32 inch tv roku

Animation Film!!! Here are options for downloading or watching The Super Mario Bros Movie streaming the full movie online for free on 123movies & Reddit, including where to watch the Nintendo's Mario video game franchise The Super Mario Bros Movie at home. Is Super Mario Bros Movie 2023 available to stream? Is watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie on Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Netflix or Peacock? Yes, we have found an authentic streaming option/service.
​
🔁Watch Now: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) Online Free
🔁Watch Now: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) Online Free
​
The new 'Super Mario Bros. Movies' streaming on digital platforms starting Tuesday, May 16.. Fans of the video game are wondering how they can stream the new video game franchise animated film The Super Mario Bros Movies streaming online reddit for free at home.
​
Mushroom Kingdom, here we come! Players of the popular video game will get a chance to relive Mario’s adventure in Mushroom Kingdom. But before viewers imagine collecting coins, the movie will reveal Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day)’s backstory as Brooklyn-based plumbers. The duo head out to a job but are sucked into a different world and separated. This kicks off Mario's journey to find Luigi. Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Bowser (Jack Black), Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen), and others also make appearances.
​
To many, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the biggest entertainment release of 2023. The film brings together the world's most prolific video game franchise with one of its most prolific animation studios in Illumination. Factor in the involvement of Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto as a producer and an all-star cast of A-list voice talent, and this movie has all the makings of Hollywood's next animated blockbuster. Read our review of The Super Mario Bros. Movie for more.
​
It's almost baffling how it's taken this long to get a proper animated film adaptation of The Super Mario Bros. series, which is easily one of the most, if not the most, well-known and beloved video game franchises of all time. For over four decades, Nintendo's titular Italian plumber and face of the company has been entertaining gamers, appearing in over two-hundred different games since Mario's debut in 1981. Mario and his brother Luigi also have a history in the world of filmmaking, though not precisely for the same prestigious reasons. One of the most bizarre adaptations in motion picture history, Super Mario Bros. (1993), starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi (neither of which are Italian), didn't come even close to delivering the iconic style and tone of the original games, instead opting for a flashy dinosaur-themed sci-fi box office bomb.
​
Despite a strange first attempt, the Super Mario Bros. IP is still ripe for a cinematic adaptation. Thankfully, we’re finally getting that with the aptly named The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Coming from Illumination Animation, otherwise known as the studio behind The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me, and Sing franchises, early looks at the film already tease a visually faithful adaptation that will thrust fans and audiences into the Mushroom Kingdom like never before. Given the huge intergenerational popularity of the series, the film is practically guaranteed to be a massive win for Universal Pictures and Illumination. Those chances are even further improved with Universal Studios' long-awaited Super Nintendo World set to open mere months before the film's release.
​
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now playing in theatres, but if you don’t want to go out of your way to watch it, you’re probably searching for the movie online. Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie streaming on Amazon Prime Video or has it found a home on another service? Here’s what we know so you don’t miss out.
The digital release date has been confirmed for the box office smash inspired by the Nintendo video game, but are you able to watch the animated film online? Here's how and where you can watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie online at home.
​
When Is the Release Date of The Super Mario Bros. Movie
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now in theatres everywhere. To find when and where you can watch the movie near you. The Super Mario Bros Movies streaming online reddit will be exclusively available in cinemas from April 5, 2023.
​
It was originally set for release on April 7, but Universal moved it forward so it could hit more than 60 markets on the same day. For audiences in Japan, it’ll arrive in theatres on April 28.
​
It will not be available on any streaming platform, nor will it be available to rent or buy via any digital or VOD service such as Amazon Prime Video.
​
Where to Watch Super Mario Bros. Movie
As of now, the only way to watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie is to head out to a movie theatre when it releases on Friday, April 7. You can find a local showing on Fandango.
​
Watch Now: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Online Free
​
Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait for it to become available to rent or purchase on digital platforms like Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Apple, or become available to stream on Prime Video.
​
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
How to Watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie Online
The Super Mario Bros. Movie can be pre-ordered on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV in Ultra HD for $30 and will be available to watch starting Monday, May 15 at 9 p.m. PT (May 16 at 12 a.m. ET). You can also pre-order the title in 4K on Google Play Movies & TV. Unlike Amazon’s original series and films, you do not need a membership to Prime or Prime Video to buy the movie.
​
As confirmed on Amazon’s product page, The Super Mario Bros. Movie will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital (including in 4K Ultra HD) on Dec. 31.
How to Watch Super Mario Bros movie At Home
​
Universal Pictures and Illumination have announced that the film will be available to rent and/or purchase on digital platforms starting Tuesday, May 16. It’s also likely the hit animated title will stream first on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, which has been home to all of Universal’s recent releases like NOPE, Knock at the Cabin, Cocaine Bear, The Bad Guys and more.
​
The Super Mario Bros. Movie comes out on digital starting at midnight ET on May 16, 2023. For all you west coast watchers, that’s 9 p.m. PT tonight, May 15. Right now, you can preorder the Super Mario movie on Amazon for $30.
​
When Will The Super Mario Bros. Movie Streaming Online?
After a successful theatrical run, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is headed to video-on-demand streaming in the coming weeks.
​
Thanks to a social media post from the cable brand Optium, the digital release date of The Super Mario Bros. Movie was revealed to be Tuesday, May 16. That marks 41 days after the animated hit first landed in theaters on April 5, which is a short theater premiere-to-streaming gap for a 2023 blockbuster.
​
However, this gap isn't necessarily surprising when considering that Universal, the distribution company of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, has had a similar progressive release strategy for recent animated movies. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was released digitally a mere 16 days after its December 2022 theatrical premiere, while Minions: The Rise of Gru hit video-on-demand 32 days after its Summer 2022 debut.
​
As for when the film could be streaming on a service (in this case, it would most likely be NBC's Peacock), that remains unknown. Given how much money the movie raked in, it's hard to imagine that Universal is in any rush to get it there anytime soon.
​
The Super Marios Bros. Movie will be available for digital purchase on Tuesday, May 16.
​
Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie Streaming On Prime Video?
The Super Mario Bros. Movie may be streaming on Prime Video soon thanks to a placeholder release date for May 16 on Amazon's video streaming service.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie comes out on digital starting at midnight ET on May 16, 2023. For all you west coast watchers, that’s 9 p.m. PT tonight, May 15. Right now, you can preorder the Super Mario movie on Amazon for $30.
​
The movie's PVOD page was spotted by Resetear user ContractHolder, noting that it's been marked as "Early Access," which means it may start streaming on Prime Video one month after the start of its theatrical run. When you preorder The Super Mario Bros. Movie on the service, you may see May 16, 2023 as the placeholder date. It's expected to come out on PVOD on that date, but that may be subject to change.
​
"Usually Universal only rushes their films to PVOD if it has under a $50 million opening weekend," ContractHolder explained in the post. "That's probably not going to happen for the Mario movie, but the marker has specifically been used for movies going to PVOD early in their theatre run. So keep in mind that there's a chance home viewings for the Mario movie could happen quickly."
​
Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie Streaming On Peacock?
As a Universal flim, The Super Mario Bros. Movie will eventually be available to stream on Peacock, but there’s currently no official streaming release date.
Some fans may believe either Disney+ or HBO Max will host The Super Mario Bros., but that will not be the case. Instead, you’ll find the movie on Peacock. Not right away, though. The animated feature will be in theatres for a number of weeks before landing on the streaming service. How long, exactly? We’re not sure, but we’ll be updating you as soon as we do.
​
Do you have a Peacock subscription? This is a great time to join! Peacock has recently made some sweet upgrades and content additions, you don’t want to miss out.
​
Will The Super Mario Bros. Movie Be On Netflix?
No, The Super Mario Bros Movies streaming online reddit will likely not be on Netflix any time soon, seeing as it will go directly to Amazon Prime Video after its theatrical run.
​
A similar timeline would put the rental release date for The Super Mario Bros Movies streaming online reddit in the UK in early May, but it'll then be another month or two until you can buy and own a copy of the movie.
​
Will The Super Mario Bros. Movie Be On HBO Max?
No, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is not on HBO Max since it’s not a Warner Bros. movie. Last year, the company released its films in theatres and on the streamer on the same day. However, they now allow a 45-day window between the theatrical release and the streaming release.
​
While we don't yet have a confirmed streaming release date for The Super Mario Bros Movies streaming online reddit, we can look at other Universal releases in 2023 to get a sense of when it might be available to watch at home.
​
When Will Super Mario Bros Movies Be On Disney?
While a streaming release date for The Super Mario Bros has not yet been announced, Disney typically sends their movies to Disney+ around 45 days after the theatrical release — and more specifically, on the Friday after that mark. With this strategy, we could be watching Avatar: The Way of Water from the comfort of our homes by early April 2023.
​
Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie Available On Hulu?
Viewers are saying that they want to view the new animation movie The Super Mario Bros. Movie on Hulu. Unfortunately, this is not possible since Hulu currently does not offer any of the free episodes of this series streaming at this time. It will be exclusive to the MTV channel, which you get by subscribing to cable or satellite TV services. You will not be able to watch it on Hulu or any other free streaming service.
​
The Super Mario Bros. Movie Cast and Characters
The Super Mario Bros. Movie was written by Matthew Fogel and directed by Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic. It stars the following actors:
​
The animated film is voiced by
Chris Pratt as Mario, a struggling plumber from Brooklyn
​
Charlie Day as Luigi, Mario’s younger fraternal twin
​
Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, the ruler of Mushroom Kingdom
​
Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, the first resident of the Mushroom Kingdom that Mario meets
​
Jack Black as Bowser, King of the Koopas and Dark Lands who wants to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom and marry Peach
​
Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, heir to the neighboring Kong Kingdom
​
Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong, ruler of the Kong Kingdom
​
Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek, a Koopa wizard and Bowser’s loyal advisor
​
Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike, Mario and Luigi’s former boss
​
Charles Martinet as Mario and Luigi’s father (Martinet voiced the two brothers in the video game)
​
How to Watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie Online For Free?
Most Viewed, Most Favorite, Top Rating, Top IMDb movies online. Here we can download and watch 123movies movies offline. 123Moviess website is the best alternative to The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) free online. We will recommend 123Moviess as the best Solarmovie alternatives.
​
There are a few ways to watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie online in the U.S. You can use a streaming service such as Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video. You can also rent or buy the movie on iTunes or Google Play. You can also watch it on-demand or on a streaming app available on your TV or streaming device if you have cable.
​
What is The Super Mario Bros. Movie about?
The Super Mario Bros. movie is an animated, feature-length film based on Nintendo's iconic video game property. Here's the official synopsis from Universal Pictures:
​
The Super Mario Bros. Movie follows the beloved video game’s brothers, Mario and Luigi, on a whirlwind adventure across the Mushroom Kingdom.
​
While working underground to fix a water main, Brooklyn plumbers Mario and brother Luigi are transported down a mysterious pipe and wander into a magical new world. But when the brothers are separated, Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi. With the assistance of a Mushroom Kingdom resident Toad and some training from the strong-willed ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, Princess Peach, Mario taps into his own power.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex) Marcus is content to stay inside you after you both orgasm, but when he finally slips out of you, he grabs a warm washcloth to sweetly clean you up so you don’t have to do the awkward walk to the bathroom. When you do get up to pee, he’ll find your panties for you in the sheets at the bottom of the bed, just in case you want to wear them while you sleep. If he’s planning a special evening, he’ll fill up the bath with steaming hot water in advance, and lead you to the tub afterwards for soothing warmth and soft kisses and caresses. He knows he’s big, so he’s always concerned about whether you’re in discomfort after sex, and he’ll offer extra cuddles and soft strokes over your entrance if you’re feeling sore. If you’re at his house, he keeps an extra blanket in his bedroom to throw over you before you fall asleep, because he sleeps warm but knows you get chilly. And of course, he sleep-cuddles with you all night long, making you feel safe and secure.
B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s) First, your hands. He loves holding your hand, playing with it, feeling that connection with you. He is fascinated with how tiny your hands are compared to his, and you love how he holds your hand during mundane everyday moments, like walking to dinner, riding the metro, or simply sitting together on the couch while you read or watch TV. He loves your skin in general, how soft you are, how good you smell. He softly rubs his fingers over you when you cuddle together on his couch, like you are his source of comfort. But he is also a boob man, and nothing gets him going like seeing a glimpse of your cleavage or a taut nipple through thin fabric. The first time he took your bra off, he couldn’t stop holding you in his big hands, thumbing your nipples, suckling your soft skin. If you are going on a special date, you’ll purposefully wear a shirt or dress that shows off your chest, then tease him when he flushes stealing glances at you.
C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically) Marcus is all about intimacy, so he loves finishing inside you. At first you used condoms, but after getting tested, you both agreed to go without, and the first time he was able to cum in you without any barrier, he was so turned on by the feeling of filling you with his cum, he got hard again before even pulling out. You love giving him an intimate lingam massage, and at the last moment, when you see him start to pulse, take him into your mouth and swallow as he cums down your throat. He almost passed out the first time he experienced this with you, and now it’s your favorite way to make him feel special. But, for everyday intimacy, he still loves finishing in you and staying inside to savor your tight warmth, gently stroking and kissing all the soft parts of you he can reach.
D = Drunk (what they’re like when they’ve been drinking) Believe it or not, Marcus gets even MORE affectionate when he’s been drinking. If you’re home, he’s pulling you onto his lap and whispering sweet adorations in your ear while his hands stroke your arms and legs and ass. If you’re in public, his hand is running up your leg under the table, and in the backseat of the taxi, he’s slowly making his way up your thigh and teasing you over your panties until you are holding back whimpers, gripping his wrists and closing your eyes in pleasure. He never gets so sloppy drunk he needs help, but he’ll have a few extra drinks if he knows he gets to take you home and make sweet, tipsy love to you for the rest of the night.
E = Emergency Situations (what they’re like in an emergency) I mean, he’s an FBI agent. You’ve never felt safer than when you’re sleeping in his arms. He hates having to bring his gun on dates, but you assure him you understand, and you secretly feel a little better knowing he’s prepared if anything goes south. And he looks hot wearing it. The first time he came to your apartment, he checked your locks and alarms (with your permission) to make sure you were safe. He has some quirks, like never sitting with his back to a doorway, or silently checking out every person who walks in the room, but you understand it’s a part of his training. You feel safe walking with him through the streets of D.C. at night, and you often suggest walking back to either your or his apartment instead of taking the metro or a taxi. You both love these moments together walking hand in hand through the city, sometimes in silence, just enjoying each others’ presence.
F = Favorite position (this goes without saying) This man loves missionary because it allows him to be close to your sweet face, but there is nothing boring about it. He thinks like both an artist and a cop, so he's going to pay close attention to your moans of pleasure and how your body responds to his touches. He'll take his time stroking and building your desire with his hands and mouth, and then when you are absolutely aching for him, he’ll cage you in his strong biceps and slowly, sweetly, inch by inch, fill you completely, your hands gripping his muscular arms and back as he stretches you. And when he finally starts moving, his big hands stroking your hair and face, he’ll use his tongue to do to your mouth what his cock is doing to you elsewhere, until you lose yourself in pleasure in his arms.
G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.) Marcus is definitely more sweet than goofy, but he does like tickling you out of nowhere on the couch or in bed in the mornings, because he knows it leads to more touching and soft kisses and sex. During sex, he is usually too worried about making sure you feel good and safe to joke around too much, but he can laugh when things go wrong, like accidentally leaning on your hair or an awkward position change. Or that time you got a little excited and spilled the red wine sitting on the side table all over the bed. (Oops!)
H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.) Judging by his well-groomed head and facial hair, you guessed he would also be well-groomed below, and you were right. Not bare, but closely trimmed. It made his dick look even bigger. As if he needed it.
I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect) Marcus believes intimacy starts long before sex. He’ll cook for you, give you massages, and tell you all the things he loves about your body as he notices them. At first, it’s a little hard for you to accept, because you’re not used to hearing what someone loves about you, but you soon realize he wears his heart on his sleeve, and you learn to appreciate how openly he adores you. You give him compliments, soft touches, head scritches, and splurge on his favorite bakery treats as a way to make him feel loved, too. And by the time you are in bed, the world-shattering orgasms you share are the natural progression of your intimacy.
J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon) Marcus would prefer to cum in you, not kleenex, so he doesn’t jack-off very often any more. If its been a while since he’s been able to see you, he’ll gladly engage in mutual Facetime sex with you. It’s especially hot if you’re both in hotel rooms. Oh, and that one time you texted him that picture, and he had to shut his office door and quickly stroke himself to completion so he didn’t walk into his next meeting with an erection.
K = Kink (one or more of their kinks) You suggested once that Marcus stay in his suit, complete with badge and gun, and slowly undress you, until you were fully nude. You sat on his lap, and being able to hold you naked against him while he remained fully clothed uncovered a slight domination kink he never knew he had. It was still important to him he didn’t hurt you, but you encouraged him to touch and explore you, and by the time he finally took out his cock, you were both on the verge of cumming as soon as he slid into you. He also loves cockwarming, because it satisfies his need for intimacy and closeness. He’ll cuddle in behind you in bed and slide himself inside you, and you love feeling full and warm and safe. Or, sometimes he’ll stay on his back while you sleep on his body, chest to chest, and he’ll put his arms around you while you sleep with his cock buried deep inside you. You especially love when you wake up in the middle of the night to his sleepy moans and the feel of him growing hard inside you.
L = Location (favorite places to do the do) Definitely his bedroom. He takes pride in having created a bed worth fucking in: high thread count sheets, down pillows, soft, gray-toned bedding, flattering lighting, candles, and a very sturdy headboard. He loves seducing you on the sofa or in the kitchen, then leading you by the hand to his bedroom, and falling into the luxurious bed with you. His side table always has lube, and other sweet, sensual enhancements. And of course, his master bathroom is elegant and warm, with a tray for washcloths next to the sink, and thick, fluffy towels outside the bathtub and glass shower. It’s his favorite place to spend hours and hours with you, and some Sundays, he only gets up to answer the food delivery driver at the front door, or to grab more wine.
M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going) Marcus is motivated by love and how much he adores you. He expresses himself through touch and sex, so just spending time with you puts him in the mood. He loves your hair, your eyes, the way you lean into his soft caresses and use his belly or biceps as a warm pillow. When you lovingly scratch his back and stroke his scalp? Forget about it. Instant erection. And whether you are dressed for comfort or for going out, he loves your style and is turned on by the thought of being lucky enough to be with the most beautiful woman in the room. But, don’t even get him started on lingerie. His first erection was seeing a Victoria’s Secret catalog on the kitchen table as a boy, and he’s never gotten over the titillating thrill of lace, satin, and shyly exposed curves. He has a degree in Art History, and definitely has an eye for beauty and sensual experiences. He buys you panties and chemises to keep at his place, and on special occasions, spends all evening fantasizing about what you’re wearing underneath, and just how you’ll disrobe for him later. (You love surprising him with a merry widow, garters, and thigh highs in his favorite color.) In fact, given the chance, he’ll try to convince you to let him undress you before you even have a chance to go out for the night, and just stay in.
N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs) Degradation is off the table, as well as anything that hurts you. He’s nervous to leave a mark. And you’ve asked him to explore light choking, but he’s just not there yet.
O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.) Marcus is a pleaser, and his love language is ‘touch’, so he prefers to give, and his oral game is off the charts. He starts by kissing and caressing your whole body, so you’re completely warmed up and tingling before he even reaches your center. He loves focusing on you and hearing your moans and sighs of pleasure, and the way you say his name over and over, like a prayer, when you’re close to cumming. You’ve felt like you nearly passed out a few times, just from the intensity of the orgasms he gives you. (And as a bonus, it’s a little easier for his large member to slide in afterwards.) As far as receiving, you’ve finally convinced him you also get turned on when he finishes in your mouth, but what he really loves is the attention you pay to his body: the feel of your hands on his thick thighs, kissing your way down his neck and chest and belly trail, using your hands and mouth together to massage and suck his cock and sensitive head. And if he does come in your mouth, he enjoys the intimacy of you swallowing, if you’re up for it. He especially loves when you slide your thumb firmly up his cock after he finishes, emptying the last bits of cum from him, licking the head to get every last drop. And then gently cleaning him with a washcloth in the warm candlelight. He looks at you with such love in his eyes, and reaches for you, pulling you tightly against him.
P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.) In the dictionary next to ‘slow and sensuous’, there is a picture of Marcus. His preference is to spend hours and hours in bed with you, incorporating soft music, candles, wine, oils, and adoration of your body, bringing you to the edge with his tongue and hands, then plunging you over the edge when he thrusts into you. In fact, sometimes you just want it hard and fast, but it’s foreign to him. Why take 20 minutes when you can take 2 hours? You know to keep your Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings open for Marcus and his love of sensuality.
Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.) Marcus likes to make a fuss, so quickies go against everything in his heart. He’ll do it to please you, such as if you only have a little while before dinner, or if you are feeling stressed or in pain and need a release. But he doesn’t really initiate them.
R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.) Listen. Marcus is all about risk. It’s why he became an FBI Agent, and why he enjoys the cat-and-mouse game that comes with chasing art thieves. He has never had an idea he didn’t act on, no matter how inappropriate or impetuous. So when it comes to sex, he’s more than willing to introduce some risk, as long as you are not going to be hurt. Sex in the evidence room? Fuck yeah. He’ll teach you about the art while he fingers you next to a priceless statue. Role playing FBI Agent and sexy art thief? Oh yeah, he’s down for that, and knows exactly what to do with you once he catches you. You plan to give him fur-lined handcuffs for his birthday, just so he feels more secure about not hurting you. And you can’t wait.
S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?) The great thing about Marcus Pike is he knows sex is more than just penetration. He usually is good for two rounds before he needs time to recover, but that doesn’t mean you are only going to experience a round or two. When it comes to giving you pleasure and making you feel adored, his stamina is endless. He’s always ready to caress and kiss and stroke you, massage you, feed you sensuous bites of the special meal he’s made for you, and stay awake until you are satiated.
T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?) His side drawer has a few little goodies you never expected, like nipple tingle cream (he loves applying it!), oils for massaging your back, thighs, and ass when you have stressful days, and a heavy feather pillow to put under your hips, raising you into the perfect position to take him as deeply as possible. You recently stashed a silk scarf in the drawer, and he’s open to you trying it on him, this time. Perfect for heightening the lingam massage experience. He’s not opposed to battery toys, but he’ll wait for you to suggest it, because he’s not sure what you’d like, and he wants you to enjoy it.
U = Unfair (how much they like to tease) Marcus wears his heart on his sleeve a little too openly to be a tease, but the exception is when he incorporates his love for art into foreplay by painting your semi-nude portrait. You’ll never forget the first time he showed you his home studio; you had no idea he was an artist, but his talent inspired his art history degree and career, and he softly asks you, while stroking your bare arm with the back of his fingers, if you’d be willing to pose for him. You nod in agreement, swallowing nervously. He chooses what you’re (barely) wearing, and keeps you warm with a heater while he sketches and paints. Every now and then, he’ll stop to just admire you, and when you self-consciously ask him, “What??” he smiles and says, “Just making some decisions, sweetheart.” Or, “Just admiring the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen.” But he won’t let you see the painting until he’s finished, and it takes several sessions. No matter what, he won’t budge. You didn’t know he had it in him to say “No” to you! But when he finally unveils your portrait, it was worth the wait.
V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.) Marcus isn’t very loud, but what he lacks in volume, he makes up for with expressive words of adoration and sensuality. He’s usually whispering to you, rather than loudly moaning, but you love his voice in your ear, urging you to orgasm with his words, tongue, and cock. And when he stops talking and uses his mouth to kiss and lick your ear? Instant cum button.
W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character) Marcus has been married 3 times. No kids, though.
X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes) He stays in shape running, and is proud of his muscular legs. As he’s gotten older, he has a soft little tummy you love, and both his belly and his broad shoulders are perfect for your head when you’re cuddling on the couch. As far as his cock, he’s above average in both length and girth, so he takes extra care to make sure you are wet and soft before sliding inside you. In fact, after the first time you had sex with him multiple times in one night, you were bleeding a little bit the next morning, just due to how stretched you were inside by his huge erect cock. He felt terrible, but you assured him it didn’t hurt, due to not having many nerve endings up there. But, he is now mindful to ask if you’re okay before starting another round, and you have to assure him it’s always worth it.
Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?) High. Sky high. International Space Station high. He can’t get enough of you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a fancy gown, comfy yoga pants and t-shirt, or sexy lingerie: he wants you.
Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards) Marcus never falls asleep first, if he can help it. Sometimes when you’ve given him a lingam massage and warm washcloth cleanup, he struggles, and you are quick to whisper in his ear it’s okay to fall asleep, his arms around you, using your breasts he loves so much as his favorite pillow. But usually he stays awake to make sure you’re not shivering from cold or uncomfortable in any way, and only falls asleep when he hears your breathing soften and slow down, and your body relax into his cuddling embrace. Usually the last thing you remember is his soft kiss against your temple. But first to wake up? Always you. Sometimes you wake him up by stroking his hardening cock, sometimes with gentle kisses on his face, and sometimes with soft fingers stroking the fair away from his peacefully sleeping face. He’ll gladly stay awake after you if it means he gets to wake up to your gentle ministrations.

My dad constantly treats me like a stranger in his household. He’s nicer to my brothers friends then he is to me. He is constantly treating me like a threat, sometimes when I try to talk to him he’ll just say he’s busy even though he’s just watching TV. Most of the time he ignores me in conversations and he likes to make me out to be the laziest, filthiest person in the household even though my room is always the cleanest out of the entire house and I’m always the first one to start cleaning and the last one to stop. He constantly piles on chores for me, he likes to take chores that my older siblings were supposed to do but didn’t and he makes me do it. I admit that I do spend a lot of time in my room but what else am I supposed to do when all he does is scream at me. For instance today I went to the store with my mom to get groceries, I helped bring them in and my mom told me and my brother to put them up together. My brother told me to get out of the kitchen so they could do it and I asked my mom what she wanted me to do and my mom said to just stand in there and wait till he asks for help. I tired to say that he might yell at me and then my dad started screaming at me that I needed to help around the house (as if I didn’t spend almost 2 hours cleaning the kitchen) and that I needed to get in there and help. I over heard him say to my mom that I needed to watch what I said to her and that if you give me an inch I’ll go a mile. All I ever do is try to appease him, all I ever do is try and I’m sick of being his scapegoat. When my OLDER siblings don’t do their chores I get in trouble, when they do they get all these ‘thanks’ and ‘good jobs’ but I literally get nothing from him.

Timestamp: https://i.imgur.com/XTTiDR1.jpg
Other pics: Imgur album
Everything 10% off until Monday night
Slings in stock, 2023-05-28 @ 10:11 PM EST:

• 4x Coyote Brown, 55301 solution dye, Ranger green pull tab: $27 shipped
• 3x 1x M81 Woodland, 55301 solution dye, Black pull tab $32 shipped
• 5x 4x Black, 55301 solution dye, Black pull tab $27 shipped
• 5x Ranger green, 55301 solution dye, Coyote brown pull tab $27 shipped
• 4x 3x DNC, 55301, Coyote brown pull tab $32 shipped
• 1x Multicam jacquard blems, coyote brown pull tab $23 shipped
• 2x Multicam black, 55301 solution dye, black pull tab: $32 shipped

Keychains in stock, $13 shipped or $10 addon:

• 3x DNC
• 4x 3x Tigertsripe
• 4x 2x Rhodesian brushstroke
• 2x 1x Multicam black

If you want one, dibs it in the thread and shoot me a message. Please don't use Reddit chat.
THE BLEMS:

• Multicam jaquard: I thought I was getting a really good deal on 250 yards of jacquard Multicam, but what I got was multiSHAM. I can't return it, so while it's not as nice as legit Murdock Multicam jacquard webbing I have to make some kind of lemonade (or lemon flavored drink, anyway). It's sturdy enough but had the occasional loose weave and the pattern repeats a little strangely compared to the Murdock webbing. Frankly, it looks fine if jacquard weave is your thing but I don't want to pass these off as something that they aren't.**

THE SALES PITCH:
I sew these slings up myself. Some are berry compliant webbing, some aren't... depends on the pattern. Everything is sewed up with Berry compliant hardware and bonded nylon V69 thread. The front half of the sling is 3ft long and the rear is 4ft long; max length is about 66" when the slack adjusters are backed all the way off.
These have quick adjust slider on the front with an elastic loop behind it for keeping the slack when storing your musket. The ends are left open with a triglide so you can attach any kind of 1" QD/snap hook/paracord loop/etc or just fasten them to the built in sling loops on your stock, FSP, etc.
If you purchase more than one I'll throw in a 10% discount on each additional item.

• 17337: Slick, thinner webbing. Breaking strength 1,200 lbs. Thickness 0.038-0.050 inches
• 55301: Slick, slightly thicker webbing: Breaking strength 1,000 lbs. Thickness 0.039-0.050 inches
• 55301 solution dyed: Softer, slightly thicker webbing: Breaking strength 1,000 lbs. Thickness 0.039-0.050 inches

17337 slings tend to be very smooth to adjust out of the box. 55301 tends to need to be broken in a little bit but becomes just as slick once it has a chance to pass through the adjuster a few times.
FAQs:

• Payment: Venmo, Cashapp, Zelle, Paypal F&F... no transaction notes.
• If you pay by Paypal G&S, I will refund your payment and ask for F&F instead.
• Shipment: USPS, usually shipped the next day.
• I do ship internationally. I charge the exact calculated amount with no extra markup; PM me to discuss.
• These are, unless otherwise stated, 1" wide webbing. Most similar to a Naked Slingster, Edgar Sherman Design, or other minimalist slings.
• More slings: I only have the pictured slings for sale right now, but I'll be making plenty more. If you want something, feel free to message me.
• Berry compliant: All solid colors, Multicam Tropic, Multicam Black, M81 Woodland
• Not Berry compliant: Banditocam, Tigerstripe, Brushstroke, DNC, Multicam jacquard
• Keychains use a steel HK snap, plastic D-ring, and steel keyring.

I'm building a rectangular cabinet with a door for under my TV. I'm planning on putting my sound bar on top and all the power connections, wi-fi router, Apple TV, etc inside. I've purchased a set of Hafale stay up spring hinges :
https://www.screwfix.com/p/hafele-zinc-plated-swing-up-stays-150-x-50mm-2-pack/5084p
These ones are ok but I'm worried that :
A - the door will snap closed to quickly and damage the cabinet. My family is not always careful with these things.
B - the stiffness of the mechanism will pull the screws out of the wood. It's made of 15mm oak, I'm not sure that's thick enough to anchor these hinges.
I was looking at the Blum AVENTOS HK hardware, the only price I could find was over $150 for one set, which is out of my price range. https://www.hardwarepanel.co.nz/products/blum-aventos-hk-top-kitset-power-factor-1730-5200-22k2701?_pos=32&_sid=3dd301658&_ss=r
Any suggestions?

I hooked my Steam Deck to my TV with the official dock. My TV is an LG C2 series 48 inch TV, for some reason, the screen is dimmer on the TV than the Steam Deck screen. All the other inputs on TV are fine. Not sure if I should change the TV settings or the Steam Deck settings.

I don’t know how relevant this will end up being, but here’s my system info, I’m running Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon, version 5.6.8, a 5.15.0-72-generic kernel, with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor, 27.3 GB DDR4 RAM, a 120 GB SSD boot drive, and a 12TB HDD for storage, and finally my GPU is an AMD/ATI Tahiti PRO Radeon HD 7950/8950 OEM / R9 280. Again, I have no idea if any of that information is even relevant to the problem, but I wanted to get that shit out of the way right off the bat.
Now, for the issue at hand. Like it says, I can’t watch movies anymore, but specifically, it seems that none of my movie files (a mixed bag of .avi, .mp4, and .mkv) will play all the way thru anymore. They’ll run fine for the first 30 minutes or so (more precisely, 32 minutes), then the video will get choppy and pixelated, and the audio will get distorted and the file will just stop playing. I can close the window, and reopen the movie and player and pick up where I left off, but that only lasts another 32 minutes, and after that there will start being progressively less time between breakdowns. This happens regardless of whether I open the video with Celluloid, VLC, SMPlayer or any other video player. The problem isn’t the video files themselves, I know this because they all play just fine on my laptops or on a smart tv when loaded onto a flash drive. So, logically, I have a problem with my PC. Which is really annoying because this machine in question is the one I use most often, has all my best hardware in it, and until now, has been my most reliable. So, anybody have any idea what the problem could be, or what I can do to fix it?

On my mother in laws FireTV stick she will be watching whatever and suddenly without warning, it changes to the Yellowstone channel. I have personally seen this happen twice in less than an hour.
I see old threads about Roku devices doing this years ago, but nothing else. Thoughts? I am baffled.

I don’t know how relevant this will end up being, but here’s my system info, I’m running Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon, version 5.6.8, a 5.15.0-72-generic kernel, with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor, 27.3 GB DDR4 RAM, a 120 GB SSD boot drive, and a 12TB HDD for storage, and finally my GPU is an AMD/ATI Tahiti PRO Radeon HD 7950/8950 OEM / R9 280. Again, I have no idea if any of that information is even relevant to the problem, but I wanted to get that shit out of the way right off the bat.
Now, for the issue at hand. Like it says, I can’t watch movies anymore, but specifically, it seems that none of my movie files (a mixed bag of .avi, .mp4, and .mkv) will play all the way thru anymore. They’ll run fine for the first 30 minutes or so (more precisely, 32 minutes), then the video will get choppy and pixelated, and the audio will get distorted and the file will just stop playing. I can close the window, and reopen the movie and player and pick up where I left off, but that only lasts another 32 minutes, and after that there will start being progressively less time between breakdowns. This happens regardless of whether I open the video with Celluloid, VLC, SMPlayer or any other video player. The problem isn’t the video files themselves, I know this because they all play just fine on my laptops or on a smart tv when loaded onto a flash drive. So, logically, I have a problem with my PC. Which is really annoying because this machine in question is the one I use most often, has all my best hardware in it, and until now, has been my most reliable. So, anybody have any idea what the problem could be, or what I can do to fix it?

Greetings
Around 4 or 5 years ago, I built a PC with these now outdates specs:
- i5, 9600K.
- GeForce 1080 6GB.
- 16GB DDR4 RAM
- LG 1080p HD minor (very standard)
It still runs great after many years, but I have realised PC's have gotten better, and game quality has too.
I was recently started Red Dead Redemption 2 (late to the party) and noticed the quality could be better. I am not sure if I could run it at 4K.
Please indicate what you all usually do to upgrade your PC, and if the following would be ok to change:
- GeForce RTC 3060
- LG 4K UHD 27/32 inch monitor.
The above two amount to around $1,000 AUD.
I purchased my original PC for around $3,000 AUD.
I understand you all probably spend much more.
Please indicate if it is worth upgrading the Graphics Card, and Monitor, or you all would usually just get a whole new PC, or upgrade different things.
Thanks.

ABout every time I use this app, my phone does a soft reboot, so I get the reboot screen but none of my apps shutdown, and for some reason it can barely find my roku tv.

I don’t know how relevant this will end up being, but here’s my system info, I’m running Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon, version 5.6.8, a 5.15.0-72-generic kernel, with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor, 27.3 GB DDR4 RAM, a 120 GB SSD boot drive, and a 12TB HDD for storage, and finally my GPU is an AMD/ATI Tahiti PRO Radeon HD 7950/8950 OEM / R9 280. Again, I have no idea if any of that information is even relevant to the problem, but I wanted to get that shit out of the way right off the bat.
Now, for the issue at hand. Like it says, I can’t watch movies anymore, but specifically, it seems that none of my movie files (a mixed bag of .avi, .mp4, and .mkv) will play all the way thru anymore. They’ll run fine for the first 30 minutes or so (more precisely, 32 minutes), then the video will get choppy and pixelated, and the audio will get distorted and the file will just stop playing. I can close the window, and reopen the movie and player and pick up where I left off, but that only lasts another 32 minutes, and after that there will start being progressively less time between breakdowns. This happens regardless of whether I open the video with Celluloid, VLC, SMPlayer or any other video player. The problem isn’t the video files themselves, I know this because they all play just fine on my laptops or on a smart tv when loaded onto a flash drive. So, logically, I have a problem with my PC. Which is really annoying because this machine in question is the one I use most often, has all my best hardware in it, and until now, has been my most reliable. So, anybody have any idea what the problem could be, or what I can do to fix it?

Hi, I’m running a 4090 + i9 -13900K on a 1000W PSU. Will also be running a 42” LG C2 OLED TV as well as a 32” 1440 as monitors. I’m a bit perplexed at what I should be looking for when it comes to surge protectors with battery backup. I only need 10-15 minutes battery max. What should I be looking for? I’m in the US (AZ) Examples would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

I have recently activated Insignia Live to my stock Xbox, but I do not have it softmodded. If I were to Softmod my Xbox, will it deactivate or mess up Insignia in any way, or would it stay the same?
I do NOT want to mess anything up. I honestly just want to mod my Xbox so I can play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on my Roku TV! 😊

I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
Here this episode wherever you listen to podcasts:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-funeral-home-stories/id1462188362?i=1000437632125
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5rzZhNGCCkIaHbhWQ1irjd?si=2e0eae46d64e4066
YouTube: https://youtu.be/UYVL66uyfAE
Download the 45 minute Epilogue & Commercial Free Episodes & Seasons: www.MyFuneralHomeStories.com

I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
​
Here this episode wherever you listen to podcasts:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-funeral-home-stories/id1462188362?i=1000437632125
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5rzZhNGCCkIaHbhWQ1irjd?si=2e0eae46d64e4066
YouTube: https://youtu.be/UYVL66uyfAE
Download the 45 minute Epilogue & Commercial Free Episodes & Seasons: www.MyFuneralHomeStories.com

In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks and crude jokes. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to catch his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!