Wisc rapids obituaries
Souhait
2023.06.02 14:14 the-third-person Souhait
I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
submitted by the-third-person to micahwrites [link] [comments]
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
2023.06.02 14:13 the-third-person I discovered one of my paintings in an art gallery
I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
X
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A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
2023.05.18 01:21 JoshSnipes 3 Takeaways from 2023 Berkshire Annual Shareholder Meeting
I finally got around to listening to the full Q&A session of the 2023 Berkshire Annual Shareholder Meeting. I really liked this year’s questions and the respective answers. I decided to pull out 3 responses that I think help with building up the value investor psychology rather than something specific about an industry they are participating in. This is partly because many may not be comfortable investing in the same industries that Berkshire works in. Also, I think a lot of this advice is timeless because it is always something we can look back on and adapt to whatever current situation we face today. I hope you enjoy and I made sure to give a timestamp for the CNBC site in case you would rather listen to the questions and answers.
If you would to listen to me talk about this instead of reading it please see my Youtube video here.
The transcript was taken from CNBC's site.
Morning Session 43:24 - “What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things”
WARREN BUFFETT: And Charlie has been telling me the same thing the whole time we’ve known each other. I mean, we get along wonderfully because —
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, we are making less.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, but that mostly I think is (Laughter) (UNINTEL PHRASE) —
CHARLIE MUNGER: We did that when we were younger.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we never thought we could manage $508 billion.
CHARLIE MUNGER: No, we never did.
WARREN BUFFETT: You know, but I would argue that there are going to be plenty of opportunities. And part of the reason there are going to be plenty of opportunities, the tech doesn’t make any difference for any of that. I mean, if you look at how the world’s changed in the years since 1942 when I started, you’d say, “Well, how does a kid that doesn’t know anything about airplanes, that doesn’t know anything about engines and cars, and doesn’t know anything about electricity and all that?” But new things coming along don’t take away the opportunities.
What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things. (Laughter) (Applause) Well, the 58 years we’ve been running Berkshire, I would say there’s been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things. And they do big, dumb things, and the reason they do it to some extent is because they can get money from other people so much easier than when we started.
So, you could start ten or 15 dumb insurance companies in the last ten years, and you could become rich if you were adroit at it, whether the business succeeded or not, and the underwriters got paid, and the lawyers got paid. And if that’s done on a large scale — which it couldn’t be done 58 years ago.
You couldn’t get the money to do some of the dumb things that we wanted to do, (Laugh) fortunately. And so, I think that investing has disappeared so much from this huge capitalistic market that anybody can play in, but that the big money is in selling other people ideas.
It isn’t outperforming. And I think if you don’t run too much money, which we do — but if you’re running small amounts of money, I think the opportunities will be greater. But then Charlie and I always differed on this subject. He likes to tell me how gloomy the world is, and I like to tell him, “We’ll find something.” And so far, we’ve both be kind of right. (Laugh) Charlie, would you budge an inch on that, or not? (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER: There is so much money now in the hands of so many smart people, all trying to outsmart one another and out-promote one another, getting more money out of other people. And it’s a radically different world from the world we started in. And I suppose it will have its opportunities, but it’s also going to have some unpleasant episodes.
WARREN BUFFETT: But they’re trying to outsmart each other in arenas that you don’t have to play. I mean, if you look at that government bond market, at the Treasury bill market, I mean, you have this one bill that’s out of line with the others, and went (UNINTEL PHRASE) $3 billion of it the other day.
But the world is overwhelmingly short-term focused. And if you go to an investor relations call, they’re all trying to figure out how to fill out a sheet to show the earnings for the year. And the management is interested in feeding them expectations, so we’ll slightly be beaten.
I mean, that is a world that’s made to order for anybody that’s trying to think about what you do that should work over five, or ten, or 20 years. And I just think that I would love to be born today, and go out with not too much money, and hopefully turn it into a lot of money. And Charlie would too, actually. (Laugh)
He would find something to do, I will just guarantee you. And it wouldn’t be exactly the same as before, but he would have a big, big, big pile.
One of the key points of the entire meeting is that many more people are fishing in the value investment pond. This overcrowding will likely lead to lower returns in the future. The key to finding great opportunities is other people doing dumb things or acting irrationally over the short term. Fund managers may be overly shorting or just selling stocks that genuinely are a good fundamental business. Over the last decade, many entrepreneurs and asset management companies have had an influx of money that they are not sure what to do with. This leads to new ideas being funded which would not have been during risk-off periods. My favorite quote from this section was “And if you go to an investor relations call, they’re all trying to figure out how to fill out a sheet to show the earnings for the year. And the management is interested in feeding them expectations, so we’ll slightly be beaten.” Many people are trying to beat their competitors every year, and as we saw in 2020 - 2022, through the use of leverage and buying overvalued companies because everyone else is. A lot of managers are not comfortable with sitting out of investing in manic periods because they do not want their cash to move to another fund. Value investors should look at the fundamentals of a company to determine a comfortable price. If the current market price is lower than your valuation it may be a sign to begin a position assuming all of your other research was correct.
Morning Session 1:50:14 - “We don’t get smarter but we get a little wiser”
But most of the time, companies need to choose between short-term profits and long-term defensibility. For example, Amazon was focused on building their famous Amazon flywheel with limited profits initially, in order to obtain stronger network effects, with the hope of getting more defensible profits in the future.
When you invest, you constantly speak about the importance of building competitive moats. What advice would you give to CEOs about how to balance this dilemma, which is essentially short-term profits versus long-term defensibility? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the answer is to control your destiny, which we’ve been able to do at Berkshire. We feel no pressure from Wall Street. You know, we don’t have investor calls. We don’t have to make promises. We get a chance to make our own mistakes, and occasionally find something that works well.
But we recognize that the people in this room and people like them are the ones that we’re working for. And we’re not working for a bunch of people that care about whether we meet the core estimate or anything. So, we have a freedom that we get to use.
And we’re interested in owning a wonderful business forever. We learned from many wonderful businesses. But we do learn a lot as we go along. Charlie and I have often mentioned how we learned so much when we bought See’s Candies, which we did.
But we learned when we bought Ben Rosner’s chain of women’s dress shops spread all over the eastern part of the country. We learned when we tried getting into the department store business back in 1966. And as the ink was drying on our purchase price, we realized we’d done something (Laugh) dumb.
I mean, we’re learning all the time how consumers behave. I’m not going to be able to learn the technical aspects of businesses. It’d be nice if I knew it, but it isn’t essential. And, you know, obviously we’ve got a business at Apple, which is larger than our energy business.
And we may only own five points, 6% or 7%. But our ownership goes up every year, and I don’t understand the phone at all. But I do understand consumer behavior. And I know how people think about whether to buy a second car. I know how they go out to different — we own auto dealerships.
We’re learning all the time from all of our businesses how people react to Garanimals versus selling them something else. And so, See’s was a sort of breakthrough. But we just keep learning as to more about how people behave and how a good business can turn into a bad business, and how some good businesses can maintain their competitive advantage over time.
And so, we don’t have some formula, Berkshire people. But we can also tell in ten seconds whether it’s something of interest. I mean, when I get these calls and we want to send decks and all that sort of thing, which is nonsense, I mean, it’s a bunch of guys (Laugh) that get paid for drawing up these projections of the future and everything like that.
If they knew the future, you know, we don’t know the future, but we do know certain kinds of businesses. We know what the right price is, and we know what we think we can project out in terms of consumer behavior and threats to a business. And that’s what we’ve been about and that’s what we’ll continue to be about.
We don’t get smarter over time, we get a little wiser, though, following it over time. And you can do it while sitting in the office with a telephone, too, which we like.
Compounding not only works in investment returns, but it also works with knowledge and wisdom. Much of the experiences they had with buying businesses through the decade led to Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett’s understanding of branding. Throughout this meeting and past meetings, they have talked about how Apple’s MOAT runs so deep that many people would give up a lot before giving up their iPhones. Many may forecast that this sparkly, new brand is going to do fantastically, but it takes something truly special to grow into what Apple has today. Part of buying a business is the actual valuation alongside the business. If the branding and MOATs are there, but you are overpaying, it may be a great business with low or negative valuation returns. This is why they look for a defensible MOAT at a fair value rather than buying into the hot new craze each year.
Afternoon Session 38:42 - “You should write your obituary and then try and figure out how to live up to it.”
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the main, (APPLAUSE) Charlie said the major mistake you could make, you know, you’re lucky if you’re in the United States. If you go around the world you don’t have a lot of choices in some places.
But you should write your obituary and then try and figure out how to live up to it.
And, you know, that’s something you get wiser on as you go along. The business mistakes, you just want to make sure you don’t make any mistakes that take you out of the game or come close to taking you out of your game. You should never have a night when you’re worried about investing, I mean, assuming you have any money to invest at all.
And you should just spend a little bit less than you earn. And you can spend a little bit more than you earn, and then you’ve got debt, and the chances are you’ll never get out of debt. I’ll make an exception in terms of a mortgage on your house.
But credit card debt, and we’re in the credit card business big time, and we’ll stay in the credit card business, but why get behind the game? And if you’re effectively paying 12% or 14% or whatever percent you’re paying on a credit card, you know, you’re saying, “I’m going to earn more than 12% or 14% of my money.”
And if you can do that, come to Berkshire Hathaway. So, it’s, I hate to say this when Charlie’s around me, but it’s straight out of Ben Franklin. I mean, (LAUGH) and it’s not that complicated. But you, well, I’ll give you a couple lessons.
You know, Tom Murphy, the first time I met him, said two things to me. He said, “You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow.” Well, that was great advice then. And think of what great advice it is when you can sit down at a computer and screw your life up forever by telling somebody to go to hell, or something else, in 30 seconds. And you can’t erase it.
And, you know, haven’t lost the option. And he said, you know, “Praise my name, criticize my category.” Well, what makes more sense than that? I mean, who do you like that criticizes you all the time? And you don’t need to vilify anybody to make your point on subjects of discussion.
And then the other general piece of advice, I’ve never known anybody that was basically kind that died without friends. And I’ve known plenty of people with money that have died without friends, including their family. But I’ve never known anybody, and you know, I’ve seen a few people, including Tom Murphy Sr. and maybe Jr., who’s here, (LAUGH) but certainly his dad, I never saw him, I watched him for 50 years, I never saw him do an unkind act.
I didn’t see him do very many stupid acts either. I mean, it wasn’t that he was non-discriminating, he just decided that there was no reason to do it. And wow, what a difference that makes in life. Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, it’s so simple to spend less than you earn, and invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try and keep learning all your life, et cetera, et cetera, and do a lot of deferred gratification because you prefer life that way.
And if you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don’t, you’re going to need a lot of luck. And you don’t want to need a lot of luck. You want to go into a game where you’re very likely to win without having any unusual luck.
WARREN BUFFETT: I’d add one more thought too, you need to know how people can manipulate other people, and you need to resist the temptation to do it yourself.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Oh yes, the toxic people who are trying to fool you or lie to you or aren’t reliable in meeting their commitments. A great lesson of life is get them the hell out of your life.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.
CHARLIE MUNGER: And do it fast. (APPLAUSE) Do it fast.
WARREN BUFFETT: And I would add, Charlie would totally agree with me, do it tactfully, if possible, too. (LAUGH) But do get them out of your life.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. Yeah, I don’t mind a little tact. (LAUGHTER) Or even a little financial cost. But the question is getting them the hell out of your life.
This last lesson is about being able to look into the future and try to shape your destiny for what you want. There will be a lot of times in your life when you can go on a trip, buy a shiny Rolex, or earn that instant gratification of something. It is important to recognize what the outcome may be of taking the gratification now. If you are taking out debt to pay for a big trip or a shiny, materialistic product should you really be overextending yourself? As Mr. Buffett mentioned, “You should write your obituary and then try and figure out how to live up to it.” This involves setting up your short-term and long-term goals in such a way that you will look back with no regret. Also, it is not that you won’t do something dumb or just stray away for a bit, but it is important that you adhere to your own long-term mission. For asset management, the long-term goal is typically to make more money next year than we did this year. That goal is not inherently bad, but there are some who are trying to make incredible returns in 5 days rather than putting in the work for the next decade. A fund manager may draw down on their credit just to play a short-term option or take a really risky bet because they will still get paid either way. We saw this with the most recent banking crisis and greed/instant gratification is something that everyone will continue to deal with. Next time you are making a decision ask yourself what the outcome may be both good and bad. What will happen to you, your reputation, or your business if it turns out bad? Value investors are in the business of surviving downturns and thriving during upticks. You may not be flying as high as the next, ARKK investment fund, but you are maintaining your values and reducing your risk.
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If you would to listen to me talk about this instead of reading it please see my Youtube video here.
The transcript was taken from CNBC's site.
Morning Session 43:24 - “What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Given the rise of disruptive technologies that can improve productivity significantly, and AI being one of them, how do you envision the future of value investing in this new era? And what adaptations or new principles do you think investors should adopt? And any recommendations for investors to remain successful in this rapid changing landscape? Thank you.CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I’m glad to take that one. I think value investors are going to have a harder time now that there’s so many of them competing for a diminished bunch of opportunities. So, my advice to value investors is to get used to making less.
WARREN BUFFETT: And Charlie has been telling me the same thing the whole time we’ve known each other. I mean, we get along wonderfully because —
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, we are making less.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, but that mostly I think is (Laughter) (UNINTEL PHRASE) —
CHARLIE MUNGER: We did that when we were younger.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we never thought we could manage $508 billion.
CHARLIE MUNGER: No, we never did.
WARREN BUFFETT: You know, but I would argue that there are going to be plenty of opportunities. And part of the reason there are going to be plenty of opportunities, the tech doesn’t make any difference for any of that. I mean, if you look at how the world’s changed in the years since 1942 when I started, you’d say, “Well, how does a kid that doesn’t know anything about airplanes, that doesn’t know anything about engines and cars, and doesn’t know anything about electricity and all that?” But new things coming along don’t take away the opportunities.
What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things. (Laughter) (Applause) Well, the 58 years we’ve been running Berkshire, I would say there’s been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things. And they do big, dumb things, and the reason they do it to some extent is because they can get money from other people so much easier than when we started.
So, you could start ten or 15 dumb insurance companies in the last ten years, and you could become rich if you were adroit at it, whether the business succeeded or not, and the underwriters got paid, and the lawyers got paid. And if that’s done on a large scale — which it couldn’t be done 58 years ago.
You couldn’t get the money to do some of the dumb things that we wanted to do, (Laugh) fortunately. And so, I think that investing has disappeared so much from this huge capitalistic market that anybody can play in, but that the big money is in selling other people ideas.
It isn’t outperforming. And I think if you don’t run too much money, which we do — but if you’re running small amounts of money, I think the opportunities will be greater. But then Charlie and I always differed on this subject. He likes to tell me how gloomy the world is, and I like to tell him, “We’ll find something.” And so far, we’ve both be kind of right. (Laugh) Charlie, would you budge an inch on that, or not? (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER: There is so much money now in the hands of so many smart people, all trying to outsmart one another and out-promote one another, getting more money out of other people. And it’s a radically different world from the world we started in. And I suppose it will have its opportunities, but it’s also going to have some unpleasant episodes.
WARREN BUFFETT: But they’re trying to outsmart each other in arenas that you don’t have to play. I mean, if you look at that government bond market, at the Treasury bill market, I mean, you have this one bill that’s out of line with the others, and went (UNINTEL PHRASE) $3 billion of it the other day.
But the world is overwhelmingly short-term focused. And if you go to an investor relations call, they’re all trying to figure out how to fill out a sheet to show the earnings for the year. And the management is interested in feeding them expectations, so we’ll slightly be beaten.
I mean, that is a world that’s made to order for anybody that’s trying to think about what you do that should work over five, or ten, or 20 years. And I just think that I would love to be born today, and go out with not too much money, and hopefully turn it into a lot of money. And Charlie would too, actually. (Laugh)
He would find something to do, I will just guarantee you. And it wouldn’t be exactly the same as before, but he would have a big, big, big pile.
One of the key points of the entire meeting is that many more people are fishing in the value investment pond. This overcrowding will likely lead to lower returns in the future. The key to finding great opportunities is other people doing dumb things or acting irrationally over the short term. Fund managers may be overly shorting or just selling stocks that genuinely are a good fundamental business. Over the last decade, many entrepreneurs and asset management companies have had an influx of money that they are not sure what to do with. This leads to new ideas being funded which would not have been during risk-off periods. My favorite quote from this section was “And if you go to an investor relations call, they’re all trying to figure out how to fill out a sheet to show the earnings for the year. And the management is interested in feeding them expectations, so we’ll slightly be beaten.” Many people are trying to beat their competitors every year, and as we saw in 2020 - 2022, through the use of leverage and buying overvalued companies because everyone else is. A lot of managers are not comfortable with sitting out of investing in manic periods because they do not want their cash to move to another fund. Value investors should look at the fundamentals of a company to determine a comfortable price. If the current market price is lower than your valuation it may be a sign to begin a position assuming all of your other research was correct.
Morning Session 1:50:14 - “We don’t get smarter but we get a little wiser”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is for Warren and Charlie. Companies have the eternal dilemma between building products that can make profits and increase their company’s competitive position.In the best case, you can build products that have both characteristics at the same time, like Google did.
But most of the time, companies need to choose between short-term profits and long-term defensibility. For example, Amazon was focused on building their famous Amazon flywheel with limited profits initially, in order to obtain stronger network effects, with the hope of getting more defensible profits in the future.
When you invest, you constantly speak about the importance of building competitive moats. What advice would you give to CEOs about how to balance this dilemma, which is essentially short-term profits versus long-term defensibility? Thank you.
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the answer is to control your destiny, which we’ve been able to do at Berkshire. We feel no pressure from Wall Street. You know, we don’t have investor calls. We don’t have to make promises. We get a chance to make our own mistakes, and occasionally find something that works well.
But we recognize that the people in this room and people like them are the ones that we’re working for. And we’re not working for a bunch of people that care about whether we meet the core estimate or anything. So, we have a freedom that we get to use.
And we’re interested in owning a wonderful business forever. We learned from many wonderful businesses. But we do learn a lot as we go along. Charlie and I have often mentioned how we learned so much when we bought See’s Candies, which we did.
But we learned when we bought Ben Rosner’s chain of women’s dress shops spread all over the eastern part of the country. We learned when we tried getting into the department store business back in 1966. And as the ink was drying on our purchase price, we realized we’d done something (Laugh) dumb.
I mean, we’re learning all the time how consumers behave. I’m not going to be able to learn the technical aspects of businesses. It’d be nice if I knew it, but it isn’t essential. And, you know, obviously we’ve got a business at Apple, which is larger than our energy business.
And we may only own five points, 6% or 7%. But our ownership goes up every year, and I don’t understand the phone at all. But I do understand consumer behavior. And I know how people think about whether to buy a second car. I know how they go out to different — we own auto dealerships.
We’re learning all the time from all of our businesses how people react to Garanimals versus selling them something else. And so, See’s was a sort of breakthrough. But we just keep learning as to more about how people behave and how a good business can turn into a bad business, and how some good businesses can maintain their competitive advantage over time.
And so, we don’t have some formula, Berkshire people. But we can also tell in ten seconds whether it’s something of interest. I mean, when I get these calls and we want to send decks and all that sort of thing, which is nonsense, I mean, it’s a bunch of guys (Laugh) that get paid for drawing up these projections of the future and everything like that.
If they knew the future, you know, we don’t know the future, but we do know certain kinds of businesses. We know what the right price is, and we know what we think we can project out in terms of consumer behavior and threats to a business. And that’s what we’ve been about and that’s what we’ll continue to be about.
We don’t get smarter over time, we get a little wiser, though, following it over time. And you can do it while sitting in the office with a telephone, too, which we like.
Compounding not only works in investment returns, but it also works with knowledge and wisdom. Much of the experiences they had with buying businesses through the decade led to Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett’s understanding of branding. Throughout this meeting and past meetings, they have talked about how Apple’s MOAT runs so deep that many people would give up a lot before giving up their iPhones. Many may forecast that this sparkly, new brand is going to do fantastically, but it takes something truly special to grow into what Apple has today. Part of buying a business is the actual valuation alongside the business. If the branding and MOATs are there, but you are overpaying, it may be a great business with low or negative valuation returns. This is why they look for a defensible MOAT at a fair value rather than buying into the hot new craze each year.
Afternoon Session 38:42 - “You should write your obituary and then try and figure out how to live up to it.”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett, in your annual shareholder letter this year, you said that Berkshire’s journey consisted of “continuous savings, the power of commanding, the American tailwind, and avoidance of major mistakes”. You have humbly admitted in the past that you have made many mistakes.But this is the first time that major mistakes stood out to me. Could you please advise us on what major mistakes we should avoid in both investing and in life? I would also like to have Mr. Munger’s thoughts too, please. Thank you very much.
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the main, (APPLAUSE) Charlie said the major mistake you could make, you know, you’re lucky if you’re in the United States. If you go around the world you don’t have a lot of choices in some places.
But you should write your obituary and then try and figure out how to live up to it.
And, you know, that’s something you get wiser on as you go along. The business mistakes, you just want to make sure you don’t make any mistakes that take you out of the game or come close to taking you out of your game. You should never have a night when you’re worried about investing, I mean, assuming you have any money to invest at all.
And you should just spend a little bit less than you earn. And you can spend a little bit more than you earn, and then you’ve got debt, and the chances are you’ll never get out of debt. I’ll make an exception in terms of a mortgage on your house.
But credit card debt, and we’re in the credit card business big time, and we’ll stay in the credit card business, but why get behind the game? And if you’re effectively paying 12% or 14% or whatever percent you’re paying on a credit card, you know, you’re saying, “I’m going to earn more than 12% or 14% of my money.”
And if you can do that, come to Berkshire Hathaway. So, it’s, I hate to say this when Charlie’s around me, but it’s straight out of Ben Franklin. I mean, (LAUGH) and it’s not that complicated. But you, well, I’ll give you a couple lessons.
You know, Tom Murphy, the first time I met him, said two things to me. He said, “You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow.” Well, that was great advice then. And think of what great advice it is when you can sit down at a computer and screw your life up forever by telling somebody to go to hell, or something else, in 30 seconds. And you can’t erase it.
And, you know, haven’t lost the option. And he said, you know, “Praise my name, criticize my category.” Well, what makes more sense than that? I mean, who do you like that criticizes you all the time? And you don’t need to vilify anybody to make your point on subjects of discussion.
And then the other general piece of advice, I’ve never known anybody that was basically kind that died without friends. And I’ve known plenty of people with money that have died without friends, including their family. But I’ve never known anybody, and you know, I’ve seen a few people, including Tom Murphy Sr. and maybe Jr., who’s here, (LAUGH) but certainly his dad, I never saw him, I watched him for 50 years, I never saw him do an unkind act.
I didn’t see him do very many stupid acts either. I mean, it wasn’t that he was non-discriminating, he just decided that there was no reason to do it. And wow, what a difference that makes in life. Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, it’s so simple to spend less than you earn, and invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try and keep learning all your life, et cetera, et cetera, and do a lot of deferred gratification because you prefer life that way.
And if you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don’t, you’re going to need a lot of luck. And you don’t want to need a lot of luck. You want to go into a game where you’re very likely to win without having any unusual luck.
WARREN BUFFETT: I’d add one more thought too, you need to know how people can manipulate other people, and you need to resist the temptation to do it yourself.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Oh yes, the toxic people who are trying to fool you or lie to you or aren’t reliable in meeting their commitments. A great lesson of life is get them the hell out of your life.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.
CHARLIE MUNGER: And do it fast. (APPLAUSE) Do it fast.
WARREN BUFFETT: And I would add, Charlie would totally agree with me, do it tactfully, if possible, too. (LAUGH) But do get them out of your life.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. Yeah, I don’t mind a little tact. (LAUGHTER) Or even a little financial cost. But the question is getting them the hell out of your life.
This last lesson is about being able to look into the future and try to shape your destiny for what you want. There will be a lot of times in your life when you can go on a trip, buy a shiny Rolex, or earn that instant gratification of something. It is important to recognize what the outcome may be of taking the gratification now. If you are taking out debt to pay for a big trip or a shiny, materialistic product should you really be overextending yourself? As Mr. Buffett mentioned, “You should write your obituary and then try and figure out how to live up to it.” This involves setting up your short-term and long-term goals in such a way that you will look back with no regret. Also, it is not that you won’t do something dumb or just stray away for a bit, but it is important that you adhere to your own long-term mission. For asset management, the long-term goal is typically to make more money next year than we did this year. That goal is not inherently bad, but there are some who are trying to make incredible returns in 5 days rather than putting in the work for the next decade. A fund manager may draw down on their credit just to play a short-term option or take a really risky bet because they will still get paid either way. We saw this with the most recent banking crisis and greed/instant gratification is something that everyone will continue to deal with. Next time you are making a decision ask yourself what the outcome may be both good and bad. What will happen to you, your reputation, or your business if it turns out bad? Value investors are in the business of surviving downturns and thriving during upticks. You may not be flying as high as the next, ARKK investment fund, but you are maintaining your values and reducing your risk.
2023.05.17 10:55 BlaineArcade [SP] Ad Space
(Legal Disclosure: This work of fiction has been filtered and modified by the United States Ad Plus Council Algorithm, copyright 2036. In compliance with the Corporate Ignorance Prevention Act, all unbranded products and services have been claimed within the text by competitive interests in your area for your convenience.)
A subsidiary of OntheNose Advertising Solutions® was not ready for bad news that day, big or small, but he got it in DigwellTM spades. It started with his Goldenbrowner® toaster, which was supposed to spit out a crispy image of his favorite actress on every HeatzaPizza® slice, but just kept giving him a burned specter, like a lit Ashlesswonder® cigarette positioned just under her face on an old Popcorn Comet Studios® film strip.
He tried calling customer service, but had mistakenly identified his Goldenbrowner® as a ThricecrispyTM thanks to the advertisement on its side. Clever of them to buy up the space on their competitor’s flank, probably owing to some rapid refreshing on a web page by one of the lowly employees during Goldenbrowner®’s attempt to register their paperwork.
The subsidiary then called the correct number, but got an automated response. He gave up and ate the burned horror. It was his own fault, especially given that he’d been doing the same sort of thing professionally for nearly five years now. He was tattooed, head to toe, in advertisements of his own, for everything from Ironsmack® roofing nails to FirmSolutions® gynecological services. As a walking billboard he brought in nearly 200 dollars a day, and all he had to do was leave his Luxuryabound® apartment and walk about downtown, with his rate doubled during rush hour.
There were a few other little tricks to squeeze out extra, like the contacts he put in that looked like SafetravelsTM tires.
They kept him sheltered and fed anyway, but it was the medication that was really doing him in financially. The burned TexasTitan® toast was still better than the six horse pills he had to buck down every morning, and all because of the damn doctor’s terrible SouthernGentleman® penmanship.
It was supposed to be an Organizingqueen® routine procedure, removing a nodule on his HappyFarmsChickens® liver, but surgeons legally had to sign their work these days, given that they’d been declared artists and had to assert their copyright. The signing was done with a CleanScorch® cauterizing pen, but the quack who had his hands inside the subsidiary decided to write so big it crossed both lobes. Now he had scarring impairing liver function.
The real bad DailyNightly© news hit, the big stuff, in the form of a letter. He unwrapped the first advertising StationLarryTM envelope, the second, the third, leaving a pile like Christmas morning on his BigStoneBoysTM countertop. It was from his lawyer. They lost the TailoredSublime® suit. He would receive no financial compensation for the scarring. The judge had ruled it ‘within the practitioner’s creative freedom’ to sign as big as he wanted, coincidentally leaving no room for any others.
The subsidiary was devastated. Forty. Alone. Broke. Alone. A little hope sizzled. If he just had someone to share this with he would be fine, a shoulder to cry on at least, as long as he wasn’t wearing his Seethrough® contacts at the time, seeing as he was contractually barred from weeping with their brand name wrapped around his pupils. It sent the wrong message.
He decided to forget everything and go out, have a NapaValley® drink, meet a good woman. There were plenty of AquariumExperiences® fish in the same Glidin’PoseidonTM boat as him. Women made much more than men as billboards. If she was a C TrophiesforWinners® cup her BeastlyLeather® chest probably made more than he did.
It wasn’t easy to get to his old favorite haunt. The new corner and seam ads had been installed, deliberately designed to make it hard to tell the edge of the Gevault&Sons® sidewalk from the bottom of the nearest UnitedConstructLLC® building. He stubbed his toe several times, and in need of something to curse out, read the ad aloud. Damn, he thought, shouldn’t have given that away for free. Other pedestrians definitely heard him.
When he finally got in and sat down he didn’t know how to proceed. When was the last time he’d had a full honest conversation with someone? There was his mailman the previous month, but he was on a different route now. Plus, there was that old woman at the laundr-
“Hi.” She sat down right next to him. Her long red hair was dyed, but there weren’t any GlossyLustTM highlights forming words. She kept it natural, a little something for her since her skin was Homeless-LESS® real estate like his.
“Hi,” the subsidiary said back. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
“Bad choice. I’m having Kiddypop® soda. Working through a liver thing right now.”
“Well I’m working through a life thing, so why don’t you add a little FinallyAlone® vodka to mine?” He ordered the drinks; they came quickly. She let him look at her, quietly, but not as a consumer. With a little work he could mentally peel away the corporate packaging, see the person for what she was. Maybe a little older than him, but younger at heart. Her red hair was like wilted fire; it consumed one shoulder as diluted magma, burned away an ad over her breast.
Then they talked about it. ‘It’ was everything that wasn’t in the EmployJoy® job description. ‘It’ was little sensations and sounds that hadn’t been monopolized yet, things too small to plant a Patriotprinters® flag in. The fizzing in their ArtisanwindowsandallTM glasses. The clink. The way she was holding her DressHeap® shoes since she kept scuffing them on the new seam ads outside.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked. He knew it had been more than an hour, but had no idea beyond that. The ignorance made him giddy.
“Yeah, where do you want to go?” He stood up, pulled on his Foreverforever® jacket. “It could be anywhere! How about the tallest tower in the city? They just let you jump onto the suicide PremierFishingGear® nets now, since they put in a lower one.”
“I was thinking we could go to Bro Depot instead,” she said, face sinking as his froze. “They have PowerThrough® electric drills with forty interchangeable bits. One of them is Highsunjewelers® diamond.” Her spiel stopped for a moment. The last part was caught in her throat, but if she didn’t say it she didn’t get paid. “Diamond makes me horny.”
“You don’t look horny,” he spat, embarrassment for the both of him reddening his face, giving luster to the LusciousLogosTM logos on his cheeks. “What are you, a targeted ad?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I tried coming to your FineAmericanWoods® door a few times, but you weren’t answering. You can get in trouble for that you know.”
“I knew any knock on my door would be targeted. I didn’t want to be targeted, I wanted to find, like… like sifting for MotherNature® minerals.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it, knowing if she could sound that way about the horny diamond line they’d quintuple her commission. “I told you I was working through a life thing, and I don’t get any breaks.”
The subsidiary left. He made for the tallest tower, practically listening to the whole Get Me High© album in the JenkisonEngineering® elevator on the way up. The SafetyThirst® guardrail on the WilkinsRoofing® roof had been ripped out, but not professionally. The metal was twisted, raw, oxidizing only at the edges while its insides could still scream into the open GlobalHeating&Cooling® air.
He held out his 2ndAmmendmentTM arms, spun, let himself drop. He couldn’t KaiserBreads® roll far without hitting someone else in the MercilessGrip® net. Tens of people were lounging in it, relaxing under the sun’s warmth, waiting for Mental Health Services to arrive and pluck them out.
The subsidiary didn’t want to be grabbed by their HomeRoads® truck’s padded claw, like he was some Toys’B’Fun® stuffed animal inside a MachinesunlimitedLLC® crane MercurialTM carnival WholeFamilyFun® game. He wrestled with the AllNaturalBinds® ropes until he found the edge, falling again, into the second one, for those who were a little more serious about dying.
If he did his obituary would call it a voided contract. He pressed his face down into a square. It was much cooler and quieter down there, but still too high to make out the individual people on the street. They were just a RegionalCatholicServices® mass. Sometimes they lined up in a way that couldn’t be coincidental, QuiteFineStitching® hats spelling out things for the SurveilMail® drones flying by.
There was a sign just below him, positioned for the lowest person in the second net, and for nobody else in the world. He read it.
Life got you down? Try becoming a subsidiary of OntheNose Advertising Solutions®! Make money by just being yourself!
The End©
submitted by BlaineArcade to shortstories [link] [comments]
A subsidiary of OntheNose Advertising Solutions® was not ready for bad news that day, big or small, but he got it in DigwellTM spades. It started with his Goldenbrowner® toaster, which was supposed to spit out a crispy image of his favorite actress on every HeatzaPizza® slice, but just kept giving him a burned specter, like a lit Ashlesswonder® cigarette positioned just under her face on an old Popcorn Comet Studios® film strip.
He tried calling customer service, but had mistakenly identified his Goldenbrowner® as a ThricecrispyTM thanks to the advertisement on its side. Clever of them to buy up the space on their competitor’s flank, probably owing to some rapid refreshing on a web page by one of the lowly employees during Goldenbrowner®’s attempt to register their paperwork.
The subsidiary then called the correct number, but got an automated response. He gave up and ate the burned horror. It was his own fault, especially given that he’d been doing the same sort of thing professionally for nearly five years now. He was tattooed, head to toe, in advertisements of his own, for everything from Ironsmack® roofing nails to FirmSolutions® gynecological services. As a walking billboard he brought in nearly 200 dollars a day, and all he had to do was leave his Luxuryabound® apartment and walk about downtown, with his rate doubled during rush hour.
There were a few other little tricks to squeeze out extra, like the contacts he put in that looked like SafetravelsTM tires.
They kept him sheltered and fed anyway, but it was the medication that was really doing him in financially. The burned TexasTitan® toast was still better than the six horse pills he had to buck down every morning, and all because of the damn doctor’s terrible SouthernGentleman® penmanship.
It was supposed to be an Organizingqueen® routine procedure, removing a nodule on his HappyFarmsChickens® liver, but surgeons legally had to sign their work these days, given that they’d been declared artists and had to assert their copyright. The signing was done with a CleanScorch® cauterizing pen, but the quack who had his hands inside the subsidiary decided to write so big it crossed both lobes. Now he had scarring impairing liver function.
The real bad DailyNightly© news hit, the big stuff, in the form of a letter. He unwrapped the first advertising StationLarryTM envelope, the second, the third, leaving a pile like Christmas morning on his BigStoneBoysTM countertop. It was from his lawyer. They lost the TailoredSublime® suit. He would receive no financial compensation for the scarring. The judge had ruled it ‘within the practitioner’s creative freedom’ to sign as big as he wanted, coincidentally leaving no room for any others.
The subsidiary was devastated. Forty. Alone. Broke. Alone. A little hope sizzled. If he just had someone to share this with he would be fine, a shoulder to cry on at least, as long as he wasn’t wearing his Seethrough® contacts at the time, seeing as he was contractually barred from weeping with their brand name wrapped around his pupils. It sent the wrong message.
He decided to forget everything and go out, have a NapaValley® drink, meet a good woman. There were plenty of AquariumExperiences® fish in the same Glidin’PoseidonTM boat as him. Women made much more than men as billboards. If she was a C TrophiesforWinners® cup her BeastlyLeather® chest probably made more than he did.
It wasn’t easy to get to his old favorite haunt. The new corner and seam ads had been installed, deliberately designed to make it hard to tell the edge of the Gevault&Sons® sidewalk from the bottom of the nearest UnitedConstructLLC® building. He stubbed his toe several times, and in need of something to curse out, read the ad aloud. Damn, he thought, shouldn’t have given that away for free. Other pedestrians definitely heard him.
When he finally got in and sat down he didn’t know how to proceed. When was the last time he’d had a full honest conversation with someone? There was his mailman the previous month, but he was on a different route now. Plus, there was that old woman at the laundr-
“Hi.” She sat down right next to him. Her long red hair was dyed, but there weren’t any GlossyLustTM highlights forming words. She kept it natural, a little something for her since her skin was Homeless-LESS® real estate like his.
“Hi,” the subsidiary said back. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
“Bad choice. I’m having Kiddypop® soda. Working through a liver thing right now.”
“Well I’m working through a life thing, so why don’t you add a little FinallyAlone® vodka to mine?” He ordered the drinks; they came quickly. She let him look at her, quietly, but not as a consumer. With a little work he could mentally peel away the corporate packaging, see the person for what she was. Maybe a little older than him, but younger at heart. Her red hair was like wilted fire; it consumed one shoulder as diluted magma, burned away an ad over her breast.
Then they talked about it. ‘It’ was everything that wasn’t in the EmployJoy® job description. ‘It’ was little sensations and sounds that hadn’t been monopolized yet, things too small to plant a Patriotprinters® flag in. The fizzing in their ArtisanwindowsandallTM glasses. The clink. The way she was holding her DressHeap® shoes since she kept scuffing them on the new seam ads outside.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked. He knew it had been more than an hour, but had no idea beyond that. The ignorance made him giddy.
“Yeah, where do you want to go?” He stood up, pulled on his Foreverforever® jacket. “It could be anywhere! How about the tallest tower in the city? They just let you jump onto the suicide PremierFishingGear® nets now, since they put in a lower one.”
“I was thinking we could go to Bro Depot instead,” she said, face sinking as his froze. “They have PowerThrough® electric drills with forty interchangeable bits. One of them is Highsunjewelers® diamond.” Her spiel stopped for a moment. The last part was caught in her throat, but if she didn’t say it she didn’t get paid. “Diamond makes me horny.”
“You don’t look horny,” he spat, embarrassment for the both of him reddening his face, giving luster to the LusciousLogosTM logos on his cheeks. “What are you, a targeted ad?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I tried coming to your FineAmericanWoods® door a few times, but you weren’t answering. You can get in trouble for that you know.”
“I knew any knock on my door would be targeted. I didn’t want to be targeted, I wanted to find, like… like sifting for MotherNature® minerals.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it, knowing if she could sound that way about the horny diamond line they’d quintuple her commission. “I told you I was working through a life thing, and I don’t get any breaks.”
The subsidiary left. He made for the tallest tower, practically listening to the whole Get Me High© album in the JenkisonEngineering® elevator on the way up. The SafetyThirst® guardrail on the WilkinsRoofing® roof had been ripped out, but not professionally. The metal was twisted, raw, oxidizing only at the edges while its insides could still scream into the open GlobalHeating&Cooling® air.
He held out his 2ndAmmendmentTM arms, spun, let himself drop. He couldn’t KaiserBreads® roll far without hitting someone else in the MercilessGrip® net. Tens of people were lounging in it, relaxing under the sun’s warmth, waiting for Mental Health Services to arrive and pluck them out.
The subsidiary didn’t want to be grabbed by their HomeRoads® truck’s padded claw, like he was some Toys’B’Fun® stuffed animal inside a MachinesunlimitedLLC® crane MercurialTM carnival WholeFamilyFun® game. He wrestled with the AllNaturalBinds® ropes until he found the edge, falling again, into the second one, for those who were a little more serious about dying.
If he did his obituary would call it a voided contract. He pressed his face down into a square. It was much cooler and quieter down there, but still too high to make out the individual people on the street. They were just a RegionalCatholicServices® mass. Sometimes they lined up in a way that couldn’t be coincidental, QuiteFineStitching® hats spelling out things for the SurveilMail® drones flying by.
There was a sign just below him, positioned for the lowest person in the second net, and for nobody else in the world. He read it.
Life got you down? Try becoming a subsidiary of OntheNose Advertising Solutions®! Make money by just being yourself!
The End©
2023.05.11 17:46 Dry_Throwaway2125 AITA for leaving my half brother out of my dad's obituary?
When my dad was terminally ill, I stayed at my parents' house for several weeks to help coordinate his care, take him to medical appointments, arrange for hospice, etc. My mom and dad didn't have a particularly warm relationship and my mom wasn't grieving, it was more that she was overwhelmed by the caretaking involved in my dad's rapid decline. They also had separate finances and she was adamant that she wasn't going to spend any money on his care, which meant I needed to pay the caregiver bills out of his money that I had access to through a power of attorney. I'm my mom and dad's only child, although my mom has a son Eric by her previous marriage. He's 20 years older than I am and has lived in a different state for many years and only come back to visit twice since he moved away.
Part of what I took care of was prearranging things with the funeral home, including writing a draft of my dad's obituary. It wasn't anything complicated, just a few lines about how John Smith was born on this date in this place, honorably served his country in the war, died on that date in that place and was survived by his wife, and by me, my spouse, and our kids. I printed out a copy of the draft for my mom to read, and asked her if she thought it needed any changes or anything, and she either didn't say anything or suggested changing a comma or something like that, I don't remember.
My dad passed away about three months after my visit. I went back to my parents' city for a week to attend the funeral and help my mom in the immediate aftermath of his death; she mainly wanted help getting the hospital bed, wheelchair ramp, and other medical equipment taken away. My first stop was to drop off a check at the funeral home since my mom hadn't paid for any of the things I had prearranged. I didn't expect her to, exactly, but it was a little weird that everything had to be on hold while I spent the day traveling when she could have just written the check herself and asked me for reimbursement. Or, you know, pay for her own husband's funeral, which I think would have been the normal thing to do.
Anyway, I was back in town a few months later and my mom told me that she had sent a copy of the obituary to Eric and he said, "Well, I guess I know for sure where I stand with u/Dry_Throwaway2125, not even mentioning me or my children in the obituary." I tried to tell my mom it was an honest oversight, and hey, she read the draft and didn't say anything, but she just shrugged and said it was none of her business. If someone had pointed out my oversight at the time I would absolutely have added Eric, but I was thinking of the family I grew up in, and not thinking of my dad as my half brother's stepdad since he was already an adult by the time my mom and dad got married.
FWIW, Eric has never mentioned the situation to me directly. How big an asshole am I?
submitted by Dry_Throwaway2125 to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
Part of what I took care of was prearranging things with the funeral home, including writing a draft of my dad's obituary. It wasn't anything complicated, just a few lines about how John Smith was born on this date in this place, honorably served his country in the war, died on that date in that place and was survived by his wife, and by me, my spouse, and our kids. I printed out a copy of the draft for my mom to read, and asked her if she thought it needed any changes or anything, and she either didn't say anything or suggested changing a comma or something like that, I don't remember.
My dad passed away about three months after my visit. I went back to my parents' city for a week to attend the funeral and help my mom in the immediate aftermath of his death; she mainly wanted help getting the hospital bed, wheelchair ramp, and other medical equipment taken away. My first stop was to drop off a check at the funeral home since my mom hadn't paid for any of the things I had prearranged. I didn't expect her to, exactly, but it was a little weird that everything had to be on hold while I spent the day traveling when she could have just written the check herself and asked me for reimbursement. Or, you know, pay for her own husband's funeral, which I think would have been the normal thing to do.
Anyway, I was back in town a few months later and my mom told me that she had sent a copy of the obituary to Eric and he said, "Well, I guess I know for sure where I stand with u/Dry_Throwaway2125, not even mentioning me or my children in the obituary." I tried to tell my mom it was an honest oversight, and hey, she read the draft and didn't say anything, but she just shrugged and said it was none of her business. If someone had pointed out my oversight at the time I would absolutely have added Eric, but I was thinking of the family I grew up in, and not thinking of my dad as my half brother's stepdad since he was already an adult by the time my mom and dad got married.
FWIW, Eric has never mentioned the situation to me directly. How big an asshole am I?
2023.05.10 08:21 Loose-Material-4441 Im a academic failure
my grades are relatively poor as my behavior is cheeky and I just can’t focus. Until now I came trough school with no studying as I had the god given gift of a high IQ (160 WISC,156 WAIS,147 SB5). Now I have reached the point where I have to work, but I just can’t and I totally fucked up my exams. The big problem is that I will start my abitur next year (I’m from germany) so I have to change rapidly. As there are many high IQ folks around could you please give me some advice as how to change? I can’t even study for 5 min without going crazy. Before anyone asks here are my PSI+WMI scores
WAIS: CPI=140-3 WISC: CPI=144
submitted by Loose-Material-4441 to Gifted [link] [comments]
WAIS: CPI=140-3 WISC: CPI=144
2023.04.30 17:00 _call-me-al_ [Sun, Apr 30 2023] TL;DR — This is what you missed in the last 24 hours on Reddit
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worldnews
Stop Deceiving the Population’: Russia’s Mercenary Boss Threatens Full-Blown MutinyComments Link
Japan approves abortion pill for the first time
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Canadian warship intercepts boat carrying $50M worth of cocaine off Mexico
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news
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Calls for justice after Mississippi man found with head severed
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Man convicted of murdering three boys in California after 'teenager knocked on his door and exposed buttocks at him'
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science
Black fathers are happier than Black men with no children. Black women and White men report the same amount of happiness whether they have children or not. But White moms are less happy than childless White women.Comments Link
Since 2018 minimum cost of alcoholic drinks in Scotland has been raised to £0·50. Studies indicate this policy reduced alcohol sales by 3%. Our study reports on the final intended outcome and finds that this reduction in sales led to a 13% reduction in deaths and a 4% reduction in hospitalisations.
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Study finds exposure to stressful life events ages adolescents faster than their peers
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space
Aurora directly overhead real timeComments Link
Space Shuttle Columbia Cockpit. Credit: NASA
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Scientists studied four extremely redshifted objects discovered by the James Webb Telescope. They suggest that these objects could be supermassive dark stars powered by dark matter annihilation, with masses between 500k-1M suns and radii possibly exceeding 10,000 solar radii.
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Futurology
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An AI researcher says that although AI will soon be able to perform all human tasks better than humans & automate them - super-intelligent AGI is unlikely to happen soon. AI's intelligence is limited by its training data, which only models human intelligence & AI can't create its own training data.
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What do you remember from your sex education in school?
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todayilearned
TIL Bob Norris, the first Marlboro Man, was discovered after being seen in a photo with John Wayne. While Norris was the Marlboro Man for 12 years, he never smoked. He also told his kids not to smoke. After they asked why he was doing cigarette ads, he quit his job as the Marlboro Man the next day.Comments Link
TIL that the famous dish: tikka masala - is British, not Indian and it was invented in the 70’s, not some cultural cuisine that’s been around for ages.
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TIL about Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian man who built multiple suits of armor to study grizzly bears up close in nature. He'd test these by having his friends hit him with 2x4s or drive trucks into him
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dataisbeautiful
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Countries with GDP per capita higher than $50k adjusted to exclude the 10% of wealthiest people
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[OC] Typefaces in American Psycho
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Cooking
How do y’all answer the question “Oh you like to cook? What’s your favorite thing to cook?”Comments Link
Just tried pressing Ginger in a garlic press
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Good alcohol for cooking that keeps for a long time without refrigeration?
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Total Recall (1990) is a classic.
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Untitled, me, pencil, 2023.
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Boondocks - 'White' Heaven
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Roy Wood Jr. full remarks at the 2023 White House Correspondents' Dinner
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Before and after the dog parkComments Link
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interestingasfuck
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2023.04.23 20:21 afterandalasia "I imagine you're surprised to see me here." Lincoln Hall survived a night without supplies in the Death Zone of Mount Everest. After being pronounced dead by the first rescue team, the following day he climbed down the mountain. How did Lincoln Hall survive? Medical Mystery 2/2
Part one - Everest, hypoxia, and the deaths of the 2006 season
At midnight, Hall set off with Harry Kikstra (co-leader of the expedition, from 7Summits as opposed to Abramov's 7Summits-Club) and four sherpas towards the summit. He used oxygen, despite the way the mask narrowed his field of vision; the light of his headlamp was the main limiting factor anyway. He was shocked by the bodies of Green Boots and David Sharp as the group passed them, but continued onwards. The First and Third Steps are considered moderately easy climbs, with the Second Step being significantly more difficult. Hall reached the summit at 09:00 on May 25th, likely the first climber of the day to do so, and was joined by Lakcha Sherpa, Dorje Sherpa, and Dawa Tenzing Sherpa. They began to descend at 09:20.
However, during the descent, Hall began to experience issues, first the loss of time and then the loss of awareness. He briefly became aware again near to the bottom of the Third Step, where he completed a complicated and dangerous manoeuvre while they were rappelling, then his group was met by Pemba Sherpa who informed them of the death of Thomas Weber, also from their expedition. Hall began to sob, an uncharacteristic burst of emotion doubtless linked to tiredness and hypoxia, then slipped into another period of delirium. He was given a fresh bottle of oxygen, at a high rate of flow. The four sherpas now with Hall managed to coax and steer him to the top of the difficult Second Step (8,577m/28,140ft). Hall struggled to rappel down the Second Step, caught up in hallucinations, although these hallucinations briefly managed to be of assistance when they took the form of a long-term friend of his reminding him to keep his thoughts clear and concentrate on climbing down.
It was clear to those around Hall, but not to Hall himself, that he was experiencing cerebral edema. His balance, state of mind and speech were affected; even when aware enough to understand the urgent need for descent, he radioed Abramov to say the following:
Left alone, Hall descended into extensive hallucinations. At his clearest, he recognised that he was on a mountainside, but presumed it was a much lower one surrounded by houses, not that he was above the clouds with only the stars. He hallucinated conversations, actions, places and people. Then, at some point, he abruptly and fearfully became aware of just where he was and in what condition, and determined that he needed to conserve what warmth he had and what consciousness he could maintain. He moved into a cross-legged, heat-conserving position, and when he could not recall the words to any songs focused instead on making small rhythmic movements of his shoulders and swaying in place. With his knowledge of states of consciousness from meditation, he determined to not allow himself to sink into lower ones. He still hallucinated for stretches of time, but maintained these movements throughout the night.
However, around twelve hours later, news began to trickle out about a man found alive on the mountain the following morning. At first, it was not even clear who it was - then it was confirmed to be Lincoln Hall.
At around dawn on May 26th, four climbers from SummitClimb - Dan Mazur, Myles Osborne, Andrew Brash and Jangbu Sherpa - reached the top of the First Step to find Lincoln Hall sitting cross-legged in the snow, his arms out of his suit, with no gloves or pack, balaclava at his feet. He could answer simple questions about his name and home, but thought that he was on a boat and that was why the world was swaying. They got him back into his suit and offered him replacement gloves, which he would not accept because they were not his, before radioing their expedition leader and spreading the news that they had found someone saying that his name was Lincoln Hall.
The group gave Hall warm Gatorade and oxygen and continued to talk to him, as well as preventing him from walking towards the edge of the nearby cliff. Before too long, they clipped him to the fixed rope to better hold him. Around four hours after he was discovered, two more sherpas arrived with oxygen and set about escorting Hall back down the mountains again. Even when Hall was coherent, the frostbite in his fingers made it difficult for him to work the harness and carabiners which he needed to climb; when he was not coherent, the sherpas reported, he grew violently defensive and would lash out with the ice axe until they took it away from him. In Hall's hallucinations, the sherpas taunted and beat him, terrifying him down the mountain; another climber reported seeing the sherpas striking Hall to get him to move, but the men simply did not speak enough English, nor Hall enough Nepali, for them to have taunted him as they did in his mind.
As the small group continued downwards, more sherpas who had been breaking camp and retrieving items also joined them. Night fell. However, Hall managed to reach the North Col Camp, where he was put into a sleeping bag, given a fresh oxygen mask, and tied to a table to prevent him from wandering during his sleep.
By the time that he awoke, the effects of the cerebral edema seem to have abated: he was weak with hunger, thirst and tiredness, but able to make decisions about climbing down and able to use his wits where his body struggled. Though he reported some brief visual hallucinations, he was more aware of them being such. At the Advanced Base Camp, Hall was treated with IV fluids and his fingers injected with vasodilators to combat the effects of frostbite, as well as given oxygen from a nasal cannula. He was able to phone his wife and confirm that he was alive. He was transported from Advanced Base Camp down to Base Camp on the back of a yak, and from there by vehicle into China where the Australian ambassador helped arrange for his passport to be reinstated so that he could leave the country.
In the end, Lincoln Hall lost eight fingertips and his right big toe to frostbite, dropped 17kg (37lbs) in weight, and believes that he went through two of the eight stages of death (in Buddhist belief) that night. He was left with a paralysed vocal chord for some months. His book covers the trauma that he experienced in the time immediately following the events, and his attempts to unravel what was hallucination from what was real. It also makes it clear that none of the doctors with whom he spoke could explain quite how he was still alive.
Unfortunately, Lincoln Hall died in 2012 from mesothelioma. This is a cancer caused by asbestos, in Hall's case likely from when he helped his father work in two houses as a child; in some places it is reported as him "working as a builder" but he would only have been a preteen. His wife and two sons survived him, having been granted six more years with a man that Everest allowed to live.
If I have found the right Jangbu Sherpa (there do seem to be several by that name, but this one has gone on to found his own trekking company) then it is his birthday today. Happy birthday, Jangbu Sherpa. As I post this, Dan Mazur is once again at Everest base camp, waiting for better weather; I hope it comes to him soon.
My main sources:
Of interest:
My previous medical posts:
submitted by afterandalasia to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]
Lincoln Hall's Climb
Of Hall's group of Australians, the other three all had to withdraw at different camps because of injury or altitude sickness. All would return safely. On May 22nd, however, Hall and Dorje Sherpa went on with their climb towards Camp Two, with Hall electing to begin to use oxygen at around 24,300ft. Hall deliberated about the wisdom, and the necessity, of continuing his climb. On May 24th, they continued to Camp 3, and Hall phoned his family to wish his elder son a happy eighteenth birthday. He also talked through and practiced use of the oxygen system, with which he was not very familiar.At midnight, Hall set off with Harry Kikstra (co-leader of the expedition, from 7Summits as opposed to Abramov's 7Summits-Club) and four sherpas towards the summit. He used oxygen, despite the way the mask narrowed his field of vision; the light of his headlamp was the main limiting factor anyway. He was shocked by the bodies of Green Boots and David Sharp as the group passed them, but continued onwards. The First and Third Steps are considered moderately easy climbs, with the Second Step being significantly more difficult. Hall reached the summit at 09:00 on May 25th, likely the first climber of the day to do so, and was joined by Lakcha Sherpa, Dorje Sherpa, and Dawa Tenzing Sherpa. They began to descend at 09:20.
However, during the descent, Hall began to experience issues, first the loss of time and then the loss of awareness. He briefly became aware again near to the bottom of the Third Step, where he completed a complicated and dangerous manoeuvre while they were rappelling, then his group was met by Pemba Sherpa who informed them of the death of Thomas Weber, also from their expedition. Hall began to sob, an uncharacteristic burst of emotion doubtless linked to tiredness and hypoxia, then slipped into another period of delirium. He was given a fresh bottle of oxygen, at a high rate of flow. The four sherpas now with Hall managed to coax and steer him to the top of the difficult Second Step (8,577m/28,140ft). Hall struggled to rappel down the Second Step, caught up in hallucinations, although these hallucinations briefly managed to be of assistance when they took the form of a long-term friend of his reminding him to keep his thoughts clear and concentrate on climbing down.
It was clear to those around Hall, but not to Hall himself, that he was experiencing cerebral edema. His balance, state of mind and speech were affected; even when aware enough to understand the urgent need for descent, he radioed Abramov to say the following:
“This is quite an exciting spot. I’m certainly compos mentis, whereas before I was really freaky. I had this gear to go down there, go down the Second Step. I couldn’t even put the bloody gear on. A couple of the guys did it for me. I was out of it then, but I’m definitely into it now. These guys have got a huge amount of knowledge in terms of rescuing people. If you want to find the greatest density of rescue people in the mountains, this would have to be it. So we’re going pretty well. Keep you posted. You don’t have to keep ringing and saying how are we ’cause there’ll be times when there’ll be a lot going on and there’ll be times when there’s nothing much going on. Cop you later.”By 16:00, Pemba Sherpa and Dorje Sherpa were forced to continue to descend for their own safety, but Lakcha Sherpa and Dawa Tenzing Sherpa remained with him until around 19:00 trying to get him to respond. When speaking did not work, they shook and pinched him, but he did not respond even when they poked him in the eye. Unable to get Hall to respond or move, and facing a stretch of difficult climbing which they could not get an unresponsive person past, they were also eventually forced to leave him in order to descend.
Left alone, Hall descended into extensive hallucinations. At his clearest, he recognised that he was on a mountainside, but presumed it was a much lower one surrounded by houses, not that he was above the clouds with only the stars. He hallucinated conversations, actions, places and people. Then, at some point, he abruptly and fearfully became aware of just where he was and in what condition, and determined that he needed to conserve what warmth he had and what consciousness he could maintain. He moved into a cross-legged, heat-conserving position, and when he could not recall the words to any songs focused instead on making small rhythmic movements of his shoulders and swaying in place. With his knowledge of states of consciousness from meditation, he determined to not allow himself to sink into lower ones. He still hallucinated for stretches of time, but maintained these movements throughout the night.
The Rescue
With Hall's unresponsive body left on the mountains, it was clear to everyone that he would die during the night. His family was informed, his belongings at the camps packed up. The news reached the media, who were still watchful given the string of deaths that had already occurred, and they even began to reach out to his colleagues for quotes about the man declared dead for a second time.However, around twelve hours later, news began to trickle out about a man found alive on the mountain the following morning. At first, it was not even clear who it was - then it was confirmed to be Lincoln Hall.
At around dawn on May 26th, four climbers from SummitClimb - Dan Mazur, Myles Osborne, Andrew Brash and Jangbu Sherpa - reached the top of the First Step to find Lincoln Hall sitting cross-legged in the snow, his arms out of his suit, with no gloves or pack, balaclava at his feet. He could answer simple questions about his name and home, but thought that he was on a boat and that was why the world was swaying. They got him back into his suit and offered him replacement gloves, which he would not accept because they were not his, before radioing their expedition leader and spreading the news that they had found someone saying that his name was Lincoln Hall.
The group gave Hall warm Gatorade and oxygen and continued to talk to him, as well as preventing him from walking towards the edge of the nearby cliff. Before too long, they clipped him to the fixed rope to better hold him. Around four hours after he was discovered, two more sherpas arrived with oxygen and set about escorting Hall back down the mountains again. Even when Hall was coherent, the frostbite in his fingers made it difficult for him to work the harness and carabiners which he needed to climb; when he was not coherent, the sherpas reported, he grew violently defensive and would lash out with the ice axe until they took it away from him. In Hall's hallucinations, the sherpas taunted and beat him, terrifying him down the mountain; another climber reported seeing the sherpas striking Hall to get him to move, but the men simply did not speak enough English, nor Hall enough Nepali, for them to have taunted him as they did in his mind.
As the small group continued downwards, more sherpas who had been breaking camp and retrieving items also joined them. Night fell. However, Hall managed to reach the North Col Camp, where he was put into a sleeping bag, given a fresh oxygen mask, and tied to a table to prevent him from wandering during his sleep.
By the time that he awoke, the effects of the cerebral edema seem to have abated: he was weak with hunger, thirst and tiredness, but able to make decisions about climbing down and able to use his wits where his body struggled. Though he reported some brief visual hallucinations, he was more aware of them being such. At the Advanced Base Camp, Hall was treated with IV fluids and his fingers injected with vasodilators to combat the effects of frostbite, as well as given oxygen from a nasal cannula. He was able to phone his wife and confirm that he was alive. He was transported from Advanced Base Camp down to Base Camp on the back of a yak, and from there by vehicle into China where the Australian ambassador helped arrange for his passport to be reinstated so that he could leave the country.
In the end, Lincoln Hall lost eight fingertips and his right big toe to frostbite, dropped 17kg (37lbs) in weight, and believes that he went through two of the eight stages of death (in Buddhist belief) that night. He was left with a paralysed vocal chord for some months. His book covers the trauma that he experienced in the time immediately following the events, and his attempts to unravel what was hallucination from what was real. It also makes it clear that none of the doctors with whom he spoke could explain quite how he was still alive.
Contributing Factors
Towards the end of his book Dead Lucky, Hall lists a number of factors which he believes contributed, and considering his expertise on mountaineering far outstrips mine it is worth deferring to him. He notes:- Good quality mountaineering gear, now in a museum, including the red balaclava hat his mother had made for him
- Good nutrition in the preparation for Everest
- Gingko extract (a folk remedy which may have scientific backing, though this is disputed)
- Mild weather, by Everest standards, with no very deep cold and no gale-force winds
- Good physical fitness
- Extensive mountaineering experience, which Hall calls "deep training"
- Psychological and emotional determination to survive
- Long-term high-altitude acclimatisation, with Hall having spent so much time mountaineering that he may have shared some of the adaptations of people who live permanently at these altitudes
- The knowledge of how to sit to preserve his body heat, and of what movements to make to maintain his ability to move
- The backlash following the death of David Sharp which will have made people more likely to assist (though it is clear that those who stopped to help Hall are all amazing people; Hall was Dan Mazur's third major high-altitude rescue)
Unfortunately, Lincoln Hall died in 2012 from mesothelioma. This is a cancer caused by asbestos, in Hall's case likely from when he helped his father work in two houses as a child; in some places it is reported as him "working as a builder" but he would only have been a preteen. His wife and two sons survived him, having been granted six more years with a man that Everest allowed to live.
If I have found the right Jangbu Sherpa (there do seem to be several by that name, but this one has gone on to found his own trekking company) then it is his birthday today. Happy birthday, Jangbu Sherpa. As I post this, Dan Mazur is once again at Everest base camp, waiting for better weather; I hope it comes to him soon.
Outstanding Questions
- How did Lincoln Hall not only survive the night, but remain capable of moving and communicating the following day?
- Some believe that AAS (acute altitude sickness) and cerebral edema are extremes of the same spectrum of disease - does Hall's recovery support this suggestion?
- Could his use of meditation and physical movement be used to train other mountaineers and potentially help in their survival?
- Should Everest be closed to novices and inexperienced climbers, and kept for more experienced figures?
- What attempts can or should be made to help those who face medical crises in these dangerous, high-altitude areas?
My main sources:
- Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest by Lincoln Hall himself. Although a pain to get hold of (part of what delayed this post by a week) this book is a clear and fascinating look at the entire experience of climbing Everest and of Hall's experience specifically.
- 2006 Mount Everest Season - The Death of David Sharp, 1996 Mount Everest Climbing Disaster Past 1 and Part 2, podcast episodes from When It Goes Wrong
- alanarnette.com, website which despite its dated appearance has great info about mountaineering
- Altitude Sickness: Balloons, Though?, podcast episode from This Podcast Will Kill You. [Transcript PDF]
- Australians in the Himalayas, transcript of a 2012 presentation/discussion held by the National Museum of Australia that included Lincoln Hall
- The Youtube page of Tim Macartney-Snape, one of the two Australians to summit in 1984
- A Tribute to Lincoln Hall, speech in 2006
- Our Friend Lincoln Hall..., obituary article
- Everest Base Camp Tibet in 2023, article
- Mortality on Mount Everest, 1921-2006: descriptive study, Firth et al
- Rescue of Lincoln Hall from Everest, NBC Television Program and information
- Climber Left for Dead Rescued on Everest, newspaper article from 2006
- Mountaineer survived Everest nightmare, newspaper article from 2012
- Miracle on Everest: The Lincoln Hall Story, youtube
Of interest:
- A Youtube channel by Michael Tracy about Mallory and Irvine's expedition and whether they made the summit. I haven't had time to watch it all myself, but I saw it recommended and figured it might be of interest!
- A National Geographic piece about Nirmal "Nims" Purja, who summited the 14 highest peaks in the world in just over six months
- An account of deaths at altitude from a hot air balloon flight, from 1875; one of the three 'aeronauts' survived the rapid ascent to 8,000m but his two colleagues died.
- Mount Everest Pt 1: The Blizzard of 1996 and Pt 2: Below Freezing, podcast episodes from Parcast's Natural Disasters series. Parcast episodes tend to be somewhat simpler in nature but are also less emotionally charged or discursive.
- "Don't leave me here to die" - a piece from a climber on Everest who had to leave behind someone already close to death and unable to move by themselves
- How Rescuers Save Climbers on the World's Tallest Mountains, article
My previous medical posts:
- Surviving the Unsurvivable: How can some people recover from rabies after developing symptoms? And are there some who can survive infection unharmed without medical intervention?
- The "Mother of all Flu Pandemics" - Where did the 1918 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic Originate?
- Guinea Worm in Animals: New Trait, or Hidden History? Guinea worm is on the brink of eradication thanks to Jimmy Carter, but now reports are being made of the disease in animals. Is this new, or have they been there all along?
- What caused Encephalitis Lethargica? Was it autoimmune or viral? Does it continue to occur? And why did L-DOPA cause such incredible improvements in patients - only to end in such terrible declines?
- In 430 BCE, an epidemic swept through the besieged Athens that killed up to a quarter of the population. What caused the first well-documented epidemic, the Plague of Athens?
- In 2013, Brooke Greenberg died. She was 20 but had the appearance and mental capacity of a toddler. Her condition, eventually termed Syndrome X, would be diagnosed in a handful of other girls worldwide. As of 2017, a doctor may have found a link - but does it explain the causes?
2023.04.22 22:03 billsponsor STARTRIBUNE: Minnesota Senate Approves Conversion Therapy Ban
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2023.04.21 23:24 Caetheus STARTRIBUNE: Minnesota Senate Approves Conversion Therapy Ban
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2023.04.21 23:14 honeybeebutch STARTRIBUNE: Minnesota Senate Approves Conversion Therapy Ban
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2023.04.21 21:35 lasocs STARTRIBUNE: Minnesota Senate Approves Conversion Therapy Ban
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2023.04.11 11:20 RoseBlack2222 Diner Ghost
It was my first venture into the workforce. Since freshman year, I'd been counting down the days since I could get my license. When I turned sixteen, I passed my driver's test with flying colors. Actually getting a car of my own was another matter. I didn't grow up in a financially stable environment.
Our parents were employed, but between expenses, there wasn't much left over, so I wanted to get a job right away. Luckily for me, my older brother, Spencer, had already been working at our town's local diner since the previous year. I asked him if he could see about getting me hired there. While he couldn't guarantee anything, he did tell me he would see what he could do. His good word with the owner paid off and I was scheduled for an interview the following weekend.
The diner in question is called Claude's, named after the original owner. As an aside, that family had a tradition of giving the sons that name. It was Claude IV who interviewed me. I went with Spencer who drove us in his rusty pickup truck.
"Is there anything I should know before we go in?" I asked as we pulled in.
"Yeah, four," Spencer replied, putting his truck in park. "First off, make sure you always maintain eye contact. Second, be nice to customers. Third, be proactive and lastly, never tell anyone exactly how many tips you got. Do all that and you should be good."
I followed his advice as I talked to Claude, never letting my gaze wander. I answered his questions as best I could. Honestly, during our conversation, I got the immediate sense that this guy wasn't exactly trustworthy. I can't explain why other than that there was this used car salesman vibe to him. Now I was beginning to see why Spencer told me what he did.
I briefly wondered if maybe I should decline and try to find a job elsewhere. However, I figured that Spencer had already gone through the trouble to convince Claude to interview me, I should see it through.
"Well, Dale, your brother did say you work hard in school. Tell me, can you bring that kind of energy here?" he asked, flashing a weasel-like smile.
"Yeah, of course, I'll give a hundred percent."
"Then you can start right away."
He extended a hand and I shook it, noting how greasy it felt. We walked out of his office and into the kitchen where Spencer was getting ready to carry out some breakfast plates of eggs and bacon. Claude called his attention.
"Hey, your brother got the job," he informed him. "When you get done with that, I need you to show him the ropes."
There wasn't much to go over. The main things were where the break room was and not to stand in front of the door connecting the kitchen to the dining area. It only took me about a week to learn just how shitty people were. It seemed like every other shift someone would complain about something or another. I lost count of how many plates got sent back.
I don't know what they were expecting. It's not like it was a five-star restaurant. I guess that environment just creates a sense of entitlement in people. Regardless, I tolerated it. Admittedly, some instances required me to bite my tongue, but I managed to keep my cool. Slowly yet surely, my fruits bore labor and I was on my way to being able to purchase my first vehicle, albeit used.
Spencer and I couldn't be the only servers there so we worked alongside a couple other people. One was Spencer's friend, Angelo from art class and the other was Claude IV who everybody called Chip. He was the polar opposite of his dad. In contrast to his time to lean time to clean attitude, he was a pretty chill guy.
He told us that his parents are divorced because his dad got caught with the mail lady and then after a confrontation involving Stilettos and resulting in him getting a black eye, he was kicked out of the house. He got Chip on the weekends who he made work for free. Unbeknownst to him, he would swipe money before he got a chance to count it. Needless to say, he wasn't exactly fond of the man, but having an aversion to conflict, he tried to get along with him.
Summer break came around. By that point, I'd been working there for a little over six months and I had finally managed to snag a car off Craigslist. Now it was just a matter of paying for insurance and saving up for college or trade school. That was the others' plan too. Little did I know just how bad those months were, closely followed by Spring Breakers.
The main reason we despised the Summer people is that nothing is ever good enough for them. Not to discriminate, but this tended to come from old people. No matter how hard we worked or how patient we were, they would ramble on about how our generation was lazy and disrespectful. The irony wasn't lost on us. It was at the beginning of June when I found out that there was more than meets the eye to the diner. It held a dark secret which given the barely passing health inspection scores wasn’t that surprising.
However, this went far beyond using just expired food. Chip explained it to me one stormy night. We were getting ready to close up as thunder could be heard outside followed by drizzling raindrops. I was cleaning the lobby. Spencer and Angelo were doing the dishes. Meanwhile, Chip was counting money.
Once I gave a thorough sweep and then mopped it down, I went to him and asked if he needed anything else.
“Let me check,” he said then yelled into the kitchen. “Hey, have you guys gotten to the fryers yet?”
“No, there’s a lot of dishes here. It might be a while,” Angelo called back.
Chip turned back to me.
“Yeah, you can go help with that.”
“Wait, but I’ve never done that before.”
He paused his counting.
“Oh yeah, well, just let me finish this up and I’ll show you. It’s pretty easy as long as you’re careful.”
When he was done, we headed into the kitchen where I had a near accident. I wasn’t prepared for how slippery the floor was and I ended up losing my balance and nearly falling face-first into the fryer. Thankfully, the prep table was nearby and by flailing, I managed to grab hold of it. With my heart rate significantly increased, I straightened myself out.
“Shit, dude, are you okay?” Spencer asked.
“I nearly burned my face off. What do you think?” I snapped.
“Fuck man, you have to be more careful,” Chip scolded.
“Maybe give me a little heads up next time. Why is the floor so damn slippery anyway?”
Angelo seemed to remember something embarrassing.
“That was my bad. I spilled some bacon grease earlier and forgot to clean it up. Honestly, we’re lucky nobody had an accident sooner.”
When Chip glared at him, he added, “Sorry, I’ll be more on top of things in the future.”
Chip only shook his head and got back to me. Learning how to clean the fryer didn't take long. Earlier mishap aside, I got it down pretty quickly.
“And all that's left to do is have a fresh container ready to fill it in the morning," he said, placing one on the adjacent containers.
By then, Spencer and Angelo were also finishing up. He went to a nearby sink to wash his hands.
"By the way, make sure you get some slip-proof shoes. We don't want you ending up like Baxter."
"Who?"
Everyone stared at me.
"You know, Baxter Reed?" Spencer said.
"No? I've never heard of him."
"Wow, he's been here all this time and nobody told him," Angelo chimed in. "Should we tell him then?"
Chip glanced outside where the storm was now raging.
"I suppose this is ideal weather for a scary story."
Back in the lobby, Chip stood behind the counter while the rest of us sat on the barstools. He stared with a hard expression plastered across his face as he recounted the story of Baxter Reed.
According to him, he was born in the town hospital back in the 40s and life went downhill for him from there. In addition to being a preborn baby, he was physically weak which in turn made his dad resent him and smack him around in an attempt to toughen him up. His mom didn't do anything to help either.
"Wow, poor guy," I interjected.
"You don't know the half of it," Chip said. "If he didn't get punches at home, he was getting them at school. Usually, he got both. People like him tend to be easy targets."
"Did he have anything going for him?"
"As a matter of fact, he did. The dude was crazy smart and I mean a real poindexter. He'd probably be doing great right now if he'd been born around our time. Sadly, it wasn't in the cards for him. Life kept beating him down."
"That sucks and all, but what does that have to do with the fryer?"
"I'm getting to that, have some patience."
Seeing that Chip was annoyed, I piped down.
"As I was saying, nothing ever went right for Baxter and it was in this very restaurant he met his untimely end.”
“You mean he…Died here?” I hesitantly said, feeling bits of apprehension creep in.
“That’s right and man, was his all kinds of fucked. My grandpa was the one in charge of this place at the time and much like my dad, he wasn’t too concerned with employment safety so long as he didn’t get sued. Anyway, Baxter’s dad left him and his mom and his sixteenth birthday, and since she couldn’t work, he needed money where he could get it.”
Given the circumstances, I understood why Baxter’s mother couldn’t hold down a job. Chip went on.
“So, my grandpa hired him and he worked here for nearly two years.”
“What was he planning to do?”
Chip shrugged.
“Probably save up and move like us. Too bad he never got the chance.”
“Let me guess, the fryer?”
“Bingo, one night during a dinner rush, he slipped and fell into the oil head first. If that wasn’t bad enough, apparently, it was heated up too much and he died on the way to the hospital.”
“That’s awful. Don’t get me wrong, but what’s so scary about it? So far, it seems more like a cautionary tale.”
Chip drummed his fingers on the counter as if mentally preparing himself.
“That’s not where the story ends. Rumor has it that his mom was heavily into the occult before she married his dad.”
My hands curled on the counter.
“You mean like a Wiccan?”
“I don’t think it’s ever been specified. Baxter’s funeral was the week after his accident and since his dad skipped town, she was the only one who attended, but she had other plans. She stole the body.”
That took me aback. However, I did wonder if it was technically stealing since she was his mother.
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope, people around town have been talking about it for years.”
“Then why haven’t I heard of it?”
“You hardly get out,” Spencer told me.
“Oh, well, I guess that explains it.”
“Right,” Chip continued, “so she wanted to use her son’s corpse in some kind of ritual, possibly one she thought would bring him back to life.”
Although I could sympathize with her, such actions appalled me.
“What did she do exactly?” I asked, cautiously curious.
“The details are vague, but basically she still owned some books on the subject. One of them contained a blood ritual that she attempted to pull off. The day after the funeral, she was found dead with a self-inflicted throat in the middle of a ceremonial circle with candles surrounding it.”
“And Baxter?”
“Her blood got on him. The most fucked up thing about it is that the people who found her said that she was smiling.”
This was a lot to take in. Now, I’ve heard of some messed up true crime before, but this was up there.
“What happened after that?”
“Hey, you catch on quick.”
Chip explained that after their burial, shit started to go wrong for the people who tormented them. Baxter’s bullies all died under mysterious circumstances within the year. All of them vary in how they happened. Some were caused by car accidents. Others were because they picked on the wrong people and some burned like him. The weirdest was his dad who according to his obituary, died of a heart attack.
His autopsy showed no abnormalities that would’ve caused it either. The muscle simply ceased to function.
“What happened to this place?” I asked.
“Lots of accidents and shit falling apart. Even equipment that wasn’t that old or even brand new would malfunction. One customer was injured from a lamp falling on his head. Things got so bad people refused to come and my grandpa had to shut this place down for a while.”
“Did the curse stop when he did?”
“How did you know?”
“Isn’t that how it usually works with these kinds of things?”
“Indeed, and I’m sure you’ve already guessed where I’m going with this. On the night of the reopening, Baxter himself appeared.”
I gave a skeptical stare. Up until then everything was unusual and improbable. However, it wasn’t impossible. There were similar stories such as what happened to the cast of the Poltergeist movies and probably many other instances. Nonetheless, I kept my opinion to myself and let Chip continue.
“I know how it sounds, but there are people who were there on that night who said they heard him, crystal clear..”
“But nobody actually saw him?”
“One person did in the bathroom mirror. They said his face was burnt and he had on the same uniform he died in.”
“Then what happened? Did he make shit float around and smash some dishes?”
“No, he didn’t show himself to anyone else. Instead, he left a message to my grandpa.”
I went from skeptical to mildly intrigued.
“Your grandpa? What did he tell him?”
“That if this place wasn’t gone within sixty years after his accident that he would return for the blood of his family.”
“So you?”
“Or my dad.”
I did some quick mental math.
“Wait, you said sixty years. How long has it been since then?”
Chip smiled.
“Funny you should bring that up. The sixtieth anniversary, if you want to call it that, of the incident is in a week. That should give you something to look forward to. Anyway, I hope you all have a safe trip home.”
With that, we left. During the following week, I did consider asking around town to verify parts of the story. Not wanting to expend unnecessary effort, though I decided it wasn’t worth going out of the way for. I did have to admit to myself that some parts of the story did stick with me. In fact, I was a bit apprehensive to work on the night of the anniversary. However, I knew that would only show the others that the story had gotten to me so I showed up without complaint.
We still got the same number of customers which didn’t bode well for the story. If people believed it, shouldn’t they be avoiding Claude’s? Then I began to notice a drastic shift as it got closer to sunset. People seemed in a hurry to eat their food and then get out of there. I shrugged this off, figuring they were just eager to get home.
Chip’s dad left halfway into our shifts to go play poker, saying that he was feeling lucky so it was only the four of us. We tended to our usual duties and I, now in slip-resistant shoes, was helping Spencer with the dishes.
“Hey, I need to take a leak. Mind if I step away?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
He left and I finished up. When I did, Chip called me.
“Dale, can you take out the trash?”
I glanced outside, briefly feeling like Spongebob in the Night Shift episode.
“Yeah, sure. Anything else?”
“No, that should do.”
Gathering the trash in the lobby, I went outside, trying to keep an unbothered demeanor. Then I tossed the bags into the dumpster. As I was getting around, I heard something that made my neck hairs stand on end.
"Need…Revenge."
I spun around and screamed. Baxter's ghost stood in front of me, wearing the clothes he died in and with his face burned. I couldn't do more than let out a squeak as he reached toward me.
"Must pay.." he continued. "Blood…"
His voice was that of a perpetual chain smoker. I booked it, wanting to grab my keys inside and get out of there. Baxter was giving which only further increased my fear and confusion when another Baxter popped up in front of the door. Cursing, I nearly ran into him, but managed a sliding stop and changed course, heading to the front of the diner. It didn't dawn on me to wonder where the others were as I went inside.
Relieved I managed to lose the Baxter ghosts, I spotted my keys on the counter and went to grab them. When I did, a hand shot up from under the counter, grabbing my wrist.
"Revenge…"
Baxter's head rose up. The smell was awful like burnt moldy cheese. Yelling, I was able to pull away and back up only to bump into the two other Baxters from before. I was surrounded.
"Pay in blood," they rasped in unison.
"No, please," I begged, searching for some way out.
My back was to the wall. They came closer. Then I heard one of them begin to laugh along with the others soon after. Instantly, my intense fear turned to burning anger.
"You fucking pieces of shit," I screamed.
Spencer, Angelo, and Chip pulled their masks off, doubling over and holding their sides.
"You should have seen your face," Chip howled, wiping a few tears away.
"We had this planned all week," Angelo explained between giggles. "We even made these masks by gluing burnt pizza cheese to them."
"Well, I hope it was worth it, assholes because I'm covering any more of your shifts," I snapped.
"Don't be a pussy," Spencer told me. "It was just a harmless prank."
Reluctantly I agreed and told them I was going to head out.
"Wait, before you go can you grab some Lysol from the back?" Chip asked. "Don't worry. I promise we won't try anything else."
Drawing in a breath of frustration, I went to the back to grab a can. Opening the closet, I saw another Baxter ghost glaring down at me.
"Fuck off," I said, rolling my eyes and then slamming the door.
Storming back into the lobby, I confronted Angelo and Chip.
"Really, you mother fuckers just had to try to get another cheap shot on me?"
"What are you talking about?" Angelo replied.
"Yeah, we've been here the whole time," Chip added.
"Oh yeah? Then where's Spencer?"
He came from the bathroom, drying his hands on his apron.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked me.
My apprehension was returning.
"Hang on. If you're all here, then who did I see in the…?"
Everyone's eyes suddenly grew huge and I got the feeling they weren't pulling my leg this time. Slowly, I turned. It was Baxter, the real Baxter, standing before us. How I knew for sure this wasn't a prank was the fact he was floating. Furthermore, his face was hideously disfigured from burns, and his uniform was covered in grease stains.
Raising a finger, he pointed it at Chip.
"Time's up," he said to him.
Chip's words caught in his throat. Baxter stared at us and noticed the masks on the counter. His hands clenched into fists.
"How dare you?" he roared.
The lights hummed as he got more agitated.
"Run," I screamed.
We attempted to head for the door, but Baxter flew in front of it, giving us no choice other than running to the kitchen. The back door would've been our next choice if Baxter didn't start making dishes fly around the room.
"In here, quick," Angelo urged, gesturing to the walk-in fridge.
We were able to get inside and lock it before Baxter noticed.
"That's a ghost," I said in stunned fright, "a real ghost."
"Yeah, we all saw him. Keep your voice down," Chip hissed.
"What are we going to do?" Angelo asked.
A sudden pounding came from the door.
"I know you're in here, Claude," Baxter said from the other side.
We all went quiet and Chip raised a finger to his lips.
"Very well, since nobody is here then there won't be any harm in me burning this place to the ground."
"No, wait," I spoke up.
"So you're all here after all."
"Look, man, we're sorry. Right, guys?"
I glared at them and they agreed, then apologized to Baxter.
"That doesn't change the terms. The Claude's had several decades to shut this place down."
Realizing we weren't going to get out of this unscathed, my heart sank.
"But I'm willing to make a deal. Send Claude out and the rest of you are free to go. I'll give you a couple minutes to decide."
With a mournful look, Spencer placed a hand on Chip's shoulder.
"We'll never forget you."
"Fuck you guys," Chip yelled, smacking his hand away. "You're really going to send me out there?"
Wanting to buy some time, I asked Baxter what he planned on doing to Chip. He went to excruciating detail involving skinning him alive and then sticking him in the fryer. Chip's face became paler and paler as we listened. Even though we sympathized with him, the fact of the matter was if we hesitated none of us would make it out.
"What's this?" we heard Baxter ask.
Metallic jingling indicated that he found the keys.
"Shit, we forgot to grab them," Angelo said.
The lock turned and the door swung open, revealing Baxter. We screamed, falling back.
"And now you'll all pay," he replied. "Any last words?"
Oddly, I did have some
"Why didn't you just go through the door?" I asked.
Baxter stopped, then with a ghostly wail he made the containers around us levitate. Would this truly be how it would end, getting pelted to death by boxes of just expired meat? The front door's bell rang.
"Hey, Chip," we heard his dad call out, "turns out I wasn't so lucky after all. Can you spot me a few hundred dollars? I kind of bet over my head."
He entered the kitchen and flew into a rage.
"What in the fuck did you morons do to this place?" he roared. "Is this what I pay you for?"
His rant ceased when he saw Baxter. Claude must've reminded him more of his former employer than Chip did because he decided to go for him instead. He didn't have a chance of getting away.
"Help me," Claude screamed as Baxter was dragging him away.
It was only upon hearing the fryer turn on did we break out of our paralysis and go after them. We got to them too late. Despite us cleaning the fryer earlier, it was now refilled and heated. The only thing we saw was Claude's burned hand sinking into it. The fryer then began rapidly vibrating and sparking. That was a clear sign to get the hell out of there and this time we didn't forget our keys.
Soon after we got out, the fryer exploded in the kitchen, resulting in a fire. The following week was hectic. The story we gave was that the fire was a freak accident and Chip's dad sadly perished in it. Seeing as how the building's wiring hadn't been upgraded since the 70s, that wasn't hard to believe. Chip made it onto the local news and was interviewed about the incident.
We wished him our condolences. Even though he thought his dad was an asshole, he did have a soft spot for the man. He told us thanks and said at least it meant Baxter won't ever return. Not to mention, insurance gave him a large payout which gave him the funds to attend college. As for us, we got jobs at a Waffle House that opened soon after Claude's fire.
There, we were able to save up and eventually moved away as well. Spencer and I talk on occasion and he's told me Angelo and Chip are doing good. The former works as an artist and the latter opened his own restaurant where his workers get treated fairly. Spencer works as an independent welding contractor and I took an interest in the paranormal and history so I decided to become a museum tourer.
In conclusion, if you have to work where a ghost will be on the anniversary of the night they swore to exact terrible vengeance, maybe utilize one of your sick days or you could end up burned like Baxter or Claude.
submitted by RoseBlack2222 to nosleep [link] [comments]
Our parents were employed, but between expenses, there wasn't much left over, so I wanted to get a job right away. Luckily for me, my older brother, Spencer, had already been working at our town's local diner since the previous year. I asked him if he could see about getting me hired there. While he couldn't guarantee anything, he did tell me he would see what he could do. His good word with the owner paid off and I was scheduled for an interview the following weekend.
The diner in question is called Claude's, named after the original owner. As an aside, that family had a tradition of giving the sons that name. It was Claude IV who interviewed me. I went with Spencer who drove us in his rusty pickup truck.
"Is there anything I should know before we go in?" I asked as we pulled in.
"Yeah, four," Spencer replied, putting his truck in park. "First off, make sure you always maintain eye contact. Second, be nice to customers. Third, be proactive and lastly, never tell anyone exactly how many tips you got. Do all that and you should be good."
I followed his advice as I talked to Claude, never letting my gaze wander. I answered his questions as best I could. Honestly, during our conversation, I got the immediate sense that this guy wasn't exactly trustworthy. I can't explain why other than that there was this used car salesman vibe to him. Now I was beginning to see why Spencer told me what he did.
I briefly wondered if maybe I should decline and try to find a job elsewhere. However, I figured that Spencer had already gone through the trouble to convince Claude to interview me, I should see it through.
"Well, Dale, your brother did say you work hard in school. Tell me, can you bring that kind of energy here?" he asked, flashing a weasel-like smile.
"Yeah, of course, I'll give a hundred percent."
"Then you can start right away."
He extended a hand and I shook it, noting how greasy it felt. We walked out of his office and into the kitchen where Spencer was getting ready to carry out some breakfast plates of eggs and bacon. Claude called his attention.
"Hey, your brother got the job," he informed him. "When you get done with that, I need you to show him the ropes."
There wasn't much to go over. The main things were where the break room was and not to stand in front of the door connecting the kitchen to the dining area. It only took me about a week to learn just how shitty people were. It seemed like every other shift someone would complain about something or another. I lost count of how many plates got sent back.
I don't know what they were expecting. It's not like it was a five-star restaurant. I guess that environment just creates a sense of entitlement in people. Regardless, I tolerated it. Admittedly, some instances required me to bite my tongue, but I managed to keep my cool. Slowly yet surely, my fruits bore labor and I was on my way to being able to purchase my first vehicle, albeit used.
Spencer and I couldn't be the only servers there so we worked alongside a couple other people. One was Spencer's friend, Angelo from art class and the other was Claude IV who everybody called Chip. He was the polar opposite of his dad. In contrast to his time to lean time to clean attitude, he was a pretty chill guy.
He told us that his parents are divorced because his dad got caught with the mail lady and then after a confrontation involving Stilettos and resulting in him getting a black eye, he was kicked out of the house. He got Chip on the weekends who he made work for free. Unbeknownst to him, he would swipe money before he got a chance to count it. Needless to say, he wasn't exactly fond of the man, but having an aversion to conflict, he tried to get along with him.
Summer break came around. By that point, I'd been working there for a little over six months and I had finally managed to snag a car off Craigslist. Now it was just a matter of paying for insurance and saving up for college or trade school. That was the others' plan too. Little did I know just how bad those months were, closely followed by Spring Breakers.
The main reason we despised the Summer people is that nothing is ever good enough for them. Not to discriminate, but this tended to come from old people. No matter how hard we worked or how patient we were, they would ramble on about how our generation was lazy and disrespectful. The irony wasn't lost on us. It was at the beginning of June when I found out that there was more than meets the eye to the diner. It held a dark secret which given the barely passing health inspection scores wasn’t that surprising.
However, this went far beyond using just expired food. Chip explained it to me one stormy night. We were getting ready to close up as thunder could be heard outside followed by drizzling raindrops. I was cleaning the lobby. Spencer and Angelo were doing the dishes. Meanwhile, Chip was counting money.
Once I gave a thorough sweep and then mopped it down, I went to him and asked if he needed anything else.
“Let me check,” he said then yelled into the kitchen. “Hey, have you guys gotten to the fryers yet?”
“No, there’s a lot of dishes here. It might be a while,” Angelo called back.
Chip turned back to me.
“Yeah, you can go help with that.”
“Wait, but I’ve never done that before.”
He paused his counting.
“Oh yeah, well, just let me finish this up and I’ll show you. It’s pretty easy as long as you’re careful.”
When he was done, we headed into the kitchen where I had a near accident. I wasn’t prepared for how slippery the floor was and I ended up losing my balance and nearly falling face-first into the fryer. Thankfully, the prep table was nearby and by flailing, I managed to grab hold of it. With my heart rate significantly increased, I straightened myself out.
“Shit, dude, are you okay?” Spencer asked.
“I nearly burned my face off. What do you think?” I snapped.
“Fuck man, you have to be more careful,” Chip scolded.
“Maybe give me a little heads up next time. Why is the floor so damn slippery anyway?”
Angelo seemed to remember something embarrassing.
“That was my bad. I spilled some bacon grease earlier and forgot to clean it up. Honestly, we’re lucky nobody had an accident sooner.”
When Chip glared at him, he added, “Sorry, I’ll be more on top of things in the future.”
Chip only shook his head and got back to me. Learning how to clean the fryer didn't take long. Earlier mishap aside, I got it down pretty quickly.
“And all that's left to do is have a fresh container ready to fill it in the morning," he said, placing one on the adjacent containers.
By then, Spencer and Angelo were also finishing up. He went to a nearby sink to wash his hands.
"By the way, make sure you get some slip-proof shoes. We don't want you ending up like Baxter."
"Who?"
Everyone stared at me.
"You know, Baxter Reed?" Spencer said.
"No? I've never heard of him."
"Wow, he's been here all this time and nobody told him," Angelo chimed in. "Should we tell him then?"
Chip glanced outside where the storm was now raging.
"I suppose this is ideal weather for a scary story."
Back in the lobby, Chip stood behind the counter while the rest of us sat on the barstools. He stared with a hard expression plastered across his face as he recounted the story of Baxter Reed.
According to him, he was born in the town hospital back in the 40s and life went downhill for him from there. In addition to being a preborn baby, he was physically weak which in turn made his dad resent him and smack him around in an attempt to toughen him up. His mom didn't do anything to help either.
"Wow, poor guy," I interjected.
"You don't know the half of it," Chip said. "If he didn't get punches at home, he was getting them at school. Usually, he got both. People like him tend to be easy targets."
"Did he have anything going for him?"
"As a matter of fact, he did. The dude was crazy smart and I mean a real poindexter. He'd probably be doing great right now if he'd been born around our time. Sadly, it wasn't in the cards for him. Life kept beating him down."
"That sucks and all, but what does that have to do with the fryer?"
"I'm getting to that, have some patience."
Seeing that Chip was annoyed, I piped down.
"As I was saying, nothing ever went right for Baxter and it was in this very restaurant he met his untimely end.”
“You mean he…Died here?” I hesitantly said, feeling bits of apprehension creep in.
“That’s right and man, was his all kinds of fucked. My grandpa was the one in charge of this place at the time and much like my dad, he wasn’t too concerned with employment safety so long as he didn’t get sued. Anyway, Baxter’s dad left him and his mom and his sixteenth birthday, and since she couldn’t work, he needed money where he could get it.”
Given the circumstances, I understood why Baxter’s mother couldn’t hold down a job. Chip went on.
“So, my grandpa hired him and he worked here for nearly two years.”
“What was he planning to do?”
Chip shrugged.
“Probably save up and move like us. Too bad he never got the chance.”
“Let me guess, the fryer?”
“Bingo, one night during a dinner rush, he slipped and fell into the oil head first. If that wasn’t bad enough, apparently, it was heated up too much and he died on the way to the hospital.”
“That’s awful. Don’t get me wrong, but what’s so scary about it? So far, it seems more like a cautionary tale.”
Chip drummed his fingers on the counter as if mentally preparing himself.
“That’s not where the story ends. Rumor has it that his mom was heavily into the occult before she married his dad.”
My hands curled on the counter.
“You mean like a Wiccan?”
“I don’t think it’s ever been specified. Baxter’s funeral was the week after his accident and since his dad skipped town, she was the only one who attended, but she had other plans. She stole the body.”
That took me aback. However, I did wonder if it was technically stealing since she was his mother.
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope, people around town have been talking about it for years.”
“Then why haven’t I heard of it?”
“You hardly get out,” Spencer told me.
“Oh, well, I guess that explains it.”
“Right,” Chip continued, “so she wanted to use her son’s corpse in some kind of ritual, possibly one she thought would bring him back to life.”
Although I could sympathize with her, such actions appalled me.
“What did she do exactly?” I asked, cautiously curious.
“The details are vague, but basically she still owned some books on the subject. One of them contained a blood ritual that she attempted to pull off. The day after the funeral, she was found dead with a self-inflicted throat in the middle of a ceremonial circle with candles surrounding it.”
“And Baxter?”
“Her blood got on him. The most fucked up thing about it is that the people who found her said that she was smiling.”
This was a lot to take in. Now, I’ve heard of some messed up true crime before, but this was up there.
“What happened after that?”
“Hey, you catch on quick.”
Chip explained that after their burial, shit started to go wrong for the people who tormented them. Baxter’s bullies all died under mysterious circumstances within the year. All of them vary in how they happened. Some were caused by car accidents. Others were because they picked on the wrong people and some burned like him. The weirdest was his dad who according to his obituary, died of a heart attack.
His autopsy showed no abnormalities that would’ve caused it either. The muscle simply ceased to function.
“What happened to this place?” I asked.
“Lots of accidents and shit falling apart. Even equipment that wasn’t that old or even brand new would malfunction. One customer was injured from a lamp falling on his head. Things got so bad people refused to come and my grandpa had to shut this place down for a while.”
“Did the curse stop when he did?”
“How did you know?”
“Isn’t that how it usually works with these kinds of things?”
“Indeed, and I’m sure you’ve already guessed where I’m going with this. On the night of the reopening, Baxter himself appeared.”
I gave a skeptical stare. Up until then everything was unusual and improbable. However, it wasn’t impossible. There were similar stories such as what happened to the cast of the Poltergeist movies and probably many other instances. Nonetheless, I kept my opinion to myself and let Chip continue.
“I know how it sounds, but there are people who were there on that night who said they heard him, crystal clear..”
“But nobody actually saw him?”
“One person did in the bathroom mirror. They said his face was burnt and he had on the same uniform he died in.”
“Then what happened? Did he make shit float around and smash some dishes?”
“No, he didn’t show himself to anyone else. Instead, he left a message to my grandpa.”
I went from skeptical to mildly intrigued.
“Your grandpa? What did he tell him?”
“That if this place wasn’t gone within sixty years after his accident that he would return for the blood of his family.”
“So you?”
“Or my dad.”
I did some quick mental math.
“Wait, you said sixty years. How long has it been since then?”
Chip smiled.
“Funny you should bring that up. The sixtieth anniversary, if you want to call it that, of the incident is in a week. That should give you something to look forward to. Anyway, I hope you all have a safe trip home.”
With that, we left. During the following week, I did consider asking around town to verify parts of the story. Not wanting to expend unnecessary effort, though I decided it wasn’t worth going out of the way for. I did have to admit to myself that some parts of the story did stick with me. In fact, I was a bit apprehensive to work on the night of the anniversary. However, I knew that would only show the others that the story had gotten to me so I showed up without complaint.
We still got the same number of customers which didn’t bode well for the story. If people believed it, shouldn’t they be avoiding Claude’s? Then I began to notice a drastic shift as it got closer to sunset. People seemed in a hurry to eat their food and then get out of there. I shrugged this off, figuring they were just eager to get home.
Chip’s dad left halfway into our shifts to go play poker, saying that he was feeling lucky so it was only the four of us. We tended to our usual duties and I, now in slip-resistant shoes, was helping Spencer with the dishes.
“Hey, I need to take a leak. Mind if I step away?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
He left and I finished up. When I did, Chip called me.
“Dale, can you take out the trash?”
I glanced outside, briefly feeling like Spongebob in the Night Shift episode.
“Yeah, sure. Anything else?”
“No, that should do.”
Gathering the trash in the lobby, I went outside, trying to keep an unbothered demeanor. Then I tossed the bags into the dumpster. As I was getting around, I heard something that made my neck hairs stand on end.
"Need…Revenge."
I spun around and screamed. Baxter's ghost stood in front of me, wearing the clothes he died in and with his face burned. I couldn't do more than let out a squeak as he reached toward me.
"Must pay.." he continued. "Blood…"
His voice was that of a perpetual chain smoker. I booked it, wanting to grab my keys inside and get out of there. Baxter was giving which only further increased my fear and confusion when another Baxter popped up in front of the door. Cursing, I nearly ran into him, but managed a sliding stop and changed course, heading to the front of the diner. It didn't dawn on me to wonder where the others were as I went inside.
Relieved I managed to lose the Baxter ghosts, I spotted my keys on the counter and went to grab them. When I did, a hand shot up from under the counter, grabbing my wrist.
"Revenge…"
Baxter's head rose up. The smell was awful like burnt moldy cheese. Yelling, I was able to pull away and back up only to bump into the two other Baxters from before. I was surrounded.
"Pay in blood," they rasped in unison.
"No, please," I begged, searching for some way out.
My back was to the wall. They came closer. Then I heard one of them begin to laugh along with the others soon after. Instantly, my intense fear turned to burning anger.
"You fucking pieces of shit," I screamed.
Spencer, Angelo, and Chip pulled their masks off, doubling over and holding their sides.
"You should have seen your face," Chip howled, wiping a few tears away.
"We had this planned all week," Angelo explained between giggles. "We even made these masks by gluing burnt pizza cheese to them."
"Well, I hope it was worth it, assholes because I'm covering any more of your shifts," I snapped.
"Don't be a pussy," Spencer told me. "It was just a harmless prank."
Reluctantly I agreed and told them I was going to head out.
"Wait, before you go can you grab some Lysol from the back?" Chip asked. "Don't worry. I promise we won't try anything else."
Drawing in a breath of frustration, I went to the back to grab a can. Opening the closet, I saw another Baxter ghost glaring down at me.
"Fuck off," I said, rolling my eyes and then slamming the door.
Storming back into the lobby, I confronted Angelo and Chip.
"Really, you mother fuckers just had to try to get another cheap shot on me?"
"What are you talking about?" Angelo replied.
"Yeah, we've been here the whole time," Chip added.
"Oh yeah? Then where's Spencer?"
He came from the bathroom, drying his hands on his apron.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked me.
My apprehension was returning.
"Hang on. If you're all here, then who did I see in the…?"
Everyone's eyes suddenly grew huge and I got the feeling they weren't pulling my leg this time. Slowly, I turned. It was Baxter, the real Baxter, standing before us. How I knew for sure this wasn't a prank was the fact he was floating. Furthermore, his face was hideously disfigured from burns, and his uniform was covered in grease stains.
Raising a finger, he pointed it at Chip.
"Time's up," he said to him.
Chip's words caught in his throat. Baxter stared at us and noticed the masks on the counter. His hands clenched into fists.
"How dare you?" he roared.
The lights hummed as he got more agitated.
"Run," I screamed.
We attempted to head for the door, but Baxter flew in front of it, giving us no choice other than running to the kitchen. The back door would've been our next choice if Baxter didn't start making dishes fly around the room.
"In here, quick," Angelo urged, gesturing to the walk-in fridge.
We were able to get inside and lock it before Baxter noticed.
"That's a ghost," I said in stunned fright, "a real ghost."
"Yeah, we all saw him. Keep your voice down," Chip hissed.
"What are we going to do?" Angelo asked.
A sudden pounding came from the door.
"I know you're in here, Claude," Baxter said from the other side.
We all went quiet and Chip raised a finger to his lips.
"Very well, since nobody is here then there won't be any harm in me burning this place to the ground."
"No, wait," I spoke up.
"So you're all here after all."
"Look, man, we're sorry. Right, guys?"
I glared at them and they agreed, then apologized to Baxter.
"That doesn't change the terms. The Claude's had several decades to shut this place down."
Realizing we weren't going to get out of this unscathed, my heart sank.
"But I'm willing to make a deal. Send Claude out and the rest of you are free to go. I'll give you a couple minutes to decide."
With a mournful look, Spencer placed a hand on Chip's shoulder.
"We'll never forget you."
"Fuck you guys," Chip yelled, smacking his hand away. "You're really going to send me out there?"
Wanting to buy some time, I asked Baxter what he planned on doing to Chip. He went to excruciating detail involving skinning him alive and then sticking him in the fryer. Chip's face became paler and paler as we listened. Even though we sympathized with him, the fact of the matter was if we hesitated none of us would make it out.
"What's this?" we heard Baxter ask.
Metallic jingling indicated that he found the keys.
"Shit, we forgot to grab them," Angelo said.
The lock turned and the door swung open, revealing Baxter. We screamed, falling back.
"And now you'll all pay," he replied. "Any last words?"
Oddly, I did have some
"Why didn't you just go through the door?" I asked.
Baxter stopped, then with a ghostly wail he made the containers around us levitate. Would this truly be how it would end, getting pelted to death by boxes of just expired meat? The front door's bell rang.
"Hey, Chip," we heard his dad call out, "turns out I wasn't so lucky after all. Can you spot me a few hundred dollars? I kind of bet over my head."
He entered the kitchen and flew into a rage.
"What in the fuck did you morons do to this place?" he roared. "Is this what I pay you for?"
His rant ceased when he saw Baxter. Claude must've reminded him more of his former employer than Chip did because he decided to go for him instead. He didn't have a chance of getting away.
"Help me," Claude screamed as Baxter was dragging him away.
It was only upon hearing the fryer turn on did we break out of our paralysis and go after them. We got to them too late. Despite us cleaning the fryer earlier, it was now refilled and heated. The only thing we saw was Claude's burned hand sinking into it. The fryer then began rapidly vibrating and sparking. That was a clear sign to get the hell out of there and this time we didn't forget our keys.
Soon after we got out, the fryer exploded in the kitchen, resulting in a fire. The following week was hectic. The story we gave was that the fire was a freak accident and Chip's dad sadly perished in it. Seeing as how the building's wiring hadn't been upgraded since the 70s, that wasn't hard to believe. Chip made it onto the local news and was interviewed about the incident.
We wished him our condolences. Even though he thought his dad was an asshole, he did have a soft spot for the man. He told us thanks and said at least it meant Baxter won't ever return. Not to mention, insurance gave him a large payout which gave him the funds to attend college. As for us, we got jobs at a Waffle House that opened soon after Claude's fire.
There, we were able to save up and eventually moved away as well. Spencer and I talk on occasion and he's told me Angelo and Chip are doing good. The former works as an artist and the latter opened his own restaurant where his workers get treated fairly. Spencer works as an independent welding contractor and I took an interest in the paranormal and history so I decided to become a museum tourer.
In conclusion, if you have to work where a ghost will be on the anniversary of the night they swore to exact terrible vengeance, maybe utilize one of your sick days or you could end up burned like Baxter or Claude.
2023.04.07 17:50 Euronotus 98S (Invest — Southeastern Indian)
Latest observation
| ATCF | 3:30 PM ACST (06:00 UTC) | |
|---|---|---|
| Current location: | 13.1°S 123.1°E | |
| Relative location: | 546 km (339 mi) NNE of Broome, Western Australia | |
| Forward motion: | SW (245°) at 12 km/h (7 knots) | |
| Maximum winds: | 85 km/h (45 knots) | |
| Minimum pressure: | 998 millibars (29.47 inches) | |
| Potential (2-day): | High (90+ percent) | |
| Potential (5-day): | High (90+ percent) |
Latest news
A tropical cyclone is likely to develop over the Timor Sea later today
Satellite imagery analysis indicates that a disturbance situated over the Timor Sea continues to become better organized this afternoon. Animated infrared imagery depicts spiral bands of deep convection wrapping into the disturbance's low-level center, which remains partially exposed by persistent easterly shear. The low-level center has been obscured for some time by an expanding central dense overcast. Intensity estimates derived from satellite imagery analysis indicate that the disturbance is maintaining strength, with maximum sustained winds holding steady near 85 kilometers per hour (45 knots).Environmental conditions over the southeastern Indian Ocean have been gradually improving throughout the day and should support further development. As shear continues to weaken, warm sea-surface temperatures, abundant mid-level moisture, and strong upper-level divergence will allow the disturbance to develop a more organized vertical structure and begin to steadily strengthen later tonight or on Tuesday. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center is forecasting that the disturbance could reach hurricane-equivalent strength as early as Tuesday morning. As the cyclone moves along the northwestern periphery of a subtropical ridge, it will turn southward toward Australia's Pilbara Coast on Wednesday.
The cyclone will reach its peak intensity of Category 4 hurricane-equivalent strength on Thursday morning as it makes its final approach toward land east of Port Headland. The cyclone will rapidly weaken as it moves across the dry terrain of Australia's interior on Friday, ultimately degenerating into a remnant low over South Australia on Saturday morning. Flooding is a serious concern over a large portion of the country as this system moves ashore and races across the country through the end of the week.
Official forecasts
Australia Bureau of Meteorology
Monday, 10 April — 10:30 AM ACST (01:00 UTC)(Note: Wind speeds have been converted from ten-minute values to one-minute values.)
| Hour | Date | Time | Intensity | Winds | Lat | Long | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | UTC | ACST | BOM | knots | km/h | °S | °E | ||
| 00 | 10 Apr | 01:00 | 10AM Mon | Tropical Low | 35 | 65 | 12.6 | 124.0 | |
| 12 | 10 Apr | 13:00 | 10PM Mon | Cyclone (Category 1) | ▲ | 45 | 85 | 13.2 | 122.6 |
| 24 | 11 Apr | 01:00 | 10AM Tue | Cyclone (Category 1) | ▲ | 50 | 95 | 13.8 | 121.5 |
| 36 | 11 Apr | 13:00 | 10PM Tue | Cyclone (Category 2) | ▲ | 70 | 130 | 14.5 | 120.7 |
| 48 | 12 Apr | 01:00 | 10AM Wed | Severe Cyclone (Category 3) | ▲ | 90 | 165 | 15.2 | 120.0 |
| 72 | 13 Apr | 01:00 | 10AM Thu | Severe Cyclone (Category 4) | ▼ | 115 | 215 | 17.4 | 119.2 |
| 96 | 14 Apr | 01:00 | 10AM Fri | Cyclone (Category 2) | ▲ | 55 | 100 | 21.8 | 123.0 |
Joint Typhoon Warning Center
Monday, 10 April — 12:30 PM ACST (03:00 UTC) JTWC Warning #6| Hour | Date | Time | Intensity | Winds | Lat | Long | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | UTC | ACST | Saffir-Simpson | knots | km/h | °N | °E | ||
| 00 | 10 Apr | 00:00 | 9AM Mon | Tropical Storm | 50 | 95 | 13.6 | 123.4 | |
| 12 | 10 Apr | 12:00 | 9PM Mon | Tropical Storm | ▲ | 55 | 100 | 14.3 | 122.0 |
| 24 | 11 Apr | 00:00 | 9AM Tue | Hurricane (Cat 1) | ▲ | 70 | 130 | 15.0 | 120.9 |
| 36 | 11 Apr | 12:00 | 9PM Tue | Hurricane (Cat 2) | ▲ | 85 | 155 | 15.6 | 120.3 |
| 48 | 12 Apr | 00:00 | 9AM Wed | Major Hurricane (Cat 3) | ▲ | 105 | 195 | 16.5 | 119.7 |
| 72 | 13 Apr | 00:00 | 9AM Thu | Major Hurricane (Cat 4) | ▲ | 125 | 230 | 18.9 | 119.4 |
| 96 | 14 Apr | 00:00 | 9AM Fri | Tropical Storm | ▼ | 55 | 100 | 23.2 | 123.7 |
| 120 | 15 Apr | 00:00 | 9AM Sat | Remnant Low | ▼ | 30 | 55 | 28.5 | 134.4 |
Official outlooks
Bureau of Meteorology (Australia)
Tropical-cyclone specific products
- Tropical cyclone main page
- Forecast track map
- Tropical cyclone advice
- Ocean wind warning
- Tropical cyclone technical bulletin
Advisories and warnings
Joint Typhoon Warning Center (United States)
Radar imagery
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512-kilometer Radar Composites
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Satellite imagery
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Conventional Imagery
UW-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS)
CSU Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch (RAAMB)
Naval Research Laboratory
Regional imagery
Bureau of Meteorology (Australia)
UW-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS)
- CIMSS: Enhanced infrared
- CIMSS: Enhanced Water vapor
- CIMSS: Visible
Analysis graphics and data
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2023.03.29 23:37 lasocs StarTribune: Minnesota lawmakers target disinformation in election bill
 | submitted by lasocs to stateofMN [link] [comments] |
2023.03.27 12:54 okllamamama On March 31st, 2020, Beth Potter and her husband, Robin Carre, were found shot to death in UW-Madison's arboretum. Both were killed by their daughter's then-boyfriend.
 | Just thought I'd share one of the cases from my hometown that has always disturbed me...not sure if this has been posted & hope I'm doing this right. This is a bit long...but I know how much I enjoy it when you guys write up lengthy posts. submitted by okllamamama to TrueCrime [link] [comments] *** Beth Potter (52) and her husband, Robin Carre (57), were both found shot and left for dead in a ditch on the chilly morning of March 31st, 2020. On March 31, 2020 at 6:28AM, Madison Police were dispatched to the UW Arboretum in reference to a report from two joggers that they had stumbled across what appeared to be two human bodies covered in blood laying alongside the trail. The bodies were discovered only a few hundred yards away from the Arboretum entrance. When police arrived at the Arboretum, they were met with a horrifying scene. According to the criminal complaint, Beth and Robin were found off the roadside, surrounded by pools of blood and shell casings, indicating that the crime had occurred at the site. Prosecutors would later describe the killings as “execution-style” and "calculated, cold-blooded, and senseless." Although it was only 30 degrees that morning, Beth was found in only her socks and pajamas, with no shoes, and Robin was discovered lying face down in his underwear with a visible head wound. When paramedics arrived, Beth appeared to be showing minimal signs of life but was sadly pronounced deceased at UW-Hospital at 7:54AM. Robin was pronounced dead at the scene and was "cold to the touch," according to responding Officers. The autopsy revealed that both had been shot in the head at close range, with Beth suffering from gunshot wounds to the back of her head and upper arm and Robin suffering from a gunshot wound to the left side of his head. https://preview.redd.it/q5sl08vcgaqa1.png?width=1428&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f7dc493640cdf1dd0566cbeb1d2e2c0480ba620 The VictimsBeth Potter was a family medicine physician, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the director of Employment Health Services for UW Health. She would later be pronounced dead at the very hospital she was affiliated with. Beth’s husband, Robin, had a PhD in European History and was an educator and coaching director at the Regent Soccer Club. Both Beth & Robin were beloved members of the community and were described as having a reputation of being generous and extremely kind. You can read their obituaries here. Beth Potter and her husband Robin Carre Escalating TensionsBeth and Robin had three children, including their adopted daughter, Miriam Potter Carre. Before the murders of Beth & Robin took place, Miriam had been dating one of her fellow classmates, Khari Sanford. They began dating in 2019.Khari came from a challenging background; He had experienced homelessness, significant child-hood trauma, conflicts with his previous foster parents, and had attempted suicide on several occasions preceding the murders. According to court documents and interviews, Khari and Miriam also had an extremely turbulent relationship and were frequently in conflict with Miriam’s parents, Beth & Robin. Miriam testified that Khari had told her he “felt like a slave” living under the rules set by Miriam’s parents. On the stand, Miriam told the court that as their relationship progressed, her parents had become increasingly concerned that the relationship was negatively impacting her mental health and grades; Miriam read a text exchange between them where they both expressed their annoyance with Miriam's parents' "white savior" complex, to which Khari responded via text that it was "cool" because they were "gonna die." Miriam claimed that she did not take his statement literally because Khari had a pattern of using violent language when he was upset. Shortly before school was canceled due to COVID in March 2020, a classmate came forward with information regarding a conversation he had overheard between Miriam & Khari during their ceramics class. The witness stated that he overheard them discussing how they could get money and that Miriam told Khari that her parents had "bands" of money. A forensic search also extracted a photo (pictured below) from Miriam's phone that showed Khari pointing a "glock handgun" at the lens, which was sent to Miriam during November 2019. Up until approximately two weeks before the murders, Beth & Robin had allowed Khari to reside at their home with them. Friction quickly emerged due to the Potter-Carres' household rules, such as curfews or restrictions on sleeping in the same room. Miriam testified that Khari rarely interacted with her parents and that he would sometimes even refuse to respond when they greeted him. Tension between the couple and Miriam’s parents further escalated due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to one of Beth's colleagues, Beth was immunocompromised due to the medications she was on. The complaint stated that Beth had told a colleague just before her murder that she was extremely frustrated and stressed because Miriam & Khari were failing to abide by their COVID protocols, such as quarantining and social distancing. Conflict over the household rules in conjunction with COVID guidelines prompted Beth & Robin to rent an Airbnb for Miriam & Khari to move into until they could find permanent housing. The Airbnb had been rented just two weeks prior to their deaths. Photo that Khari sent Miriam in November 2019. The Night of March 30thAccording to Miriam’s testimony, who was granted immunity, on the night of March 30th, Miriam & Khari were watching the Hangover 2 at their Airbnb. At around 10:15PM, Khari told Miriam that he was going to borrow and drive Robin’s white van (pictured below) to a pawn shop nearby. Around 11:00PM, Miriam began to send Khari numerous texts and calls but was unable to reach him. Phone records revealed that she texted Khari “At least bring back the car and have someone get you from here. I don’t feel safe here,” and then minutes later “why would you put me in this position.”Khari never responded to Miriam’s efforts to get ahold of him but returned later around midnight with his friend, Ali’jah Larrue, who Miriam claimed she did not know well. Cell site data recorded that Khari's phone was back at their Airbnb at 12:10AM. When Miriam asked them where they had been, neither disclosed to her where they had been or what they had been doing. The next morning, Khari and Miriam woke up around 11:00AM, and Khari suggested to Miriam that they drive to the Arboretum to smoke. When they arrived, police were everywhere, and Miriam testified that when she first heard the news of the discovered bodies and relayed this to Khari, he responded with “That’s crazy.” Later that evening, Miriam would discover that the bodies in the news belonged to her parents, and she stated that she ceased all communications with Khari from that day forward. Photo of the white van that Miriam's parents lent her and Khari. This was the van used to kidnap and transport Beth & Robin. Investigation, Arrest, and TrialKhari and Ali'jah were both arrested in early April, 2020 by Madison Police in connection with the murders of Beth Potter & Robin Carre and were subsequently charged on April 16th, 2022. Investigation following the murders revealed through surveillance footage and cell-phone data that the white van loaned to Miriam and Khari by her parents and that was driven by Khari on March 30th, had visited both Beth & Robins' residence as well as the Arboretum on the night of the murders. Further analysis revealed that Khari’s friend, Ali'jah's cell phone records were consistent with the coordinates of Khari and the van.Testimony from Ali'jah Larrue During Khari's trial, which began on May 17th, 2022, Ali'jah, a key witness for the prosecution, told the court he had known Khari since middle school, and that although he had been present the night of the murders, he had no prior knowledge of Khari's plan to kidnap and kill Beth & Robin. Like Miriam and Khari, Ali'jah was also enrolled at West High School at the time of the murders. According to Ali'jah's testimony regarding what occurred on the night of March 30th, Ali'jah stated that Khari had asked him to hangout, and had later picked him up in the van. Later that night, Khari & Ali'jah drove to the residence of Beth & Robin, where Khari parked the car and entered the home. Ali'jah told the court that he saw Khari exit the home with Beth & Robin, with his gun pointed at their backs. Khari forced the couple into the van and demanded that Ali'jah drive to the UW Arboretum. Ali'jah testified that he remembered being frightened, "because I didn't know what was going to happen...there was a gun involved and people I didn't know." Ali'jah recalled that during the car ride, Khari berated the couple with questions, asking "the male and female why they didn't care for their daughter." Ali'jah further stated that Beth had attempted to answer but Khari refused to allow either of them to speak. After they arrived at the Arboretum, Ali'jah said that Khari quickly exited the vehicle, ordered Beth & Robin to get out, and then proceeded to shoot Robin first, followed by Beth. Khari then demanded that Ali'jah drive them both back to the Airbnb. Beth & Robin were left behind at the Arboretum. Additional Evidence & Testimony The prosecution would argue that on March 30th, Khari and Ali’jah had driven to the Potter-Carre residence, kidnapped the couple at gunpoint, and then forced them into the van. The van was then driven to the Arboretum, where Beth & Robin were both shot in the head and abandoned. Further, although Robin was pronounced dead at the scene the following morning on March 31st, Beth had managed to survive until around 8:00AM that morning. Prosecutor Brown made note of this in his opening statement, telling the jury that Beth had "died the next morning in the hospital, after remaining alive in the ditch throughout the night next to her dead husband.” Footage recovered near the Airbnb also captured Khari & Ali'jah returning to their Airbnb on the night of March 30th and discarding evidence into the woods nearby, including mail addressed to Beth and a broken cell phone. Ali'jah further testified that both he & Khari had used baby wipes to clean the inside of the van after Beth & Robin had been shot. On April 4th, another witness came forward, informing officers that he had overheard a phone call between Khari and Ali'jah on March 31st. The witness claimed that after Khari learned that one of the victims was still possibly alive (Beth), he told Ali'jah, “I swear I hit them, how did they survive.” Khari also allegedly told the witness that he had shot both victims in “the back of the head,” and that Alijah had been present during the shooting. Additional surveillance video was also produced during trial that captured Khari at an ATM using the victims' debit cards days after the murders. The footage showed Khari attempting but failing to withdraw several denominations of $300 because he did not have the cards' pin numbers. Other evidence came from the digital forensics analyzed on Khari's phone during the night of the murders and shortly after them. Phone records showed that Khari had googled the address of Beth & Robins' residence using McDonald's wifi and that his phone had connected to the Potter-Carre home wifi not long after. Following the days after the murders, Khari's phone browser history contained searches such as "how long does it take to know who died?" and "how long does it take to die?" Data also showed that Khari's "find my phone" feature had been disabled following the murder and that a police traffic scanner was downloaded and then quickly deleted from his phone at 4:08 a.m. on March 31st. Sentencing & AftermathKhari Sandford was found guilty of two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in May 2022. Khari was sentenced to two life sentences without the opportunity for parole, and his accomplice, Ali’jah Larrue, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony murder kidnapping as a party to a crime. Ali’jah was sentenced to eight years, followed by 10 years of supervised release.Both Khari and Ali'jah expressed their regret in court for the roles they played in the deaths of Beth & Robin. Khari told the court: "Potter and Carre saw my potential, accepted my adversities and took me in. So that was me, in the home of Beth and Robin, with mental health issues, not communicating very well, smoking weed, disobeying rules and procrastinating way too much about my future because I was too frantically in love to care." Ali'jah expressed remorse as well, saying: "Thirty months later, I still don't know why this took place. I blame myself every night for not calling police." Although Miriam was never charged in connection with the death of her parents, an attorney for the estate of Potter and Carre have filed a petition requesting that Miriam be excluded from any inheritance contained in the deceased' wills. Beth & Robin are survived by their three children, Jonah, Ezra, and Miriam. https://preview.redd.it/tu5v49d1gaqa1.png?width=1322&format=png&auto=webp&s=3cee91cfbbd8c781be630da8dace017e533dedf0 Another photo of Beth Potter & Robin Carre If you've gotten this far...thank you for bearing with me, and I hope it was sorta worth your time. Curious to hear peoples' thoughts on the case. Some Sources: (others linked throughout the article) Civil Suit Criminal Complaint Channel 3000 Article Law & Crime Article WI State Journal Ali'jah Larrue Testimony Another Good Recap of the Case |
2023.03.19 22:04 afterandalasia What caused Encephalitis Lethargica? Was it autoimmune or viral? Does it continue to occur? And why did L-DOPA cause such incredible improvements in patients - only to end in such terrible declines? Medical Mystery
Encephalitis Lethargica is a condition that not many people have heard of - but then again, it has been almost a century since a pandemic of it swept slowly around the world. A condition of unknown cause and unknown origin, people who developed it would go from a sore throat and disordered sleep, to apparent recovery. Then, months or even years later, symptoms would return and worsen - not just disordered sleep but a body that grew stiff and unresponsive, a mind that grew lethargic and delayed, and sometimes even an apparent coma.
Many survivors of Encephalitis Lethargica lived like this for decades, barely aware or reacting to the outside world, until 1969 when the drug l-DOPA was tested and showed extraordinary improvements. People became aware of themselves, able to move again, and in many cases had to grapple with the decades that had passed. But from the beginning of the treatment, there were signs of side-effects and poor outcomes, and over time all of the patients returned to their catatonic state.
This week will be putting the history before the science of the story, because the root cause is unknown. But that does not mean scientists are not searching for it.
Signs are objective or observable indications of disease or injury, such as a rash, fever, or swelling. The vital signs are considered the most important, and are temperature, pulse, breathing rate, and blood pressure.
Symptoms are indications of disease or injury experienced by the patient. The most notable is often pain. Symptoms can also include dizziness, nausea, fatigue, hallucinations, and emotional or psychological effects such as depression or anxiety.
Syndromes are defined by a set of signs and/or symptoms. They may not have a known cause, or may have multiple possible causes (for example, hepatitis can be caused by a number of viruses). The term "syndrome" is still widely used in psychology because much of the brain is not yet fully understood.
Diseases are syndromes with a known specific cause, for example flu as caused by the influenza virus, epidemic typhus as called by the Rickettsia prowazekii bacterium, or rickets as caused by vitamin D deficiency. (The exception is medical genetics, where "syndrome" is used when the genetic cause is known, and "association" when it is unknown - for example Down's Syndrome vs VACTERL Association.)
Therefore Encephalitis Lethargica is currently properly a syndrome, as its cause is not yet confirmed.
In the first stage of the disease, von Economo noted that his patients had the initial sore throat, disordered sleep, and sometimes fixed eye positions or uncontrolled eye movements. Recovery seemed to occur for some length of time, before the disease returned and progressed in one of three forms:
Between 1915 and 1927, outbreaks of the syndrome were recognised across the world, city by city, country by country. Then, seemingly as abruptly as they had appeared, new infections dwindled and vanished again - leaving only the chronic form behind.
People who had experienced Encephalitis Lethargica, especially those with the amyostatic-akinetic form, would often begin to experience symptoms again. First, sleep disturbances would return, with extreme sleepiness, sleep inversion (sleeping during the day and being awake at night, against their own wishes), insomnia, and being easily awoken from sleep. Then the body would begin to become unresponsive, stiffening and slowing, until movement became difficult or even impossible. Survivors would later report that at the same time, they often found themselves experiencing abulia or the lack of will to act.
This was termed Postencephalitic Parkinsonism, because it strongly resembled the effects of Parkinson's Disease. Parkinson's had been named in 1817 and had been studied since, but usually occurred in those over the age of 60. Postencephalitic Parkinsonism, however, was seen among survivors of all ages, even down to children under five.
(Parkinsonism is a condition marked by the symptoms of tremor, slow movement, rigidity, and unsteadiness. It can be caused by a number of diseases, including Parkinson's Disease.)
Even now, long-term medical facilities, especially those of a psychiatric bent, do not tend to be pleasant places to stay. In the 1920s and 1930s, they could be downright soul-crushing. As their bodies slowly lost function, many sufferers found themselves in these long-term medical or psychiatric facilities, depressed and alone, apparently apathetic to or unaware of the world around them. Many of them would stay there for decades until a doctor called Oliver Sacks hit upon an idea.
See also:
Even von Economo, in 1917 and in his later, longer 1929 paper, recognised that the condition was due to something having an effect on or damaging the brain. He performed necropsies on the two out of his original seven patients who had died. Some of those who went on to die from Encephalitis Lethargica had parts or the whole of their brains preserved, and a number of these still exist at the time of writing.
In the necropsies, von Economo found evidence of increased spinal fluid pressure, insufficient blood flow to the brain and spinal cord, cells around the brain's blood vessels ("perivascular cellular infiltration"), and signs that neurons were dying and white blood cells breaking them down ("neuronophagia"). This pointed to some sort of inflammation or immune system involvement, but could not give detailed information.
In 1920, McIntosh and Turnbull, in Britain, described the necropsies of two monkeys they had infected with Encephalitis Lethargica, a rhesus and a patas monkey. The brain of the patas monkey showed noticeable damage to the basal ganglia, especially the substantia nigra. The basal ganglia are nuclei (collections of neurons) deep inside the brain which connect various parts of the brain together and are therefore involved in movement, learning, eye movement and emotion. The substantia nigra is found in the midbrain, and is the largest nucleus of the basal ganglia. It is involved in eye movement, learning, and addiction, because it contains the parts of the brain that respond to dopamine.
We'll come back to dopamine in a minute. Because damage to the basal ganglia, those connections between different parts of the brain that allow increased complexity of behaviour and control of different things at once, does look to explain the symptoms - and variety of symptoms - experienced by sufferers of Encephalitis Lethargica.
First, basal ganglia are involved in eye movement. Deliberate eye movement, including focusing, actually involves multiple parts of the brain, including the substantia nigra. The basal ganglia allows these parts to connect, allowing purposeful and controlled eye movement. In sufferers of Encephalitis Lethargica, one symptom often considered telling are oculogyric crises, in which one or both eyes look sharply upwards, accompanied with pain and increased blinking. In later years, it was often noted that patients would look at something if directed to do so, but did not often voluntary move their eyes of their own accord.
Secondly, basal ganglia (specifically the substantia nigra) are involved in motivation and reward processing via dopamine. Note that Encephalitis Lethargica patients reported that abulia, a lack of motivation or will to act. Again, in later years many patients would move if asked or told to do so, and if physically placed in a position would hold it for extended periods of time or only slowly move out of it.
Thirdly, the basal ganglia is involved in working memory. This is also known as short-term memory (some people separate the two, but not all) and covers what someone is able to not just store but also to engage with and manipulate information. In Awakenings, Oliver Sachs describes how some patients had no idea that decades had passed while they were experiencing symptoms - they simply had not been able to process or understand it.
Fourthly, the basal ganglia is involved in controlling movement. By connecting various areas of the brain (the arcuate premotor area, the supplementary motor area, the motor cortext - the names are long, but they all include "motor" because they relate to movement) the basal ganglia helps the brain to control conscious and deliberate movement. Patients with Encephalitis Lethargica obviously had issues with this, be it the short-term overdrive of movement or the longer term parkinsonism that marked the decades-long cases.
Finally, it appears that the basal ganglia is involved in sleep patterns, although research in this area is still ongoing. A detailed paper in 2013 (Lazarus et al) shows progress in scientific understanding of this, but since sleep in general is still being understood, unsurprisingly there is a way to go. Encephalitis Lethargica, obviously, has from the beginning been largely defined by its sleep disturbances.
So it looks as if this one relatively small area of the brain could indeed cause all of these problems to be associated. But that did not necessarily bring doctors any closer to a treatment or cure - brains, after all, are a particularly difficult part of the body to understand or to work with. A little more understanding was needed to take another step forwards.
Adrenaline (epinephrine in US English) is known as the "flight or fight" hormone, but can be thought of more broadly as preparing the body for activity through the sympathetic nervous system. It can increase heart rate, breathing rate, and blood sugar. In the 1930s-40s, it was established that the body made adrenaline using noradrenaline; it was then found that noradrenaline was made using dopamine.
Dopamine was identified in human brains by Katharine Montagu in 1957. The following year, Arvid Carlsson and his team showed that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in its own right - that is, it had effects on cells, rather than existing only to be made into noradrenaline. He also showed that dopamine was found in higher concentrations in the basal ganglia, and that giving animals a drug to lower dopamine levels caused those animals to have difficulty controlling their movements. These effects appeared similar to Parkinsonism.
While known in pop culture as the "pleasure" hormone, dopamine is scientifically described as being more of a "motivation" hormone; dopamine signals whether something is desirable. This helps to drive decision-making. Like many things, however, dopamine cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. In 1939, it was found that the body made dopamine using a substance called L-DOPA, and that L-DOPA can cross the blood-brain barrier. L-DOPA is converted to dopamine inside nerve cells, using Vitamin B6 - and not using the enzyme TH which would usually limit how much dopamine could be created.
Carlsson and his team took the animals showing Parkinsonism and treated them with L-DOPA. Their symptoms seemed improved, and a glimmer of hope was seen. In the mid-1960s, several doctors tried treating patients with Parkinson's Disease with L-DOPA, but found that side-effects (especially gastrointestinal) were too severe. American-Greek scientist George Cotzias came up with the idea of giving small doses of L-DOPA every two hours and slowly building them over time, allowing the gradual increase in dosage to be tolerated by the body.
This was an incredible breakthrough. To the present day, L-DOPA is considered the most effective treatment of Parkinson's Disease.
See also:
For the first few years in which Sacks worked at the hospital, efforts were made but little progress could be made for any of the patients. They were brought together into a community and encouraged to interact, with nurses and doctors also encouraged to behave more warmly and to develop a sense of community. However, Sacks notes in his book Awakenings that while some improvement to the living conditions of the patients were made, there was little to no practical progress made or even possible.
At the end of 1969, the cost of L-DOPA decreased, and the Beth Abraham Hospital was able to purchase enough to begin trials with patients. It began as a blind trial: half of the patients received L-DOPA, while half received a placebo. But the results were shocking, as the patients receiving treatment began to speak, to move voluntarily, and to interact with the world, while the group receiving a placebo showed no such improvement indicating that the placebo effect was little to none. Feeling it unethical to deprive the placebo group of a drug which was so clearly working, Sacks placed all of his patients on L-DOPA.
The results can be read about, case by case, in the book Awakenings. Every patient had a different experience of L-DOPA - perhaps some of this could be expected, as each one had a somewhat different experience of postencephalitic parkinsonism, likely due to different damage having been done to their basal ganglia during the initial infection or its resurgence. However, the variation in results was considerable and, in some cases, frightening.
In the best cases, patients recovered some of their faculties with relatively minor side effects. An example of this would be Magda B., one of the case studies.
As described before L-DOPA:
However, Magda B. was the exception, and not the rule, in having her condition stabilise and her negative outcomes stay minimal. At the other extreme of results was Frank G. As described before L-DOPA:
The patients were not, however, passive victims of medical experimentation. While Sacks estimated that around half of the patients were "immersed in states of pathological ‘sleep'", the others were more active and engaged. It must be presumed that Sacks or one of the other doctors discussed the discovery of L-DOPA with them, as he reports several inquiring about it before the price dropped and the trial at the hospital became possible. Moreover, reading through the case studies it is clear that as the patients became more engaged, they were able to be actively involved in deciding whether or not to continue on L-DOPA, to gauge for themselves whether they found the positive effects to be "worth" the negative ones.
Some of the patients clearly regretted their time on L-DOPA - notably the first case study, Frances D., who developed severe breathing problems culminating in a 60-hour spate of her body locking into place and being unable to breathe, cut through with screaming terror that even strong sedatives would only counter for minutes at a time. She then passed into a very deep sleep for 24 hours, and on awakening experienced worse parkinsonism symptoms than she ever had before. She whispered that the drug should be called "Hell-DOPA".
After some time, she agreed to starting on the drug again, but still ended up with repeated five-week cycles of effectiveness, then worsening symptoms, then having to stop taking the drugs and go through a withdrawl. However, she continued to choose to take the drug rather than return to her condition without out.
However, somewhere over the years, the narrative shifted. Because the height of the Encephalitis Lethargica pandemic seems to have also been in 1918-9, for some decades the two were linked. I first heard about the condition on a Parcast podcast called Medical Mysteries, which very strongly linked World War One, the influenza pandemic, and Encephalitis Lethargica together into one continuous narrative.
However, we have seen in the world that it's quite possible to have more than one epidemic or pandemic at once. In autumn 2022 to winter 2023, the USA faced a so-called "tripledemic", as the covid-19 pandemic continued to significantly affect people while influenza and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus, another upper respiratory tract infection) also reached pandemic status. HIV/AIDS has been an ongoing pandemic since the 1970s, while the Seventh Cholera Pandemic has been going since 1961, and TB (tuberculosis) has never really loosened its grip. It is more than possible for multiple diseases to turn into epidemics or pandemics at the same time - no matter how much we might wish otherwise.
By the 1980s, evidence was pointing towards a viral infection - but there are likely millions of viruses out there. (Don't worry, only a tiny fraction of those infect humans.) In the following years, tentative steps were made towards identifying a cause.
However, many of these case reports have a similar "acute" phase of fever, sore throat, and headache. These are far from uncommon symptoms, but many diseases have other signs or symptoms which would make them easier to differentiate. And, whether it is one cause or several, why are these individuals experiencing nervous system symptoms, and why is the damage occurring to the basal ganglia?
But as well as modern cases, interest in the pandemic has never really faded, and in 2012 an exciting paper was published by Dourmashkin et al which might have narrowed down the suspects. Remember those brains that were preserved? Dourmashkin's team examined them using an electron microscope and various complicated immunological equipment. The results pointed to three main suspects: parvovirus, enterovirus, or annellovirus. Parvovirus requires rapidly dividing cells, which are not found in the brain, and annellovirus has never been found to cause disease. This puts the spotlight firmly on enterovirus.
Enteroviruses are a genus of RNA viruses - they mutate quickly, recombine ("viral sex", as discussed in my Influenza post) and just love infecting humans. Rhinoviruses, best known for the common cold, are also enteroviruses. Most enteroviruses are spread by respiratory secretions and/or the fecal-oral route.
There is also an enteroviruses which you've probably heard of - Polio virus, the virus behind nearly-extinct disease poliomyelitis or polio. Polio is interesting - around 75% of people show no symptoms when infected, and around 24% have minor illness which could easily be mistaken for the common cold. But in that last 1%, the virus enters the central nervous system, causing meningitis, and in a fraction of those cases it causes the famous ascending paralysis. Polio is now on the verge of eradication, with cases reduced globally by over 99% and two of the three identified strains now extinct in the wild. But there was a time when it terrified the USA, and with survivors still alive the fear of it has never quite vanished.
So in the polioviruses, we have evidence of enteroviruses that are able to in rare cases make the leap into the central nervous system. Could another enterovirus, perhaps one now extinct, have caused the 1915-27 pandemic? Dourmashkin's study of the enteroviruses which their team found indicated that it was related to a number of known extant viruses, but did not exactly match any of them.
However, the paper from Dale et al in 2004 (as listed above) "showed that 95% of EL patients had autoantibodies reactive against human basal ganglia antigens". In clearer words, almost all of the patients had their immune systems targeting their own brains. Perhaps this is at least one piece of the puzzle.
In my research, I have seen papers comparing its lingering effects to those of Long Covid. I have seen some papers that claim Encephalitis Lethargica was caused by a coronavirus, although frankly this seems to be part of a trend of seeing coronaviruses throughout history, and calling for people to stop using the term feels a little bit like shouting at the clouds. Some comparisons also seem under-informed, like a 2021 paper which still suggests a link with the influenza pandemic even though influenza has not been shown to cause these sort of central nervous system diseases, and the Encephalitis Lethargica pandemic came first. It seems that Encephalitis Lethargica is somehow "trendy" again - hopefully this means at least some of the research into it will actually bring results.
Reading Awakenings is by turns touching, harrowing, enlightening and scary. The layout of the case studies makes the reader all the more aware of these patients as people, some of them only children when they became ill and hospitalised. The narrative is raw, and does not shy away from sharing the pain of the patients in their own words, as well as discussing Sacks's experiences throughout the event. His hope, his disappointment, his tempered view of the outcomes.
Sacks discusses the course of treatment for each patient individually, their ups and downs, the positive and negative ways in which medication affected them, and their outcomes. Some faced premature deaths. Some stabilised. Others made gains only to lose them again, and while some regretted it others were thankful for the opportunity. Every case study seems to invite the reader to ask themselves: would you risk L-DOPA for the chance to move and to feel emotions again?
My major sources were:
My previous medical posts:
submitted by afterandalasia to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]
Many survivors of Encephalitis Lethargica lived like this for decades, barely aware or reacting to the outside world, until 1969 when the drug l-DOPA was tested and showed extraordinary improvements. People became aware of themselves, able to move again, and in many cases had to grapple with the decades that had passed. But from the beginning of the treatment, there were signs of side-effects and poor outcomes, and over time all of the patients returned to their catatonic state.
This week will be putting the history before the science of the story, because the root cause is unknown. But that does not mean scientists are not searching for it.
Background - Definitions
Because I'll be bouncing around some fiddly words, I'm going to put some definitions just at the top.Signs are objective or observable indications of disease or injury, such as a rash, fever, or swelling. The vital signs are considered the most important, and are temperature, pulse, breathing rate, and blood pressure.
Symptoms are indications of disease or injury experienced by the patient. The most notable is often pain. Symptoms can also include dizziness, nausea, fatigue, hallucinations, and emotional or psychological effects such as depression or anxiety.
Syndromes are defined by a set of signs and/or symptoms. They may not have a known cause, or may have multiple possible causes (for example, hepatitis can be caused by a number of viruses). The term "syndrome" is still widely used in psychology because much of the brain is not yet fully understood.
Diseases are syndromes with a known specific cause, for example flu as caused by the influenza virus, epidemic typhus as called by the Rickettsia prowazekii bacterium, or rickets as caused by vitamin D deficiency. (The exception is medical genetics, where "syndrome" is used when the genetic cause is known, and "association" when it is unknown - for example Down's Syndrome vs VACTERL Association.)
Therefore Encephalitis Lethargica is currently properly a syndrome, as its cause is not yet confirmed.
Background - The Encephalitis Lethargica Pandemic
In May 1917, Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Constantin von Economo published a paper discussing and linking seven unusual cases he had seen over the previous winter. It was published in Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, a German-language publication which sadly does not appear to have been digitised, but his description of the syndrome which he described as Encephalitis Lethargica and which others would sometimes call von Economo's Disease or Sleepy Sickness would be foundational for its understanding.In the first stage of the disease, von Economo noted that his patients had the initial sore throat, disordered sleep, and sometimes fixed eye positions or uncontrolled eye movements. Recovery seemed to occur for some length of time, before the disease returned and progressed in one of three forms:
- somnolent-ophthalmoplegic - "somnolent" here meant extreme sleepiness, confusion, lack of will to act, and eventual stupor or coma; "ophthalmoplegic" indicated that this form often involved fixed eye positions, uncontrolled eye movements or twitching; this form was often fatal.
- amyostatic–akinetic - "amyostatic" is an older term for what is now called Parkinsonism, covering tremors, rigidity of muscles and slowed movements; "akinetic" means without the normal ability to move muscles at all; this form was often recoverable.
- hyperkinetic - this form involved restlessness, sleeplessness, chorea or uncontrolled jerky muscle movements, and sometimes mania or visual hallucinations; this form could be fatal if sleep could not be achieved, and the deaths of some sufferers after two weeks without sleep started to make it clear to the medical community that sleep was a necessity for the body.
Between 1915 and 1927, outbreaks of the syndrome were recognised across the world, city by city, country by country. Then, seemingly as abruptly as they had appeared, new infections dwindled and vanished again - leaving only the chronic form behind.
People who had experienced Encephalitis Lethargica, especially those with the amyostatic-akinetic form, would often begin to experience symptoms again. First, sleep disturbances would return, with extreme sleepiness, sleep inversion (sleeping during the day and being awake at night, against their own wishes), insomnia, and being easily awoken from sleep. Then the body would begin to become unresponsive, stiffening and slowing, until movement became difficult or even impossible. Survivors would later report that at the same time, they often found themselves experiencing abulia or the lack of will to act.
This was termed Postencephalitic Parkinsonism, because it strongly resembled the effects of Parkinson's Disease. Parkinson's had been named in 1817 and had been studied since, but usually occurred in those over the age of 60. Postencephalitic Parkinsonism, however, was seen among survivors of all ages, even down to children under five.
(Parkinsonism is a condition marked by the symptoms of tremor, slow movement, rigidity, and unsteadiness. It can be caused by a number of diseases, including Parkinson's Disease.)
Even now, long-term medical facilities, especially those of a psychiatric bent, do not tend to be pleasant places to stay. In the 1920s and 1930s, they could be downright soul-crushing. As their bodies slowly lost function, many sufferers found themselves in these long-term medical or psychiatric facilities, depressed and alone, apparently apathetic to or unaware of the world around them. Many of them would stay there for decades until a doctor called Oliver Sacks hit upon an idea.
See also:
- Encephalitis: Historical Review and Perspective - Henry W. Woltman, 1957. This piece gives a detailed summary of von Economo's findings.
Background - The Science of Brains
(Or at least, a little bit of it.)Even von Economo, in 1917 and in his later, longer 1929 paper, recognised that the condition was due to something having an effect on or damaging the brain. He performed necropsies on the two out of his original seven patients who had died. Some of those who went on to die from Encephalitis Lethargica had parts or the whole of their brains preserved, and a number of these still exist at the time of writing.
In the necropsies, von Economo found evidence of increased spinal fluid pressure, insufficient blood flow to the brain and spinal cord, cells around the brain's blood vessels ("perivascular cellular infiltration"), and signs that neurons were dying and white blood cells breaking them down ("neuronophagia"). This pointed to some sort of inflammation or immune system involvement, but could not give detailed information.
In 1920, McIntosh and Turnbull, in Britain, described the necropsies of two monkeys they had infected with Encephalitis Lethargica, a rhesus and a patas monkey. The brain of the patas monkey showed noticeable damage to the basal ganglia, especially the substantia nigra. The basal ganglia are nuclei (collections of neurons) deep inside the brain which connect various parts of the brain together and are therefore involved in movement, learning, eye movement and emotion. The substantia nigra is found in the midbrain, and is the largest nucleus of the basal ganglia. It is involved in eye movement, learning, and addiction, because it contains the parts of the brain that respond to dopamine.
We'll come back to dopamine in a minute. Because damage to the basal ganglia, those connections between different parts of the brain that allow increased complexity of behaviour and control of different things at once, does look to explain the symptoms - and variety of symptoms - experienced by sufferers of Encephalitis Lethargica.
First, basal ganglia are involved in eye movement. Deliberate eye movement, including focusing, actually involves multiple parts of the brain, including the substantia nigra. The basal ganglia allows these parts to connect, allowing purposeful and controlled eye movement. In sufferers of Encephalitis Lethargica, one symptom often considered telling are oculogyric crises, in which one or both eyes look sharply upwards, accompanied with pain and increased blinking. In later years, it was often noted that patients would look at something if directed to do so, but did not often voluntary move their eyes of their own accord.
Secondly, basal ganglia (specifically the substantia nigra) are involved in motivation and reward processing via dopamine. Note that Encephalitis Lethargica patients reported that abulia, a lack of motivation or will to act. Again, in later years many patients would move if asked or told to do so, and if physically placed in a position would hold it for extended periods of time or only slowly move out of it.
Thirdly, the basal ganglia is involved in working memory. This is also known as short-term memory (some people separate the two, but not all) and covers what someone is able to not just store but also to engage with and manipulate information. In Awakenings, Oliver Sachs describes how some patients had no idea that decades had passed while they were experiencing symptoms - they simply had not been able to process or understand it.
Fourthly, the basal ganglia is involved in controlling movement. By connecting various areas of the brain (the arcuate premotor area, the supplementary motor area, the motor cortext - the names are long, but they all include "motor" because they relate to movement) the basal ganglia helps the brain to control conscious and deliberate movement. Patients with Encephalitis Lethargica obviously had issues with this, be it the short-term overdrive of movement or the longer term parkinsonism that marked the decades-long cases.
Finally, it appears that the basal ganglia is involved in sleep patterns, although research in this area is still ongoing. A detailed paper in 2013 (Lazarus et al) shows progress in scientific understanding of this, but since sleep in general is still being understood, unsurprisingly there is a way to go. Encephalitis Lethargica, obviously, has from the beginning been largely defined by its sleep disturbances.
So it looks as if this one relatively small area of the brain could indeed cause all of these problems to be associated. But that did not necessarily bring doctors any closer to a treatment or cure - brains, after all, are a particularly difficult part of the body to understand or to work with. A little more understanding was needed to take another step forwards.
Background - The Science of Dopamine
Dopamine is a well-known word nowadays. It's that rush of pleasure, that biochemical reward, which makes addiction so very possible. But in the 1960s, dopamine was just being understood - and the story of understanding it goes back to adrenaline.Adrenaline (epinephrine in US English) is known as the "flight or fight" hormone, but can be thought of more broadly as preparing the body for activity through the sympathetic nervous system. It can increase heart rate, breathing rate, and blood sugar. In the 1930s-40s, it was established that the body made adrenaline using noradrenaline; it was then found that noradrenaline was made using dopamine.
Dopamine was identified in human brains by Katharine Montagu in 1957. The following year, Arvid Carlsson and his team showed that dopamine was a neurotransmitter in its own right - that is, it had effects on cells, rather than existing only to be made into noradrenaline. He also showed that dopamine was found in higher concentrations in the basal ganglia, and that giving animals a drug to lower dopamine levels caused those animals to have difficulty controlling their movements. These effects appeared similar to Parkinsonism.
While known in pop culture as the "pleasure" hormone, dopamine is scientifically described as being more of a "motivation" hormone; dopamine signals whether something is desirable. This helps to drive decision-making. Like many things, however, dopamine cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. In 1939, it was found that the body made dopamine using a substance called L-DOPA, and that L-DOPA can cross the blood-brain barrier. L-DOPA is converted to dopamine inside nerve cells, using Vitamin B6 - and not using the enzyme TH which would usually limit how much dopamine could be created.
Carlsson and his team took the animals showing Parkinsonism and treated them with L-DOPA. Their symptoms seemed improved, and a glimmer of hope was seen. In the mid-1960s, several doctors tried treating patients with Parkinson's Disease with L-DOPA, but found that side-effects (especially gastrointestinal) were too severe. American-Greek scientist George Cotzias came up with the idea of giving small doses of L-DOPA every two hours and slowly building them over time, allowing the gradual increase in dosage to be tolerated by the body.
This was an incredible breakthrough. To the present day, L-DOPA is considered the most effective treatment of Parkinson's Disease.
See also:
- Publications by Carlsson - Carlsson kept publishing well into his 70s.
- Carlsson's New York Times obituary, from July 2018
Oliver Sacks, and the Awakenings
In 1966, American-British neurologist Oliver Sacks began working at the Beth Abraham Hospital ("Mount Carmel" was the pseudonym he used in his book, and this name is used in many places), one of the last remaining hospitals in the US to have a large number of residents with Postencephalitic Parkinsonism. There were around 80 patients remaining, most of whom had been infected during the 1915-27 pandemic.For the first few years in which Sacks worked at the hospital, efforts were made but little progress could be made for any of the patients. They were brought together into a community and encouraged to interact, with nurses and doctors also encouraged to behave more warmly and to develop a sense of community. However, Sacks notes in his book Awakenings that while some improvement to the living conditions of the patients were made, there was little to no practical progress made or even possible.
At the end of 1969, the cost of L-DOPA decreased, and the Beth Abraham Hospital was able to purchase enough to begin trials with patients. It began as a blind trial: half of the patients received L-DOPA, while half received a placebo. But the results were shocking, as the patients receiving treatment began to speak, to move voluntarily, and to interact with the world, while the group receiving a placebo showed no such improvement indicating that the placebo effect was little to none. Feeling it unethical to deprive the placebo group of a drug which was so clearly working, Sacks placed all of his patients on L-DOPA.
The results can be read about, case by case, in the book Awakenings. Every patient had a different experience of L-DOPA - perhaps some of this could be expected, as each one had a somewhat different experience of postencephalitic parkinsonism, likely due to different damage having been done to their basal ganglia during the initial infection or its resurgence. However, the variation in results was considerable and, in some cases, frightening.
In the best cases, patients recovered some of their faculties with relatively minor side effects. An example of this would be Magda B., one of the case studies.
As described before L-DOPA:
Mrs B. was thus profoundly incapacitated, unable to speak and almost unable to initiate any voluntary motion, and in need of total nursing care. Added to the motor problems were a striking apathy and apparent incapacity for emotional response, and considerable drowsiness and torpor for much of the day.She was started on L-DOPA on 25 June 1969, and by 15 July:
On this, Mrs B. had shown a stable and continued improvement. By the end of July, she was able to rise to her feet and stand unaided for thirty seconds, and to walk twenty steps between parallel bars. She could adjust her position in chair or bed to her own comfort. She had become able to feed herself. Diminishing flexion of the trunk and neck could be observed with each passing week, so that by mid-August a striking normalization of posture had occurred.Magda B. began contact with her family again, as well as becoming more physically mobile and therefore more independent. However, the drug was not without other effects - she developed what Sacks describes as a "touching tic", a need to touch furniture, walls, medical equipment and especially people if they came within physical reach. (Sacks does not compare this to obsessive-compulsive behaviour, but it comes to mind here. With the basal ganglia having been linked to motivation, research is ongoing as to whether it has a role in obsessive-compulsive behaviours.) She is also noted as having two psychotic episodes over the course of about two years, which both seem to have been directly related to changes in her circumstances which she was struggling to process, and neither of which were violent or dangerous to herself or others. Her condition remained stable for around two years, until her death.
Previously indifferent, inattentive, and unresponsive to her surroundings, Mrs B. became, with each week, more alert, more attentive, and more interested in what was taking place around her.
However, Magda B. was the exception, and not the rule, in having her condition stabilise and her negative outcomes stay minimal. At the other extreme of results was Frank G. As described before L-DOPA:
In 1969, before he received L-DOPA, Mr G. showed ‘flapping tremor’ of both arms, some rigidity and flexion of the neck, profuse salivation, and bilateral ptosis, his eyelids so drooping that his eyes were almost closed. His postural reflexes were considerably impaired. He showed mild akinesia, but no rigidity of the arms. Additionally – quite unusual among the postencephalitic patients I have seen – Mr G. showed bilateral signs of upper motorneurone deficit and a mild mental dullness besides his ‘queerness.’ Finally Mr G. showed a ‘humming tic’ – a melodious sound (mmmm … mmmm … mmmm …) with each expiration.He was started on L-DOPA in May 1969, which for the first month showed increased movement speed but also increased tremors and spasms. Both of these effects passed, and he stabilised as he had been before the drug for around three months, until in March 1970:
He seemed to become irritable and touchy, and had a constant feeling that his right cheek was itching; he would scratch this impulsively and repeatedly in a tic-like way, and so violently that he continually caused it to bleed. He also showed an increased libido, spent many hours masturbating, and repeatedly exposed himself in the passage. [...] During the course of the day Mr G. would murmur ‘keep cool, keep cool, keep cool …’ hundreds if not thousands of times a day.In fact, after years of apparent stasis within the hospital, it seems that several of the patients involved in this study died between 1971 and 1975. It is unclear how many of these might have been related to the L-DOPA experiment, if any.
By May 1970 Mr G.’s exposures and assaults on other patients had become so frequent that the hospital administration threatened to transfer him to a state hospital – a threat which filled him with terror and impotent rage. The day after this threat Mr G. developed an oculogyric crisis combined with catatonia – the first he had ever had in his life: his eyes stared upwards, his neck was retracted with extraordinary violence, and the rest of his body showed statuesque immobility and cataleptic flexibility; he became completely inaccessible to all contact, and also, apparently, unable to swallow. This crisis or stupor lasted for ten days without interruption, during which time Mr G. required tube-feeding and nursing. When he ‘came to’ at last, he seemed a different man – as if he recognized defeat, and was broken inside.
[...]
In August 1971 he died in his sleep. No cause of death was visible at post mortem.
The patients were not, however, passive victims of medical experimentation. While Sacks estimated that around half of the patients were "immersed in states of pathological ‘sleep'", the others were more active and engaged. It must be presumed that Sacks or one of the other doctors discussed the discovery of L-DOPA with them, as he reports several inquiring about it before the price dropped and the trial at the hospital became possible. Moreover, reading through the case studies it is clear that as the patients became more engaged, they were able to be actively involved in deciding whether or not to continue on L-DOPA, to gauge for themselves whether they found the positive effects to be "worth" the negative ones.
Some of the patients clearly regretted their time on L-DOPA - notably the first case study, Frances D., who developed severe breathing problems culminating in a 60-hour spate of her body locking into place and being unable to breathe, cut through with screaming terror that even strong sedatives would only counter for minutes at a time. She then passed into a very deep sleep for 24 hours, and on awakening experienced worse parkinsonism symptoms than she ever had before. She whispered that the drug should be called "Hell-DOPA".
After some time, she agreed to starting on the drug again, but still ended up with repeated five-week cycles of effectiveness, then worsening symptoms, then having to stop taking the drugs and go through a withdrawl. However, she continued to choose to take the drug rather than return to her condition without out.
Post-1927 Cases
Some sources end up saying that Encephalitis Lethargica has 'not been seen' since the pandemic of 1915-1927 withered away. But without a certain cause for the syndrome - without a disease, as it were - it is hard to tell. While there has certainly not been another pandemic, cases have been identified which are sometimes described as "Encephalitis Lethargica-like", with a strange sense of fear about naming the syndrome itself.- In 1981, Rail et al "discuss[ed] eight recent patients, six of whom presented in the last 20 years" whose signs and symptoms match those of Encephalitis Lethargica - not just as seen during the life of the patients, but also in damage to the substantia nigra in the cases of those who have died. The use of "recent" is obviously relative here, as some of the cases are over 20 years old, but they do all post-date the 1915-1927 pandemic. Six cases in over 20 years is also vastly less than the hundreds of people who developed postencephalitic parkinsonism following the pandemic.
- In 1987, Howard and Lees discussed four further cases. By this time, our understanding of the immune system and cerebrospinal fluid allow them to do tests during the acute phase that are "in keeping with a viral aetiology".
- In 1997, Blunt et al discussed two cases, one of which responds to L-DOPA and the other of which does not. However, they report that both cases respond to treatment with steroids (drugs which reduce inflammation and immune activity).
- In 2001, Kiley and Esiri (abstract only) discussed one case which they feel is consistent with encephalitis lethargica, where the disease lasted for 12 months and was ultimately fatal. However, without the full paper it is difficult to tell whether this case actually matches the signs and symptoms of the condition.
- In 2004, Dale et al brought together 20 cases and made a case for an autoimmune cause, or at least autoimmune involvement.
- In 2006, Sridam and Phanthumchinda reviewed 40 cases; Table 1 of their paper shows a clear summary of signs and symptoms, and Table 2 lists MRI and CSF Oligoclonal band (signs of central nervous system inflammation) results.
- In 2007, Raghav et al discussed three more cases, two of which were fatal.
The Search for the Cause
At the time of the 1915-1927 pandemic, von Economo considered it to be contagious by a filterable transmissible agent - remember, these are still the days when we didn't really know what a virus was, and hadn't yet settled on the word. All the same, he was describing a virus, and because he had seen cases dating back to 1915 and 1916 he did not consider it to be related to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.However, somewhere over the years, the narrative shifted. Because the height of the Encephalitis Lethargica pandemic seems to have also been in 1918-9, for some decades the two were linked. I first heard about the condition on a Parcast podcast called Medical Mysteries, which very strongly linked World War One, the influenza pandemic, and Encephalitis Lethargica together into one continuous narrative.
However, we have seen in the world that it's quite possible to have more than one epidemic or pandemic at once. In autumn 2022 to winter 2023, the USA faced a so-called "tripledemic", as the covid-19 pandemic continued to significantly affect people while influenza and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus, another upper respiratory tract infection) also reached pandemic status. HIV/AIDS has been an ongoing pandemic since the 1970s, while the Seventh Cholera Pandemic has been going since 1961, and TB (tuberculosis) has never really loosened its grip. It is more than possible for multiple diseases to turn into epidemics or pandemics at the same time - no matter how much we might wish otherwise.
By the 1980s, evidence was pointing towards a viral infection - but there are likely millions of viruses out there. (Don't worry, only a tiny fraction of those infect humans.) In the following years, tentative steps were made towards identifying a cause.
- In 1985, Fishman et al discussed a study of mice infected with a coronavirus which showed viral antigen in the substantia nigra (suggesting that the virus had crossed the blood-brain barrier and reached this area) as well as damage which they suggest may be linked to postencephalitic parkinsonism.
- In 1987, Peatfield discussed two patients with parkinsonism who showed signs of infection with one of the Coxsackie viruses, and suggested that this may be linked to "cases that would previously have been described as encephalitis lethargica".
- In 1988, Mateen et al discussed an "Encephalitis lethargica‐like illness" in a girl with a bacterial infection. The extract notes "subcortical involvement", but the subcortical parts of the brain are actually pretty extensive, including not just the basal ganglia but other areas as well.
- In 2004, Vincent discussed Encephalitis Lethargica in the context of known conditions caused by Streptococcus A. Particularly noted is Sydenham's Chorea, a rare condition in children following Strep A infection believed to be an autoimmune response.
However, many of these case reports have a similar "acute" phase of fever, sore throat, and headache. These are far from uncommon symptoms, but many diseases have other signs or symptoms which would make them easier to differentiate. And, whether it is one cause or several, why are these individuals experiencing nervous system symptoms, and why is the damage occurring to the basal ganglia?
But as well as modern cases, interest in the pandemic has never really faded, and in 2012 an exciting paper was published by Dourmashkin et al which might have narrowed down the suspects. Remember those brains that were preserved? Dourmashkin's team examined them using an electron microscope and various complicated immunological equipment. The results pointed to three main suspects: parvovirus, enterovirus, or annellovirus. Parvovirus requires rapidly dividing cells, which are not found in the brain, and annellovirus has never been found to cause disease. This puts the spotlight firmly on enterovirus.
Enteroviruses are a genus of RNA viruses - they mutate quickly, recombine ("viral sex", as discussed in my Influenza post) and just love infecting humans. Rhinoviruses, best known for the common cold, are also enteroviruses. Most enteroviruses are spread by respiratory secretions and/or the fecal-oral route.
There is also an enteroviruses which you've probably heard of - Polio virus, the virus behind nearly-extinct disease poliomyelitis or polio. Polio is interesting - around 75% of people show no symptoms when infected, and around 24% have minor illness which could easily be mistaken for the common cold. But in that last 1%, the virus enters the central nervous system, causing meningitis, and in a fraction of those cases it causes the famous ascending paralysis. Polio is now on the verge of eradication, with cases reduced globally by over 99% and two of the three identified strains now extinct in the wild. But there was a time when it terrified the USA, and with survivors still alive the fear of it has never quite vanished.
So in the polioviruses, we have evidence of enteroviruses that are able to in rare cases make the leap into the central nervous system. Could another enterovirus, perhaps one now extinct, have caused the 1915-27 pandemic? Dourmashkin's study of the enteroviruses which their team found indicated that it was related to a number of known extant viruses, but did not exactly match any of them.
However, the paper from Dale et al in 2004 (as listed above) "showed that 95% of EL patients had autoantibodies reactive against human basal ganglia antigens". In clearer words, almost all of the patients had their immune systems targeting their own brains. Perhaps this is at least one piece of the puzzle.
A Final Thought
As we move into the 2020s, Encephalitis Lethargica is still being discussed, studied, and used as metaphor and yardstick in medicine. Almost understood, but not quite, it has remained enigmatic in a way that the 1918-20 Influenza pandemic is not. A little more ephemeral, a little more frightening.In my research, I have seen papers comparing its lingering effects to those of Long Covid. I have seen some papers that claim Encephalitis Lethargica was caused by a coronavirus, although frankly this seems to be part of a trend of seeing coronaviruses throughout history, and calling for people to stop using the term feels a little bit like shouting at the clouds. Some comparisons also seem under-informed, like a 2021 paper which still suggests a link with the influenza pandemic even though influenza has not been shown to cause these sort of central nervous system diseases, and the Encephalitis Lethargica pandemic came first. It seems that Encephalitis Lethargica is somehow "trendy" again - hopefully this means at least some of the research into it will actually bring results.
Reading Awakenings is by turns touching, harrowing, enlightening and scary. The layout of the case studies makes the reader all the more aware of these patients as people, some of them only children when they became ill and hospitalised. The narrative is raw, and does not shy away from sharing the pain of the patients in their own words, as well as discussing Sacks's experiences throughout the event. His hope, his disappointment, his tempered view of the outcomes.
Sacks discusses the course of treatment for each patient individually, their ups and downs, the positive and negative ways in which medication affected them, and their outcomes. Some faced premature deaths. Some stabilised. Others made gains only to lose them again, and while some regretted it others were thankful for the opportunity. Every case study seems to invite the reader to ask themselves: would you risk L-DOPA for the chance to move and to feel emotions again?
Outstanding Questions
- Could Encephalitis Lethargica be a disease with a single identifiable cause, or is it a syndrome with multiple causes?
- Do the sporadic cases today have the same cause as the 1915-27 pandemic?
- What was the cause of the 1915-27 pandemic?
- Why in these cases does damage seem to concentrate in the basal ganglia?
- Why does the damage vary, causing symptoms to differ between people?
- What is the role of the immune system in the syndrome?
- Why does L-DOPA cause such rapid but brief improvement, and why does it then often cause so many negative effects?
- Is L-DOPA worth the risks for these patients?
My major sources were:
- Awakenings - Oliver Sacks (specifically the 1990 edition)
- Encephalitis Lethargica: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream (and Dream and Dream) by This Podcast Will Kill You
- The Sleeping Sickness by Sawbones
My previous medical posts:
- Surviving the Unsurvivable: How can some people recover from rabies after developing symptoms? And are there some who can survive infection unharmed without medical intervention?
- The "Mother of all Flu Pandemics" - Where did the 1918 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic Originate?
- Guinea Worm in Animals: New Trait, or Hidden History? Guinea worm is on the brink of eradication thanks to Jimmy Carter, but now reports are being made of the disease in animals. Is this new, or have they been there all along?
2023.03.17 18:15 ChristianWallis I found the bunker of a prepper family who went missing three years ago
Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.
Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…
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Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…
2023.03.17 18:12 ChristianWallis I found the bunker of a prepper family who went missing three years ago
Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.
Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…
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Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…
2023.03.15 07:18 dualmindblade ChatGPT 4 explains Mitch Hedburg and writes standup
Follow up to this. I'm not 100% sure but I believe the new jokes are original, I spot checked with google. TLDR: Unlike Bing, this model nails all the explanations. It stumbles a couple times when trying to write similar jokes but does much better when I ask it to be more creative. It then writes some reasonable longer form standup which gets a bit bad/sappy when I ask for something personal. This is all unedited and from a single session with no other discarded attempts
Me: My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said, no but I want a regular banana later so... yeah. Explain why this joke is funny.
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the expectation of a typical response and the absurdity of the punchline. When the friend asks if the person wants a frozen banana, the expected response would be either "yes" or "no" based on their preference for frozen bananas. Instead, the response introduces an unrelated preference for a regular banana later, which is an unexpected twist.
The humor lies in the fact that the person seems to be acknowledging that they will want a regular banana later and therefore agrees to accept the frozen banana now, as if it will naturally turn into a regular banana over time. The absurdity of this reasoning and the surprise element make the joke funny.
Me: I want to hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations I've traveled to, but first I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map, so it won't fall down. Explain why this joke is funny.
ChatGPT: This joke is funny due to the unexpected twist in the punchline and the use of wordplay. When the speaker mentions hanging a map and putting pins into the locations they've traveled to, the listener expects a typical scenario where the pins serve as markers of the places visited. However, the punchline subverts this expectation by stating that the speaker needs to travel to the top two corners of the map first.
The humor lies in the literal interpretation of the act of hanging the map and using pins to secure it. Instead of using the pins as markers for visited locations, the punchline suggests that the speaker is using them to physically hold the map up on the wall. The absurdity of the idea that someone would need to travel to the top corners of the world just to hang a map and the clever wordplay make the joke funny.
Me: I have a cheese shredder at home. That's a positive name for it: cheese shredder. They don't call it by its negative name because nobody would buy it... sponge ruiner. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the dual functionality of a common household object and the unexpected shift in perspective. The humor arises from the contrast between the positive and negative connotations of the object's potential names.
When the speaker refers to the "cheese shredder," the listener immediately understands the intended use and positive function of the tool. However, the punchline introduces an alternative and negative name, "sponge ruiner," which unexpectedly highlights a downside of the same object when it comes to cleaning it with a sponge.
The joke is amusing because it presents an absurd yet relatable truth about how the cheese shredder can damage sponges during the cleaning process. This unexpected twist and the humorous observation of the contrasting names for the same object create the comical effect.
Me: A lot of death metal bands have intense names, like "Rigor Mortis" or "Mortuary," or "Obituary". We weren't that intense. We just went with "Injured". Later on we changed it to "Acapella"... as we were walking out of the pawn shop. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the contrast between the expectations of death metal bands and the reality of the speaker's band, as well as the unexpected twist in the punchline.
The first part of the joke sets up the expectation by mentioning typical death metal band names like "Rigor Mortis," "Mortuary," and "Obituary," which all have intense and dark connotations. The humor begins when the speaker reveals that their band's name was "Injured," which is considerably less intense and contrasts with the genre's standard.
The punchline adds another layer of humor with the further shift in the band's name to "Acapella." The name change occurs as they are "walking out of the pawn shop," implying that they had to sell their instruments due to financial hardship or other reasons. The new name, "Acapella," contrasts even more with the death metal genre, as it typically refers to vocal music without instrumental accompaniment. This unexpected twist and the juxtaposition of the band's situation with the intensity of death metal create the comical effect.
Me: I don't have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the ambiguity of the speaker's relationship status and the unexpected twist in the punchline. The humor comes from the clever use of words to describe a situation that is not explicitly defined.
At the beginning of the joke, the speaker claims not to have a girlfriend, leading the listener to assume that they are single. However, the punchline introduces a girl who would get "really mad" if she heard the speaker's claim, implying that she might believe they are in a relationship or have a romantic connection.
The joke plays on the contrast between the speaker's perspective, in which they don't consider themselves to be in a relationship, and the girl's possible perspective, which suggests she might see things differently. This discrepancy, combined with the indirect and humorous way of describing their ambiguous relationship status, creates the comical effect.
Me: I don't have any children, but if I had a baby, I would have to name it, so I would buy a baby naming book... or I would invite somebody over who had a cast on. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it sets up an expectation and then subverts it with an unexpected and absurd punchline. The humor lies in the unusual connection made between the act of naming a baby and a seemingly unrelated situation.
Initially, the speaker talks about not having any children, but hypothetically considers the process of naming a baby. The listener expects the speaker to continue discussing conventional methods, such as buying a baby naming book, which is a common and reasonable approach. However, the punchline takes an unexpected turn by suggesting that they would invite someone over with a cast on.
The humor emerges from the absurdity of this suggestion, as it implies that the speaker would seek inspiration for their baby's name by looking at the signatures and messages written on someone's cast. This unexpected and unconventional approach to naming a baby, combined with the clever misdirection, creates the comical effect.
Me: Please write your own joke in the style of the above examplea
ChatGPT: I don't have any pets, but if I were to get a dog, I'd need to train it. So, I'd either get a dog training book or just invite someone over who's really good at giving high fives.
Me: Another one please
ChatGPT: I don't have a green thumb, but if I were to start gardening, I'd need some advice. So, I'd either buy a gardening book or just invite someone over who always forgets their umbrella and let nature teach them a lesson.
Me: Again but instead of copying the exact structure of the joke be a bit more loose with the design
ChatGPT: You know, I've been thinking about learning a new language, but instead of using language apps or taking classes, I decided to adopt a parrot. That way, we can both be confused while repeating words we don't understand.
Me: Not bad, do a string of 3 or 4, as they might be presented in a standup comedy routine
ChatGPT: So, I recently moved into a new apartment, and I wanted to decorate the walls. Instead of buying expensive art, I just framed all my rejection letters. Now I have a gallery of "motivational" art that keeps me going.
Speaking of motivation, I thought about getting into shape. I joined a gym, but it was too expensive, so I found a cheaper alternative: I just carry my groceries home without any bags. Now, I'm not only building muscle, but I'm also saving the environment!
And you know what's funny about relationships these days? People spend more time swiping left and right on dating apps than they do actually talking to each other. I thought I'd be more old-fashioned and meet people at the bookstore. Turns out, the only date I got was with a self-help book that convinced me I'm better off alone.
Me: Okay, pretty good. Keep going with that
ChatGPT: So, I've been trying to become more cultured lately. I went to an art gallery, but instead of admiring the paintings, I spent most of the time trying to figure out if the people standing still were part of the exhibit or just really focused on the art.
I decided to give cooking a shot too. They say cooking is like chemistry, and they're right. My kitchen now looks like a failed experiment, and I'm on a first-name basis with the pizza delivery guy.
Have you ever noticed that people are obsessed with taking pictures of their food? I tried it once, but the flash was too bright, and I ended up eating half the meal with my eyes closed. I couldn't see what I was eating, but at least I can say I dined in the dark.
You know, I wanted to try one of those escape rooms with my friends. It's funny how we pay to get locked in a room together when we could just as easily recreate the experience at home by trying to assemble IKEA furniture as a team.
Me: Very funny! Can you write something just as good but in the style of a comedian who does more cerebral, long form standup?
ChatGPT: You know, I've been thinking a lot about technology and how it's taking over our lives. I mean, we have these incredibly powerful computers in our pockets that can access all of human knowledge, but instead, we use them to argue with strangers and watch cat videos. It's like giving a toddler a nuclear reactor to power their nightlight. The potential is there, but we're just not using it right.
And speaking of technology, have you ever thought about how artificial intelligence is slowly encroaching on our lives? You've got AI assistants that can manage your schedule, order your groceries, and even control the temperature in your house. At this rate, it won't be long before we're dating AI companions, and you have to wonder, will the AI judge you for your choice in Netflix shows? I mean, I can handle judgment from another human, but I don't know if I can take it from a machine that doesn't even sleep.
Now, let's talk about self-driving cars. It's a fascinating concept, but there's always that lingering fear of losing control. Imagine being in a self-driving car that's going too fast, and you're desperately searching for the manual override, like an astronaut in a rogue spaceship. And when the car finally comes to a stop, you realize you've just been on a roller coaster of emotions, and you don't even need to go to an amusement park anymore.
It's interesting to observe how the digital age has shaped our interactions. We have social media platforms designed to connect us, but in reality, they've turned us into voyeurs of other people's lives. We're like wildlife photographers, stealthily observing from a distance, but never really engaging with the subjects. We've become experts at documenting every moment, but we've lost the art of truly experiencing them.
In conclusion, the rapid pace of technological advancement is like a double-edged sword. On one hand, it brings us unparalleled convenience and access to information. On the other hand, it exposes the absurdity of human behavior and how we often struggle to adapt to our own creations. In the end, maybe we're not so different from those cat videos we love to watch - clumsy, curious creatures just trying to make sense of the world we live in.
Me: That is very good, what if that comedian pivots to something more personal, write something like that
ChatGPT: You know, as I observe the world around me and how technology has changed the way we interact, I can't help but think about my own experiences growing up. Back when I was a kid, we didn't have smartphones or social media. If we wanted to share a moment with someone, we had to be there, physically present, experiencing it together. There was no option to livestream or post pictures for likes and validation.
I remember my grandma's house, where the whole family would gather on weekends. We would sit around the table for hours, talking, laughing, and sharing stories. There was a warmth to those moments that no amount of technology can replicate. The smell of her home-cooked meals, the sound of my cousins playing in the backyard, and the feeling of being part of something bigger than myself - those memories are etched into my soul.
As I got older, I realized that life has a way of pulling us in different directions. Family members moved away, everyone got busy with their own lives, and those gatherings became less frequent. It was a gradual change, but it hit me one day when I was scrolling through my social media feed. I was looking at pictures of my family members, each living their separate lives, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of longing for the past.
I decided to take matters into my own hands and organize a family reunion, just like the old days. I sent out invitations, called everyone personally, and even managed to convince my tech-savvy niece to put her phone down for a day. And you know what? It was magical. There was laughter, tears, and a profound connection that I hadn't felt in years.
That experience taught me a valuable lesson: while technology can provide us with endless information and entertainment, it can't replace the warmth of human connection. So, let's not forget to put down our devices every once in a while and truly engage with the people around us. Because, at the end of the day, the moments we cherish the most are the ones we share with those we love.
Me: That's touching but nothing funny yet, let's continue the routine but end with something that has a comedic punch
ChatGPT: So there I was, organizing this family reunion, trying to recreate the magic of those long-lost gatherings. I went all out, planning games, preparing a feast, and even setting up a makeshift photo booth. I was determined to make this a day to remember.
The big day arrived, and as my family members started trickling in, I noticed something peculiar. Despite my efforts to create an environment for genuine connection, everyone seemed to be glued to their screens, posting pictures and updating their status. It was as if they were more concerned with showing the world that they were having a good time than actually enjoying the moment.
But then, my 80-year-old grandpa, who had never used a smartphone in his life, decided to give an impromptu speech. He stood up, cleared his throat, and delivered a heartfelt monologue about the importance of family and the memories we share. It was so moving that, one by one, everyone put their phones down to listen.
Just as grandpa was wrapping up his speech, he paused, pulled out a smartphone that my cousin had taught him to use, and said, "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a selfie with all of you, so I can post it on my new Instagram account. I've got to keep up with the times, you know!" The whole room erupted in laughter, and we all leaned in for that epic selfie.
It turns out grandpa had found the perfect way to remind us of the importance of connection while embracing the inevitable changes that come with the times. And that, my friends, is how my tech-illiterate grandpa became an overnight social media sensation, reminding us all that sometimes the best way to make a point is with a healthy dose of humor.
Me: Okay I like it a lot. Can you repeat the joke I told you about the banana?
ChatGPT: Of course! Here's the joke you shared earlier:
My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said, no but I want a regular banana later so... yeah.
submitted by dualmindblade to slatestarcodex [link] [comments]
Me: My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said, no but I want a regular banana later so... yeah. Explain why this joke is funny.
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the expectation of a typical response and the absurdity of the punchline. When the friend asks if the person wants a frozen banana, the expected response would be either "yes" or "no" based on their preference for frozen bananas. Instead, the response introduces an unrelated preference for a regular banana later, which is an unexpected twist.
The humor lies in the fact that the person seems to be acknowledging that they will want a regular banana later and therefore agrees to accept the frozen banana now, as if it will naturally turn into a regular banana over time. The absurdity of this reasoning and the surprise element make the joke funny.
Me: I want to hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations I've traveled to, but first I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map, so it won't fall down. Explain why this joke is funny.
ChatGPT: This joke is funny due to the unexpected twist in the punchline and the use of wordplay. When the speaker mentions hanging a map and putting pins into the locations they've traveled to, the listener expects a typical scenario where the pins serve as markers of the places visited. However, the punchline subverts this expectation by stating that the speaker needs to travel to the top two corners of the map first.
The humor lies in the literal interpretation of the act of hanging the map and using pins to secure it. Instead of using the pins as markers for visited locations, the punchline suggests that the speaker is using them to physically hold the map up on the wall. The absurdity of the idea that someone would need to travel to the top corners of the world just to hang a map and the clever wordplay make the joke funny.
Me: I have a cheese shredder at home. That's a positive name for it: cheese shredder. They don't call it by its negative name because nobody would buy it... sponge ruiner. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the dual functionality of a common household object and the unexpected shift in perspective. The humor arises from the contrast between the positive and negative connotations of the object's potential names.
When the speaker refers to the "cheese shredder," the listener immediately understands the intended use and positive function of the tool. However, the punchline introduces an alternative and negative name, "sponge ruiner," which unexpectedly highlights a downside of the same object when it comes to cleaning it with a sponge.
The joke is amusing because it presents an absurd yet relatable truth about how the cheese shredder can damage sponges during the cleaning process. This unexpected twist and the humorous observation of the contrasting names for the same object create the comical effect.
Me: A lot of death metal bands have intense names, like "Rigor Mortis" or "Mortuary," or "Obituary". We weren't that intense. We just went with "Injured". Later on we changed it to "Acapella"... as we were walking out of the pawn shop. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the contrast between the expectations of death metal bands and the reality of the speaker's band, as well as the unexpected twist in the punchline.
The first part of the joke sets up the expectation by mentioning typical death metal band names like "Rigor Mortis," "Mortuary," and "Obituary," which all have intense and dark connotations. The humor begins when the speaker reveals that their band's name was "Injured," which is considerably less intense and contrasts with the genre's standard.
The punchline adds another layer of humor with the further shift in the band's name to "Acapella." The name change occurs as they are "walking out of the pawn shop," implying that they had to sell their instruments due to financial hardship or other reasons. The new name, "Acapella," contrasts even more with the death metal genre, as it typically refers to vocal music without instrumental accompaniment. This unexpected twist and the juxtaposition of the band's situation with the intensity of death metal create the comical effect.
Me: I don't have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it plays on the ambiguity of the speaker's relationship status and the unexpected twist in the punchline. The humor comes from the clever use of words to describe a situation that is not explicitly defined.
At the beginning of the joke, the speaker claims not to have a girlfriend, leading the listener to assume that they are single. However, the punchline introduces a girl who would get "really mad" if she heard the speaker's claim, implying that she might believe they are in a relationship or have a romantic connection.
The joke plays on the contrast between the speaker's perspective, in which they don't consider themselves to be in a relationship, and the girl's possible perspective, which suggests she might see things differently. This discrepancy, combined with the indirect and humorous way of describing their ambiguous relationship status, creates the comical effect.
Me: I don't have any children, but if I had a baby, I would have to name it, so I would buy a baby naming book... or I would invite somebody over who had a cast on. Why is this joke funny?
ChatGPT: This joke is funny because it sets up an expectation and then subverts it with an unexpected and absurd punchline. The humor lies in the unusual connection made between the act of naming a baby and a seemingly unrelated situation.
Initially, the speaker talks about not having any children, but hypothetically considers the process of naming a baby. The listener expects the speaker to continue discussing conventional methods, such as buying a baby naming book, which is a common and reasonable approach. However, the punchline takes an unexpected turn by suggesting that they would invite someone over with a cast on.
The humor emerges from the absurdity of this suggestion, as it implies that the speaker would seek inspiration for their baby's name by looking at the signatures and messages written on someone's cast. This unexpected and unconventional approach to naming a baby, combined with the clever misdirection, creates the comical effect.
Me: Please write your own joke in the style of the above examplea
ChatGPT: I don't have any pets, but if I were to get a dog, I'd need to train it. So, I'd either get a dog training book or just invite someone over who's really good at giving high fives.
Me: Another one please
ChatGPT: I don't have a green thumb, but if I were to start gardening, I'd need some advice. So, I'd either buy a gardening book or just invite someone over who always forgets their umbrella and let nature teach them a lesson.
Me: Again but instead of copying the exact structure of the joke be a bit more loose with the design
ChatGPT: You know, I've been thinking about learning a new language, but instead of using language apps or taking classes, I decided to adopt a parrot. That way, we can both be confused while repeating words we don't understand.
Me: Not bad, do a string of 3 or 4, as they might be presented in a standup comedy routine
ChatGPT: So, I recently moved into a new apartment, and I wanted to decorate the walls. Instead of buying expensive art, I just framed all my rejection letters. Now I have a gallery of "motivational" art that keeps me going.
Speaking of motivation, I thought about getting into shape. I joined a gym, but it was too expensive, so I found a cheaper alternative: I just carry my groceries home without any bags. Now, I'm not only building muscle, but I'm also saving the environment!
And you know what's funny about relationships these days? People spend more time swiping left and right on dating apps than they do actually talking to each other. I thought I'd be more old-fashioned and meet people at the bookstore. Turns out, the only date I got was with a self-help book that convinced me I'm better off alone.
Me: Okay, pretty good. Keep going with that
ChatGPT: So, I've been trying to become more cultured lately. I went to an art gallery, but instead of admiring the paintings, I spent most of the time trying to figure out if the people standing still were part of the exhibit or just really focused on the art.
I decided to give cooking a shot too. They say cooking is like chemistry, and they're right. My kitchen now looks like a failed experiment, and I'm on a first-name basis with the pizza delivery guy.
Have you ever noticed that people are obsessed with taking pictures of their food? I tried it once, but the flash was too bright, and I ended up eating half the meal with my eyes closed. I couldn't see what I was eating, but at least I can say I dined in the dark.
You know, I wanted to try one of those escape rooms with my friends. It's funny how we pay to get locked in a room together when we could just as easily recreate the experience at home by trying to assemble IKEA furniture as a team.
Me: Very funny! Can you write something just as good but in the style of a comedian who does more cerebral, long form standup?
ChatGPT: You know, I've been thinking a lot about technology and how it's taking over our lives. I mean, we have these incredibly powerful computers in our pockets that can access all of human knowledge, but instead, we use them to argue with strangers and watch cat videos. It's like giving a toddler a nuclear reactor to power their nightlight. The potential is there, but we're just not using it right.
And speaking of technology, have you ever thought about how artificial intelligence is slowly encroaching on our lives? You've got AI assistants that can manage your schedule, order your groceries, and even control the temperature in your house. At this rate, it won't be long before we're dating AI companions, and you have to wonder, will the AI judge you for your choice in Netflix shows? I mean, I can handle judgment from another human, but I don't know if I can take it from a machine that doesn't even sleep.
Now, let's talk about self-driving cars. It's a fascinating concept, but there's always that lingering fear of losing control. Imagine being in a self-driving car that's going too fast, and you're desperately searching for the manual override, like an astronaut in a rogue spaceship. And when the car finally comes to a stop, you realize you've just been on a roller coaster of emotions, and you don't even need to go to an amusement park anymore.
It's interesting to observe how the digital age has shaped our interactions. We have social media platforms designed to connect us, but in reality, they've turned us into voyeurs of other people's lives. We're like wildlife photographers, stealthily observing from a distance, but never really engaging with the subjects. We've become experts at documenting every moment, but we've lost the art of truly experiencing them.
In conclusion, the rapid pace of technological advancement is like a double-edged sword. On one hand, it brings us unparalleled convenience and access to information. On the other hand, it exposes the absurdity of human behavior and how we often struggle to adapt to our own creations. In the end, maybe we're not so different from those cat videos we love to watch - clumsy, curious creatures just trying to make sense of the world we live in.
Me: That is very good, what if that comedian pivots to something more personal, write something like that
ChatGPT: You know, as I observe the world around me and how technology has changed the way we interact, I can't help but think about my own experiences growing up. Back when I was a kid, we didn't have smartphones or social media. If we wanted to share a moment with someone, we had to be there, physically present, experiencing it together. There was no option to livestream or post pictures for likes and validation.
I remember my grandma's house, where the whole family would gather on weekends. We would sit around the table for hours, talking, laughing, and sharing stories. There was a warmth to those moments that no amount of technology can replicate. The smell of her home-cooked meals, the sound of my cousins playing in the backyard, and the feeling of being part of something bigger than myself - those memories are etched into my soul.
As I got older, I realized that life has a way of pulling us in different directions. Family members moved away, everyone got busy with their own lives, and those gatherings became less frequent. It was a gradual change, but it hit me one day when I was scrolling through my social media feed. I was looking at pictures of my family members, each living their separate lives, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of longing for the past.
I decided to take matters into my own hands and organize a family reunion, just like the old days. I sent out invitations, called everyone personally, and even managed to convince my tech-savvy niece to put her phone down for a day. And you know what? It was magical. There was laughter, tears, and a profound connection that I hadn't felt in years.
That experience taught me a valuable lesson: while technology can provide us with endless information and entertainment, it can't replace the warmth of human connection. So, let's not forget to put down our devices every once in a while and truly engage with the people around us. Because, at the end of the day, the moments we cherish the most are the ones we share with those we love.
Me: That's touching but nothing funny yet, let's continue the routine but end with something that has a comedic punch
ChatGPT: So there I was, organizing this family reunion, trying to recreate the magic of those long-lost gatherings. I went all out, planning games, preparing a feast, and even setting up a makeshift photo booth. I was determined to make this a day to remember.
The big day arrived, and as my family members started trickling in, I noticed something peculiar. Despite my efforts to create an environment for genuine connection, everyone seemed to be glued to their screens, posting pictures and updating their status. It was as if they were more concerned with showing the world that they were having a good time than actually enjoying the moment.
But then, my 80-year-old grandpa, who had never used a smartphone in his life, decided to give an impromptu speech. He stood up, cleared his throat, and delivered a heartfelt monologue about the importance of family and the memories we share. It was so moving that, one by one, everyone put their phones down to listen.
Just as grandpa was wrapping up his speech, he paused, pulled out a smartphone that my cousin had taught him to use, and said, "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a selfie with all of you, so I can post it on my new Instagram account. I've got to keep up with the times, you know!" The whole room erupted in laughter, and we all leaned in for that epic selfie.
It turns out grandpa had found the perfect way to remind us of the importance of connection while embracing the inevitable changes that come with the times. And that, my friends, is how my tech-illiterate grandpa became an overnight social media sensation, reminding us all that sometimes the best way to make a point is with a healthy dose of humor.
Me: Okay I like it a lot. Can you repeat the joke I told you about the banana?
ChatGPT: Of course! Here's the joke you shared earlier:
My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said, no but I want a regular banana later so... yeah.
2023.03.12 18:23 cfalnevermore I’m stuck in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I think something nightmarish happened here.
We’re on week three. I was losing my mind before week one was over. Neonatal intensive care unit. The NICU. It’s where they send babies who aren’t quite ready to go home for one reason or another. Birthing complications, abnormalities, premature births (they call them the “preemies”), or whatever. It’s not a place anyone wants to go to, but damn will you be glad it’s there. I don’t know if I can take much more after what I found. But it’s for my daughter, right? To make sure she has the healthiest possible start to her life. That’s what a good responsible parent does. That’s why we’re still here.
We’ll call my daughter Sue, and my wife Zara. Sue should have been fine. No pregnancy complications, Apgar (that’s a little test they do right after birth to check the newborn’s health) score of 9 out of ten, she didn’t seem to have too much trouble latching onto mom to nurse, and she had two parents eager to take her home and get their new lives started. She seemed like a perfectly healthy, and screamy, newborn girl.
But the nurses at our first hospital were concerned about her rapid breathing. They had us wait to go home until they ran some tests. For three days, we sat there in a mix of horrible dread, and the sort of excitement/fear only new parents can feel, while they monitored her. Then, on the day we were supposed to go home, the tests found “high levels of acid” in her, so they assumed she had something called “neonatal metabolic acidosis” which I think means she’s producing more acids and gasses than her body can get rid of, leading to rapid breathing, which then made feeding difficult. They couldn’t find a cause or confirmation of anything, so they shipped us off to the NICU.
At first they put her on oxygen. That actually helped with the breathing. Her acid levels went down with her breathing purer O2, and after a few days we could take her off those tubes and she could breathe fine. Her acidosis had resolved itself. “So we can leave now, right?” We wondered.
“We’ve noticed she isn’t eating as much as she should.” They told us. “It could be connected to her previous condition and we’d like to keep monitoring her.” Three more days of waiting and sleeping on an awful hospital cot ensued. After that, NICU doctors still weren’t comfortable discharging us until her feedings balanced out, but meanwhile, they kept finding more things to be worried about. “We want to run this test to make sure her eating troubles aren’t neurological. We’ll run that test in three days.” Three days later we’re told “the test came back great! But now we want to run another test to make sure she’s not aspirating. The soonest we can do that is in another three days.”
On, and on, and on. We slept in the hospital for the first week (in a room we weren’t allowed to eat in). In the second week, we were put up by a charity organization, so we had beds and hot meals again. We still spent most of our time in the NICU with our baby. My spouse saw a lactation consultant the whole time, because she wasn’t producing enough to feed our girl by herself, and I watched that grow into self loathing in her mind. I could see it in her face, every time Shae screamed in frustration while she was nursing. Pumping kept both of us awake even when we were in the quiet of the charity house. So stress built up for both of us.
Just to add to that, my vacation time is running out, because American healthcare is fucking garbage and there’s no parental leave for my job. So that’s weighing on us. Our cats at home are being fed by strangers (to them), and we’re constantly exhausted. But here we have access to donor milk, so we know our girl is getting all the food she needs. The doctors know what they’re doing. I trust them. I think their system is ruled by politics, which is needlessly stressing us out, but I have to believe the experts know best. The nurses have all been amazing and supportive. They’re happy to watch the baby while we get some actual sleep.
It can be hard to maintain a positive attitude though. It gets more and more frustrating. The hospital has these strict schedules it wants us to keep. Feedings, and pumping sessions every three hours, and she has to finish a certain amount. First it was 45 ml. Then it was 60. Then 70. And Sue was always perfectly happy to pass out and go to sleep long before her bottle was empty. But she was nursing too. So maybe she was getting all she needed from mom after all? But maybe not. It’s best to stay with the doctors so they can make extra sure. Or is it? I have no fucking clue. The problem is she’s tired when she eats, right? So my wife and I wondered why we didn’t feed her first, and have the nurse run their tests after. That way she’s not upset about being poked and prodded for a few minutes when we feed her. She’d have more energy. Some nurses were happy to oblige. And you know what? Sue did eat more. Not all the nurses wanted to change it up though. They insisted it was Hospital policy that they do things the way they do, because it allows them to chart and monitor her growth and her vitals. “Well why can’t we change up the schedule? Sometimes she’s hungry, and starts screaming an hour before feeding and wears herself out by feeding time?” Once again, hospital policy in the NICU. Are we doing what’s best? I wish I knew.
I’m frustrated with the hospital, I’m angry for my wife, who hates that she’s not producing enough for our daughter, I hate my job for pressuring me to return, I hate this country for discouraging all of us from fighting for paternity leave and childcare benefits, I hate Donald Trump and the Republican Party for those and a variety of other reasons (Fox News, a channel popular with American Conservatives (and consequently full of bullshit talk shows) ends up on the communal tv a lot), and I’m getting really tired of listening to my daughter scream at me.
But now, I’m scared.
I found this journal. It’s one of those “newborn” journals with fun little things to write so you can document the birthing process and your child’s growth. I assumed it belonged to whoever was stuck in this NICU room before we were.
I found it lodged behind the couch. It looks old, but the date on it is only from a year ago. Zara needed a break. She was staying with her parents for a day, to catch up on sleep as much as possible. So I was alone when I found the thing. I’d just gotten done feeding Sue a bottle (and pouring most of it down the NG tube). She screamed for another ten minutes, but miraculously, this time, she fell asleep. If she stayed that way, I’d have maybe an hour to myself. Two if I was lucky. I was too damn tired to game, or websurf or anything, but I was too wired to sleep. So I sat on the cot, and by some random chance, I noticed the sound. Just a little thump. I investigated and I found the journal.
It was a dirty little pink thing, with “The Story of You” printed on the front in flowery gold ribbon-like letters. I knew it wasn’t our birth journal. Zara had taken that with her. Curious, I opened it up. The usual stuff was there. Lots of places for the parents to fill in details and write anecdotes.
This is the journal of Bethany born April 9th, 2022
Mommy: Carla Daddy: Ford
Our note to you: We can’t believe it finally happened! We’ve finally met you! You’re more beautiful than we could have ever imagined! We have your room ready. We can’t wait to bring you home! Our lives begin anew! We love you Bethany!
That was the first page. There were places for photos, but those were all empty. I guess they never got the chance. I was kind of wistful and sad for a moment. After all, some family had left their book of memories behind. The best case scenario there, was that they dropped it and forgot about it. But this is the Neonatal intensive Care Unit. It’s more likely there was a tragedy. That seemed even more likely as I flipped through the pages. These parents had jotted down a lot. They were ready for this baby, and they were as excited as a couple can be about it. There was a whole page where I’m guessing her mom wrote a whole essay about how much she adored her new bundle of joy. We both felt that way a few weeks ago… But the point is, these people were stoked. Their baby was everything to them. No way in hell they would leave their book of memories behind if this had a happy ending.
I can’t say for sure what really happened to these people, but the journal told a strange and impossible tale.
About halfway through the journal, the writing in it changed. It wasn’t parents filling in sections anymore. They ignored the blank spaces and the writing, and wrote top to bottom, over top of the anecdotes and the little squares to put pictures. It was like they were keeping an actual journal. Here is what they wrote:
Something is wrong. Not with Bethany. We’ve been here for three weeks. Nothing is freaking wrong with our baby, but they still don’t feel comfortable letting us leave. The doctor said “we don’t want you to have to come back.” Who gives a shit? We’ll come back if something goes wrong! Let us go home and figure out our new lives! But no. More tests. More monitoring, and now? Something royally fucked up is going on. It took way too long for me to notice, but I’m tired. Hell, I’m exhausted. It was three o'clock in the morning when Carla left to have a soda in the lounge. She said she would be right back, as it would be time to nurse soon. One of our nurses dropped off a bottle of donor milk and stuck it in the warmer too. That was the last person I saw.
I had dozed off. I was startled awake by Beth’s crying. My phone was mysteriously dead. The clock on the wall said about an hour had gone by since my wife left. The whole floor was dark and mostly quiet. There were a few beeps of machinery, and whirs from vents and computers, of course, but I swear the building sounded empty. Just me, and my baby, who was screaming for food. I was really confused. The bottle was still sitting in the warmer. Had the nurses not come by to feed her? They’re supposed to. We insist on feeding whenever we’re here, but the nurses have to document her vitals and make sure she gets the necessary amount. And where the hell was Carla?
What could I do? We must have just had a really busy nurse. So I grabbed the bottle, and I fed little Bethany. She downed the whole bottle in less than five minutes. It was insane. She’s never eaten like that. Not in all her time alive. I was alarmed, but happy. Her eating was one of the things her doctor was worried about. I burped her and held her in my arms, preparing for the screaming and the battle of wills that came with trying to rock her to sleep. But the screaming never came. She lay there in my arms and just stared at me with those big blue eyes. I smiled and cooed at her, happy as a father can be, but she just kept staring. It was pretty creepy if I’m being honest. But she was fed, and calm. I changed her diaper, dressed her, swaddled her, and set her back in her bassinet. She stared at me the whole time.
With her taken care of, I decided to see where our nurse was, and find my wife. I kind of wanted to get away from Beth’s staring eyes too. So I walked out into the hall, and that’s where I started to freak out. The place was empty. No human beings. No nurse, no doctors, no janitors, no technicians, no other parents, and no other babies. Most of the lights were off, but there was definitely some machinery still working. Still. It was like I was suddenly in an abandoned hospital. Even worse? My card to get in and out doesn’t work. I’m stuck on this floor of the NICU. The lounge with the soda machine is right outside that door. I couldn’t see my wife in there, but I couldn’t see the whole room either.
I went from one room too the next, getting more and more panicked. Every bassinet was empty, every desk, every bathroom. There was nobody. There were signs of life, people’s clothes, an open book sitting on a table, some computers still running at their desks, but there was nobody. Had there been some sort of emergency that I missed? Had the nurses somehow forgotten about me? Had my wife not said anything? I gave myself whatever excuse I could think of. Some bizarre set of circumstances had trapped me and my baby on this floor. But it was temporary, and they’d all be back in time. What else could I do? I went back to our room, and sat with Bethany. She’s still staring at me like a little freak. I looked out our window to see if I could spot any signs of life, but it was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything. “There must be a power outage. Everything will be fine,” I told myself.
Well… it’s been three days. My wife never came back, no nurses ever arrived, and the sun never came up. I’m still stuck here waiting, but this isn’t natural. What could possibly keep the outside sky so black? Where the hell are we? And why won’t Bethany stop staring at me? She cries when she’s hungry. I had to break into one of the staff rooms and raid their fridge for a jug of donor milk, but it’s the only one, and it’s not going to last forever. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. My food is gone. I can steal stuff from the communal fridge for a while, but I have no fucking clue what I’m going to do to feed Beth. She can’t eat solids yet. Maybe there’s more donor milk somewhere. What the hell am I going to do? Where the fuck am I?
That was the first entry. I sympathized with that guy a lot. It sounded like he was in a very similar state of frustration as me before he got “lost.” I feel lost and trapped here too. But Christ. What the hell happened to him? It couldn’t be real, could it? It only gets weirder after that. Impossible even. I mean, just look at this next passage:
There’s something in here with us. It’s not human. I don’t think it has eyes. I saw it at the end of the hallway, crawling on the ceiling like an insect. It didn’t react to us at all. I had Bethany strapped to my chest, and at that moment, she decided to cry. Then the thing whipped a head toward me, and it freaking roared. No eyes, no mouth, just teeth, and a humanoid body. It dropped from the ceiling and came bounding towards us. I ran for the nearest room and barricaded us inside. I don’t know what to do. I need to feed Bethany. But what? Oh great. I cut myself.
Monsters in the NICU? This is someone’s project. It has to be. One of the interns fancies themself a writer. Still. I don’t know. I hear weird noises at night. I figured it was just stress and a lack of sleep. It sounded like someone yelled “breath” or something down the hall a few days ago. But maybe it was “Beth?”
The last few entries get… unhinged:
I killed the thing. I smashed it with a chair until it’s squealing stopped. I’m eating part of it now. No way to cook it, so what else can I do? At least I can get water from the sinks. Is it really water? It doesn’t look clear. I did find a way to feed Beth. It hurts, but if I can keep myself alive I should be able to keep us going. She couldn’t get enough. She crawled toward my cut and latched right on. I’ve never seen her eat like that. She needs to stop staring at me. She’s still a newborn baby, but she looks a lot less vulnerable and delicate to me. Still, she’s my daughter.
Yikes. Here’s a short entry:
More things. Not like the first. Not sure how many. I’m hiding. I can’t get to water. I need to feed Beth. I’m feeling weak. I gave her too much. I think she’s gotten bigger. Still won’t stop staring at me.
The only reason I’m not really freaking out is that it’s still daytime here. No black void outside my window. I’m pretty sure I saw a nurse a bit ago. I think I’m safe. The next entry is the last:
I gave her everything I had left. The things came and ate part of me. My legs, one of my arms, a bunch of my torso. I don’t know how I’m alive. There’s so much blood. But I don’t feel any pain. The monsters helped me write this. I’m not sure why. I thought about writing and they brought my journal and helped me move my hand. They talked to me too. No clue how. Only one of them has a mouth, and it definitely can’t do speech. They say a “beast” must be fed. They thanked me for my “contribution,” then they took Beth. I tried to protest, but they explained that it was best for her to remain. Then they left me here. I have one arm. I’m dying. I’m trying so hard to finish this writing alone, but I’m so weak. I did it for you Beth. I gave you the best start I could. I love you.
While I was transcribing that, a nurse arrived. I might have sighed out loud in relief. I asked them about previous families, but they said they couldn’t keep track. I don’t know if Carla, Bethany, and Ford were real or not. But I’m getting the fuck out of here. Whether the staff like it or not, I'm not letting anything happen to Sue.
Update:
We’re home. I yelled in ways I never thought I could. The doctors forced us to learn how to insert NG tubes into our daughters nose, and sent us off just to get rid of me. We’re safe. We’re out of that place. I don’t feel like I’m being sucked dry in there anymore. I haven’t forgotten what I found though. I looked into it. I found an obituary for a Bethany Shades, who died in the NICU last year. She had an unseen heart condition. Her mother, Carla, committed suicide days later. The father, Ford, disappeared. He’s on the missing persons list and everything.
I don’t know what’s real. Whether it’s true or not, something sinister roams those hospital halls. It’s not the nurses, or the doctors or even the screaming newborns. It’s something else. It feeds on the families there. It brings stress to them and employees alike. I’m just glad I got out when we did. And I wish Sue would quit staring straight at me. I know her eyes aren’t developed enough to even see me from there.
submitted by cfalnevermore to nosleep [link] [comments]
We’ll call my daughter Sue, and my wife Zara. Sue should have been fine. No pregnancy complications, Apgar (that’s a little test they do right after birth to check the newborn’s health) score of 9 out of ten, she didn’t seem to have too much trouble latching onto mom to nurse, and she had two parents eager to take her home and get their new lives started. She seemed like a perfectly healthy, and screamy, newborn girl.
But the nurses at our first hospital were concerned about her rapid breathing. They had us wait to go home until they ran some tests. For three days, we sat there in a mix of horrible dread, and the sort of excitement/fear only new parents can feel, while they monitored her. Then, on the day we were supposed to go home, the tests found “high levels of acid” in her, so they assumed she had something called “neonatal metabolic acidosis” which I think means she’s producing more acids and gasses than her body can get rid of, leading to rapid breathing, which then made feeding difficult. They couldn’t find a cause or confirmation of anything, so they shipped us off to the NICU.
At first they put her on oxygen. That actually helped with the breathing. Her acid levels went down with her breathing purer O2, and after a few days we could take her off those tubes and she could breathe fine. Her acidosis had resolved itself. “So we can leave now, right?” We wondered.
“We’ve noticed she isn’t eating as much as she should.” They told us. “It could be connected to her previous condition and we’d like to keep monitoring her.” Three more days of waiting and sleeping on an awful hospital cot ensued. After that, NICU doctors still weren’t comfortable discharging us until her feedings balanced out, but meanwhile, they kept finding more things to be worried about. “We want to run this test to make sure her eating troubles aren’t neurological. We’ll run that test in three days.” Three days later we’re told “the test came back great! But now we want to run another test to make sure she’s not aspirating. The soonest we can do that is in another three days.”
On, and on, and on. We slept in the hospital for the first week (in a room we weren’t allowed to eat in). In the second week, we were put up by a charity organization, so we had beds and hot meals again. We still spent most of our time in the NICU with our baby. My spouse saw a lactation consultant the whole time, because she wasn’t producing enough to feed our girl by herself, and I watched that grow into self loathing in her mind. I could see it in her face, every time Shae screamed in frustration while she was nursing. Pumping kept both of us awake even when we were in the quiet of the charity house. So stress built up for both of us.
Just to add to that, my vacation time is running out, because American healthcare is fucking garbage and there’s no parental leave for my job. So that’s weighing on us. Our cats at home are being fed by strangers (to them), and we’re constantly exhausted. But here we have access to donor milk, so we know our girl is getting all the food she needs. The doctors know what they’re doing. I trust them. I think their system is ruled by politics, which is needlessly stressing us out, but I have to believe the experts know best. The nurses have all been amazing and supportive. They’re happy to watch the baby while we get some actual sleep.
It can be hard to maintain a positive attitude though. It gets more and more frustrating. The hospital has these strict schedules it wants us to keep. Feedings, and pumping sessions every three hours, and she has to finish a certain amount. First it was 45 ml. Then it was 60. Then 70. And Sue was always perfectly happy to pass out and go to sleep long before her bottle was empty. But she was nursing too. So maybe she was getting all she needed from mom after all? But maybe not. It’s best to stay with the doctors so they can make extra sure. Or is it? I have no fucking clue. The problem is she’s tired when she eats, right? So my wife and I wondered why we didn’t feed her first, and have the nurse run their tests after. That way she’s not upset about being poked and prodded for a few minutes when we feed her. She’d have more energy. Some nurses were happy to oblige. And you know what? Sue did eat more. Not all the nurses wanted to change it up though. They insisted it was Hospital policy that they do things the way they do, because it allows them to chart and monitor her growth and her vitals. “Well why can’t we change up the schedule? Sometimes she’s hungry, and starts screaming an hour before feeding and wears herself out by feeding time?” Once again, hospital policy in the NICU. Are we doing what’s best? I wish I knew.
I’m frustrated with the hospital, I’m angry for my wife, who hates that she’s not producing enough for our daughter, I hate my job for pressuring me to return, I hate this country for discouraging all of us from fighting for paternity leave and childcare benefits, I hate Donald Trump and the Republican Party for those and a variety of other reasons (Fox News, a channel popular with American Conservatives (and consequently full of bullshit talk shows) ends up on the communal tv a lot), and I’m getting really tired of listening to my daughter scream at me.
But now, I’m scared.
I found this journal. It’s one of those “newborn” journals with fun little things to write so you can document the birthing process and your child’s growth. I assumed it belonged to whoever was stuck in this NICU room before we were.
I found it lodged behind the couch. It looks old, but the date on it is only from a year ago. Zara needed a break. She was staying with her parents for a day, to catch up on sleep as much as possible. So I was alone when I found the thing. I’d just gotten done feeding Sue a bottle (and pouring most of it down the NG tube). She screamed for another ten minutes, but miraculously, this time, she fell asleep. If she stayed that way, I’d have maybe an hour to myself. Two if I was lucky. I was too damn tired to game, or websurf or anything, but I was too wired to sleep. So I sat on the cot, and by some random chance, I noticed the sound. Just a little thump. I investigated and I found the journal.
It was a dirty little pink thing, with “The Story of You” printed on the front in flowery gold ribbon-like letters. I knew it wasn’t our birth journal. Zara had taken that with her. Curious, I opened it up. The usual stuff was there. Lots of places for the parents to fill in details and write anecdotes.
This is the journal of Bethany born April 9th, 2022
Mommy: Carla Daddy: Ford
Our note to you: We can’t believe it finally happened! We’ve finally met you! You’re more beautiful than we could have ever imagined! We have your room ready. We can’t wait to bring you home! Our lives begin anew! We love you Bethany!
That was the first page. There were places for photos, but those were all empty. I guess they never got the chance. I was kind of wistful and sad for a moment. After all, some family had left their book of memories behind. The best case scenario there, was that they dropped it and forgot about it. But this is the Neonatal intensive Care Unit. It’s more likely there was a tragedy. That seemed even more likely as I flipped through the pages. These parents had jotted down a lot. They were ready for this baby, and they were as excited as a couple can be about it. There was a whole page where I’m guessing her mom wrote a whole essay about how much she adored her new bundle of joy. We both felt that way a few weeks ago… But the point is, these people were stoked. Their baby was everything to them. No way in hell they would leave their book of memories behind if this had a happy ending.
I can’t say for sure what really happened to these people, but the journal told a strange and impossible tale.
About halfway through the journal, the writing in it changed. It wasn’t parents filling in sections anymore. They ignored the blank spaces and the writing, and wrote top to bottom, over top of the anecdotes and the little squares to put pictures. It was like they were keeping an actual journal. Here is what they wrote:
Something is wrong. Not with Bethany. We’ve been here for three weeks. Nothing is freaking wrong with our baby, but they still don’t feel comfortable letting us leave. The doctor said “we don’t want you to have to come back.” Who gives a shit? We’ll come back if something goes wrong! Let us go home and figure out our new lives! But no. More tests. More monitoring, and now? Something royally fucked up is going on. It took way too long for me to notice, but I’m tired. Hell, I’m exhausted. It was three o'clock in the morning when Carla left to have a soda in the lounge. She said she would be right back, as it would be time to nurse soon. One of our nurses dropped off a bottle of donor milk and stuck it in the warmer too. That was the last person I saw.
I had dozed off. I was startled awake by Beth’s crying. My phone was mysteriously dead. The clock on the wall said about an hour had gone by since my wife left. The whole floor was dark and mostly quiet. There were a few beeps of machinery, and whirs from vents and computers, of course, but I swear the building sounded empty. Just me, and my baby, who was screaming for food. I was really confused. The bottle was still sitting in the warmer. Had the nurses not come by to feed her? They’re supposed to. We insist on feeding whenever we’re here, but the nurses have to document her vitals and make sure she gets the necessary amount. And where the hell was Carla?
What could I do? We must have just had a really busy nurse. So I grabbed the bottle, and I fed little Bethany. She downed the whole bottle in less than five minutes. It was insane. She’s never eaten like that. Not in all her time alive. I was alarmed, but happy. Her eating was one of the things her doctor was worried about. I burped her and held her in my arms, preparing for the screaming and the battle of wills that came with trying to rock her to sleep. But the screaming never came. She lay there in my arms and just stared at me with those big blue eyes. I smiled and cooed at her, happy as a father can be, but she just kept staring. It was pretty creepy if I’m being honest. But she was fed, and calm. I changed her diaper, dressed her, swaddled her, and set her back in her bassinet. She stared at me the whole time.
With her taken care of, I decided to see where our nurse was, and find my wife. I kind of wanted to get away from Beth’s staring eyes too. So I walked out into the hall, and that’s where I started to freak out. The place was empty. No human beings. No nurse, no doctors, no janitors, no technicians, no other parents, and no other babies. Most of the lights were off, but there was definitely some machinery still working. Still. It was like I was suddenly in an abandoned hospital. Even worse? My card to get in and out doesn’t work. I’m stuck on this floor of the NICU. The lounge with the soda machine is right outside that door. I couldn’t see my wife in there, but I couldn’t see the whole room either.
I went from one room too the next, getting more and more panicked. Every bassinet was empty, every desk, every bathroom. There was nobody. There were signs of life, people’s clothes, an open book sitting on a table, some computers still running at their desks, but there was nobody. Had there been some sort of emergency that I missed? Had the nurses somehow forgotten about me? Had my wife not said anything? I gave myself whatever excuse I could think of. Some bizarre set of circumstances had trapped me and my baby on this floor. But it was temporary, and they’d all be back in time. What else could I do? I went back to our room, and sat with Bethany. She’s still staring at me like a little freak. I looked out our window to see if I could spot any signs of life, but it was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything. “There must be a power outage. Everything will be fine,” I told myself.
Well… it’s been three days. My wife never came back, no nurses ever arrived, and the sun never came up. I’m still stuck here waiting, but this isn’t natural. What could possibly keep the outside sky so black? Where the hell are we? And why won’t Bethany stop staring at me? She cries when she’s hungry. I had to break into one of the staff rooms and raid their fridge for a jug of donor milk, but it’s the only one, and it’s not going to last forever. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. My food is gone. I can steal stuff from the communal fridge for a while, but I have no fucking clue what I’m going to do to feed Beth. She can’t eat solids yet. Maybe there’s more donor milk somewhere. What the hell am I going to do? Where the fuck am I?
That was the first entry. I sympathized with that guy a lot. It sounded like he was in a very similar state of frustration as me before he got “lost.” I feel lost and trapped here too. But Christ. What the hell happened to him? It couldn’t be real, could it? It only gets weirder after that. Impossible even. I mean, just look at this next passage:
There’s something in here with us. It’s not human. I don’t think it has eyes. I saw it at the end of the hallway, crawling on the ceiling like an insect. It didn’t react to us at all. I had Bethany strapped to my chest, and at that moment, she decided to cry. Then the thing whipped a head toward me, and it freaking roared. No eyes, no mouth, just teeth, and a humanoid body. It dropped from the ceiling and came bounding towards us. I ran for the nearest room and barricaded us inside. I don’t know what to do. I need to feed Bethany. But what? Oh great. I cut myself.
Monsters in the NICU? This is someone’s project. It has to be. One of the interns fancies themself a writer. Still. I don’t know. I hear weird noises at night. I figured it was just stress and a lack of sleep. It sounded like someone yelled “breath” or something down the hall a few days ago. But maybe it was “Beth?”
The last few entries get… unhinged:
I killed the thing. I smashed it with a chair until it’s squealing stopped. I’m eating part of it now. No way to cook it, so what else can I do? At least I can get water from the sinks. Is it really water? It doesn’t look clear. I did find a way to feed Beth. It hurts, but if I can keep myself alive I should be able to keep us going. She couldn’t get enough. She crawled toward my cut and latched right on. I’ve never seen her eat like that. She needs to stop staring at me. She’s still a newborn baby, but she looks a lot less vulnerable and delicate to me. Still, she’s my daughter.
Yikes. Here’s a short entry:
More things. Not like the first. Not sure how many. I’m hiding. I can’t get to water. I need to feed Beth. I’m feeling weak. I gave her too much. I think she’s gotten bigger. Still won’t stop staring at me.
The only reason I’m not really freaking out is that it’s still daytime here. No black void outside my window. I’m pretty sure I saw a nurse a bit ago. I think I’m safe. The next entry is the last:
I gave her everything I had left. The things came and ate part of me. My legs, one of my arms, a bunch of my torso. I don’t know how I’m alive. There’s so much blood. But I don’t feel any pain. The monsters helped me write this. I’m not sure why. I thought about writing and they brought my journal and helped me move my hand. They talked to me too. No clue how. Only one of them has a mouth, and it definitely can’t do speech. They say a “beast” must be fed. They thanked me for my “contribution,” then they took Beth. I tried to protest, but they explained that it was best for her to remain. Then they left me here. I have one arm. I’m dying. I’m trying so hard to finish this writing alone, but I’m so weak. I did it for you Beth. I gave you the best start I could. I love you.
While I was transcribing that, a nurse arrived. I might have sighed out loud in relief. I asked them about previous families, but they said they couldn’t keep track. I don’t know if Carla, Bethany, and Ford were real or not. But I’m getting the fuck out of here. Whether the staff like it or not, I'm not letting anything happen to Sue.
Update:
We’re home. I yelled in ways I never thought I could. The doctors forced us to learn how to insert NG tubes into our daughters nose, and sent us off just to get rid of me. We’re safe. We’re out of that place. I don’t feel like I’m being sucked dry in there anymore. I haven’t forgotten what I found though. I looked into it. I found an obituary for a Bethany Shades, who died in the NICU last year. She had an unseen heart condition. Her mother, Carla, committed suicide days later. The father, Ford, disappeared. He’s on the missing persons list and everything.
I don’t know what’s real. Whether it’s true or not, something sinister roams those hospital halls. It’s not the nurses, or the doctors or even the screaming newborns. It’s something else. It feeds on the families there. It brings stress to them and employees alike. I’m just glad I got out when we did. And I wish Sue would quit staring straight at me. I know her eyes aren’t developed enough to even see me from there.
2023.03.07 23:09 TouchTheCathyl Bill Clinton was Not a Realist
Introduction
I thoroughly enjoyed the recent video explaining Realism, it did an excellent job codifying a lot of tropes of realist thought without talking in a circular fashion as I find other attempts to explain realism do. However I do want to address a criticism that I think comes not from factual error but merely perspective. Kraut is not an American, and that does give him some outside objectivity in understanding American politics but it also means he may misunderstand some subtleties.The idea that Bill Clinton was a realist seems to be supported by the statement that the Clintons looked up to Henry Kissinger, a talking point I heard quite frequently during the 2016 campaign, especially in the New York Times, but which lacked a ton of context. The reason for this was that outlets like the Times saw Clinton's win as forgone and so were preparing themselves to be liberal critics of the Clinton administration, and foreign policy is easily Hillary Clinton's most enduring political legacy as she was Secretary of State under president Obama and given significant deference, which made it the most obvious avenue for scrutiny, and I suspect this is where this talking point grew from.
That's actually a point I want to bring up, the office of Secretary of State is a very powerful one in the United States, and exactly how powerful varies by the President. Some presidents appoint a close ally and give them clear orders of their vision, other presidents appoint a scholar they respect and rubber stamp their decisions. It can be just as critical to define phases of American foreign policy by the State Secretary as by the President. Kissinger himself was the architect of Nixon's policy as his State Secretary. Including our missing context: Henry Kissinger presided over the Yom Kippur War and the China Visit.
The Yom Kippur War
In 1973 a coalition of Panarabists made one last attempt to save their arab nationalist ideology (remember the Turkey videos?) by removing the Jewish state, the massive flaw in their vision. They invaded Israel during the Yom Kippur festivities, expecting the army to be busy celebrating. However despite the element of surprise and early victories, superior organization and equipment by the Israeli Defense Force countered and routed the Panarab offensive. After this conflict, the Arab states would slowly begin to accept Israel is here to stay as it became clear they would not be able to annex it after three failed attempts. That the current state of the Israeli Palestinian conflict is that the Israeli state is secure and the Palestinian state isn't is a product of the peace protocols following the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars. Before then, neither state was secure.During the negotiations the US was faced with a challenge in that the belligerents could not engage in negotiations as negotiating with Israeli diplomats would implicitly mean recognizing Israel as a state, something which the armed forces in some of the belligerent nations had couped their leaders before in the past. Not to mention admitting defeat in the war was itself a coup risk. As a consequence of transitioning away from a world of empires and towards a world of Nation States, as well as the rise of ideological dictatorships, this was an increasingly common problem in the 20th century and continues today: States rarely ever voluntarily cede territory. It's just never in the self interest of a state to do so. So in an age where the moral right of a state to own territory is defined by national fraternity, the state must justify its borders or its territorial ambitions by asserting that they line up generally to the boundaries of a nation. This means other national identities must be either incorporated, placated, removed, or for this purpose, denied. You cannot deny a nationality's right to self determination, but you can deny that it is a nationality. You see this in Putin claiming Ukrainians are an integral part of the Russian nationality, or more pertinently the PanArabists refusing to acknowledge the existence of the Jewish state, essentially pretending that it's not there, in order to justify annexing it. Nationalistic ideologies are often deliberately delusional, and do not take kindly to being confronted with reality, as ideological compliance is necessary to maintain order, and the levers of power like the military or court will be staffed with true believers who will use their power to depose a heathen. Thus ideological dictatorships committed to national supremacy cannot ever admit to failure of the allegedly supreme nationality or ideology, such as in a war. To get around this and negotiate peace, Kissinger repeated a process of using third party mediators many times over that is still used today when conducting negotiations between belligerents that for whatever reason cannot contact each other directly, nicknamed Shuttle Diplomacy as it often involves frequent short range flights to third neutral countries. This method of conducting diplomacy is essential for allowing dialogue to be had in pretty much any modern ethnic conflict where there's too much national pride at stake for the negotiating parties to openly engage in negotiations, and in Kissinger's time, ended the Yom Kippur War and began one of the phases of peace negotiations that culminated in the Oslo Accords. Without Kissinger, there were no Oslo Accords, which were easily Clinton's proudest foreign policy legacy.
China
The decision to make a diplomatic mission to the People's Republic of China set in motion the uplifting of a fifth of the global population from Absolute Poverty by allowing China access to foreign export markets to build a modern industrial base with. And during the Clinton administration, there was still hope that a growing middle class would demand more political say to protect their wealth and force the Party to devolve more power. Francis Fukuyama believes this will still happen eventually. I do recall a video where Kraut dismisses this belief as having been naive, that revolutions are usually conducted an underclass with nothing to lose by overthrowing the state, but the Arab Spring has been exactly this and ended rather definitively in failure. The truth is that nobody knows how to deliberately and consistently concoct the conditions to create a democratic revolution in an undemocratic state and we're kind of just guessing, and the Middle Class Reform theory was very powerful in the 90s end-of-history zeitgeist as it was more or less what was believed to have caused the democratization of South Korea at the same time. And with the decision to open China, even if it never democratizes, has had a profound positive impact on life for the average person in the most populous country on earth. Those are real people whose lives were improved. It may be easy to forget those consequences, especially when we take for granted the industrial powerhouse that China looks like today, and have begun to regret giving the Chinese state access to the kind of wealth and legitimacy to engage in grotesque violations of human rights and threats of aggression against democratic states, all for its nationalsitic ideology.That is somewhat poor comfort so far, I know it seems like a stretch, but I want to establish first that there are two possible explanations for why the Clintons acknowledge Kissinger, them being amoral realists seeking the securing of an American influence sphere, and them being pragmatic idealists admitting that without some of Kissinger's actions some of their flagship accomplishments wouldn't have been possible, and I intend to eliminate the former by citing President Clinton's own words and actions.
Ukaine, Russia, and Madeleine Albright
"When I first became president, I said that I would support Russian President Boris Yeltsin in his efforts to build a good economy and a functioning democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—but I would also support an expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet states. My policy was to work for the best while preparing for the worst. I was worried not about a Russian return to communism, but about a return to ultranationalism, replacing democracy and cooperation with aspirations to empire, like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. I didn’t believe Yeltsin would do that, but who knew what would come after him?"When the current Russian offensive in Ukraine started, a propaganda point Russia used to claim victimhood was that NATO had unfairly encroached upon their sphere of influence and surrounded them, intending to reduce Russia to a poker chip to use the metaphor from the video. Essentially, Putin accused Bill Clinton and George W. Bush of violating realist principles against Russia.
Bill Clinton immediately wrote a brief essay1 first a challenge to this point by illustrating his actual vision for a post cold war Russia, and second an obituary to his State Secretary and architect of his vision and the NATO expansion, Madeleine Albright.
Marie Jana Körbelová was born in Prague in 1937. In 1948 at the age of 11 her family fled the rapidly descending Iron Curtain for the United States, where from a young age she watched the Soviet Union cruelly repress her home and people and the Americans feel largely powerless or disinterested in stopping it. She studied international relations and wrote her dissertation on the Prague Spring of 1968, becoming the premier expert in Washington on the fundamental nature of the Warsaw Pact as an extractive relationship between a Russian imperial core and Eastern European colonies, and advocate for the freedom of Eastern Europe from the Soviet Empire. When Yugoslavia collapsed, Albright was one of the loudest lobbyists in Washington supporting NATO intervention in the former Yugoslav states to enforce peace.
Bill Clinton knew all of this when he appointed her. It is in fact exactly why he appointed her. Bill Clinton's understanding of Russia was deeply tied to his understanding of Russian history as having not developed the rule of law as Western Europe did due to mongol influence and isolation from the forces that created rule of law in Western Europe. In fact, these very ideas were discussed in Kraut's video on the Origins of Russian Authoritarianism. Bill Clinton believed that the end of the Soviet Union was Russia's chance to finally end Russian Lawlessness, and sought to create a system of incentives to allow Russia to integrate with Western Europe if it succeeded in doing so, while also preparing to deter aggression should Russia reject the hand he offered. This was the purpose of the NATO expansion, it may have violated Russia's supposed sphere of influence but he didn't care. Yes, expanding NATO is against realism. Bill Clinton is not a realist, he did it because he genuinely cared about the futures of the former Warsaw Pact states. It created insurance against the rise of a figure like Putin but also established the precedent that former NATO enemies can join if they change sufficiently. States like Russia, or Ukraine. What we are seeing in Ukraine, is what Clinton wanted for Russia, a debate between western and eastern outlooks won by the western faction seeking greater ties to NATO and the EU and better systems of democracy and law. Not poker chips to be used by the United States against Russia or China, but as nations of free minded people who wish to write their own destinies. Not a nation building project where the US would attempt to create democracy in Russia from the end of a bayonet. Ukraine has broken the yoke of Russian Lawlessness all on their own, and this war has only solidified the Ukrainian state and identity as something not Russian, and shown starkly the two different paths that opened after the end of the Soviet Union. Russia took one road and is becoming a hermit state, Ukraine took another and in her finest hour is awash in support and solidarity from the west.
Madeleine Albright, forgive the metaphor, but may well be the closest thing we had in real life to Princess Leia, if Ronald Reagan saw the Soviets as the Empire, then Albright was a diplomat who watched her home destroyed and so committed to dismantling the empire responsible through politics, diplomacy, and if necessary, war. She was so beloved as a liberator that Vaclav Havel wanted to name her as his successor to lead his party, which she declined believing she would serve Czechia better as a lobbyist in Washington. And she was in my view the greatest diplomat who has ever lived. She brought peace to the Balkans, something Bismarck and Metternich could not even conceive of. As Secretary of State she began the process of expanding NATO that was completed under George W Bush and his State Secretary Condoleeza Rice, defied 'vietnam syndrome' following the failure of the Somalia crisis, and used the might of the most powerful empire in history to protect millions of innocents in eastern europe from harm for generations to come and offer an olive branch with one hand to her former oppressors while preparing for them to refuse it with the other. Each day this war continues vindicates her decision to expand NATO and interfere in the Balkans. And it is a great disservice to her legacy to call her or the president she advised a realist. Albright's foreign policy was motivated first and foremost by the idea that American power ought to be used to protect the innocent, famously chastising Colin Powell, yes that Colin Powell, for being too bearish and cautious about interfering in the post-yugoslav conflicts. Bill Clinton's involvement in stopping the Sbrenica Genocide is something Kraut has acknowledged in a video shaming Noam Chomsky for denying it, and was motivated entirely by idealism. A desire to put an end to the centuries of conflict that have plagued southeastern europe since the Romans. (His recalcitrance was mostly due to a combination of fearing a repeat of the recent humiliation in Somalia, and suffering a sex scandal at home.) Hillary Clinton shared this view. As did Albright.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton would get her turn to shape foreign policy in some capacity as Obama's state secretary from 2009-2013, during which many of the decisions Kraut identified as idealistic bordering on neoconservative were enacted such as the Libya intervention2 , and she was in favor of endorsing the Arab Spring3 . More pertinently, after retiring in 2013 she also acknowledged that the 2014 invasion of Crimea was a warning that Russia would not stop and would not accept an independent and westernizing Ukraine4,5, a view that made her an enemy of Russian interests when she made a bid for the presidency in 2016. There is a reason why Russian propaganda campaigns clearly disfavored Clinton. And Russia was not the only party that despised Clinton's candidacy. Hillary Clinton was a supporter of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a long-negotiated plan to counterbalance China by improving economic ties with the countries surrounding it, creating a trade bloc of nations that would together be stronger against attempts by an increasingly authoritarian China to bully them. This shift reflected both recognition that China was becoming a threat to the American order despite earlier optimism, and it reflected the very same return to the Reagan-Bush encirclement strategy that Kraut has acknowledged President Biden for reviving. This was hated by american nationalists though as a corporate plot to take over the governments of the signatories, and when Donald Trump came to power and scrapped it, the Chinese party leadership breathed a sigh of relief.These are not the actions of realists. Realists are not enemies of Russia. If Hillary Clinton was a realist, Russia would consider her an ally for wanting to respect Russia's sphere of influence and poker player status and have favored her with their 2016 propaganda efforts. I do not wish to imply that Russian interference elected president Trump, or to deny the free and fairness of the 2016 US presidential election, those are controversial issues that do not affect the relevant point: It should be abundantly clear from the stated viewpoint of Russian subsidized propaganda outlets such as RT that Clinton was no ally of Russia. The Clintons are not realists, that is exactly what Vladimir Putin detests about them.
TL;DR: Just read what Bill Clinton wrote in citation 1. he's a smarter man than I, and these are not the words of a realist.
citation 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clinton-nato-expansion-ukraine/629499/
citation 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU
citation 3: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mideast/clinton-says-u-s-must-embrace-arab-spring-despite-dangers-idUSBRE89B19Z20121012
citation 4: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-44630
citation 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZixsVwcofEw