers.
There was a small basket with berries and small fruits sitting on a bench and Surscee's smile got wider. She moved over and sat down, picking up the basket and setting it on her lap.
If the being wanted her dead, she would be dead, simple as that.
The berries were blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Clean, sweet and tart.
After a moment the matron came walking out of the fog, opening a breast pocket to remove a pack of cigarettes and a flint-steel lighter. The woman sat down, crossing her legs at the knee and smoothing her skirt. She then lit the cigarette, the flare of the lighter lighting her face with the warmth of the flame without making the face seem any warmer.
Surscee slowly chewed a blackberry as the cigarette was lit, puffed on, and the lighter clinked shut. The pack and the lighter went back into the top pocket, the matron's fingers nimbly buttoning up the pocket.
They sat there for a long moment.
"All of that power, all your knowledge and mastery of exotic and esoteric disciplines, and here you sit eating freshly picked berries and fruit," the matron said.
"I am a simple woman who enjoys simple pleasures," Surscee said, smiling.
"I could use someone like you on my team," the matron said, exhaling smoke. "Power, the will to dominate, the means to achieve the goals I set out for you."
"An enticing offer," Surscee said carefully. She picked up strawberry and bit off the tip, chewing slowly.
"With your brother as one of my Hell Knights, you would make an excellent Hell Storm," the matron said.
This time when she exhaled the smoke was tinged with a slight tang hot freshly spilled blood and a taint of brimstone.
"Acting as the agent of the Lady Lord of Hell herself," Surscee said. She picked up a black cherry and looked over it. "Empowered, strengthened, by the Lady Lord of Hell, to punish the wicked for their sins."
The matron nodded slowly.
"With you as the judge, myself as the jury, and my brother as the executioner," Surscee said, still smiling.
"At times," the matron said. She exhaled smoke and glared at the mist that surrounded them. "Do you know what sin mankind has fallen into?"
Surscee shook her head. "Pride, perhaps? My mother often spoke of sloth and gluttony, perhaps that?"
The matron shook her head. "No. Far far worse."
"I would hear your words, fearsome one," Surscee said, making sure her voice was respectful.
"An anecdote," the matron said. She sighed. "Later, in my life, as more and more people became enamored with being ethical, more for status than to be truly ethical, philosophers and those who called themselves ethecists began posing questions, providing answers, each of the seeking to be recognized as the pinnacle of ethics and morals that would guide humanity into a Golden Age."
"That smack of wickedness," Surscee said. "Of pride and arrogance."
The matron nodded. "One question, posed by academics to students, always enraged me. Asked by academics who had never traveled beyond their ivory towers or guarded enclaves, asked to pampered students who had spent their lives dwelling in luxuries beyond imagination to the people of my youth."
The matron reached down into the mist that covered her feet, lifting up a bottle of beer and popping the cap with a talon that immediately returned to a manicured nail.
"The question, put forth, involves a situation. I will explain it thusly: You are at a village in a war torn nation. A warlord arrives with his men, intending on killing the village. The reasons do not matter. However, the warlord makes you an offer, handing you a gun with a single bullet. Shoot one person, of your choice, and he will spare you and the survivors. Kill him, and his men will kill you, and allow the village to survive. Kill none, and he will order his men to kill all the villagers, man, woman, and child, but leave you to live," the matron said.
Surscee frowned. "A terrible choice."
The matron snorted. "The academics and ethical philosophers then asked their students: What is the most moral choice?" the matron looked at Surscee. "Care to make a guess?"
Surscee thought for a long moment. "Shoot one of his men. He did not say you had to kill a villager."
The matron laughed. "A choice fitting for a Great Value Red Sonja," she laughed. She shook her head. "But, you would be wrong. You see, you make the unethical choice to take a human life."
"Then what?" Surscee asked.
"To stand aside. That you do not make a choice. The philosophical correct answer was to stand aside, that the warlord and his men make their own decisions and it is not your responsibility nor your moral failing whatever they choose to do," the matron looked out at the mist, taking a swig of her beer. "Do nothing, let the trolley kill five, because for you to decide who lives and dies is unethical."
Surscee snorted. "Choosing to make no choice is a choice in and of itself. You should always seek to do the least harm and the greatest good."
The matron nodded.
"The cowardice disgusts me," the matron said. She took another swig of her beer and then a drag from her cigarette. She exhaled smoke tinged with blood and brimstone. "I need those who will not back down, who are willing to get in the mud and the blood and the beer to get the job done."
The matron held up a red apple. "Take the apple, accept my offer. Be my Hell Storm to your brother's Hell Knight."
"Your offer humbles me," Surscee said. "It does not matter if my brother took your offer, I am Oathsworn to Lady Nakteti the Traveler. My duty is clear, it lies with my sworn liege."
"But what of your duty to your people?" the matron asked. "What of your duty to humanity?"
"I represent humanity wherever I go. Shall my actions, my decisions, lead the people's of the galaxy to believe that humanity are oath breakers? That our word, our bond, our oath, carries no meaning other than to further our own aims and goals? That we will abandon them, no matter what oaths we swear?"
The matron was silent.
"I am tempted by your offer, but I must, respectfully, refuse," Surscee said.
"Very well," the matron said. She blew on her fingertips and the apple dissolved. She stood up, taking a moment to smooth her skirt and tug the cuffs of her sleeves.
"You would have made an excellent Hell Storm," the matron said, exhaling smoke.
When it cleared, she was gone.
Surscee closed her eyes and heaved a great breath.
"I have passed the test, I hope," she said softly.
Only the dripping of water in the mist answered her.
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Hello,
My sGPA is 3.77, cGPA 3.85, MCAT 504, Psychology major with upward trend in GPA.
I think I am a non-trad because I am closer to 30 than 20 and have had a previous career in the skilled trades.
I don't know if I am URM or ORM but I have Argentinian heritage and present white. Looking at CA schools or west coast region but I have some on my list that don't fit that.
have really strong research (3500+ hours at state school in basic neuroscience wet lab. Two publications both 1st or shared 1st author.)
~1500 clinical hours (Paid hours working in assisted living and memory care);
~50 shadowing hours with a geriatric NP;
~40 Shadowing hours with OB/ plastics
~750 non clinical volunteering hours (food banks, fund raising, community improvement projects);
lots of work experience in my previous career and as an undergrad. I am currently a program Director of a memory care with ~ 40 employees.;
and I will have glowing letters of rec.
How do you think I will fair given my moderate GPA and Low MCAT? FWIW I interview very well.
I understand that a lot of the MD schools are extreme reach but I have the fee waiver.
School list:
MD
Cal Northstate
Loma Linda
OHSU
U of Az Tucson
UCDavis
UCRiverside
UCSF
U of Minnesota
UN Reno
U New Mexico
U Washinton
​
DO
A.T Still-AZ
CHSU-COM
ICOM
MCOM
Pacific Northwest UHS
Rocky Vista
Touro NV
Touro CA
Touro NY
Western University of Health Sciences CA and OR
Burrell NM

Position: Wheelchair Rugby Travel Assistant Dates: June 10-30, 2023 Location: Richmond, VA to Tucson, AZ
Description: C-5,6 complete quadriplegic wheelchair rugby player looking for a female travel partner to accompany to University of Arizona for training with U of A Wildcats Wheelchair Rugby team. No skilled nursing care or knowledge needed. Explanations and teaching can be given for each task.
Flight and room cost is covered.
Requirements: - Available to travel from RIC to Tucson, AZ June 10 - June 30, 2023
- Ability to transfer 100lb person - Comfortable taking direction - Driver’s license
Tasks & Responsibilities: - Assisting with personal care (dressing/bathing) - Transfers to/from wheelchaibed - Driving my accessible van to U of A for training at the Adaptive Athletics gym. - Assistance getting up in the morning (7am) and getting in bed in evening (9pm)
Contact: message me through here and I'll give you my contact
Note: Great opportunity for someone interested in working with SCI, PT, OT, Nursing, or Rec Therapy and experience adaptive sports through wheelchair rugby. Willing to write recommendation letter afterwards.
Thank you!!

Company Name	Title	City
United States Secret Service	Criminal Investigator	Phoenix
UnitedHealth Group	$75K Sign-On Black Canyon Primary Care Physician	Phoenix
Home Brands Group LLC	Maintenance Technician	Phoenix
LanceSoft Inc	Packaging Operator	Phoenix
Partnership With Native Americans	Warehouse Associate $17-$19 per hour	Phoenix
Salvation Army	Warehouse Associate - Phoenix AZ	Phoenix
Event Network	Receiving Lead (Full-time) - Retail	Phoenix
Pace Analytical Services LLC	Sample Receiving Tech - Client Services - Environmental	Phoenix
Integrated Supply Network	Warehouse Generalist	Phoenix
Concordance Healthcare Solutions	Warehouse Production Clerk	Phoenix
Pendergast Elementary School District	Warehouse Delivery Worker	Phoenix
Guitar Center	Warehouse Associate (AZ)	Phoenix
Shearer's Foods	Forklift Operator	Phoenix
Inpro	AssembleShipper - AZ	Phoenix
American Iron and Metal	Non-Ferrous Receiver	Phoenix
Eurofins	Sample Receiving Technician - Phoenix, AZ	Phoenix
Core & Main	Warehouse Associate I	Phoenix
Aaron's	Forklift Operator	Phoenix
Unifi	FT/PT Ramp Supervisor ($20.50/Hour + Flight Privileges) F9	Phoenix
Forte - Well Being	Allopathic Physician	Phoenix

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in phoenix. Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Part 2
If you travel far enough North on the map, well above where the Civilized Nations stop because no crops grow, you'll find a mountain range. Crossing this range leads to the Monster Kingdom, though for some reason they prefer the name 'TFSU.' Yes, they prefer. The literal forces of anarchy and chaos in the universe have a government. However, ignoring that whole thing, the Monster Kingdom is fine. No armies march on them, mostly because of supply and logistical issues. The Monsters never say how they grow their own food, but given that they don't trade and millions of kobolds worth of food don't go missing every day, it's safe to say they make their own. Now, that doesn't stop the Civilized Nations to send one hero a decade to 'keep them in check.' Four decades ago, the hero closed off a mountain pass, which was supposed to cause a massive flood. Four days later, it was cleared, and the only thing to show for it were the cities that glow like the sun at night. However, yesterday, the Hero returned having burnt one of the bigger cities down. It was empty of all monsters, but the act was the first real damage they had taken in seven hundred years, since their founding. For seven hundred years, the TFSU have taken the beating of seventy heroes and simply moved on. But now. Now, millions of kobolds make up heavy 'machinery' units that march in armored, self-moving caridges that spit fire and metal. Thousands of beastpeople make up scouting and light infantry ranks. The TFSU use hellish 'guns' that hit harder than a catapult from kilometers away, all in a single 'bullet' not the size of a human's thumb. Metal birds and dragonflies join dragons as they assault cities. We poke the very literal sleeping dragon in the eye. Yet the armies don't do much. They march for our capitals and leaders, but on the way our civilians live. Surendees live. People go about their daily lives without too much change. Of course, that fact didn't stop the front line from finally crashing over my small village, located so close to the pass for a while we thought they the monsters had bypassed us entirely. The Civilized Nations had decided to send an entire legion to prevent the Monsters from getting across a nearby canyon pass. We were hit with an air-based assault with only dragons and metal dragonflies, our balista uselessly demolished by pillars of metal and flame thrown out of the metal dragonflies. I blacked out when the legion managed to shoot enough arrows to take down one of the dragonflies. I remember it crashing down onto my house... and then nothing.
-----
The elf stirred as they woke up. I'd been raised in the Terra Firma Sapience Union, so I was... less than familiar with the clothing and lifestyle the Southerners used. The elf groaned again, before their eyes shot open and they looked around, quickly settling on my frame. "A-Are you going to kill me now?" They asked, their voice shaken with fear. I let out a laugh. "If I wanted you dead, you'd already be dead." I decided to transmorph into my secondary form - a cat - to help the conversation go better. In a land where humans lived to forty, elves only lived to a hundred, and that meant that even I was older than this elf, and they were no older than thirty. The elf, to their credit, quickly figured out I wasn't pulling any mindgames. I'd heard tales from my relatives before the Kobolds founded the TFSU. People, especially when panicked, usual acted with more than enough stupidity to make the situation worse. "Where am I?" The elf asked. Their tone told me that they were still suspicious, but it wasn't outright denial of the situation. "My home," I answered bluntly. "Your village tried to fight our ground forces when they moved in, so most of them are currently under house arrest." Still in my cat form, I created a portal into my storage cavern and reached my arm through, while summoning a lab coat around my shoulders and glasses. It was a trick I had only learned to do recently. "Let's see..." I found the clipboard and brought it out, flipping to the elft's page and taping the pen against the paper. "You suffered a collapsed lung, severe burns on the right side of your body, three broken ribs and two fractured ones, shattered three wrist bones, three breaks in your right upper arm and another two in your lower arm, and on the left side you have another fractured rib and three broken fingers. Your left leg was shattered and your left foot was completely torn up. Healing magic stabilized you and surgery did the rest. You've been comatose for the past three days, and was brought to my home yesterday due to a surge in hospital patients from the seige of Trembolorne. "In terms of organ damage, that was also severe. A busted kidney, I already mentioned a collapsed lung, and your entire digestive system was... well, pulverized would be putting it lightly. Also, unrelated to the incident with the helicopter, you had cancer in your liver and kidney. "In terms of medical treatment, you've been given an IV line for the past couple days and several painkillers, and you underwent four separate surgeries. We reconstructed your organs, welded your bones to metal plates, and used a genetic printer to replace your skin. You're lucky to have gotten time with the genetic printer in the first place, you know; those things are expensive, and I mean expensive to run. Though it's all billed on the government anyway, but that just means that they'll only run it if they have to." The elf sat up in bed looking at me as I just stood on two paws on the cave floor. "Right, sorry, you wouldn't understand most of that." I sheepishly scratched the back of my head with my right paw. "Um... put this way, you were crushed by debris and we basically reconstructed your body before you died. So not necromancy, though you did get close to needing more advanced magical treatment." "Oh," The elf replied. The cat thing seemed to have helped, because they were no longer stuttering with their single word response. "Um... do you want anything to drink?" I tried to kickstart a conversation. "Where am I?" The elf asked again. I was silent for a second. "My home? It's right on the edge of TFSU territory, one of the southernmost places you can be while still being with the recognized borders. I chose this place because I like to fly out in the summer over the flowers in the forest at the foot of the mountains. Your village is a couple hour dragon-flight time away." "Mmmhm." The elf commented halfheartedly. "OK, um... who are you?" "My dragonic name isn't something most can pronounce, so my public name is just Vixie Remminie." I answered. "What's yours?"
The elf's eyes narrowed. "Why do you want to know my name." I blinked. "Because... It's a name? I'm not a Fey, you know, it's not like I can tie ancient demons to your soul and call it a prank or something ridiculous like that. Besides, you asked for mine; now I get to ask for yours." "And who says you won't just burn my village to the ground and eat me right now!?!" The elf suddenly burst out. "You monsters ruin everything! You trespass on our land, take our resources, and kill our people! All we did was try to defend ourselv-" I cut him off, and poured just a bit of attention in giving myself an aura. Blue fire licked the bottom of my vision as I rebuttaled his point. "Don't forget, you stole the land from us. We were the ones living in the wild when you razed our forests and grew crops. We couldn't even purchase land to live on! So yes, we stole what we could to survive and those who didn't starved and died! And when all was said and done, you tried to kill us and turned it into a war, one where we had no choice but to kill you back. And when we found someplace to run, a spot to hide and do our own thing with our own land? You blistering idiots sent you 'courageous heroes' to try and kill us! What for? Nothing! Just your stupid, moronic fear making, forcing you to decide to 'kill the big thing over there!' We can't even have freaking farmland, we have to grow it all in hydroponic farms and harvest thousand-year-old vines out of caves because this is all we have!" I realized that my aura was burning fully and scorching the ground around me. I let out a long sigh, and it died down. Several memories flashed through my head, but I pushed them away. "Apologies, my parents are still a... sensitive topic for me. It would be best if we just stayed away from talking about the war until the hospital has room for more patients again." "Yeah?" The elf was still enraged. Even sitting down, they were still trying to construct an argument. "You parents who killed how many? Your family killed how many more? You dragons, you monsters are nothing more than one large grouping of murders that deserve to die! As the gods will!" The elf was spitting in rage, but I recognized his determination to hold onto his worldview. It was the one thing I needed to pry away before it got out of hand. "And you elves killed how many more?" I asked in a low voice. "Can you tell me the number of kobold dens exterminated in caves, the number of beastpeople sent to an early grave in slave camps? Because I can tell you ours. My father's was two, my mother's four, and my extended family including deceased relatives is one hundred and thirty seven. "You declared war against monsters, you child of an elf," I growled. "And death the reality of war. We know. The Unification Wars weren't fought with swords and honor. They were fought with artillery barrages and death. They were fought with miniature suns and political backstabbing, with tanks and guns and submarines and warships and all the more death. "You say the gods don't like us! That's put lightly. They forsook us! Abandoned us in our hour of need. So we learned to live without them. There are no gods we pray to anymore, elfling. Only each other, our creations, and the universe itself. They don't want us, we don't need them. It's more than they deserve." My aura was once again charring the floor and I had transformed back into my dragon form, but this time I refused to cool it down. "You call us creations of death, the primal forces of anarchy? We are you. You are us. We are sapient, we are all mortals, no matter our advantages. We are bound to this dimensional plane, forced to serve our betters, and live out our lives not with earnest but with trepredition for when it ends. We are all death incarnate, because we can all die. That is just the way it is. Besides, you've wondered about my kill count; tell me, can you tell me the gods'? Can you tell me how many souls they have cut from fate for their own entertainment? No? I can tell you." I growled, moving closer until the blue flames enveloping my body threatened to light the elf's cot on fire. "More people than are alive on this planet right now." I pulled back, bottling up my aura and reverting to my cat form. "We can talk all we want about death and destruction, and I won't lie and say you aren't victims of the war; pre-unification dragons we're exactly kind and merciful to those with treasure hoards. But perhaps, I implore you to consider that maybe we both are victims of the war, and maybe we can one day work together instead of fighting each other. "Maybe, one day, we can fight for our rights against the gods." I moved into my dragon form and darted deeper into my cave, moving so fast I could hear the howl of the wind against my ears. Only when I had reached my memorial wall for my parents did I stop and take a breath and think over my conversation with the elf. We had a long way to go, but I hoped I had put a little bit of sense into him. I hoped that the world could change.
-----
When the dragon cat thing sped away, I took a moment to survey my surroundings. Only now did the effects of my first question hit my formerly-groggy head. "My home." He said. Dragons live in caves. Oooooh. I'm screwed. However, there were no treasure hoards visible from my perspective; then again, while the Monsters were stupid, they still had brains to them, and carrying me into a treasure room would probably be something they'd be able to tell was a bad idea. Pops said never underestimate you foe, A voice in the back of my head said, and the dragon even launched in a full conversation with you. You're selling the dragon very, very shor- Shut up I growled internally to the treacherous voice in my head. The cave itself was... a cave. There was a metal slab on one end, it went deeper in the other, and that was that. In a 'corner' of the jagged room there were a number of red, glowing rods attached to some kind of giant mechanism three elfs wide and six deep, but the rods glowed against the cave's light- What light source? My eyes darted around looking for one. Only now was I aware of how unnatural each shadow was, how awkward each shining rock looked, how each stalagmite could hide an entire dragon, and that was before they started transfiguring into cats. How bright the ceiling- I looked up. The bright light burned my eyes, but I needed to know what fiendish magic was in play so I could counter it. But the light didn't flicker like fire - they were far too bright for that anyway - but they also didn't have the magical circles surrounding each spell. They were... lights. As if the universe simply willed brightness into existence. Each far-too-bright-hurts-to-look-ats was placed along a main hallway clear of stalagmites running from the metal slab deeper and around a corner where I couldn't see. The lights were only poised above this one hall, and they just... shone one the rest of the cave. Looking closer, I could see thin black lines, too thin to be mana feeds, running along the walls to both the glowing red rods and to the so-shiny-the-lit-up-the-cave. And... that was that. There was no massive pile of treasure in the hall, though I suspected the dragon kept their hoard deeper than... wherever I was. There was no pile of skull trophies or the banner of cities and armies slain, and I noted that while he had told me his parents', the dragon had never told me his own. Then again, the cat thing could be lying. Dragon transfigured into a cat. Probably has Circle Of Truth around his entire den. Nonsense, dragons can only do elemental magic. Evidently not. Would you just shut up already? No- I moved my attention back to the metal slab, cutting off whatever the voice in my head had to say about my current situation; it wasn't every day one just got kidnapped by a nation of monsters, after all. The slab was truly elegant. It was painted with the monster language, and then was painted with some kind of mural. I could barely make out a blue circle with green splotches on it surrounded by twelve rings in the bottom corner because most of the door was taken up by a ice-blue cat with lighter strips engulfed in blue fire. It was a mural of the dragon cat thing. That didn't stop it from being pretty, and someone had obviously put a lot of effort into it. The flames looked realistic from what I had seen minutes ago, and the cat's details were perfectly engraved. It was... acurrate. Yeah, because I think Vixie was just trying to tell you that they built their civilization for a reason, and it wasn't carnage. You don't know what you're talking about. We both know I do. How else to you think- Listen to me, you treasonous voice of a- No, you listen to me, you pathetic excuse for a brain. The dragon was able to hold and win an argument with you, fixed your wounds that would've been a dead write-off for any other hospital, and then you think SHE barely meets the threshold for sapient? THE ABSOLUTE MORON I'M ARGUING WITH IS THE ONE YOU BARELY MEETS IT!!! You moved to your frontier village because the world was changing, Lazerot the Sixth. Congrats, you were right. It did change. Now shut your OVERSIZED EGO up at being bested by a creature ten times older than you, and go appologies before they decide that saving your life wasn't worth it. I... I... OK- No. I'm in control now. Shut up. I....... yes, sir. Good. With new resolve, I stood up. My head throbbed, and the next thing I knew was my face hitting my cot again.
-----
When I heard the thud of something falling in the entrance cave, I carefully moved back into the entrance cave. The elf was face-down in their cot, unconscious again. It looked like they had tried to stand and just.... fallen over. I sighed and used a claw to nudge the elf back onto his pillow, and then covered him with a blanket. I watched him for a minute, and then returned to the deeper parts of my home. The TFSU was completely overloaded with the number of patients needing treatment. Apparently, the Southener's hospitals just... didn't do anything, so in addition to soldiers, there was a massive influx of civilians to our hospitals too. Of course, this meant that they were absolutely overloaded, and the Civilized Nations strategy of fighting to near-death and then surrendering wasn't helping. So, stable recovering civilians like the elf were just... shipped out. When shelters filled up because the Civilized Nations overpopulation crisis was too bad to do anything, people just had to take them into their homes. Long story short, the government was in way over their head attempting upgrade the standard of care in the Civilized Nations while occupying their territory. My job so close to the border was remote infrastructure maintenance, and my ability to change size while not dissolving made me an expert at it - and that was before my two hundred years of experience. And then I didn't need a vehicle to get on-site, and was fast. The alarm pinging me that one of the space radars was down again gave me an excuse to avoid the elf and do some work. I grabbed a pack of supplies, put on my shapeshift-compatible uniform, and wrote down a note on a piece of paper. On my out past the sleeping elf, I dropped it for him.

Space radar system needs repair, as it's returning a false positive. It's my job to repair all the infrastructure around here, so I need to go fix it. I'll be back soon. If you're hungry, my pantry is the first cave on the right. You can just eat anything that's easily open-able in there. If it has a lock or airtight opening mechanism (anything more than a clip, really) then don't eat it. If your thirsty, there's a stream in the entrance cave near the heaters. When the door mechanism beeps, step back. Sometimes pressure in the cave can get a bit wonky, and I don't want you to get hurt. Other than that, feel free to explore. I've locked all the doors to the rooms I don't want you to enter. For toilet necessities, the second cave on the left has a properly-sized toilet. And running water, but stuff I can explain later means don't drink it. See you soon! - Vixie.

Satisfied, I left opened the door. There was a puff as the air from inside flowed out to the lower-pressure atmosphere. I could spot a snow squall to the north, and the pressure meant that it was probably coming my way. I moved out onto the ledge and closed the door behind me. At high altitudes this far north, the air was already near-zero and it was still five in the afternoon. I took just a second to confirm with the weather report that the snowstorm was in fact going to arrive on my doorledge using a smartwatch I had strapped around my wrist. When I found that the storm was coming, I opened my wings and flew. Being an Ice Dragon had its advantages, but being a Water-Ice Combined Dragon was much better. The frosty air curled around my wings as the freedom of ignoring gravity filled my brain. Ice and Water dragons both had large wings to deal with the cold air (and lower pressure leading to the requirement for more surface area to achieve the same amount of lift) and incompressable water physics (to let the wings act like a one-way fan blade as they move back and forth, increasing efficient). Dragons might be magestic creatures, but we were still bound to the physics of the mortal plane, after all. Being part of both, my wings were even bigger, making me one of the best high-altitude fliers on the planet. The ability to use both gills and lungs at said altitudes helped with oxygen also helped. Air Dragons were better at flying in normal air, but I liked to think of it like stats from a video game. Air Dragons min-maxed their stats for low-altitude, but I could go anywhere - even underwater - can keep my speed relatively high. I took full advantage of this on my way to the space radar, soaring well above the cloud ceiling and to the point where I could make out the curvature of the planet below me. The ocean spread out to my west, while more land was to my east. Snow covered the north as to the south was the telltale splotchy color of industrialism. My smartwatch beeped, as I crossed the normal altitude limit. I hadn't realized I'd gone so high; I had a radar to repair, after all. I dove down towards the surface, ignoring more beeps as I crossed half the way to the speed of sound. The wind howled angrily in my ears, but I flattened those (thank you, streamlined water genetics) and came out of my death dive right over the radar. The repair itself went relativity smoothly, though I couldn't find a broken component and chalked it up to more space anomalies. They weren't infrequent, and usually marked where the gods decided to look over the planet. For my radars, anyway. Further north, ignoring the north pole, almost no gods came out and wanted to deal with us. Our unspoken agreement was held that way. I flew straight back for my return journey. The storm was definitely closer, but fifteen minutes of flying later and I was entering the opening mechanism for my door. As it swung inwards, I heard the high-pitched scream of an elf.
-----
When I awoke, I found myself tucked into some covers. It took all of seven seconds for reality to catch up with me. Right. I got into a heated argument with a dragon. I instinctively touched the part of my face that had been closest to the dragon's flame. I'd read about Auras in books, but never thought I'd get to see one. They were only ever found in the most powerful and competent individuals of a race in an entire plan of existence. I wondered which skill gave the dragon hers - Vixie, I reminded myself. Either way, given that Auras are technically illusions, I wasn't hurt. The flames didn't get close enough to hurt anyway, but that didn't stop me from checking. This time, I was much more careful when I stood up. I sat up first, then started to kick my legs back and forth. That's when I spotted a paper on the other side of my cot. I stood up without thinking, but managed to keep my consciousness this time and moved towards the note. It was handwritten and contained a lot of jargon that I wasn't familiar with. Space. Radar. False positive. Airtight opening mechanism. Heater. Beep. Pressure. Toilet. Running water. I could deduce some of it. A message had come in requesting the services of the local dragon to repair a thing that has an issue, and that she would return shortly. I could wander around as I pleased, besides eating food that wasn't open or contained in a clip bag. From the tone of the message, I could deduce what a 'toilet' was. The heaters would logically be things that produced heat, so all I had to do was look for those. I wasn't able to tell time, but I supposed at this point it didn't matter. I moved over deeper into the cave, and quickly heard the sound of a stream. It led directly into a forest of stalagmites. After clambering over those, the temperature started to increase, which was all I needed to know that I was getting a drink of water. I was only now catching up to the fact that I had been out for three days, and that meant that I was extremely thirsty. I wasn't sure how I wasn't dead of dehydration at this point. I found the stream next to the glowing metal rods, and with it a clear path to my location. Sighing slightly at the wasted effort on climbing through Rock Forest, I snatched an undersized cup off a rack built into a nearby jut in the cave wall and filled it, before entering the bliss of fresh water. Back in the village, we had some of the best and cleanest water in all the land thanks to snow melt, but this took that to a new level. Cold, crisp water melted in the sun only minutes ago. It was... pure. I spent the next couple minutes simply drinking and processing everything over in my mind. The gods might have willed the monster dead, but if even the monster gods had abandoned them and survived... then how come the Pantheon never told us? Religious issues aside, there were more practical issues regarding my own survival. How did I get out. There was a thud at the metal slab, and I moved back towards it, leaving my cup to dry on the rack I pulled it from. The engraving of the cat on the metal slab was- BEEEP! What was that sound? There was a hiss, and the slab started to peel away. A gust of frigid cold air washed over me as a mage Ice-Water hybrid Aura-capable dragon that I had argued with stared me down. I did the instinctive thing and let out the scream of a human three year old, squeezing my eyes shut and waiting for the final blow. When the end of my life didn't arrive, I reopened my eyes to find the sky-blue cat standing in the hole where the metal slab was supposed to be. Then there was another... sound, and the metal slab started to move back into position. The cat was surprised for a single moment before simply charging the door and jumping through, skidding to a halt right in front of me. Which meant that I got a closer look at her. Ocean-blue strips crossed an ice-blue body fur in a fifty-fifty ratio. Small crystals of ice twinkled, floating here her wings would be. One tail was accompanied by two more made of pure blue-white energy, and the cat even had a halo. Six orbs of blue-white light hovered in lazy circles around her back, and even in a diminutive form the size of a cat the being radiated the power of an aura-capable creature. "Oh, right, sorry," Vixie said, and all the ethirial energy disappeared. Now that I knew what I was looking for, however, I could just barely tell, using my power as a mage, that Vixie was using illusion magic to hide her true energy. "You don't need to hide your reserves," I said. "Though if you're shapeshifting into forms so small that you need to expose yours, then you should just burn yours instead. It's not worth the trouble of people bottling yours." Vixie gave some kind of half-shrug. "They're not reserves, no." She said, emphasizing the word. I looked at Vixie with a sharp look, and for a second I forgot I was talking to a dragon. "Then what are they?" "They're..." The cat blushed, something I wasn't even aware was possible. She let the illusion fall away, and the tails, crystals, orbs and halo returned. "They're my regenerative baseline minimum." I looked her up and down for a second, dumbstruck. She really is a creature of power, huh? "Um.... uh..." I stuttered. "Is... that where you get your aura from?" I asked. Vixie closed her eyes with an expression on her face, and this time green flame started to peel off her. "Part of it, yeah." To control an aura like that... two auras. Just how powerful is she? I was so deep in thought that I didn't realize that the expression on her face was pain. "I... uh... what happened?" I asked, shellshocked. "Why aren't you fighting in the war?" The worldwide-powerful dragon masquerading as a cat sighed. "I... haven't told anyone. It's... personal." "I..." Only now did it hit me that I was talking with a dragon, not another person. Not just a monster, but a... creature with emotions. "You don't have to tell me." I quickly backtracked. "No, no, it's a fair question. It..." The cat let out a chuckle, and it filled the cave with a beautiful sound. "I suppose it's kind of ironic... but it starts with a kobold and a god, back when the Firma kobold tribe decided to travel north to escape the civilized nations, shortly before the amassing of all creatures in these same northern mountains and the Unification War. "Back before the gods forsook us."
Original Prompt: [WP] For as long as all the races have known, Dragons have been seen as violent, destructive creatures. After an attack on your village, you black out and find yourself in the den of a dragon. It's rather annoyed that that is how they're seen, and wants to prove that isn't the case.
u/Lycan_Jedi thank you for the prompt!
Part 2

Valid theories as to why Nine Mile Hole was so very special to Forrest Fenn are out there, if one cares to look carefully enough. But nobody yet to my uncertain knowledge has pointed to hints in The Thrill of the Chase or other evidence that explain why Fenn might have been so emotional about his journey to the special place that he cryptically described in the poem. Yes, it was the place he wanted to die, and that alone would be a good enough reason for emotion. Yet the sort of sentimentality that Fenn betrayed about the place – for example when he read the poem out loud – suggests something even deeper and more sorrowful: a sense of loss that is larger than the man himself.
It so happens that there truly is a source of information that reveals why Nine Mile Hole was so sacred to Forrest Fenn: an emotional connection had been forged as a result of dual tragedies. It is contained in poetry masquerading as prose written by Ernest Schwiebert, an expert on flies and flyfishing, in his seminal Nymphs: Stoneflies, Caddisflies, and Other Important Insects including the lesser mayflies, Volume II (2007).
The existence of this text and its importance to the chase was originally revealed by Vertigo, who first shared it on The Hint of Riches forum. Later, Vertigo reposted the excerpt from the Schwiebert text on Medium here along with the other results of his excellent research. All the Vertigo entries are a must read if you want to try walking in the shoes of Forrest Fenn. I won’t repeat that portion of the Schwiebert text previously shared by Vertigo in its entirety although I will include a few of the most relevant excerpts to help tie everything together.
What I want to focus on here is the emotional and motivational parts of the tragic story that Schwiebert eloquently told in the paragraphs that Vertigo did not quote. This material is critical in my opinion to understanding the importance of Nine Mile Hole and what happened there to make it the place where Fenn wanted to die.
To summarize, the fires that devastated Yellowstone in 1988 were in part the result of government mismanagement of forest fires on Federal land, much of which was due to political games (e.g. to discredit members of the other political party). These fires created havoc and destruction in the Madison watershed and its fisheries that went largely unacknowledged by environmentalists and the public at large. Only those who had fished those flywaters in the decades before the fires could truly understand the extent of the negative impact on the river and its riparian ecosystem.
Among other casualties, the brown trout hideout at the famous Nine Mile Hole was spoiled, and the spring-fed pond secreted in the woods nearby was literally wiped off the map. Its crystal clear waters – a quarter mile up a cold rivulet from the legendary hole on the Madison – had once rewarded the most tenacious Brown with the perfect spot to spawn. Now there was only brown sludge in its place. To someone who had intimately known Nine Mile Hole, its matronly crystalline pond, or any other riverine wonder of the Madison watershed in Yellowstone, it was enough to utterly break their heart.
Forrest Fenn's feelings about the ordeal were very much in the same vein as those expressed by Ernest Schwiebert. The difference was that the latter man did not need to keep a secret and therefore could lay bare his emotional injuries.
Indeed, the 1988 fires must have devastated Fenn similarly if not more so. But this grand tragedy was not quite as catastrophic to him as being diagnosed with cancer and given slim odds of surviving it. The year 1988 was not particularly kind to the man.
Fortunately, the forests and rivers of Yellowstone always seem to recover from the worst tribulations that nature could manage to throw at them, and so did Fenn. But not without a profound impact. The battle for survival and the scars left behind had connected Fenn to his special place at a level so primal and emotionally raw that it was almost umbilical. How could there ever be another consideration when it came to the somber task of choosing the place to take his last breath?
And then came the FBI raids in 2009. The Feds had had a hand in destroying his Shangri-La in Yellowstone in 1988, and now it seemed they wanted to finish robbing him of treasure while desecrating his reputation and castle in Santa Fe.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, he said to himself through sublime gritted teeth and with a resolve that only the gravely aggrieved can muster. I'm going to carry out my plan. In Yellowstone Park, damn the consequences!
The following is taken from Nymphs: Volume II, starting on page 237. Unless noted otherwise, boldface is mine for emphasis.
I note that Vertigo excluded an important portion of the first paragraph of the story so I will re-quote this paragraph in its entirety. He then faithfully reproduced the next 7 paragraphs, which I won't repeat but will highlight a few excerpts. See Vertigo's Medium post for the full text of the 7 paragraphs, or "DYODD" and buy the book.
Schwiebert's account contains several additonal paragraphs beyond the 7 quoted by Vertigo that are just as important in my opinion, plus there is a footnote that helps enormously to shed light on things. I quote these in their entirety as fair use in order to support the theory being advanced in this entry.

But the entire Yellowstone was ravaged by a series of wildfires in the drought of 1992, and one of the worst of these fires had crossed into the park from Bridger National Forest in Wyoming, just north of Grand Teton National Park.⁶ The great lodgepole forests of the Bechler and Firehole watersheds had become a tinderbox, and vast acreages of primeval timber were surrendered to the fire. Magnificent stands were transformed into fire-blackened cemeteries of snags. Entire mountainsides were utterly scorched as steep timber-filled ravines became incandescent chimneys filled with fire. Slopes of unstable volcanic soils were stripped of their trees and rendered vulnerable to the erosive impacts of winds, rains, and melting snowpacks. Frightening shrouds of talcum-fine soil and ash were carried aloft as storms worked across the Yellowstone Plateau. Gullies were quickly cut into unstable hillsides, and large alluvial fans of gritty clay and ash were formed at many places along the Madison, Gibbon, and Firehole. Such fans were visible immediately below Seven Mile Bridge on the Madison, and there was much worse damage at its famous Nine-Mile Hole, which had been the most popular pool.

Schwiebert makes an error here: the great drought and fires were actually in 1988 as he correctly states in Footnote 6; see near the end of this post.
The next 7 paragraphs are faithfully reproduced in full by Vertigo … I highlight a few key lines. Following this, I start to quote the paragraphs that are excluded from Vertigo's work.

Nine-Mile lay just below the highway, in a beautiful corridor of primeval lodgepoles and ponderosas …
It was a striking place with secrets. There was a crystalline springhead pond across the water, about a quarter mile beyond the river, and completely hidden behind a dense screen of intervening conifers.
Large brown trout were known to enter this minor lodgepole tributary in October to mate and lay their eggs …
I once caught a good fish in the little pond itself … a handsome five-pound hen that had apparently spawned and wintered, and then elected to stay.
The cold spillages of the crystalline creek entered the river in the uppermost shallows at Nine-Mile …
It was a spring-hole worth knowing. Large trout often gathered there in hot weather, basking in its cool temperatures where the ledge rock shelved off into a secret pocket. I could usually count on at least one good fish there, because most anglers simply fished the primary currents of Nine-Mile without covering the pocket below its aquatic weeds.
The fate of Nine-Mile, however, was a terrible surprise.

Compare to page 141 in TToTC with the following words bolded and in red: "Cancer is a terrible word." Boldfaced and redlined text is used within the memoir in only four places, twice in reference to cancer and twice to suggest a warning that something is scalding hot: "DO NOT TOUCH!". The reason for this editorial oddity should be obvious: red for fire, and the red boldface connects cancer to fire.

The fish-filled secret below the weeds was smothered with silt and trash, and the spring-hole itself was gone. I became curious about the fate of the forest pond, and forded the river to inspect it. Dour rivulets of slurry came spilling through the trees, and I was astonished when I reached the tarn.
Its crystalline shallows were completely filled with slurry and trash. A tiny paradise had been destroyed. The outlet was clogged with refuse and silt, and the barrage of trash had raised the water in the lake until its overflows were forced into several braided channels farther downstream. No trout could ascend such gritty rivulets to spawn, and no freshly hatched juveniles would use its spatterdock riches to reach smolting size. Nine-Mile itself had been irrevocably changed, and after dutifully suiting up, I found myself angry and unable to fish.

Compare to "There'll be no paddle up your creek, Just heavy loads and water high."
Consider why Schwiebert was "angry": the full extent of the devastation was perhaps preventable if Forest Service management had actually cared about the ecosystem within their purview instead of trying to score political points.
Schwiebert continues the story as follows, not quoted by Vertigo.

Some ecologists have argued that postfire impacts have largely proved beneficial because natural lightning-strike fires are obviously implicit in our natural forest ecosystems. The science of such truths remains clear. Lodgepole cones do not surrender their seeds without exposure to hot temperatures associated with natural fires, and the argument that ancestral fires have played a substantial role in the ecological history of such forests is sound.
Such apologists further contend that once-dangerous thickets of deadfalls and dry tinder in these lodgepole forests had healthily been purged, and argued that these Yellowstone fires had cleansed its historic forests. The new grasslands created were alleged to have improved bison and elk habitat because both are grazing species, but both bison and elk lacked major predators then and had become much too plentiful before the fires. The ecosystem did not need more bison and elk. Other apologists waxed poetic about the beneficial impacts of the fires on avifauna and their prey within the boundaries of the Yellowstone, but none mentioned their horrendous impact on the famous Yellowstone trout streams.
Some fishing writers have written pieces echoing the doubtful thesis that everything had been improved through the purging of the fires, and that the fishing had also been helped. One reported unusual numbers of larger fish in the Firehole. This was irresponsibly wishful conjecture on the part of observers who lacked a fifty-year perspective on the Yellowstone and its fisheries, and were not competent to pass such judgment. The truth is much less felicitous. Several key tributaries had become so choked with postfire sedimentation, ash, and charred debris that their fish, including large trout that had never seen anglers, had been displaced from their headwaters to find refuge in the Firehole itself.
Such fish were not a happy portent.

Compare the above paragraphs to Fenn on page 141 of TToTC where he follows up the redlined and bolded "Cancer is a terrible word" with "The disease it defines represents nature in its most repellent form."

Fires also ravaged the hillsides along the lower Gibbon. Steeper slopes had quickly eroded, forming labyrinthine networks of raw gullies and wounds leaving the narrow highway below Gibbon Falls buried under great alluvial fans of mud, gritty precipitates, and trash. Heavy equipment had cleared the right-of-way, leaving great windrows of marl in many places, and the Gibbon became choked with waist-deep strata of raw sediments and ash. The great beauty of the box canyon below the Gibbon Falls had been charred and scarified by fire, leaving a river littered with postfire trash and mud winding through cemeteries of charred lodgepoles. I did not attempt to fish, and decided to investigate the fire damage along the Firehole.
The fires had decimated its remarkable lodgepole forests in many places between the Cascades of the Firehole and the Fountain Flats above Nez Perce Creek. I turned south on the old freight road toward Ojo Caliente, and found more fire damage there, but worse burns had overwhelmed the shores of Goose Lake. Its trees had been killed in fires of such temperature and intensity that their fire-seared trunks looked like they had been coated with shiny black lacquer. Fire had smoldered in the great mattresses of dead needles that once carpeted the entire forest floor, and when I used a tire iron to root deep into the burned earth, I found that fire had festered into its thick mattresses of pine needles to depths of eight and ten inches. Goose Lake was now encircled with skeletal lodgepoles that had been killed and charred by fire, although damselflies were still emerging from its shallow margins, swimming ashore to climb the blackened deadfalls and split their nymphal skins.
The scars were much worse beyond the lake.

Compare to cancer as above and to the poem words "Tarry scant": the word tarry could also mean covered by tar in addition to its more common interpretation of delay.

I reached the river and simply sat in the car, staring at its crippled forests with tears in my eyes, remembering the circling seasons I had enjoyed in these uncommon meadows. There were decades of happy memories from this place. I had shared a number of wonderful picnics at Feather Lake with old friends like the late John Hemingway, the late John Daniel Callaghan, and Bud Lilly. I particularly remember awakening from a post-lunch nap on the lodgepole bench at Feather to find Hemingway looking upstream toward the geyser plumes at Midway.
"Know what's wrong with this place?" Hemingway said with a sigh.
"No," I confessed.
"We don't own it," he said.
The narrow trace and cul-de-sac were no longer sheltered in a theatrical corridor of lodgepoles and big ponderosas, and a place of remarkable beauty had been utterly sacrificed and lost. The Firehole still flowed under the fire-blackened bench, a glittering necklace of bright water, with great billows of steam still rising from the geyser basin upstream. I had shared this place with a long parade of people across more than fifty years, and the morning was filled with echoes. I left the car and was surprised by the silence. There were no birds, no brash camp robbers arrived to beg for table scraps, and no skittish chipmunks scuttled across the forest floor. There was nothing for buzzards to scavenge, and no voles to interest circling hawks. The pale September sky was empty. Wind stirred in the blackened snags, which groaned and creaked. The meadow had offered some remarkable sport over the years, and I had hoped to fish, but there was no thought of fishing now.
I drove slowly back along the washboard trace toward Ojo Caliente, through its fire-scarred mausoleum of trees, as a big storm was starting to gather and build along the Pitchstone Ridge. Its conifers had also been ravaged as the wildfires crossed into the Firehole watershed, leaving its summits a raw wasteland of charred earth and gritty ash. The sun had quickly surrendered to an ominous gunmetal sky, and as the storm finally broke along its battlements, immense clouds of loose soil and ash billowed high into the darkening gloom. Such spiraling squalls of silt and windmilling ash would eventually reach the little Firehole itself, and further despoil its hyaline currents. I suddenly understood how profoundly its watershed had been changed.
And it utterly broke my heart.

😪
Footnote 6 on page 735 is revealing. It reads:

There is much credible evidence that these fires had begun outside Yellowstone Park, in the Absaroka headwaters of the Yellowstone in the Shoshone National Forest, and in the Teton National Forest north of Jackson Hole. The fires were fought on national forest tracts, but firefighters were withdrawn once the fires entered the national park itself. The fires were permitted to burn inside the national park for short-term political purposes, because 1988 was an election year. Our natural-fire policy had actually emerged under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and was based on sound forest science, but its application became a regional political issue when both Nathaniel Pryor Reed and Cecil Andrus refused to extinguish a number of controversial fires on federal land. Political opponents fought the Yellowstone fires aggressively outside the national park because the blazes had apparently begun in campfires and lightning strikes on the national forests. Firefighters had been deployed while these fires were still burning on tracts of commercial saw timber, but were stopped once the fires had crossed into Yellowstone. Some of the worst damage occurred on the Firehole and Thoroughfare, and these fires were not fought until they threatened park installations at Canyon and Fishing Bridge, and the historic art sauvage hotel located at Old Faithful. Andrus was no longer Secretary of the Interior when I met him, but during an interview in his office at Boise, I sought his opinion of the Yellowstone fires. Andrus still believed that the bipartisan natural-fire policy had been supported by good science, and pointed out that more than twenty petrified forests within park boundaries suggest that Yellowstone had survived worse destruction, although that perspective is little comfort to anglers who will never again enjoy the pristine Madison and Firehole of recent memory. He agreed that Yellowstone itself was not large enough to protect its aggregate ecosystem, and further conceded that a zealotry that had continued to advocate natural-fire policy in the worst drought summer in recorded history had perhaps been unwise. But he shook his head over the political tactics of appointees in the Forest Service, who had protected tracts of commercial saw timber while later permitting the Yellowstone itself to burn, and had further attempted to discredit the Carter Administration during the election of 1980.

From TToTC page 26: "One day my father gave me a spanking at school for running across some stupid desks, then that night he gave me a spanking at home because I got a spanking at school. The more I thought about that the more I felt put upon. When I explained to him that I'd been double jeopardized he told me that those things didn't count in a dictatorship. That's when I started to mistrust governments."
From TToTC page 147: "Now I feel that my father is sitting on the edge of a cloud somewhere watching. If he knows everything about me he's pretty busy lighting candles, some of them on both ends. But I hope he knows that I've been sometimes guilty only by innuendo, and that's why I wrote my epitaph with such profundity: I wish I could have lived to do, the things I was attributed to."
In 2009, the FBI raided Fenn and several other art dealers – and alleged looters – of Native American artifacts in the Southwest. The raid resulted in the confiscation of just four items from Fenn (none of which could be proven as having been obtained by him illicitly).
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2009/08/19/stealing-the-past/
This was more than just a nuisance … Fenn's reputation had been impugned and two other dealers who were arrested after the raids committed suicide. These guys were likely people he knew or may have even been his friends. A third man arrested in the case also committed suicide; he was a government informant who essentially helped the federal agents entrap the Four Corners dealers.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/dealer-blame-fbi-for-seller-suicides-in-four-corners-looting-case/article_f8613507-1b71-513a-ba21-43a6b0622c0b.html
Fenn was supposedly very angry and threatened Tony Dokoupil with legal action when the reporter spoke with old "pothunting" acquaintances and revealed some unsavory information about Fenn's artifact-collecting past, for example: "... Fenn wasn't just taking a treasure or two but returning to caves and stripping them clean …" In the end, the publicity of appearing in Newsweek magazine at such an early stage in the treasure hunt must have overridden Fenn's desire to keep some of those things that he "was attributed to" under wraps.
https://www.newsweek.com/forrest-fenn-wants-you-find-his-treasure-and-his-bones-64427
The FBI raids – based on purchases of artifacts by a government informant using government money to entice dealers to specifically sell him contraband, and which were conducted by multi-agency SWAT teams – were highly controversial for many locals. No doubt Fenn was pissed off at the Feds more than ever at that point. Despite the epitaph he wrote for himself, he certainly did not want to be remembered as "the old guy in Santa Fe raided by the FBI".
Less than a year later, he published his memoir with its treasure hunt poem. Little chance the timing was just a coincidence.
Finally, does anybody find it intriguing that Fenn rarely if ever talked about the 1988 fire in Yellowstone? It happened the same year he got cancer (or did it?), and he talked plenty about that personal ordeal. The fire and its aftereffects utterly destroyed some of his most cherished places where he had fished for trout and melded with nature since he was a young boy, including his (probably) favorite fishing hole at TOP SECRET "Nine-Mile" and not to mention the magical wood on the far bank of the river with its secluded crystal pond to which he would have gone alone and sat under pine trees, napping, daydreaming, watching wildlife, marveling at the mountain and river vistas, and writing poems or love notes to his wife. Yet not a peep from him about the conflagration that ravaged all of that? Curious.

Tom was still rather worried he had made a big mistake as he watched Jacky fly off towards the grey horizon, chainsaw dangling from her chest. He felt a little odd actually. He had come running out to say goodbye and to give Jacky her pair of ear defenders and some safety glasses that sorta fit, at least a little bit. He had also reminded them to pack some tarps. Just in case it rained since it might help keep the wood mostly dry. Honestly, he felt like a worried mother or housewife.
The image hadn’t really been helped when Ray had also come running up carrying some bundles of food someone had apparently forgotten. Maybe he should go do a load of laundry next and complete the image.
“Well… that’s them gone,” Tom shrugged as he lost sight of Jacky against the grey skies.
“Yup…” Ray answered, also staring up at the sky, watching them.
“You got anything you have to do or?”
“Oh eh, not that much… I really should wash the floors in the armory though, a lot of muddy feet,” Ray joked a little unsurely.
“Don’t bother, it’ll be just as dirty tomorrow anyway, and ten times so if we get rain.”
“Raulf thinks so… About the rain that is. So you’re probably right,” Ray agreed, turning to look at him instead. “Do you need help with anything?”
“We just have some stuff to do in the smithy. I don’t think so… Actually,” he replied, turning to her as well, tilting his head a little. “I heard Fengi mention that you were looking at getting dresses made. Is that right?”
“Oh, yes,” Ray responded with a quick nod. “You know. It would be nice to have, even if it wouldn’t be so good to wear every day. It is going to be hard with the silks though.”
“Everyone needs some finery,” Tom replied with a wink. Of course she should have some nice clothes, maybe she would even start wearing what they had gotten for her in the capital then. She looked quite nice, all things considered, when she tried. “You went for silk? I guess that’s a bit expensive,” he carried on, having no clue what silk they might be talking about. The only silk that he remembered them having was the changeling silk of his cloak… maybe he should revisit the idea of getting that turned into a proper uniform. He would need a bit more of the stuff though.
“Well that too, but I’ve never sewn silk before. It’s always so expensive. And it’s hard to make look just right.”
“I know Essy is pretty good at sewing. I’m sure Wiperna is too.”
“Oh of course,” Ray giggled, though still looking a little uncertain. “But not to be mean or anything, but a dress is quite different from some armor or a simple shirt.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t know. Only sewing I’ve done was to fix things… It usually didn’t end well,” Tom joked, hoping Ray wouldn’t be quite so skittish. They hadn’t talked that much, but everyone knew she was sweet as pie.
“I could teach you if you want? I was helping Jacky a little before all this stuff with the inquisitor happened.”
“Jacky was taking sewing classes?” Tom questioned, raising an eyebrow. That was honestly quite the surprise.
“It’s been a while. She’s been busy and all,” Ray replied a little meekly before changing the subject. “How have the two of you been doing? You have had a very hard time.”
“Right… Oh yeah, it’s been… well it sucked a lot. Jacky blames the inquisitor rather than me, even if I wasn’t that nice all the time, so I guess that is a plus.”
“It’s okay, everyone has bad days. You especially so,” Ray said in a very soothing voice, going to put a hand on his shoulder with the most tender and caring look on her face Tom could imagine. “Just try not to, okay?”
“You know Ray, this is why everyone here likes you so much,” Tom chuckled softly, giving her a pat on the shoulder in return. “You’re a good egg as we would say back home.”
“But humans don’t lay eggs,” Ray replied, turning her head to the side a little, looking adorably confused.
“No, but we still know what eggs are… Anyhow, Jacky thought you would want to buy some jewelry with the money? I guess that falls under clothes to some extent.”
“Oh… Yeah, I guess so. It is going to be so strange having to buy something not from my brother's shop.” She laughed hollowly. Tom hadn’t thought about that part. He didn’t even know if the shop was still around.
“We could also try making some? I know Shiva will be quite busy, but we certainly have plenty of materials to work with. Silver and gold too. I have a feeling that maybe she will want to do something other than entertaining us lot as winter goes by.”
“Do you think she would do that? It is a lot of work,” Ray questioned meekly, clearly worried time would be spent on her that shouldn’t. Tom couldn’t really blame her. They would probably be busy all winter, but surely Shiva could whip up some earrings or something.
“Well, she sure loves polishing everything. Do you know her magic?”
“Yeah, I more or less worked it out… My brother had the same talent. Let him make things without solder. He made these earrings out of very thin gold wire all fused together into little designs. They were beautiful,” Ray replied, turning sadder and sadder as she explained.
“Oh I believe it. Maybe Shiva can replicate one?” Tom tried cautiously, not sure if he should change the subject or if this was a good thing to talk about. ‘God dammit Tom, why are you such a numpty with all this stuff?’
“Perhaps?... It was very fine work. They easily broke too. He just called that a business opportunity since not many places could fix them. I often wore some of them when standing outside, at least during the day, you know? Advertising. He never even got mad every time I broke one,” Ray replied somberly, her expression going blank. “Times change, I guess.”
“They sure do. I had never worn jewelry before coming here. And then what do the girls do? They take every chance they get to dress me up with whatever they can find. Even cut my hair to leave a damn heart and a lightning bolt. Wore a cap for months after that. It’s still not quite gone,” Tom joked. It seemed to help as she looked at him with big eyes like she had just realized something embarrassing.
“I remember those… I thought they were religious or something like that.”
Tom suppressed a snicker at that, not wanting to laugh at her. Shortly thereafter Ray too let out a little giggle, confirming that she found it funny too.
‘Oh thank god for that.’
“And the time they tried to do my hair into horns, oh that was soo stupid.”
“They really tried that?” Ray questioned, suppressing another snicker.
“Yup, I think Saph just panicked. Dakota basically just told her ‘Make him presentable!’ and then left. She didn’t have a clue what to do,” Tom carried on, breaking out laughing properly at the stupid memory. That had been so damn dumb, but it was a good story at least. Ray joined in too, though she was more snickering and giggling at his misfortune than outright laughing.
“I’m sorry, but that is funny,” Ray apologized as she kept snickering at him.
“Oh don’t worry, it was damn funny. Afterwards at least,” Tom got out after catching his breath real quick. “Or the time when Kiran attacked my foot ‘cause of how bad it smelled. That really hurt. Bastard has sharp fangs.”
“He is a spirited one,” Ray remarked, the two of them continuing to snicker like idiots.
Then there was a bit of a cough from behind them. Tom turned to see Junior and Radexi standing there, Junior at attention for some reason.
“At ease gentlemen,” Tom joked, watching the young man switch to a more relaxed stance, almost mirroring Radexi who just shook his head the tiniest amount. “What is it?”
“Shiva and Edita want you in the forge, and Jarix would like a word as well.”
“Right. I guess the fun is over then. Run along you two, I’ll be right up.”
“Yes sir.”
Tom let out a sigh as he watched them run off ‘I guess he’s not quite over playing soldier… I guess it still beats him taking after his father. Oh well, to work.’
__________________________________________________________________________________
Saph’s day had been rather boring thus far. It had been such a long walk, and it was more or less around late afternoon by the time they had made it to just the treeline. It had taken some walking back and forth from there before Essy had come descending out of the skies towards them to lead them to the camp.
It had turned out to be another half-hour walk through the forest to get there, which had left everyone save Essy a little travel sore. One might laugh at the idea of sitting down for a whole day being tiring, but Saph had actually gotten off to jog alongside just to have something to do for a bit. That and she was sore and stiff from all the hours sitting on Yldril’s back.
At least the forest was beautiful though, much better than the rolling hills. They really did get boring after a while. Here, though, it was all full of color. Especially on the outskirts of the forest. The leaves were already a dark yellow and falling, coating the ground in a colorful blanket. A few piles could be seen here and there where the wind had swept them up. Saph poked one to check for any surprises with a long stick before taking a run up and just jumping in backward, letting her wings catch the leaves to give a soft bouncy landing.
Fengi had kindly asked the dragon to walk by the pile of leaves, causing Saph to vacate to the shout of “Clear below!” followed by Fengi letting herself fall off the dragon’s back and down into the pile of leaves, using much the same trick as Saph had, though the cushion of leaves caught under her wing and sent her bouncing off. Essy stuck her head over the side to better watch as Fengi sailed gracelessly through the air and landed with a thunk and an “Aooow…” on some rather less well-padded ground.
The two silvered huntresses both chuckled a bit as Fengi held up a hand showing the OK symbol. “Nailed it.”
“Well if there had been a nail there then absolutely. You didn’t hurt anything, right?” Saph snickered, walking up to look down at the younger woman.
“Nope, I’m fine,” Fengi replied, standing up and dusting herself off, still looking like that had hurt at least a bit.
“Well at least the kids aren’t around to learn about that maneuver,” Essy added with a shake of her head. “I could see someone breaking a wing doing that.”
“You can break a wing doing the dishes,” Fengi retorted, going to jog after the dragon who hadn’t stopped or even slowed down. “Yldril, I’m climbing up your tail, just so you know.”
“Wonderful. At least you don’t want me to pick you up when you fall off,” The dragon retorted sarcastically, not seeming to care overly much. It wasn’t like she could stop them anyway. Fengi hopped up onto her tail and started climbing. Saph was half expecting the tip to fall off again, but it did seem to have survived the reattachment pretty well. Even if it was just the tip that had come off, it was certainly more than could be said for Balethon.
Saph followed Fengi’s lead, taking a running start and using a few powerful flaps of her wings to send her up onto the dragon's back. “All aboard.”
“Chuu chuu,” Essy let out playfully, pumping her fist in the air twice, leading to both Fengi and Saph tilting their heads looking at her. “Oh, it’s a thing Tom said… Not sure what it means, probably Danish.”
“Ahr yeah, that makes sense,” Fengi and Saph both agreed as they made themselves comfortable once more.
Saph went to lay down alongside the spines on the dragon's back, looking down at the ground moving slowly by below them. The dragon’s steps had slowed a bit as the hours had gone by, and she just watched the ground glide past. She thought back fondly to old times long ago. Playing in the rustling leaves as a kid had always been good fun. They used to take the kids of the keep to the forest just to see how different it was on a normal year. It was good to have a trip to see something other than just the rolling hills around the keep after all. For the last while though the kids had more or less just been cooped up inside the keep. She didn’t see that changing this year either.
‘Maybe next year. With some money, surely we could take a trip to the capital or something. Been a few since last we did that after all I think.’
They didn’t so much see the camp as hear it. Specifically, the roar of Tom’s chainsaw cutting through the woods. At first it was faint in the distance, almost like a shriek of a wounded animal, but as one came closer the true anger of that strange tool could be heard in full song. Accompanied by a familiar if rather manic-sounding laughter…
“Wait… Did they give it to Jacky?” Saph broke out, sitting up and trying to look ahead.
“Well that can’t possibly go wrong,” Fengi said sarcastically, shaking her head a bit, standing up, and walking up to Yldril’s shoulders to get a better view.
“It gets worse I’m afraid,” Essy added, having taken a comfy seat on Yldril’s back as well.
Fengi and Saph both didn’t say anything, instead just turning to look at the oldest huntress.
“Tom isn’t here either… and he gave it to her for the day,” Essy carried on reluctantly, apprehension clear on her face.
“Dakota did come, right? You know, just in case something needs to be put back on,” Saph tried half-joking, half-serious. A healer sounded like something they could definitely use if they ended up in that situation.
“I am not sure Dakota could manage that if I’m being honest. I wouldn’t like to think what that thing could do to flesh and bone,” Fengi added, also not seeming overly thrilled with the news.
“Is anyone going to tell me what that noise is?” Yldril protested, shaking her head a little as Jacky let loose once more, the screaming saw chewing its way through a log somewhere in the forest. It was hard to even work out where it was coming from with the echo bouncing off the trees all around them.
“Just think of it as a magical item that cuts wood and to do it, it burns stuff rather than magic. And is incredibly loud,” Saph responded as she tried to tell what parts of the noise were the saw and what might be Jacky screaming with glee.
“Am I the only one who would be quite scared to hear this? Say in the dark of night all alone out here?” Fengi questioned, sounding like maybe there was a little fear in there already as she looked around, the sound overwhelming them from all directions.
“Please tell me I do not have to listen to that all day?” the dragon grumbled, seeming a lot less impressed by the noise.
“If it helps, we all do. If Jacky’s got the saw, then she ain’t putting it down till it doesn’t wanna go no more. Or when we are done, I hope,” Saph sighed, the sheer disappointment radiating off the dragon feeling almost thick in the air as she walked along.
“Who knows, maybe they will be done soon?” Fengi tried in a cheerful tone. “I mean cutting trees down with that thing and branching them can’t take that long, and they must have been going for a while by now.”
Rounding a large path of bushes, the source of the noise came into view. Jacky stood with her back to them complete with her red-furred ear-defenders as woodchips flew all around, before the tree she had been working on creaked and cracked, slowly starting to topple over. “TIIIMBEEEER!”
There was a brief panic as the tree fell the wrong way, and several keep dwellers ran for it before the tree slammed into the ground. Jacky stood there looking quite pleased with herself.
“GOT IT!” she shouted out as grumbling faces started returning to the site, some having fled quite far away. As order returned some of them noticed the massive dragon staring at them. “Sorry about the bad guess. I really thought it was going that way.”
‘Gods give me strength,’ Saph sighed, clutching her temples a bit.
“Now now Saph, I’m sure she tried to make it go the other way. The saw does look like a handful if you ask me,” Essy let out, clearly trying to mediate things before anyone got shouted at. “Looks like they have come a long way already too.”
“Indeed,” Yldril replied, looking around and not sounding overly thrilled as she started walking up to the latest trunk to hit the ground. Looking around, the victims were quite spread out, and Essy was right too, there were quite a lot of them.
Jacky apparently hadn’t noticed them until Yldril was but a few meters behind her. She turned a bit to the right, probably sensing something was behind her, and let out a yelp of surprise as she noticed the massive black dragon standing just behind her. In true Jacky fashion, her finger was seemingly still on the trigger as the chainsaw roared to life, revving wildly before she managed to get her finger off the trigger, stumbling back a step or two. Some people averted their gaze once more, fearing Dakota’s magics were about to be needed, though others simply shook their heads or giggled a bit.
Yldril just stood there staring at the huntress unflinchingly. “Would you please shut that thing up?”
“Oh… right. Fuck man, you can’t just sneak up on me like that,” the chainsaw-wielding huntress countered, shutting off the chainsaw with a flick of a switch.
“I was not. You are simply oblivious. How many trees are there?”
“Oh uuuhm…” Jacky paused, looking back at her path of destruction. "Well… You know, I think I stopped counting.”
“There are twelve in total,” Dakota responded, walking up to the dragon. “And I must say, things have been going far swifter than we imagined. So far we are talking two logs per tree, we will cut them in half again when back at the keep. So two trees cut into four logs a trip was our idea. You will have to put together your cargo though. Do you think you can handle that?”
“Just fine… what even is that, a couple tons? Might as well take eight just to get it done with. That would mean I only need to do three trips, right?”
“That would be correct, yes. It is an awful lot of wood though,” Dakota replied, not seeming quite convinced that was a good idea, looking to Fengi for confirmation.
The young huntress just shrugged, clearly not knowing either. “If she thinks 8 logs is fine, why not? Not like we know what she can pull.”
“I have hauled far worse. But first I want to lay down somewhere with a bit of peace and quiet,” the dragon rumbled unenthusiastically, looking to Jacky, who was already making her way to the tree she had downed, fiddling with the saw.
“You can rest for a little. Afterward, we would have you stack the lumber up over there. We’re laying down two logs to put it on so it doesn’t get wet. In the meantime, Saph, we have a little foraging to do. I hope you brought your knife.”
“Always,” Saph replied, sliding down Yldrils's side and landing in a crouch, steadying herself with an arm before standing up again. “What are we looking for?”
“Heaven oak bark and anything else of use. A tasty snack wouldn’t go amiss either. By the looks of it, we might be able to finish up here today. Actually, remember to grab a hatchet for the bark while you are at it.”
“I saw some berry bushes when looking for you three. Worth a look I think,” Essy added enthusiastically as she too slid down Yldril, as the dragon started walking off to go have a nap somewhere a little quieter.
“Could I come too? Once I’ve seen where Yldril went to sleep at?” Fengi questioned hopefully, looking to Dakota. “I’ll be back so we can have her ready stuff for tomorrow.”
“I don’t see why not, as long as we get the prep done properly. Apparently it is going to rain tomorrow.”
“Yeah we heard,” Fengi sulked, glancing to Saph.
“Not much we can do about it. We better get going then before she wanders too far off. Do try to keep Jacky from killing anyone,” Saph chuckled, feeling a little glad she didn’t have to be too close to the saw either. It made her ears ring, and since Jacky had it there was not much chance of her getting a go at it anyway, and where was the fun in that?
“No faith at all,” Jacky laughed loudly with a big smile on her face as she yanked the cord and the device sprang to life once more. There was no denying just how quick work it made of those branches though. Each was gone in a matter of seconds as she walked up the side of the trunk.
“Well, good luck. See you later!”
__________________________________________________________________________________
As Tom came up the stairs to the greeting hall, the sight that greeted him was a young and slender blue dragon laying on his belly, head turned to face the horizon while completely overrun by kids. Said gaggle of kids seemed to include nearly everyone, save Lothal. Last Tom had seen him he had been shadowing Rachuck, who was supposed to be with Paulin at the moment so he guessed the kid was getting his first proper lessons on inquisition wrangling. Someone had to keep an eye on her.
The investigator hadn’t actually been causing much trouble as of late. Whether that came down to the orders she had been given or to the fact that Tom had a suspicion that she and Rachuck actually saw eye to eye on many things was hard to say. They were certainly both rather paranoid and beset by an impeccable work ethic.
For now though, Tom guessed he had kids to worry about, as well as whatever Jarix wanted to do. As he made his way over he saw Zarko holding the basket with Jinora, looking less than thrilled about the whole situation. It was rather funny to see the strict and uptight military woman being forced to babysit. And in all due honesty, she should probably be sawing planks or something instead. But they wouldn’t have any more wood till sometime late tomorrow, so here she was. He guessed that she hadn’t gone logging because if it came to it Jarix needed his crew for a fight.
“Ahr Tom, listen bro, I need to ask a favor,” Jarix called out, seeming quite delighted once he spotted Tom and Ray.
“Name it big guy,” Tom called back, walking up and watching as the kids all turned to look, a few hopping down to come his way with Kiran leading the charge.
“I wanted to ask you. Remember back before Joelina came here, well mostly even longer back than that. You used to run around in the morning and lift things?”
“Yup,” Tom replied, bending down to pick up Kiran as he came running with arms raised. “Up we come.”
“Yeah that stuff. Does it actually work?” the dragon questioned as the rest of the kids running up went right by Tom and instead ran up to Ray, who had already bent down arms open to welcome them in.
“What do you mean?” Tom asked with a chuckle, watching Ray with a big smile.
“He’s just trying to get out of having to do the training, that’s all,” Zarko interjected annoyedly, also walking towards Ray, Jinora’s basket in hand.
“No, not me. Radexi. He’s just embarrassed to ask, that’s all,” the dragon clarified. “I don’t need more flying practice, I’m the best already. And look at this now,” he went, flexing a foreleg which was showing some rather nicely defined muscle underneath the scaly hide.
“All that fieldwork was good for something, aye? Maybe you should be helping out log hauling.” Tom chuckled, watching the dragon’s expression go from proud to rather annoyed.
“Yeah, right,” Jarix chuckled sarcastically. “Why not do the work of someone 4 times my size, might be 5 actually. I think I’m good.”
“You haven’t done anything for weeks you big baby. It’s time to get to work again,” Zarko corrected as she gingerly gave the basket to Ray like she was defusing a bomb. Ray took it right away and stuck a hand down for Jinora to play with to the sound of happy baby giggles.
“Oh come on, I was wounded.”
“And now you’re fixed. I think it’s an excellent idea. It will take Yldril more than one run I hope, otherwise it’s not gonna be anywhere near enough wood.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Though flying practice should be a thing too, right?” Tom questioned, looking to the now much more comfortable-looking lieutenant.
“We really should be practicing with Dakota and her girls, yes. Rachuck and the guard too for that matter, in case we get locked up in here with you for winter.”
“Makes sense. I for one would love to see some aerial exercises.” Tom mused glancing to Jarix hoping the dragon would pick up on a possible way out of hauling duty.
“As long as you don’t plan on falling off, I think the big baby could use some weight. Much like yourself,” Zarko agreed, gesturing at Tom. Tom had indeed resumed the practice of walking around with the weights on. He was more or less mended after all. The last two days hadn’t even come with dreams of Joelina’s past. Even if that wasn’t really enough to have him discount that side effect as dealt with. “Perhaps a few of the guards would be willing to come along for target practice. They will be fine in the belly netting I am sure.
“Oh come one, I’m supposed to fight using speed. Don’t go weighing me down now.”
“Of course, and if you are faster with passengers, imagine how well you will do in a proper fight. Besides, I already talked with Dakota. She found the idea quite ideal,” Zarko retorted with a grim smile on her face, Jarix deflating noticeably.
“Don’t worry, Jarix! We coming too!” Kiran shouted out, raising a clenched fist.
“Oh no you don’t,” Tom chuckled, lowering the hand back down again. “It’s bad enough for them if I fall off.”
“But I fly already.”
“Yes, when you weren’t allowed to… and were high on sugar.”
“I still want more sweets. They taste good!”
“Yes, yes I know. I promise when you’re older,” Tom tried, Kiran’s expression turning exceedingly grumpy as he crossed his arms. “I am three. That’s a lot!”
“Hey, don’t feel bad, kid. My dad didn’t let me try flying till I was 10,” Jarix added in helpfully, Kiran turning to look at the dragon, mouth agape.
“Oh nooooo.”
“Oh don’t give me that,” Zarko let out, clearly not impressed “I know your mother. No way in hel-”
“Heherm!” Ray cleared her throat, looking rather scathingly at Zarko, who for her part just shut up.
Tom just watched in awe. He had never seen Ray do anything like that before. And Zarko was not exactly the most lenient of people. Even Kiran didn’t seem to have a funny quip.
Jarix just looked rather smug at the whole thing before slowly and with head held high turning to look at Tom and Kiran.
“Anyway, I just wanted to ask if you could help Radexi out. He’s a bit spindly.”
“And he can’t pull back the bolt on the 50 properly… I’ll see what I can do,” Tom promised, not quite sure how this would end. Hopefully better than his attempt to wingman for Unkai. Even if that had been more or less successful in the end.
“Thanks bro. Now I think if I have to go out and start hauling trees, I’m gonna need to look good. Who knows who might see us out there? We have to put on a good image after all,” Jarix chuckled, laying his head back down on the sun-heated stone and looking rather comfy really. Even if Tom still needed to make good on that promise of a bed.
“What’s next, do you want white enameled armor too? Maybe a huntress crown as well? I’m sure I could put in a good word with Dakota and get you at least a copper one,” Zarko retorted sarcastically, crossing her arms and looking unimpressed.
“Did you forget how much I was paid? I am a gilded, I would have you know.”
“Still only made half of a normal year’s commission, didn’t you?”
“No, I made half on top of a normal commission, remember?”
“Right,” Tom let out, blinking a few times. “Forgot just how expensive you lot are.”
“Why do you think most keeps out here don’t have dragons? At least not normally. They are putting a fortune into this place,” Jarix countered. “I know mum’s place back home cost thousands. Food is the big one though. In the big cities, it’s just crazy.”
“There is also the small matter of asking someone who can live for hundreds of years to risk their life for you. No keep dweller dragons making 500 a year out here.” Zarko added apathetically.
“Well duh, just like there aren’t any dragonettes making 50, or even like what? 10 gold.”
“Quite, most would be more like a couple on a good year… if you're a higher rank,” Ray interjected cautiously, clearly not quite comfortable with the huge numbers.
“Damn… actually, what would a dragon make out here?” Jarix proceeded to ask, looking to Zarko, who just shrugged.
“I don’t know. Maybe 100? Maybe only 50? Some might only be paid in food and shelter, you are expensive to feed after all. From what I heard many are usually hired rather than part of the keep too.”
“Welp, even more reason to join the army,” Jarix mused, seeming quite content with his lot in life. “So much more worth it.”
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Chapter 168 ready and able. Things are starting to feel a bit more like they used to back when Tom was setteling in at the keep. Still plenty going on but it's not the center of attention right now. at least not the large scale political shenanigans. I don't know about you but I like it. Speaking of which any feedback is as always welcome down below be it pitchforks or cake. I might not agree with you but I still wanna hear it.
On the news front, There is a brand new piece of Grevi in the art show, made by Lunhaku. It's the first time we get to see a dragon in armor as well, it provides a nice perspective on the size of the dragons as well.
Praise the editors for making this all possible, I hope you enjoyed it. If you did an want another check out the patreon or if you just wanna help get more cool pictures of dragons drawn.
Until next time, take care, and I'll catch you around.
​
Cover three by HarmaaGriffin
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HoH Subreddit if you want more stories from the HoH universe or are interested in writing something for this funny little world.
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i am from NY so i am not familiar with the climate in AZ, but i have been there a few times to hike the grand canyon.
i wouldnt be able to start the AZT until winter time. im pretty sure it still gets down to like 15f from dec-feb. is that true? that's a little too cold for me.
if you could hike half of the AZT, which 400mi section would u do? i care about scenery and water above all else

I originally posted this list of Hollywood related longreads to a gossip subreddit, but have been meaning to clean it up and share it here since. I'm hoping to be more active here from now on, as I am definitely a passionate longreader. :)
"Tears and Terror: The Disturbing Final Years of Mickey Rooney," The Hollywood Reporter
"One of the biggest stars of all time, who remained aloft longer than anyone in Hollywood history, was in the end brought down by those closest to him."
The gripping tale of Mickey Rooney, the legendary child star turned Oscar nominee and how his tormented end unfolded— abused and robbed by his eighth wife and her children. This is a captivating story that exposes the tragic downfall of a true Hollywood icon.
"The Untold Stories of Wes Studi," GQ
"In the process, he's become the biggest star we've ever had in the Native acting world, but he's never attained actual stardom."
A terrific profile of Wes Studi, the renowned Native American actor who stands as a true luminary in the industry. With good insight into the workings of Hollywood, Studi's remarkable journey encompasses not only his experiences as a Vietnam War veteran but also his invaluable wisdom acquired as an activist within the American Indian movement of the 1970s.
"The Rise and Fall of Planet Hollywood," Esquire
"My second wife was on the way back from [an event], and she flew back with George Clooney. He got the call where he found out he was Batman on the plane. . . . He was saying, ‘I am Batman.’. . . There were so many celebrities, it became like high school. You got to hang out with the cool kids.”
Embark on a nostalgic journey through the bygone era of the 1990s, where Planet Hollywood reigned. This movie-themed restaurant, owned by the movie stars themselves, promised a glamorous encounter with the very celebrities who graced the silver screen. At the pinnacle of pop culture's obsession with fame, this chain soared before crashing into bankruptcy not once, but twice. This article will take you back if you ever experienced the dubious pleasure of sampling the lackluster food at a Planet Hollywood franchise.
"Frank Sinatra Jr. is Worth Six Buddy Grecos," GQ
"Not one of them can even imagine what it is like to be Junior, to have a father who would do something like that to his own son, to have a father who is proud enough, fierce enough, brutal enough and big enough to present his son to a thousand faces and then turn him into a shadow."
An exquisitely crafted profile, not only due to its prose but also the way it exudes a remarkable sense of empathy. Frank Sinatra Jr. was not just a walking punchline but trapped in the unfulfilled, lonely cage of his father's fame. This is not just a mere recounting of events, but a sincere examination of the profound loneliness and unfulfilled dreams that defined Junior's existence.
"The Ego Has Landed," People magazine
"He has been compared to nearly every great man in history. The funny thing is, he's the one doing all the comparing."
Step into the world of Philip Michael Thomas, a former TV star whose fleeting fame on Miami Vice propelled him to astonishing levels of egomania. While his name may have faded from memory, this article unflinchingly spotlights a man whose taste of success led him to unparalleled heights of self-importance.
"Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie," The New York Times
"She proclaimed the director a jerk, her co-star a nightmare and the crew unfriendly. On it went. Schrader listened for a while. He looked stricken. He softly tapped his balding head on the table. Lohan asked him what was the matter."
The Canyons was destined to be a disaster film simply because of the crazy egomaniacs (and worse, in the case of James Deen) involved, at the service of what was, by all accounts, an awful script. I haven't seen the film myself, but I have read this piece several times, which captures the slow trainwreck in progress. At the center of this calamity stands Lindsay Lohan, a star who somehow manages to duck any inklings of sympathy by embodying entitlement and assholeish behavior.
"Val Kilmer Doesn't Believe in Death," Men's Health
"'Cher dipped out for afternoon errands,' he writes. 'Night fell, and I fell asleep. Suddenly I awoke vomiting blood that covered the bed like a scene out of The Godfather. I prayed immediately, then called 911.'"
A poignant piece that details how a once radiant star grapples with the passage of time and the relentless grip of throat cancer. This piece gives a mix of emotions that range from sympathy to a lingering sense of unease - the latter due to Val's bizarre obsession with his Christian Science faith and how it requires reconciling his idols Mary Baker Eddy and Mark Twain, two totally opposed personalities.
"Ten Years Ago, I Called Out David Letterman. This Month, We Sat Down to Talk," Vanity Fair
"I’m sorry I was that way and I was happy to have read the piece because it wasn’t angering. I felt horrible because who wants to be the guy that makes people unhappy to work where they’re working? I don’t want to be that guy. I’m not that guy now. I was that guy then.”
Twenty years ago, Nell Scovell quit her dream job as a writer at The Late Show with David Letterman over sexual harrassment. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, Scovell seizes the opportunity to conduct an interview with Letterman, who confronts the difficult questions. However, amidst the acknowledgment and apology, Scovell grapples with a lingering doubt: Does Letterman's contrition stem from genuine remorse or simply from the consequences of being exposed? This compelling piece questions the intricacies of celebrity apologies and the true nature of accountability.
"Nobody's Victim: An Interview with Samantha Geimer," Quillette
"I know what happened, and I know how I feel. I will not silently let my life be distorted and used by strangers, whatever their intention, knowing full well that they care nothing for me."
An incredibly hard read, this interview is with Samantha Geimer, who was violently raped by Roman Polanski at age 13. Yet this emotionally charged piece has lingered in my thoughts for years, as it grapples with the complex issues surrounding society's expectations of sexual abuse victims, particularly the victims of heinous acts committed by public figures. As you navigate through the interview, be prepared for moments of discomfort as Geimer calls out even those who purport to advocate for her, revealing how their actions have, at times, exacerbated her pain. Bonus: For the intricate details of the legal case and all its twists and turns, see this examination by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.
"The King of the Geezer Teasers," Vulture
"Off-camera, De Niro’s ordeal was no less daunting — somehow, the great actor had to keep Hollywood’s worst filmmaker from ruining the movie they’d set out to make together."
Written before Bruce Willis' dementia diagnosis, this is a revealing profile that takes you behind the scenes of the straight-to-video empire constructed by Randall Emmett, a mastermind who leverages aging male stars to churn out profitable yet subpar films. There have been accusations since this piece was published that Emmett exploited Bruce Willis to keep his deals going.
"Oliver Stone's Mother Lode," Washington Post
"It's not clear -- from detailed interviews with Elizabeth, Oliver and his mother Jacqueline -- what actually occurred."
What starts as a routine profile of Oliver Stone explodes when his ex-wife drops a bombshell allegation about an incident from his childhood. The normally combative Stone seems uncharacteristically reticent (or perhaps in denial) at times, as the writer tries to untangle the family drama and how personal history intertwines with the filmmaker's work. Bonus: Carole Cadwalladr revisted these allegations thirteen years later in this excellent Guardian profile of Stone.
"Natalie Wood's Fatal Voyage," Vanity Fair
"After a few minutes, Wagner appeared and told the captain, “'She’s gone.'"
What happened the night Natalie Wood drowned? Was it an accident or something more sinister? This article of unparalleled depth explores that tragic night, including incredible revelations from the captain of the yacht - the only surviving witness willing to talk.
"Trapped in the Twilight Zone," Los Angeles Times
"'It’s not that there are no values in Hollywood,' Puttnam says. 'It’s that there is a whimsical lack of consistency on ethical issues. People can be incredibly loyal and forgiving toward some individuals, and completely unforgiving toward others.”
In 1982, a horrific accident killed Vic Morrow and two child actors (working illegally) on the set of The Twilight Zone: The Movie. While the powers that be - John Landis, Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall - faced no long-term consequences and reached new career heights, it wasn't so for the crew members who survived. This compelling article delves into the profound impact that continued to haunt the below-the-line personnel years after the tragedy, and on the enduring trauma it left behind.
"The Miranda Obsession," Vanity Fair
"'On a good day,' she wrote, 'I feel like a shipwrecked person spotting the sight of some nearing shore: a taste in the wind, a softness in the light, a sudden passage of words. Love is so easy in the movies.'"
In the pre-Internet era, the enigmatic figure of Miranda Grosvenor weaved a web of allure and deception over the phone, captivating numerous famous and influential Hollywood men with her mesmerizing voice and innate charm. However, the true identity of Miranda Grosvenor was far from the persona she projected. In a tale that predates the concept of "catfishing," this peculiar and poignant narrative explores the impact of illusion and the bittersweet reality of loneliness.
"The Unbearable Bradness of Being," Rolling Stone
"We are alone. Pitt glances suspiciously at what lies between us on the table, as though it's always the inconsiderate, tattle-telling interloper that spoils a good conversation. 'The dreaded tape recorder,' he says, fingering it."
This starts as a typical celebrity profile from the late 90's, slightly edgy because it was from Rolling Stone and Brad Pitt was in his dudebro era. But things get interesting when Brad has second thoughts, and he and the writer, Chris Heath, get into an argument. Heath shares the power struggle that ensues when a celebrity - at the peak of their influence - attempts to seize control of their profile.