Gerbil hamster yellow wubby

Good day!
(I started this ramble as a feedback e-mail, but before finishing it found this sub-reddit where I heard the devs are active? Current game version as of writing: 1.5.4.)
A big thank you to everyone involved in developing and delivering Pickle Pete! It is easily in my top 10 most fun mobile games and I very nearly consider it a masterpiece of the genre. I've put in dozens of hours of playtime at the least.
I'll lead with critical bullet points, follow them up with elaboration and my experience, then end with praise bullet points for those that care to read it.

Opportunities for Improvement:

There is no in-game method to replay the intro sequence.
Each playable character should have their own, even if very short, intro animation.
Intro animations / bestiary for enemies.
Add more bang for more bucks.
Honor those that spent gems on chests before additional rewards for cumulative openings was added.
No in game text tips.
Narrow preferable choices for mutations and equip-able active skill.
Weapon attachments
Farming the last available boss could be more rewarding.
"Blessings" is an awesome system, but isn't congruent with the game thematically.
Long animation delay on skill selection cards. Not an issue for new players.
Add weapon trade-in vendor.
Possible bug: when swapping apps and returning to Pickle Pete while playing Endless game play will continue, but pickles will refrain from dropping making points no longer acquirable until the run is terminated. Possibly intentional to reduce cheating.

I've been playing Pickle Pete over the last few weeks and it's clearly a step above most mobile games on the market now. I had completed all main campaign levels and additional game modes just before the level twelve update. This was of course followed closely by multiple other updates which kept resetting my endless rank. ::MadNotMad:: After 3 committed attempts I've broken into the top one-hundred twice and top ten once. I did all of this without purchasing anything...yet, nearly acquiring all of the bonus blessing stats, and working up to a purple SMG for a starter weapon. I still have no legendary gear...yet.
I've loved video games since my grandparents let me load up games I can't completely recall on their MS-DOS computer. I don't always have as much time as I'd like to game, but I have been mashing buttons for nearly three decades. I believe there is some overlap between what makes a game fun and what makes a game well designed. What people find fun will vary, but I see good design as a more objective truth. Even though I'm no professional it's clear to me that Pickle Pete had/has at least a rock star or two infusing good design principles.

1. First things first. The intro animation may have been added after I started playing for a bit. I can't recollect. In any event I skipped some of it. Sure I can and have viewed it on youtube, but it's still taking up space on my phone right? Can we get an in-game button to replay it?

2. Speaking of intro animations.. each character should get one! Even if just a short one that plays when acquiring one. (And maybe also a replay button.) It could highlight or hint at the different bonuses that apply at the end of their roll moves.
**Mr. Peely** \- Running, slips into a back flip, beginning of slip flip face is surprised/worried, midway through flip face is determined/smug, animation becomes a blur, lands while doing a split and swinging upward with an axe cleaving an enemy in two.
**Corny McCob** \- A yellow cylinder is rapidly spinning on two squares of butter, butter drops are being flung away at various directions, the cylinder launches away, three point hero landing, camera panning up from feet reveals a maniacal cob of corn holding a pipe bomb, glancing left and right, I don't like that look in his eyes or that blinking red light.
**Willy the Wiener** \- Is that a rapidly disassembled picnic table riddled with bullet holes flying through the air? Camera pans down to a beach front while cinders and charcoal pieces are jettisoned from a barbecue grill. Willy is tanning hides with a quickness holding dual uzis. Arms and uzis are a blur until they snap into clarity between each volley.

3. It's only fair that the enemies of the game get a little love. They're getting slaughtered out there! Something has to raise morale. Why not a little intro sequence highlighting their attack? And/or a bestiary somewhere in the menus. Descriptions with similar tone to what is found in the game Plants vs. Zombies would be fitting.

4. I find the current monetization models most prevalent, specifically in the mobile market, shameful. Ninety-Nine dollars is a big chunk towards the latest gen console or a kick ass graphics card. Or... a pile of in game currency that shaves off some time and possibly puts you ahead of fellow gamers... I know it's just the way of things currently, but the cliche gem crates for various prices including one for ninety-nine dollars is personally a huge annoyance. It is one of the first things I look for in a game and determines along with the obvious passion that was put into the games creation that determines whether I will spend any money within it.
Money is part of what makes life unfun for many, and now more than ever it's detracting from a core reason gaming is fun. In my opinion games should be as level as a playing field as they can be outside of 'real life'. Paying to win robs fledgling gamers of skill ceiling, feelings of accomplishment, and the bragging rights that come with leveling up without swiping a credit card.
So dump the uninspired gem boxes for money or at least throw in some extra cosmetics, alternate soundtracks, or the option for players to add their own content. Something to move the needle in the other direction and show appreciation to those who help fund access and development for those that can't. The move would ideally garner more appreciation and wind up netting more money anyway. Or I might need to see an optimismoptomitrist about adjusting the shade of my glasses.

5. I haven't yet, but I will be spending some money on this game. It's too good not to. I'd like to at least craft a legendary starter weapon beforehand though. Just so I can say I did. It makes me wince a little inside knowing that if I had saved my marshmallows I would have spent enough gems on large chests by now to acquire a guaranteed legendary item. I opened three before the update was released that added the cumulative reward. Any chance a catch-up / credit can be implemented for all in the same boat?

6. I must have missed the message that explains the way the uncollected pickles and the pickle jar interacts. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out what the jar was all about. Could we get this and other such game tips added? Maybe incoming update teaser message as well. They could be auto-cycling fade in/out text messages in the empty space underneath the boss picture on the stage selection screen.

7. I've read some google reviews of the game suggesting that melee weapons need adjusting. I think they're just fine. They receive strong bonuses from the viking four-set. They're best used to supplement range damage as the timing of damage between melee and low fire rate range is staggered. If you want to up the difficulty of the game, try going for full melee builds. It's like a hidden difficulty slider. An active skill equip could be added to enable the player to throw their melee weapons for a duration, turning such builds into a challenging wave clearer, but a monstrous boss killer. If nothing else throw in some Lightsab...I mean... Laser Swords.
What I find simultaneously the most easily fixed and largest flaw of the game is the narrow preferable choice in mutations and equip-able active skills. Similar to my perspective concerning melee weapons this system could be viewed as a difficulty slider. I think it would instead be more fun to modify them to make them more compelling. The damage bonus to enemies on fire would be more viable if the active skill that set the enemies on screen on fire was on a shorter cooldown. Now that I'm thinking about it though this combo may be just fine if you want to build up larger health enemies first or do more damage to bosses. The cooldown and fire duration still seem kind of dissatisfying. Maybe add hidden bonuses that increase the draw rate of things like the fire mace while either or both are equipped.
The knock back skill is more underwhelming than the fire. The most viable use I can think of for this one is securing supply crates. The cd could be shortened on the skill or turn the skill into a time warping bubble that begins with a knock back. While the bubble is active increase player attack speed and damage taken, but any enemies or projectiles entering the bubble will have drastically reduced movement speed.
Maybe more diverse enemies could then be added so that occasionally what once was an optional item is near mandatory for a time. Urging players to try out new builds for success while making more items feel like they've earned their place in the game.

8. One last item modification idea. Weapon attachments! Scopes, Stocks, Barrels, Carbon Fiber Axe Handles, stuff like that to modify 'Own' weapon stats. Maybe you have to collect pieces for them from specific bosses. Late game players would have a reason to return to earlier levels and in turn see the progress they've made as they rack up way more pickles than their first time through. This would also give a bit of a push/pull mechanic to the energy system. The energy system I suspect is just there to prevent supply crate farming abuse. I've rarely run out of energy while still wanting to play which I like. All attachments could be lost upon upgrading or resetting the weapon to keep the hamster wheel spinning, make the efforts toward building them more meaningful, and delay the realization of weapons full capabilities.

9. The above change would make farming the last available boss more rewarding as well. The latest boss being the most difficult to kill and dropping the latest released weapons attachments would give successive runs more meaning.

10. Another change that I feel should be done quickly is 86ing the blessing system. Not entirely. It is a win-win addition that makes watching nearly pointless ads more satisfying. But it just doesn't mesh with the Pickle Pete theme. Idea: 'Condiments' may not make sense for all of the characters, but thinking 'Hot Sauce' for the +25% damage boost. Visual effects for each can be added to the character to cement the system in the player's mind. "Aww crap my character isn't throwing off glitter sparks. I forgot to grab the the gold gain bonus."

11. This change suggestion is more for experienced players that have earned their stripes. When doing long endless runs especially the animation delay after picking skill cards is slightly annoying. It's not major, but I wanna go fast! Make this delay toggleable after the player has cleared all the extra game mode levels or killed the final available boss or meeting both requirements. Let's gooooo!

12. A change that would be good for players of all experience levels would be a weapon trader. Maybe you can set up a trade-in shop preference before level select. Should you find the merc vendor in a level you can trade one of your currently equipped weapons for an equal grade preferred weapon. Even if at an additional cost...gotta make pickles somehow.

13. Possible bug: when swapping apps and returning to Pickle Pete while playing Endless game play will continue, but pickles will refrain from dropping making points no longer acquirable until the run is terminated. Possibly intentional to reduce cheating.

Things that make you go 'Awesome!':

Pickle Pete! is not another copy and paste code cash grab. ...I'm imagining a darty eyed programmer hesitantly grinning 'right' while slowly nodding. :D
Viability of numerous gear and skill selections.
Excellent sound design. I especially love the long battle track that only reveals itself as you progress to long lasting waves.
Animations and weapon targeting is on point.
UI and loading screen design.
Creative additional game modes.
Competitive Endless!?! This is a massive boon to replay-ability, keeps the game off the 'eh I may as well uninstall' list, and takes me back to playing Diablo 2. Yeah you beat the game, but how many people have you beaten that have beat the game? I love it. The only improvement I would consider for endless is implementation of a wave skip feature. You'll get more points faster, but only be able to skip as far as progress you've earned minus X amount. Skip too much and you might not be able to crush the wave with your relatively diminished gear. Maybe wave skip is only available once a day too.
I'm Pickle Pete!

submitted by PowerToTheOhana to picklepetegame [link] [comments]

2023.06.05 02:53 I_Love_Cyndaquil2 Burnt out.

Let me paint a picture for you.
Within a dark basement room, illuminated only by the pale blue of a setting sun, dusty paper and cardboard covers the floor, some of the paper has math equations and some has notes on history, some paper talks of the current economy and the government. On the floor, faint music can be heard, it blares the distinct sound of heavy metal and rock, but where is it?
In the back left corner sit two gerbils, one beige and one grey, the top of the 50 gallon tank collects dust, they may not have much in terms of human interaction, yet they have all they need inside the cage, a perfect bedding depth that is changed weekly, a big wheel, a sand bath, and all homemade cardboard toys from safe non-toxic glues.
Near the entrance to the room a love seat presses against a blue wall, yet this couch has not been sat on in weeks, instead it is home to more paper and pencils as well as half finished crochet projects that have been tossed to the side as they have never been finished.
To the far left side of the room, a fireplace can be seen, however, this fireplace has not had any fire in a long time, inside it hosts a wide variety of cobwebs, while ashes and dust scatter the bottom of it.
To the far right side of the room an old worn down altar can be seen, upon first glance the table could be mistaken for antique, yet on closer inspection you would find it is merely in awful condition. Around the table a wide variety of candles, paper, and dusty jars containing different ingredients are found. The candles come in black, blue, red, and yellow, as well as green, pink, orange, and brown. The papers are covered in chicken-scratch writing in what appears to be another language. Yet all of them list the same things, spells, the language is a mere alphabet known as Theban. The jars contain egg shells and snail shells, charcoal and ashes, colourful stones and preserved flowers, needles and rusty nails.
The centre of the room is home to a wall-mounted television, the last time the screen changed was the early morning, beneath the television is a cedar chest, on top of the chest you will find granola bar wrappers and peels of various fruits as well as pop cans and water bottles, beside the garbage is old dishes, mugs that have old half drank coffee and plates covered in maple syrup from old waffles and pancakes, this is easily the most lived in part of the room.
A few feet away from the chest, and next to the altar is a sofa, it seems to be the reason paper covers the floor as every time the cushions move a paper falls to the floor. On the far left side of the sofa, near the entrance to the room sits a 15 year old fat boy with messy blonde hair. Caked on grease covers his face as he stares down at a math sheet, a pen in his right hand and a calculator in his left.
The boy is attempting to solve math equations, yet he is so burnt out, that despite reading the question over and over the words do not seem to make sense. The boy looks down at his wrists, pink shiny scars stare back, a reminder of what happened.
His mind flashes memories, he remembers waking to police at 5, he remembers watching his brothers fights, he remembers the time people attempted breaking into his house to kill his brother, he remembers everything.
He remembers his mother saying she wishes she never had him.
The boy feels sick now, a knot in his stomach and he looks at the calendar hung across the room, he counts 18 days left of school.
The knot tightens, for the coming summer does not mean a time of relaxation and recovery, it means fighting and stress. This homework does not symbolize a chance at passing, it symbolizes a failing future.
He reads the question again, “Solve using either elimination or substitution. Be sure to write a therefore statement. Check the solution using a LS/RS chart for both equations.
4x - 3y = - 2
2x + y = 8”
He knows what to do, all he has to do is pick up the pencil and write, but he seems to be frozen, staring at the page.
A lady walks down the stairs, “Are you doing your homework?” She asks.
“Yeah… Yeah, sorry I’ll get to it.” He starts writing but stops, the steps to solving it have gone, he’s forgotten everything.
The lady walks away, angry, the boy lifts his pencil, he swiftly lowers it to his ankle, he lifts his pant leg and slices, the burning sensation of a scratch covers his leg as it begins to form a long red line, it matches all the others, scars and scabs, scratches and cuts. Fresh and dry blood.
A sense of relief fills the boy, he lifts his pencil and goes to solve the equation, but again, he forgot it.
Instead he picks up his phone and begins to type, he describes the room he is in, he describes what he just did.
The lady comes back, it’s his mother, yet he doesn’t consider her one, she screams at him, tells him to get back to work, he heard the words, but they don’t seem to make sense, as if his brain has stopped translating the language.
And he describes it as it happens.
And then he posts the story as he feels fresh blood from the new cut trickle down his leg.

submitted by I_Love_Cyndaquil2 to mentalillness [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 15:18 devilsnumbre rule

submitted by devilsnumbre to 196 [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 12:06 dupj some symbols for pikograph

submitted by dupj to neography [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 05:38 maamthisisawalgreens Thoughts on owning two dogs as a college student? Should I do it?

(cross-posted to pets as well.)
Hi there! I’m nineteen years old and going into my third year of undergrad. I am moving off campus into an apartment this upcoming fall semester. I am definitely bringing my current dog, a tiny maltipoo and japanese chin mix. I have an opportunity to get an ethically-bred Boykin Spaniel puppy in about two months (breeder is a veterinarian I work with), and I would absolutely love one! I have a few concerns, though.
First, my apartment is on the larger side, but this does mean I have three roommates. The one roommate that I know would be fine with two dogs, so that isn’t an issue. My complex hasn’t released the information of my other two tentative roommates to us yet. Said complex is very dog oriented, so I would have space for the dogs to run around and play, and there’s many parks and outdoor spaces in my area for walks and playtime.
Second, my current dog is… a bit much. She’s a very cat-like dog. She’s a picky eater, very clingy, and she also prefers the company of people rather than dogs. She’s one of those dogs that thinks she’s a human. My mom did not enforce her training while I was away from home and let her pick up a ton of bad habits that I now have to correct. So, I’ll be training a new puppy at the same time as training a four-year-old tiny mutt that isn’t even food-motivated.
I work in the veterinary field and feel very comfortable with handling and managing multiple animals, and money is not an issue, as I have plenty saved up for the new dog and my mom pays for all my current dog’s necessities (food, vet bills, etc). My class schedule is already oriented around having a dog and spending time at home. I’ve had more than one pet to care for basically my whole life, although this was usually a hamstegerbil and my dog. My late hamster passed away in March. Having just one pet feels weird to me because that’s something i’m so used to.
So, what else are some things to consider with this decision? I understand that a second dog is a big commitment, and I want to make sure I’m not getting in over my head.

submitted by maamthisisawalgreens to dogs [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 01:51 maamthisisawalgreens Would two dogs be manageable in college?

Hi there! I’m nineteen years old and going into my third year of undergrad. I am moving off campus into an apartment this upcoming fall semester. I am definitely bringing my current dog, a tiny maltipoo and japanese chin mix. I have an opportunity to get an ethically-bred Boykin Spaniel puppy in about two months (breeder is a veterinarian I work with), and I would absolutely love one! I have a few concerns, though.
First, my apartment is on the larger side, but this does mean I have three roommates. The one roommate that I know would be fine with two dogs, so that isn’t an issue. My complex hasn’t released the information of my other two tentative roommates to us yet. Said complex is very dog oriented, so I would have space for the dogs to run around and play, and there’s many parks and outdoor spaces in my area for walks and playtime.
Second, my current dog is… a bit much. She’s a very cat-like dog. She’s a picky eater, very clingy, and she also prefers the company of people rather than dogs. She’s one of those dogs that thinks she’s a human. My mom did not enforce her training while I was away from home and let her pick up a ton of bad habits that I now have to correct. So, I’ll be training a new puppy at the same time as training a four-year-old tiny mutt that isn’t even food-motivated.
I work in the veterinary field and feel very comfortable with handling and managing multiple animals, and money is not an issue, as I have plenty saved up for the new dog and my mom pays for all my current dog’s necessities (food, vet bills, etc). My class schedule is already oriented around having a dog and spending time at home. I’ve had more than one pet to care for basically my whole life, although this was usually a hamstegerbil and my dog. My late hamster passed away in March. Having just one pet feels weird to me because that’s something i’m so used to.
So, what else are some things to consider with this decision? I understand that a second dog is a big commitment, and I want to make sure I’m not getting in over my head.

submitted by maamthisisawalgreens to Pets [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 00:38 Catastrophe_unedited Why do I feel like I need a dog right now?

First off, just looking for answers, not trying to stir the pot. I (20F) have been living in an apartment since my (24M) have been dating and married. We are both feeling cramped in our 1 bedroom apartment, but I just can't shake wanting a dog so badly. I've had dogs through my entire life, and ever since I moved out a few years ago. I got a hamster (died earlier this year & then got a gerbil a few months later because of this same feeling) instead of a dog because I just always have had pets- from dogs, hamsters, fish, etc - they have been a constant. My husband doesn't want a dog until we move in a larger living space but I feel like I am missing a huge piece of my life without a dog. I don't know why I feel this urge to start my life with a dog, but I know I was good with waiting for a house a few months ago. I can't explain it but I feel guilty for changing my mind after being married for a year and a half, but what is causing this? My husband and I had a conversation about if I seriously thought it was a NEED versus something I could wait on. He's super understanding and supportive through everything, but I just can't shake it.
Thoughts?
Also, I suffer with anxiety and depression - could that be causing this need?

submitted by Catastrophe_unedited to Marriage [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 15:24 Humble_Sheepp This is the first time I lucid dreamt and it was terrifying

TLDR at the end.
The earliest I can remember in the dream was going to this huge house for a get together with friends from a new church that invited me. The house had a large TV, a very spacious living room, a line of doors north the living room that lead to another part of the house, stairs on the east of the room that lead to the outside patio, three doorways southwest of the house the lead to three rooms each with a large stain glassed window of Jesus, and to the west of the house was a kitchen that had large stairs that lead up. In this house, there were about 8 girls around my age, a medium sized dog, and a man in his late 20s - early 30s with his wife and a buddy of his. The couple and his friend decided to leave the house for some reason and I was left alone in this house with the girls and the dog. At some point, I accidentally hurt the dog (not badly though, just made him yelp) and one of the girls grabbed the dog and yelled, "I hope you never do that again. If you do that again I'll kill you. I'll kill your right here." In a fit of rage I screamed back, "Well I hope you do. I HOPE YOU DO FUCKING KILL ME!" At that moment I grabbed some of my things and ran up the stairs, however I was still missing my backpack. I looked behind me and saw the girl angrily grab an empty bottle of svedka and march up the stairs after me as I hurriedly fiddled with the shitty doorknob to the outside patio. Once I got out there the patio was mostly covered in smooth gravel with the occasional concrete squares and a metal grater close to the door that was falling in. I stood outside of the door as the girl who I pissed off as well as the other girls started throwing glass bottles at me and everyone of them missed me and shattered behind me. They were shouting at me as I was trying to explain to them that all I needed was my backpack and I would leave. A girl with blonde wavy hair walked out of the house and started shoving me and pushing her glass bottle into my arm and chest. At that moment, I realized that her pushes felt like nothing and a voice inside my head said "You're dreaming". I forcefully pushed her away and looked at the ground while I did it then looked back up only to realize the blonde girl disappeared. I looked back over at the door to see the girls staring back at me then shutting the door. I walked back into the house with the girls nowhere to be found and the dog peacefully sleeping on the floor. I walked back down the stairs and once I reached the bottom I noticed one of the girls peaking from behind one of the lines of doors from the north side of the room then slowly closing it. I realized now would be a good time to find my backpack and head home. This was when I looked into the different doorways that lead to the rooms with the stain glassed windows and thought, "Damn, this house is huge." I walked into the kitchen only to be welcomed by the man and his wife and friend walking through one of the doors that lead outside. I told him about the backpack situation and he said I would get it back after the church service and lead me up the stairs in the kitchen and it was at that moment I realized I was shirtless. I covered my breasts with my arms and walked up the stairs to a huge chapel full of people. I sat down for a few moments then decided to just leave and maybe come back later once i was dressed. Once I got home and put a shirt on I noticed how absolutely filthy my room was. There were yellow and white stains on the carpet, the windows were covered in condensation on the inside, and both of my pet's tanks (I have am axolotl and a hamster) were disgusting. I also noticed that my axolotl's bubbler was on in his tank and half the water was gone. I quickly unplugged it then stared out the window because I noticed my mom's suitcase on the floor and she was nowhere to be found so u assumed she'd be coming home soon. I first saw a woman I didn't know walk up the stairs to my house and knocked on the door and stood there then I saw my mom. I turned around only to see her already walking up the stairs to my room and I explained the situation with the bubbler. She replied, " oh its good for him" to which I said, "no, if you leave it on too long it stresses him out." I looked away and looked back only to see the bubbler on again and my axolotl vomiting became of it. Once again I turned it off and said "Keep it off, I mean it." "Oh, he likes it." "I MEAN IT!" Just then mom let out my old family dog who died 2 years ago. Her fur was completely white when it was usually brown and black and she could barely walk. She fell to the floor and started vomiting profusely with the occasional human-sounding burp in between gagging. Then I woke up. It was the craziest thing I ever dreamt.
TLDR: I went to a big church house that housed 8 girls and a dog. I hurt the dog and the girls got mad and fought me. I realized I was dreaming when I didn't feel them hurt me. They ran off and spied on me in the house when I went looking for my backpack. The man who owned the house returned with his wife and I realized I was naked at this point. He told me I would get my backpack back if I went to a church service. I went home instead to put on some clothes. At home my room was filthy and my pets were sick. I got into an argument with my mom over it.

submitted by Humble_Sheepp to DreamInterpretation [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 01:37 Frownycatgirl Is this an okay food mix?

i mixed these all together and this will be my hamsters dry food and it will also be getting a mix of fresh foods everyday, also The kaytee food Will mostly just be as a foraging treat.

submitted by Frownycatgirl to hamstercare [link] [comments]

2023.06.01 16:46 happy__teo Is this portion too much or enough for whinter white hamster?

Broccoli, yellow thing - bell pepper, and piece of green bean. My finger for comparison. Is it normal portion of vegetables for whinter white hamster per day (2-3 times per week)?

submitted by happy__teo to hamsters [link] [comments]

2023.06.01 16:44 Cool_Garlic6995 General Care Info

Hi everyone! I’m looking into adopting from a rescue and I was curious if there are any links or master posts for general care advice? I know a lot more about hamsters than I do gerbils but I have slowly started to feel gerbils are better for me.
But it seems I can’t find as much info on them. Thank uuu in advance🫶🏽

submitted by Cool_Garlic6995 to gerbil [link] [comments]

2023.06.01 05:57 milkybright After becoming a rat owner, I don’t understand why people would own other small animals like hamsters, gerbils, and guinea pigs

They’re smarter than all the dogs I’ve ever had, reciprocate love to you as much as they can in their little bodies, and are low maintenance overall. What more could you ask for??

submitted by milkybright to RATS [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 21:28 SubstantialRoutine99 Should I be that guy to get a service monkey

submitted by SubstantialRoutine99 to AdviceAnimals [link] [comments]

2023.05.31 20:34 Hiraya1 Temporary enclosure

Unfortunately while browsing Facebook i noticed that a neighbor have a little dwarf in a cage that is smaller than a shoebox, i tried to show her info's about proper hamster care but she most likely wont spend money on the poor hammy 😞 at home i have a extra 60x40x30cm cage that i could give to her along with proper bedding, although is not meeting minimum requirements it would be almost 3 time bigger than the current enclosure. My idea if she agree is to borrow her this cage untill i have time to build a better cage for the poor guy but the issue is with the wheel as is just 14cm, any idea how i could setup a bigger wheel on this enclosure? As height from yellow platform is not enough and there is no mesh where i could attach a 8inch/20cm wheel

submitted by Hiraya1 to hamsters [link] [comments]

2023.05.27 20:34 OsirisDawns Cooling help

I need some help with this, I've made posts before about my 2 lads and I am proud to say they have a tank now!
However, I live in an attic... And they get hot pretty easily on warmer days...
Now then, I do have a fan on 24/7 when these days are unfortunately upon me and my boys, I do keep the room ventilated, they have constant access to fresh water, however I still get worried that they will overheat.
I saw that I can purchase aluminium cooling pads (Basically a little sheet of Aluminium that you can refrigerate to cool it down) and it seems more aimed towards hamsters/guinea pigs/rabbits etc. but it should work the same for a gerbil, right?
Of course I'll be watching them both when this is in their tank, I wouldn't want them to hurt themselves, but I'd really like a second opinion before I end up causing them grievous harm somehow.
Seriously, I would really appreciate some advice right about now.
Oh! I also thought about maybe refrigerating some cardboard tubes, but they mostly tear these up but I thought it work to just provide some passive cooling when they are digging about, but I'm not sure if it will work lol.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! 😊

submitted by OsirisDawns to gerbil [link] [comments]

2023.05.27 13:52 chainsaw_creepy Secret passage in the corner of the yard

Hello. I won't beat around the bush. This letter, more like a confession, came to me through a long chain of acquaintances and distant relatives several years ago. I do not personally know the people referred to in the letter, and I cannot say anything about its authenticity. However, the places described in the text do exist, I myself grew up nearby.
Last week I was digging through my email for the password to an old multiplayer game and came across this email again. To be honest, reading it the second time was just as disturbing and uncomfortable as the first. Having come up with nothing better, I decided to translate it into English and show it to you, friends. My fellow Yuriy Eremenko (hi bro!) helped me with the translation, I myself am not so good with English.
I want to know what you think about all this. I really really want to.
-------
from: bespalyi***@mail.ru to: litovskih.***@gmail.com subj: Regarding your request
Hello, Sasha. Forgive me, if you can of course, but it didn't work this time.
I can explain how that happened, but you probably shouldn't count on me now. I do think there is still a chance though. You can try to do everything yourself. I did not manage to do it, but maybe you still can. It's a bad option, a very bad one. This is not a good thing, no matter what you say to yourself. Quite the opposite.
If I had another solution, I wouldn't even suggest this, but I do not see one. I just remember your look when we last saw each other, and, well...
Look, just think it through, don't do something you would regret later, do not rush anything. I may have nothing to lose, but you have Zina, and your parents, if they're still alive of course. Sometimes it's just better to leave things as they are, you know?
I'll tell you what I know. You know my address. Delete this message once you read it.
Long story short, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, there was this urban legend about our yard...
I feel like I've known this legend for a long time, since my childhood. All the kids were aware of this legend and knew plenty of other, similar ones. In the town's outskirts, in this ("experimental", as they said back then) microdistrict lived several generations of teens. From the town to our district led a 5 kilometer long road, alongside several sandlots. Schools, kindergartens, couple of clubs - according to the architects, these blocks of flats, around 20 of them, that organized our microdistrict, were supposed to be autonomous. And autonomous they were. Sure, some people went to the town from time to time, to visit their relatives for example, but the majority of us rarely left Zhilmash.
As a result, stories about a creepy man from the local park, or about the dark secrets of the sewers, or, say, about the manhole in a corner of one of the yards constantly circulated around the local kids and teens, told again and again and collecting more and more creepy and less believable details. Seriously, someone should have written a dissertation about our "folklore", but that's beside the point.
Thing is, our surroundings were not the only thing that was enclosed. In fact, our yards were as well. In the middle of a square made of long nine-story buildings, where all the porches were facing, there was always a polyclinic, a school, or any other socially important establishment, while a few archways led outside these fortresses, as if they were meant to have a suspension bridge as well. One would think that Zhilmash was designed by a man suspecting that, sooner or later, the locals would have to withstand a circular siege of their houses.
The urban legend I want to explain to you is about the corner closest to my porch. There were bushes growing in said corner, facing the shop windows of a pharmacy and a barbershop that occupied the first floor. There, near ground level, between the two blocks of flats, formed a crack roughly three palms wide and about one and a half meters high. There was a small passage behind the crack, but no adults ever went that way. This hole allowed us to shorten our path outside, but squeezing in there and staying clean was impossible. So we, kids and teens, were the only ones to really use it, especially when playing hide and seek and enacting a tiny war. At the same time, the adults had to take one of the archways to get to the bus stop.
Right in front of the hole there was a square, about an open book-sized, stone block, placed into the ground, seemingly during the construction works, resulting in this small pedestal. As the story went, you had to place some small animal on top of it and kill it. Then, instead of the crack, there would appear a passageway not to the concrete slab behind the bakery, but a way to an entirely different place. A "dead world" of sorts. Once you got there, you needed to quickly find a kiosk with closed or painted over windows, go to its front and loudly and clearly ask for whatever you wanted - a new Sega or even a computer. Some boy, according to the rumors, had even asked for an entire jeep. And, if you did it right, your wish would come true and you would need to hurry and exit this place before the passageway closed.
Typical story, if I am honest - dark, cruel and stupid. Precisely one that children love. As proof, people constantly brought up a friend of a distant relative's friend who did exactly that and their wish came true. They also pointed out the concentric circles and squiggles scratched on top of the pedestal with a knife or some nail.
Nobody from our company even thought of torturing a poor animal like that to test this stupid story For even joking about it we'd call the one suggesting to test the story sick in the head. Nika, however, was not from our company. Almost an adult, as I thought back then, a very beautiful girl with copper hair and almost constantly bruised knees, she once went to live with her grandmother for the summer and immediately gained the role of our yard's Ataman, setting up her own rules.
We were showing her around for the whole duration of July. I think each of my friends fell in love with her at least a tiny bit, since we were of that age. On one of the last long evenings before she was supposed to leave we set up a small bonfire, baking potatoes that we got god knows where with salt in tinfoil. We were telling stories, and of course someone blurted out something about the passageway. On the next day, Nika brought her grandmother's parrot to our "Headquarters" on the sandlot.
Have you finally figured it out, Sasha? Anyone else would have said that I may have lost my mind or maybe became an alcoholic, since I am seriously telling you how a children's horror story became reality. But not you. Yes, you got that right: all these years, when the need arose, I went to a pet store, bought a pet, one that I did not feel that much guilt about, and went there. The hole and the stone block are still there. But do not get too excited, finish reading first. Because you cannot solve it just by killing an animal. Nothing happens so easily, you know it well.
When Nika, ignoring our loud protests, broke the poor parrot's neck, we fell silent. Something broke alongside his spine. Something right turned very wrong. Nika did not seem as beautiful to me anymore. Her appearance did not change, but the girl herself and everything around her became ugly in my eyes. Especially gross was the stone block with the little carcass on top of it. As if it was made of squirming insects and not concrete. At the time I couldn't understand where this fracture appeared, inside me or somewhere outside. Now I know - everywhere.
We were stunned for just a moment, then we heard a loud sound from behind our backs. It was as if something huge smacked its lips, opened its mouth and inhaled deeply, almost with pleasure. The air in the clearing started to float and distort, flowing around us. Then it went in the vertical passage between the two houses, now leading to the bluish twilight of a somehow different yard, completely alien to us. In our yard it was only midday.
Houses stood there as well. Normal from the first glance, but looking dusty, almost ancient, like pyramids in the pictures of a children's encyclopedia. In the light gusts of wind small whirlwinds of dust formed and fell apart. It got cold - not extremely cold, but more like the cold you feel when entering the shadow on a sunny day. And a faint smell. It was disgusting, bitter and almost rotten, like from a wet overfilled ashtray or from a Chizhevskiy's lamp. The wind was making the grass move - normal grass on our side, and some colorless and dried like hay stems on the other.
Despite my disgust, I managed to grab Nika, who was running right past me into the passage, by the wrist, but she pushed me aside, and squeezed into the passage. Into the portal. After all, why not call it for what it is. She stood there for a bit, looking around. She turned to look at us with fear on her face mixed with enthusiasm. And, as it seemed, the enthusiasm overcame all of her fear.
— Don't just stand there! Come here!
Nobody moved a muscle. Quite the opposite. Kostya, the youngest of our group, backed away slowly until his back hit the wall. Nika's ginger hair almost faded, became an unremarkable shade of brown. Weird details, I know, but this is how I remembered her: scared and faded. Almost fractured.
— Nika, please come back, — Anton said quietly.
— Wha-a? Pft, pussy! And you call yourselves men? Aren't you curious? — her voice sounded muffled, the intonations fading out at the border.
— Really, don't...Maybe you shouldn't go there, we can clearly see that something is wrong there. And it stinks. Maybe this place is radioactive?
— We'll lie to your grandma that Kesha flew out the window, — I said, — Tell your grandma I let him out, you won't get scolded. Let's go, please? What if the passage closes? How will we get you out?
Our obvious stress, of course, only made her more excited. We should've just shut up or suggested coming back with rope and a flashlight, but we were too scared. And then she walked away and ordered us to watch the passageway. Called us dipshits and that she'll go make a wish, disappearing behind the nearest house with darkness instead of windows.
We waited for 30 minutes or so, but nothing happened. Moving slowly, as if underwater, I walked around the pedestal to see that world better. Yes, there was indeed a town, but almost swollen, wrong. Monochrome, like in a dream. Similar to our town in general. As long as you pay no mind to the details, that is.
There, everything seemed a bit bigger than normal: the window holes are bigger, the floors are higher, and the empty metal trash can could fit a person inside it. Along the road stood distorted lampposts, accentuating the unpleasant perspective. The upper floors were lost in a fog, making the unusually thin street, squeezed by buildings from both sides, look more like a cave with a high ceiling rather than an open space. No movement. And no sky as well, just countless dark shades instead of it. One row of buildings stood behind the other, hiding the horizon from my view and forming a depressing maze, the further parts of which were swallowed by darkness and fog. Alongside the road, the broken benches and rusty cars there were lots of grey sand.
Looking at the corners and the walls going up and to the sides I did my best to imagine people walking around here, living in these houses and then just packing up their things and suddenly leaving somewhere else.
As hard as I tried to imagine it, I just couldn't...
Instead, old scenic decorations came to mind, meant to imitate a normal soviet town for some old forgotten movie.
My thoughts were interrupted by a terrifying scream from the crack's side, echoing around the emptiness between these scary monoliths. It was Nika, but her scream was so loud and strained that it turned into a roar and then a wheeze. Sasha, you wouldn't believe that a small girl could scream like that. There was a temporary silence necessary for a deep inhale and the scream started again. It got closer. Nika was supposed to come out from that corner, which she disappeared behind all this time ago.
Seconds passed by, I did not let my eyes wander from that corner, trying to pinpoint at least something in the darkness of this dead world. And finally, I saw a shaky silhouette. It did not look human. Struggling to move on short leg stumps, an armless and asymmetrical figure leaned on the wall. The sacks and meat pieces dragging behind the figure inflated and deflated making fleshy noises, like a frog goiter. Bending like a worm, it pushed itself off the wall with all of its strength and made a few more clumsy steps in our direction. It screamed in Nika's voice. The scream came from the disorganized lumps of flesh the thing was dragging behind it.
I screamed and recoiled. The edge of a stone, which I had completely forgotten about, hit my knees. Falling, I threw the bird's carcass onto the grass. The champing sounded again, as if cutting off the heart-rending cry of our friend with a knife. Gradually, other, normal sounds returned: the laughter of children from the side of the sandbox, the cooing of pigeons, the voice of a woman calling someone for dinner from the kitchen window. It was day again in the narrow opening, rare dandelions were swaying there, a bus, battered by life, drove up to the "Sports School" stop. A striped cat ran past and darted into the basement window. Nika was nowhere to be found.
Drowning in tears, we told the adults what had happened: first to our parents, then to a gloomy man in an unbuttoned police jacket, while a friend of his questioned the neighbors. Nika's grandma was taken to the hospital, we thought her heart was about to stop. No one told us that we were lying or played around too much. But the testimony of little kids was also not taken seriously. They clarified over and over again if we had seen a suspicious man, and even described his appearance. They must have had some kind of maniac in mind.
I accompanied the policeman to the place where Nika was last seen. He looked around, stuck his head inside the hole, went around the house and wandered for a long time on the other side of the patch of land between the ends of the houses, looking for something in the grass. Then they left. The blue UAZ appeared in our yard several more times, but, of course, it was as if Nika had disappeared without a trace.
That summer, I occasionally thought about what she was like when she stood there, calling us to follow her. At night, I dreamed of something else. Something almost turned inside out, but still alive ... However, this happened less and less, and life had set its own priorities. In the fall, my father left us, problems began at home, there were also several disagreements at school. Years passed. The old company fell apart, new friends from the other yards appeared. I remembered little about the red-haired girl, but since then I have always went past the accursed place. That is, until I was fifteen.
After my father left us, my mother started drinking. A little bit at first, locking herself in the kitchen after work. Thinking that I'm sleeping in my room unaware of her crying, sitting with a glass of vodka in front of the TV. Then things got worse. Getting drunk, my mother became tearful, asked me for forgiveness, promised that she would quit from tomorrow morning, but that, of course, was a lie. A couple of times I got hit in the face by the men she brought with her - I tried to get them to leave the apartment. Then I skipped school for weeks so as not to show my bruises.
The head teacher wrote our family down as dysfunctional and did not do much since. By the eighth grade, the entire household was on me, I even learned how to cook. Mostly I just cooked soups, because they were somewhat filling and inexpensive. I got a job with a friend of his father at a car wash as a "runner" when my mother was fired from her job. She had spent all of the alimony on alcohol. My father knew, sometimes threw some extra money our way, but did not want to interfere in our affairs. It seems that he had started a new family, but I did not ask questions, and he was in no hurry to tell me anything.
By the ninth grade, every morning, just opening my eyes, I sincerely hated this life. Sometimes I spent whole days in bed, listening indifferently to the clanging of glasses of my mother's friends in the kitchen. How she vomits in the bathroom, yells at the TV, knocks at the door to my room: "Kolenka, sonny, I'm one hundred roubles short, I'll return it at the end of the month! Do you want to go for a walk in the park later? Do you remember what you wanted? I'll only go to the store and then go back". After another call to the ambulance, while the mother was sleeping under a dropper, the paramedic told me (not looking up from filling out the papers on hospitalization refusal) that she would last another year at this pace, maybe two, and then it would be necessary to call not an ambulance, but a funeral home.
Every morning in the ninth grade, I woke up with thoughts about the hole in the corner of the yard and the strange city lying behind it. The legend turned out to be accurate, the first part at least, so why the hell shouldn't it be true in its entirety? I knew what wish I wanted to make. Only a miracle could save my mother, or rather, both of us. And if not, then I didn't even want to live too much. I remembered all the horror of that summer, but you can't run away from yourself: the idea seemed more attractive day by day. Do you understand, Sasha?
One day, after returning from my lessons, I found my mother drunk on the floor by the stove, with an arm broken at the elbow. It seems she was trying to cook dinner for us when she lost her balance and fell. The sharp tip of the broken bone pierced the stretched skin from the inside, and she didn't even wake up. It's a miracle that she didn't have the time to turn on the gas.
Having sent her to the hospital, I sat up all night without sleep, and in the morning I went to the zoo store and bought an exotic lizard with the last money I had for this month. It cost far more than the funny hamsters that bustled about in the neighboring enclosure, but I couldn't bring myself to look at them. It was easier for me this way.
Everything worked like a charm. I again felt that the world had cracked, but now I myself was the center of the split, as Nika had once been. From that day on, I started to feel worse about myself, you know? As if I was that one person who I would not shake hands with at a meeting. I became a little unpleasant for myself, I don't stop to look at my reflection in the mirror anymore, I constantly carry this trash in myself. It's up to you if you decide to follow in my footsteps. I have a theory. It consists in the fact that, by opening the hole, you are doing something disgusting, and not even by personal, but by cosmic standards ... And the problem is not in the killing of an innocent animal, which is necessary for this, but in what happens then - in the very appearance of the gap.
Looking up from the stone, I was not even surprised. It was as if all these years had not happened at all, the city behind the hole has not changed at all, except for a couple of little things. I think that time goes differently there, or is even frozen in place. Because the "dead world" is not actually an abandoned village located somewhere in the north. Rather, it is an echo. A dream about what our reality could become if something terrible happened to humanity, which we miraculously managed to avoid. People have never inhabited these houses. Their inhabitants are completely different. And they are still there.
When I climbed through the gap, the smell of decay and bitterness spilled in the cold air, vividly reviving childhood memories. I looked around for traces of the creature that came to us four years ago from the darkness. The deposits of sand seemed to form a barely noticeable path leading along the wall and making a loop near the hole, from where a long rectangle of light was now falling. But it could have been an illusion, or the natural workings of the wind, and I didn't see anything else.
I had a flashlight with me, but I did not dare to turn it on. There was enough light, even though the source was not clear. Soon I noticed that there was light in some of the windows: first in one part of the building, then in another, square frameless pits were faintly opalescent, all in the same dirty-gray spectrum, like multiple TVs tuned to the same program were working right behind them. From other windows protruded long black tufts of what looked like crooked branches of dead shrubs or mushroom stipes.
Getting colder inside with every step, I wandered, raking in the smelly sand with my feet, in the direction where Nika had fled in search of a way to make her wish. Clinging to the ice-cold stone, I looked around the corner. Nothing was moving in the streets. The road continued, partially blocked in two places by fallen lampposts, smashed to pieces like antique columns in the ancient ruins of a lost civilization. But for some reason, it constantly seemed to me that something was still breathing behind these walls and, perhaps, even looking at an intruder from the darkness of these huge apartments. Gathering what little courage I had left, I took a few steps towards the center of the street, looking intently around me in order to detect any possible source of danger in time.
To the left, slightly to the side, stood a gray cube of something like a boiler room or a transformer booth with its gates wide open, as if in an invitation, with barely visible broken wires laying around. Behind it began a labyrinth of small garages, almost completely hidden behind thickets of the same bundles of sticks, which had made their way here and there from under the ground, like frozen explosions, from round holes in wells with torn hatches. Whatever happened here happened very quickly. I looked ahead. In the distance, about one house away from me, near what looked like a broken subway lobby, a patch of dim glow spread across the asphalt: one of the lanterns still functioned there, the only one as far as the eye could see.
In the dim circle of light stood a row of ordinary trading stalls. You know, those armored monsters with tiny money slots, they used to hang around every corner and sell pretty much everything from chewing gum to hard-to-find pantyhose.
My heart pounded even faster. So the legend did not lie about this either! To get there, it seemed, it was enough to go straight along the street past a series of entrances, some of which even still had doors hanging on one hinge. I must have lost my vigilance from impatience...
Each dark doorway was three meters high. As I drew level with the first of them, I heard something rolling in there, inside, bouncing off the steps. A worn rubber ball with two stripes rolled out onto the road in front of me. I used to have the same exact ball as a child, except that it got lost somewhere. Perhaps it flew away from a strong kick somewhere into the bushes, and I never saw it again. Maybe even in those very bushes in the corner of the yard.
I won't bore you with the details of the fear I experienced there. Both for the first time, and in all of my subsequent visits. Either way, you will see something of your own, personal, my experience will not be useful to you. Just... be prepared for anything. Just like in that ravine, in the first Chechen war, remember? Ha, then, after the shelling, you and I decided that now we saw everything, we were baptized, and nothing could scare us anymore. I don't know about you, but then I saw plenty of things afterwards: both in the dead world and in our ordinary one. Hell, sometimes I even miss the war. Don't get me wrong, but at that time I had friends, we swore to go through life together, if we made it out alive that is, and we believed in our oath.
Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. It's been a long time since the last opportunity to talk heart to heart to someone.
I don't know for sure whether this world can harm you, whether it just plays around, whether it wants to scare, or vice versa - tries to make friends. I will only say that its inhabitants should be avoided at all costs. It is not difficult, they are rarely intrusive and almost never leave their homes. But if you see fresh footprints in the sand or something like a stripe that a huge snail could leave, turn around and leave. Don't run, you don't have to run there at all. You'll be back the next day. Each animal killed will take away a piece of your own soul, but it's better that way than to disappear completely.
Look at the picture I have attached. I have drawn, as best I could, the route that turned out to be the safest. Strictly follow it, even if some loop seems strange and unnecessary to you. Especially if it appears. Yes, in one place you will have to enter the house. There is a gap in the apartment on the second floor, you go out there, go down another entrance. So it is necessary, and for God's sake, do not arrange excursions for yourself, but inside the house, look only at your feet. Right at your feet and nowhere else. Ideally, close your eyes altogether. I wrote down the required number of steps, remember the amount and count.
Well, there is little left to say. How I got to the stall and made my first wish...
Coming out right under the dead light of the lantern, I perceived almost nothing. I was not harmed, but the human psyche, especially of a skinny teenager that I was, is simply not adapted to endure such things. I was trembling, not believing that I got there. At first I was overcome with despair at the sight of a row of stalls: they were destroyed and had see-through holes in places: just rusty frames with spots of dry and peeling paint. In the floor of one of them, a nasty mushroom-like bush grew, parting the wreckage.
Slowly walking along the large heaps of metal, I reached the last kiosk in the row, and although the light inside was not on, I knew: this is it. Welded from sheet iron, like all the others, this one was mostly intact. Even the glass behind the bars had survived, so dirty that no goods behind them, if any, could be seen. On a small semicircular window, behind which the salesman was supposed to be, there was a yellow card with a faded, just like everything around, inscription: "OPEN". Gathering my strength, I tapped on the window with my knuckle. Just a second later, it opened.
My nose was hit with a terrible stench. Once I already felt something similar. When, one autumn, I took a deep breath of hot and humid steam, coming from a sewer in which some animal had died and had been decomposing for a long time.
The darkness of the iron box was not pitch black; It occupied almost the entire volume of the kiosk. It was the Seller.
Finally, the movement in the darkness stopped. "Even if the kiosk had a door," I thought, "this creature would not be able to get out and chase me." The thought calmed me down a little, but I lost all of my pre-prepared words. My voice sounded strange and muffled in the middle of the empty square of this forgotten world.
— My mother... She is a good person, but she drinks a lot. Vodka, that is... or any alcohol. She won't be able to stop on her own because she's sick and I can't do anything about it. I have tried and tried!
The last "tried" quickly faded, as the echo disappeared into the alleys and yards. They didn't answer me. I don't know to whom and what I tried to prove, the words just flowed out of me, and they were sincere.
— She will die if it goes on like this, and I will be left alone. We didn't deserve it. I still love her! Therefore, I want my mother to stop drinking, and everything to be fine with us, just as before!
— Can I? — I added, waiting for the mocking echo to die down again.
And then there was silence. A minute had passed, and I sighed. What was I even thinking about. I fell for childish tales, climbed into a world where everyone either died a million years ago or became monsters, I tried to talk with one of them ... I need to save myself as soon as possible. Or maybe when I return to the passage, it will be closed? The thought that I could stay here forever made me want to just lie down and cry.
- f̶i̸n̸g̴e̶r̴, - gurgled the darkness.
- What? A finger?
- f̵i̶n̶g̷e̵r̶
Oh god, it was impossible to call it a voice, but it seems that I understood what they wanted from me. An icy cold sweat formed on my forehead. Why did I decide that everything would be free? Did this shit sound like a good fairy tale from the very beginning? And what if this creature bites off my finger, will I be able to get back and not bleed out?
Without giving myself a chance to change my mind, I tore two long strips from my T-shirt, then pulled out the trouser belt and squeezed it in my teeth, folding it in half, like I saw in the movies, until my mother sold our cassette player to someone for almost nothing. Clenching my left hand into a fist, I stuck out my pinky finger and put my hand right in the window of the kiosk, at the same time closing my eyes and clenching my teeth.
Nothing happened. After a couple of minutes, I dared to open my eyes. Maybe I misunderstood, and it was not about barter? As soon as I took my hand out, the window slammed shut. The inscription on the card had changed, now it said "CLOSED". Looking at my left hand made me dizzy, I started to feel sick: there was no pinky finger. There was no blood either, the remaining half of the phalanx looked like I lost my finger a long time, at least a year ago. Deciding to deal with this later, I went back. The hole and the clear sunny day behind it were still there.
You know, Sasha, I still wonder: what did Nika wish for? What was the price she had to pay?
As for what happened next, I think everything is clear. When my mother returned to work, we patched up our place, which had been pretty much wasted at that moment. I retrained from a simple car washer to an assistant mechanic in the same place, in a car service. I was entrusted with simple repairs, they paid a little more. In general, the money began to suffice. I had to call my friends to ward off some excessively aggressive chumps, who did not want to understand that they were no longer welcome at our house, and life went on as usual.
I learned to live without my pinky finger in just a week, and I lied to my mother about an accident at work last year. She cried again, of course. Mom died ten years ago: quietly, in bed, already retired. There was no more drinking involved, and those were good years. There would have been more if not for her poor health.
After leaving school, a war broke out, and the military registration and enlistment offices did not particularly sort out who to take. From here on out, you know everything yourself. Some returned, some didn't. We've been lucky. It was there that you called me Kolya the Fingerless, but now you at least know where my finger actually went.
At home, I got a job as a car mechanic in a bus depot. Between a tank and a rust-bucket of a car there is not such a big difference, if you look closely. Life was not that great for me, but I had girls, and meetings of old veterans. I bought my mom a country house in the suburbs to grow her own tulips there - what else does a person need? Only in a nightmare could I imagine that someday I would return to the dead world. But fate decided otherwise.
You now know how I spent my pinky finger. But at our last meeting, you noticed (I saw that you noticed): since then I have been squandering a lot. Three fingers remained on my right hand and two on the left. And that's not it. One kidney. Pancreas. And my left eye can't really see. Can you guess why that is? I think you can. You have always been the smartest among us, student.
As you could have guessed, I haven't worked as a mechanic for a long time. I get my allowance, I don't leave the apartment, I almost forgot what people look like, except for the girls from the welfare department. But I'm not offended. Do not reproach yourself that we did not communicate for a long time. And tell our guys, if necessary, when you meet. I wouldn't even talk to myself if I could.
When a year passed, we returned to civilian life, and things started to get better for everyone, Igor at first suddenly did not want to go to the next meeting to drink, remember that? And when we forced him, he sat in the corner, pale, did not even drink. This is Igor, who prepared booze almost from antifreeze.
His wife, Katya, was diagnosed with a bad case of breast cancer. And he loved her unconditionally. She was waiting for him to return from the war and here he was after all. I must have said too much then. I could not look at how he was tormenting himself, I really wanted to cheer him up. Everyone lost their mood, they parted early, and on the way back I bought a canary near the house. Breast cancer cost me another finger and another lie about an accident at work.
After that, a rumor had spread, either as a joke, or seriously: the fingerless healer. Everything was as promised: not just a remission, but as if the sickness was removed completely. The doctors were shocked, Igor laid at my feet while I couldn't even look him in the eyes.
Then more people came. Someone has a mother, an old father, children... Especially children. Then I realized that our world is full of suffering. I, whatever one may say, could help where nothing else would have helped. What is one finger of mine against someone's life that is just beginning? Believe me, I thought about this a lot, looking at all the new short stumps: stumps sticking out of my palm.
I didn't agree every time, and when I did, I didn't say anything. Inoperable hip fracture, legs turned into mush, the guy will never walk again - a finger. Sudden stroke, progressive dementia, another one. Congenital cerebral palsy, complete paralysis of the body - two fingers. Rumors spread. That's when you came to me for the first time, remember? We put your Zinka back on her feet, I hope she is doing well now.
Nine. Nine trips to the dead world, and every time a little less of me came back. And every time, while I looked at the opening passage, some creature was dying in my hands, and inside a part of my soul was dying as well. Nine is a lot, Sasha. I no longer feel anything but deep disgust for myself. People cannot look at me without disgust, without understanding why. They feel what I have become, although they do not know the reason. Paradoxically, the more I helped people, the more lonely I got. But I was ready for it, it's part of the price.
The only reason I haven't killed myself yet is because I might be of use to someone else. What little is left of me.
And then you called again.
I'm really sorry about your girl, really. I hope this fucking junkie gets caught and hanged by the balls. Believe me, I was ready to give everything that I have for her. I don't know, really, whether that would be enough or not ... Everyone else was alive, you know? Sometimes things were very bad, and then it cost me more, but everyone else was still alive. Nevertheless, I was going to try.
But the unexpected happened. As I made my way to the kiosk, I heard the soft cry of a child. It was coming from the windows of one of the apartments, away from my usual route. I don't know what came over me, but I decided to check. Used the grappling hook, climbed into the window. An insane risk, but... I must have realized something on a subconscious level. It was Nika.
How much time has passed, more than thirty years? But that is by our, earthly standards. For how long did she wander through the monstrous colorless void among the dreary monoliths, from apartment to apartment, in the hope of meeting at least one person? I'm afraid to even imagine it. The main thing is that she is alive. And she's still a child, in a way. In its current form, at least...
Oh, you should have seen what her stupid wish did to her. What was it like? Perhaps something like "I want to live forever"? And now, for the first time, something came to my mind. After all, we don't know how many more Zhilmash children got there over all these years, and what they wanted. I remember what I myself could wish for at that age. Is it just the new bike or the dog? Or maybe, for example, to take revenge on a bully? Or become invisible?
I think Nika recognized me.
I never made it to the kiosk. I came back to send you this email. Forgive me if you can, but I only have one chance left, and I must try to save her. I must return her body, return Nika back to our world. There is no worse fate than the one that fell to her. I don't know what the price will be, but it doesn't matter. Even if I have to take her place, I'm ready. After all, it was my fault that the portal closed back then. I'm afraid, it was I who told the legend about the passageway that evening by the fire.
You have a choice, Sasha. Think it over properly. Sometimes it's better to leave things as they are.
I have to go, she's been waiting too long...

submitted by chainsaw_creepy to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.05.26 17:42 ChristianWallis I’m a teacher, and my whole class shares an imaginary friend

It’d be wrong to say I don’t like kids. It’s adults I have more of a problem with. In my last school when I called one of the ten year old boys in my class a little bastard, he wasn’t the problem. His parents were the ones who insisted I get fired. But that boy didn’t mind me swearing at him because he knew damn well he’d keyed my car, even if I had no proof. He just thought it was funny, no different to the sort of interaction he’d have with an older sibling. On that note I wouldn’t say I like children either. Kids are little adults. They’re more truthful but only because the stakes are lower. People with jobs and mortgages tell great big tremendous lies. Kids don’t have the weight of the world on their shoulders so why lie about mistresses and promotions and why you’ve been crushing up antibiotics into your wife’s morning smoothie. Instead they just lie about where their homework is.
Kids I teach are right on the cusp of it. Some of the boys might get caught sniggering at the back while showing each other naughty little videos they don’t understand but can’t look away from, but then they go out and chase each other around. Do cartwheels. Play tag. Hide and seek. Cry if they take a particularly bad knock. Kids are weird. Got one whose dad’s in jail and he talks about it like it means nothing. His old man tried to kick a woman to death in the parking lot of a bar and won’t be out until the boy’s a teenager. Kid don’t care. Doesn’t get it. If anything he thinks it’s funny. But then last week I confiscated his novelty pencil that was the size of a cucumber and he screamed so hard he threw up all over the speckled tiles that have been glued to this floor since ‘96.
Ten is a weird age. Old enough to feel the vaguest hint of life’s problems just beneath the surface like lumps in a pillow, to question why Mommy downs three bottles of wine on a Tuesday, or why Daddy changes his shirt and hides it in the garage before coming in from work, but too young to know what’s really under the surface. These kids can feel something is wrong with the world. They just don’t know what. Not yet, anyway. They have my sympathy. Twenty-six years teaching has eroded most of everything else. I’m not particularly invested in whether these little shits become scientists or janitors. Nor am I particularly interested in helping them process their emotional luggage. If any of you want me to undo the damage you’ve done to your own kids, then you can start by paying me a hell of a lot more. But I do feel sorry for them because they don’t really know what’s going on, but unlike a five year old they can’t just fumble around in blind ignorance. They’re stuck in between worlds, one where you cry yourself to sleep at night over your parent’s divorce but still think Santa and the tooth fairy are real.
Maybe it’s different at a rich school, one where kids don’t go to food banks or where whole families don’t have to share a smartphone. I doubt it. Don’t know why. I just doubt anyone’s out there living the plot of the Berenstain bears, rich or otherwise. I used to dream of teaching at one of the big schools a couple towns over, the ones with all the funding. Oh that’d be nice. Walking into a building that doesn’t look like set dressing for the next season of True Detective. Now I just dream of getting out of this profession entirely.
Maybe if I play my cards right.
Sounds crazy to say it out loud, so I won’t. But maybe I found a way out. Well, to be exact the kids found it. Don’t know what they got. Course they fucking don’t. They’re kids. They haven’t got a clue. But I think I’m maybe thirteen weeks from another go and when that happens, you can bet your ass I’m asking for a ticket outta here. At first I planned on getting a cushy job in one of the schools a few towns over. One where the schoolbus doesn’t have to plan its route around multiple trailer parks. Now I realise I was thinking small. If I’m smart, I won’t ever have to work another day in my life.
Imagine that?
Thirteen more weeks.
Right now Grenwig is with Layla. Sweet girl but she’s smart enough for it to be a problem. The dumb ones fair the best. You wake up to something grinning at your bedroom window, it helps to have the sorta mind that doesn’t ask questions about what floor you’re living on. Layla isn’t winning a genius grant anytime soon, but I can tell it’s bothering her because deep down she knows how wrong this all is. Dark circles under the eyes. Pallid skin. Eyes that keep darting to dark corners. Sometimes she falls asleep at her desk. Sometimes she wakes up with a little jump, like something only she can see has startled her. It’s hard. Only reason she sticks it out is the same reason you or I would.
The rewards.
She got a smartphone last time. I wonder what it’ll be this time. These kids don’t ask for a lot. Toys, mainly. One of them got crazy good at football crazy quick. That makes sense. But it’s that kinda thing, you know? They don’t ask after the lottery or nothing like that because money’s a little too abstract right now. Strange thing though, as young and naive as they are they learned the rules pretty quickly. I guess Grenwig’s lessons aren’t subtle. Just look at one of my former students, Jared. Now at the time all this flew under my radar. Kid in my class lost a parent, moved away. So what? Happens. Turns out he asked for his father to get sober. Next day the poor guy got caught in the machinery at his job. CCTV footage was very popular on LiveLeaks. Makes for grim viewing. I’m not particularly handy so I never knew a lathe could do that to a human body.
Anyway, it’s not good to ask after other people. I wish my dad was this. I wish mom was that. Ooph. Alia told me that up front around the time I started asking why half the kids in my class had new iPhones and Nintendo Switches. She said it was easy to ask for things, but it was riskier to ask to change something into another thing, and downright awful to ask it to change a person in any way, no matter how small. Even that kid who got good at football played a risky game. It paid off but the other kids wouldn’t go near him for a week. They kept expecting something bad to happen to him and they didn’t want to be in the splash zone. I can’t pretend to understand the subtleties. Like the kids, I can only observe what happens to other people and learn the lessons that imparts.
Nothing about Grenwig is guaranteed. There are no certainties. Even the kids get worn down by it. Whoever has it, they’re a pariah. Risk assessment in under-elevens. Strange thing to see. But unless it’s your turn, you don’t even want to risk something as inane as a game of catch with his chosen friend. Grenwig is territorial. Possessive. Bizarre. Didn’t even believe in it until it was somehow my turn, which the kids found pretty alarming. Grenwig doesn’t like adults.
I thought it was a ghost at first. Lights coming on and off. Footsteps in the corridor outside my apartment. Pretty creepy, sharing my home with something I couldn’t see. I didn’t like it but it had only been a couple of nights and I did a good job of convincing myself there was no ghost or poltergeist. Just an overactive imagination. Yeah sure the tv channel changed and there were finger marks on my bathroom window I hadn’t put there. So what? Way at the back of my mind I’d reserved a little bit of space for the possibility of a haunting, but otherwise I remained a sceptic. Jesus, if only it was as simple as a haunting.
I don’t know if I could explain to you how it felt that first time I woke to Grenwig gently stroking my toes. Jesus. The violation of it. The feeling of a world that didn’t make sense. My eyes glared at his fingers, terrified, heart pounding, head throbbing like I’d taken a knock, and I kept waiting for it to make sense. My eyes wandered, tried to find the hands those fingers belonged to, but they just kept going. And going. And going. They stretched for metres until they disappeared into the shadow of my closet. Whole time they kept massaging the big toes. Cold as ice. I started counting the knuckles. Got to thirteen and gave up. But they were fingers. I could tell from the nails. The hair that ran along dimpled skin the colour of cement. And then just as I started to really appreciate that I was awake, 100% stone cold sober and lucid, and what I was seeing wasn’t a dream or a nightmare or some other fucking conjuration of the mind, just as I felt panic begin to flare up inside my chest like a burgeoning heart attack, those impossible long fingers withdrew into the darkness like a spider curling its legs.
I got up and threw on the lights but found my closet empty. Felt like the world was coming apart. Had to be a night terror, I decided. Hadn’t had one for decades but what else could it be? I wanted to go back to sleep, to at least try, but I was so scared I couldn’t face the dark again so I decided to stay up. Went out into the living room and turned the tv on, plopped down onto the sofa, and let my head tilt back. I might’ve drifted off again. I don’t know for sure. All I remember was the feeling as the cushion beneath me adjusted and I heard it. The sound of something tightening, like a creaking door.
I looked down and saw white bands wrapped around the entirety of the sofa. Fingers. They tightened, and the material let out a groan as the tension went up a notch. I flew upwards in a terrible panic. By the time I turned back the fingers were gone, but the indent they’d left in the sofa remained.
This repeated itself all night. Each time I felt close to drifting off, those impossibly long fingers would reach out of the darkness somewhere and make an appearance. They knocked glasses off countertops. Opened the fridge. Turned on the oven. And, whenever possible, they touched me. Stroked an ear. Tickled my nose. Slid between my fingers and tried to hold my hand. I tried to play chicken with it at one point. I stayed stock still as a greasy finger plucked at my lips and tried to find its way into my mouth, but before it met any success I flipped out and ran shrieking into the corridor outside my apartment.
Panting in the hallway, I told myself I’d never step foot in that apartment, but there was something about the way all my neighbours came to their doors one-by-one and just stared at me in my underwear and sweat-stained vest. I felt like a fucking idiot and before I knew it, I was offering muddled apologies while slinking through my front door.
By the time I got to school the next day, I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. I genuinely suspected my day was going to end with me being carted off in a straight jacket. Last people I expected to find any understanding from were my students, but when I came in looking like a sleep-deprived drunk they all stared at me in silence. And this wasn’t the slackjawed idiocy I’m sometimes used to with these kids, like that time I told them I used to have a wife. This was something else. Took me a second to decipher it. Not the sort of expression I’m used to from kids in that age group, what with half of them being miniature psychopaths.
It was sympathy. They felt sorry for me. But when I took a step forward, every single one of them scooted their chairs backward.
Just like that it clicked. I’d spent the last year watching them take turns ostracising one another and I’d written it off as just a peculiar product of childhood social dynamics. It felt cruel, and I’d tried over and over to mitigate it. To sit with the excluded kids and talk with them, try to figure it all out. But it was an enigma, all of it. If it wasn’t for the fact that this fucked up system seemed to operate on some kind of rota, I would have been forced to intervene. But as it was, the kid who was targeted would always be back with the crowd a week later, and they’d be the ones excluding someone else. But now all of that made sense. The way they were looking at me. Pity. Recognition. They knew what I’d spent the night going through, and for the last year they’d gone through it themselves one-by-one.
“You should play with Grenwig, sir,” one of the quieter girls piped up looking wide-eyed like a hostage at gunpoint, and all the other kids nodded.
“Yeah he wants to play.”
“You need to play with him.”
“He gets real impatient.”
A chorus of whispered uh huhs.
“Grenwig?” I muttered. One word. Is that what it’s called? I wondered, and all the kids nodded like they could read my mind.
There are no records of Grenwig anywhere, by the way. Good God I tried a thousand times over to find something, anything. The best I could think of was that Grenwig was a kinda boogeyman, but what does that even mean? Just a word I used to give the world a little more shape. A little more structure. I’m not sure Grenwig has much of either. The games he plays are like what a toddler or a young dog would be interested in. Basic stuff. No rules. I move something. Grenwig moves it back. Hours lost tracing the spiral of my hair, or pulling at my cheeks and face to create strange new expressions, or flicking the lights on and off. During that week I took to eating lunch in my car, largely because it was hard to be around people who couldn’t see why a glass went flying at the wall, or why I had to keep stacking plates until they were so tall they toppled over.
At least the kids gave me a head’s up. Most important warning I ever got in my life. Every kid had their own observations, some more reliable than others. Most of them boiled down to the simple fact that for seven days you belonged to Grenwig. You were a toy. A source of endless amusement for something that had the sense of humour of a three year old. Pretty much every kid agreed on one concrete thing though.
Saying no to Grenwig was dangerous.
Now I can’t say for sure but I’m positive Grenwig gave the kids more leeway. He left them alone for lunch and dinner. Bedtime games were usually quieter. But for me it was almost like part of the game was watching me go about my adult life as he did everything to fuck with me. He’d snatch at my steering wheel, giggling from the dark footwell, yellow eyes peering up from between my legs. He’d grab my phone and throw it into the middle of traffic. Or sit there tickling my neck and armpits as the principal demanded to know why my class’s behaviour was so erratic. He made it difficult. Pushed me right up to breaking point.
Eventually I did snap. I slapped his hand away as he tried to mess with me during a traffic stop. Felt like screaming at him that he was this close to getting me shot, but of course I couldn’t. Just had to sit there as this cop looked over my licence and mulled giving me a sobriety test. Couldn’t blame him. I’d been swerving all over the road until I saw the flashing lights. Didn’t help when, as he approached my pulled-over car, he saw me slapping furiously at the steering wheel while hissing,
“Stop it!” over and over.
He inevitably issued the test which I passed. The cop gave me a long narrow-eyed stare before telling me to get some sleep. He must have figured I was just a stressed mental-case instead of a drunk. And he was right. It was day six and I’d barely slept. Despite all the grave warnings from the kids about the dangers of telling Grenwig off, I drove off hoping that maybe he would just let this one go. I went to school and taught lessons as usual, but Grenwig made no appearances. I asked the kids if his little rota ever found itself wrapping up a day early and they all shook their heads like they knew bad news was coming my way, but none of them wanted to say for sure. Still, it was my first time so I ignored the look in their eyes and tried my best to focus on the hope that maybe Grenwig was going to finally leave me alone.
A feeling that dissolved in its entirety when I opened my front door and found a package on the floor. A large box, about one foot cubed. It looked like old cardboard, like what happens when it gets soaked but left out to dry. Just dingy. Its sides had been stapled together too, and that gave it a real homemade look that went the extra creepy little mile. I expected something bad. I knew the second when I went to lift it and it was too heavy that something was wrong. It just felt… well it felt like lifting an overfull bucket from the bottom. And then there was the smell, and the noises that sounded like a distant transmission of a mewing child. Tinny, like the muffled cries of someone on the other side of a very thick wall.
When I finally opened it, I found the policeman inside, familiar because of the shield and name. He… well he’d been folded, I guess is the best way I can describe it. At first I thought it was just his uniform but, well, clothes aren’t warm and obviously a folded uniform wouldn’t explain the forearm hair and skin poking out the side. I recoiled, terrified. Fell backwards onto my ass and this was when Grenwig made an appearance. His arachnid fingers curled out of the box. I’d say about a dozen of them this time, but there are always more in the dark. Out of sight. And these did what I couldn’t have brought myself to do on my own.
They unfolded the policeman. Lifted him up like a tailor showing off a suit, and the flayed skin opened up to reveal the barely recognisable outline of an adult man.
He was still alive.
And the rest of him, I soon found out, was in my bathtub. And that half was also very much alive. Thrashing and sliding as it struggled to gain a grip on the smooth ceramics, begging for its other half. Words I don’t really think were a natural fit for the stern man who’d interrogated me just ten hours ago. But then again it wasn’t really the same man. Either way, he spoke of the darkness between atoms, the infinite space where time doesn’t exist, and the endless shapes that swim the murky abyss, fleeing their cruel god. More than that, he lamented no longer being whole. Feeling himself in two places at once. He called it wrong and on that he had my agreement.
I begged Grenwig to take it away. To undo what he had done.
And that was how I used my first favour. The box and the man disappeared, dragged off to some dark corner that was out of sight. And that was the last I saw of him, although a bit of research later on revealed that while Grenwig did indeed put him back together, the poor man has been catatonic in a hospital bed ever since.
Alive, but definitely not well.
Next day the kids asked me what I’d requested. I told them I asked for a new playstation. Didn’t tell them the truth, partly because it’d traumatise them, but partly because acknowledging it even happened would traumatise me. After that I crunched the numbers. I figured out the number of kids and how often the rota would fall on me. Based on this info I booked the week off work ahead of time and well, I just waited. I tried to support the kids as best I could when it was their turn, but they didn’t really have the same problems as me. I mean… it wasn’t a holiday for them either. Each one came to school looking like they’d spent the night watching their dog die over and over. Just distraught. Ruined. Exhausted. But like I said, Grenwig generally let them eat their food, or interact with their parents and siblings without demanding attention at the worst possible time.
Eventually round two came along. The kids seemed damned relieved. As for Grenwig’s games, this time I came prepared. I’d already noticed that Grenwig only ever emerged from the shadows, and the kids corroborated that fact. So in the run up to my turn I spent a few weeks setting my bathroom up with as many lamps and torches as I could find. Wasn’t easy to eliminate all those shadows. I had a lot of sleepless nights trialling different arrangements but eventually I got one as close to perfect as I could. I figured if I could have just one or two nights of sleep it’d be damned easier to deal with him.
An hour passed before my stomach started to ache. By the time I realised what Grenwig was doing I could already feel the urge to throw up. Guess I hadn’t given him much of a choice. He wanted to play and there was only one place in that room that was still dark. Wasn’t until I threw myself out into my living room and switched off all the lights that the pain eased up, but by then I was already close to suffocating on the finger sticking out of my throat. When it finally withdrew and I took my first breath in over a minute, I collapsed to the floor, unable to do much of anything except heave and sob.
Grenwig, yellow eyes glaring at me from the space beneath my sofa, giggled. In hindsight, I’m lucky he found it funny. I think he thought it was a game of sorts. God knows what would have happened if that little stunt had made him mad. Otherwise, that second round passed without incident. At least, I wasn’t at work. It was hell, but I didn’t have to worry about driving anywhere or being out in public waiting for those wretched hands to find me. I just stayed indoors and played his weird little games, which mainly just involved me cleaning up whatever stupid thing he’d decided to make a mess of. I found it helped if I played up my exasperation. The less I reacted to his mischief, the more likely he’d escalate.
When it was all over I asked for a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately I didn’t specify the amount, which I supposed is my fault. At least the amount I won covered rent that month, even if my expectations were a little higher.
Still I figured it’d be better next time. I’d be more specific, I decided.
Best laid plans of mice and men…
You ever lost someone? Most people have. I have, for sure. More than once, too. It nearly unmade me and I was a fully grown man.
It was about a couple days before my turn that Alia experienced her first loss. Most kids it’s a hamster. If they’re unlucky, a grandparent. For her, it was her older brother. I’d taught him eleven years earlier and he was a good kid. Smart, like her. Went on to become a mechanic. His passing wasn’t anything strange or sinister. Just an accident. Jack popped off. Car crushed him. Random. Devastating. She was called out of a lesson by the principal and her parents, the three of them looking like hell. Like they’d spent a month one-on-one with Grenwig. A little reminder that not all nightmares hide in the dark, I suppose.
I don’t know why this hit me hard. I think it was probably my own experience with grief. Either way it stuck with me. Her absence, the empty chair and desk, felt hard to ignore day-after-day, knowing what she was going through. I think it’s one thing to accept that these kids’ll face circumstance. Poverty. Shit parents. Life isn’t fair. I don’t get a say in the way society says some kids get ponies and others get rickets. But there’s something about losing someone that way, just a random confluence of bad luck, that hits harder than most. I don’t know if I can explain it. It’s just Alia was already growing up at the bottom rung of our not-very-invisible class system. Hadn’t she had her fair share of bad luck already? I mean, fuck, even Grenwig grants favours! Even that wretched monster isn’t all bad. But an accident like what happened to Alia’s brother. There’s no upside. It’s just shit.
Thing is… like I said, my turn was coming up, and I mean, the way I saw it, the boy was already dead, right? Wasn’t like he could die getting wrapped three times around a lathe? Worst had already come to pass. I decided to do something that, even at the time, I figured to be pretty stupid. But if there was a chance it could work, well… I had to try.
Round three with Grenwig went real easy. I preemptively bought a bunch of jigsaws and left them half done. He honed in on them straight away. I did as much as I could in a single sitting, turned around, turned back and he’d muddled them all up. I’d play up my anger and irritation, then go back to it. Drank a lot of coffee and whiskey. Watched a lot of movies. Grenwig loved it. Broke a couple plates and mugs too. It wasn’t all plain sailing. Woke up one night to find him licking my neck and had to rush to the hospital to get the chemical burn treated. Still, for the most part the week went by without much incident because, well, I had something in mind. Couldn’t get it out. This idea, I had to act on it. And the promise of what it would mean if it worked meant I practically skated through that week with a smile on my face.
At least I had the sense to specify that the boy return to me. Not Alia. I thought if anything went wrong, it’d be best if she didn’t have to see it.
It was four in the morning when I was awoken by a sound that had slipped into my dreams as a kind of creaking door. But as I opened my eyes and reality reasserted itself I realised that what I was actually hearing was a little more like gravel being trod on. Strange. Distant. Quiet. I held my breath, if only so that I could hear better, but it seemed to only amp up the sound of blood rushing through my ears. White noise. It’s so hard to perceive what’s there sometimes, isn’t it? All I wanted was for my ears or eyes to report something useful to me without having to get out of the safety of my own bed. Instead all I got were dim shadows and the sea-like susurrations of my own breathing.
At least I could ascertain I wasn’t alone in my apartment. Over time, the longer I waited, the more sure of that I became. Something was out there, in the corridor between my bedroom and living room at a guess, moving with the kind of irregular rhythm that belongs only to living things. This wasn’t the wind or some pipe settling. Something was moving, and it was moving in my direction. Low to the ground. A noise I couldn’t put any shape to. Wrong. All wrong. Made me think of breaking pencils. Grinding teeth. In the end I couldn’t help myself. I got up and called out. Who’s there? The words didn’t feel real to me. The world took on the realer-than-real distortion that comes with terror, coupled with a prickling white heat at the nape of the neck. For a moment I swore I was outside my own body staring down at myself from above. It was too much. But that sound was clearer than ever before. There was no pretending this ghost wasn’t real.
I turned on the light.
Alia’s brother screamed and crawled away from the light, neglected whimpers left behind like a trail that led me to the living room where I found him curled around a table leg. He was alive but not whole. Guess I hadn’t given much thought to what a car would do to a man’s chest. Every breath was a strange orchestra. Too many sounds to disentangle. Bone on bone. Crumpled ribs expanding, or at least trying to, and drawing oxygen into blood filled lungs. Moss had grown across his face, even in the short time he’d been in the ground.
A hand, ice cold, shot out and grabbed my wrist and I cried out, but he didn’t let go. He followed as I tried to push myself away, his bottom half trailing along, limp and misaligned with his torso. Felt like pulling a sack of meat across an ice rink.
“Don’t send me back,” he whimpered. “Don’t send me back.”
Eventually my foot hit the sofa and I fell onto it. He dragged himself using his hands over to the side so that we were face-to-face before I even had time to push myself upright.
“He likes you,” he whispered and I recoiled at the smell of his breath. “There are so few things in the dark that know how to leave. But he does. Don’t… don’t ask him to send me back. Please?”
For the first time my mind started working. Was he talking about Grenwig? I wondered. But of course, I told myself, who else?
“What… what’s over there?” I asked.
He went to answer before the words choked in his mouth and his face twisted into a mask of melancholic agony. Trying to utter something, he burst into painful sobs.
“Don’t make me go back,” was all he could manage to say. “Don’t make me go back! Don’t make me go back! Please please please don’t send me back there you don’t know what they do to us!”
“I don’t… I don’t know what to do,” I stammered.
The boy grabbed me and pulled me close. Unsure of how to comfort him, I let him hold me in an embrace.
“We aren’t the same when it’s done with us.”
“What?”
I never saw him take the knife from the kitchen, but I suppose he’d been in my home for longer than I’d been awake, and he had plenty of opportunity. First thing I felt, which surprised me even in the moment, was that it suddenly became hard to breathe. That was the punctured lung. Felt like the worst pneumonia I’d ever had came over me in the space of five seconds. Just boom, suffocating on your own blood. So much that it spilled over my lips and down my chin. By the time I registered the aching waves of dull agony pulsing out of the spot on my rib cage, I was already slumping back down onto the sofa, sitting there like I was getting ready for a friday night move.
Not that I was helpless. I took maybe two seconds, tops, to accept what had happened. To understand it, and then I was able to drive my heel into his head as he tried climbing up onto me. Weirdly his broken back helped him. He sort of just bent with the blow, but it didn’t actually dislodge him. I had to kick him again to do that. And then I had to stand up and do it again and again, and I think around the fourth or fifth kick I realised I had something of a problem.
The pain didn’t really bother him.
Not when I kicked him in his pulped chest. Not when I stamped on his hand as he tried to push himself back up for the tenth time. Not even when I rolled him over and stamped on his head, struggling to aim my foot through the tears in my eyes. Even after I’d immobilised him, even after I fumbled around and found an old bike helmet, and clubbed his skull until my arm grew sore, he didn’t cry out in pain. He just kept trying to get back up.
“Fuck!” I screamed as seconds turned to minutes, which just kept ticking on. It felt like I was swinging for hours, but in truth I don’t know how long. Eventually I stopped for breath and frantically looked from one corner of the room to another, desperate for the first time in my life to see those horrible long fingers. “Take him!” I cried. “For God’s sake take him back!”
I suspect he’d been waiting and watching, because with very little delay Grenwig finally made his appearance.
Yellow eyes, clustered together like frog spawn, winked at me from a shadow under the table. They seemed self-satisfied, as they always did, but I didn’t care. The mutilated man who lay on the floor continued to bark with wet laughter, pawing at me with broken fingers. I was feeling faint, and my whole right side was burning hot and cold all at once as warm blood began to cool.
“Oh God,” I cried. “Just take him back.”
Grenwig’s hands wasted little time, and that man’s laughter grew only more hysterical as the fingers wrapped around his chest and legs and slowly towed him towards the dark. I felt a brief moment of relief as I hoped this would be the end of my mistake.
But then I felt his arms wrap around my legs.
Even broken, his strength was something special. Trapped in a bear hug, slowly being pulled towards that abyssal shadow, I began to panic. But it was far too little, and far too late. I went feet first. A feeling like nothing else I’d ever had. In the end I was clinging by the tips of my fingers to an impossible ledge. Above me was a sort of opening with no defined beginning or end, and on the other side lay my living room.
I looked down and, for the first time, saw Grenwig as a whole. In hindsight it had been a mistake to think of him as humanoid. I think I’d just decided the boogeyman should look like a man, but what floated in the strange aether beneath me was more akin to a jellyfish, or maybe a spider. I don’t know. It was dark in that void, and yet impossible clear. I could see things in there. More than just Grenwig. It defied dimensions as we understand it. It was both an ocean and a landscape. In the distance, leviathans swam through open space. I’m not even sure I was seeing based on light. When I blinked I still saw everything.
Grenwig found it all hilarious. He had a mouth, and it laughed maniacally as it peeled Alia’s brother from around my waist, leaving me free to kick and pull my way back into reality. As I slid onto the carpet of my living room, his laughter persisted.
As soon as I was out I crawled and rushed to the bathroom where I locked the door and passed out.
Grenwig’s next turn with me lasted two weeks which I think was because I made two requests. One for Alia’s brother to return from the dead, and the other for him to be taken away. Either way, I didn’t begrudge Grenwig’s games. But it did mean I didn’t get another request. I have to wait until next time. Meanwhile I’ve watched the children approach the end of the school year and I find myself wondering if they’ll age out of Grenwig or take him with them into the next teacher’s class. If he leaves them alone, will he terrorise the next lot of kids I teach?
Either way, I think Grenwig will let me double up again and that’s important because if so, I know what I’m going to do. Like I said before, I’m out of here. No more teaching. I’m cashing out. But I’ve decided, after what I did to Alia and her brother, that I can at least take Grenwig with me. He can become a permanent friend, leave the kids the hell alone. I don’t want him following them, or haunting the next bunch to come along.
I’m going to stuff my pockets so full of cash that I can build him and me a playground and he won’t ever have to bother them again.
They have enough to deal with.

submitted by ChristianWallis to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.05.26 17:41 ChristianWallis I’m a teacher, and my whole class shares an imaginary friend

It’d be wrong to say I don’t like kids. It’s adults I have more of a problem with. In my last school when I called one of the ten year old boys in my class a little bastard, he wasn’t the problem. His parents were the ones who insisted I get fired. But that boy didn’t mind me swearing at him because he knew damn well he’d keyed my car, even if I had no proof. He just thought it was funny, no different to the sort of interaction he’d have with an older sibling. On that note I wouldn’t say I like children either. Kids are little adults. They’re more truthful but only because the stakes are lower. People with jobs and mortgages tell great big tremendous lies. Kids don’t have the weight of the world on their shoulders so why lie about mistresses and promotions and why you’ve been crushing up antibiotics into your wife’s morning smoothie. Instead they just lie about where their homework is.
Kids I teach are right on the cusp of it. Some of the boys might get caught sniggering at the back while showing each other naughty little videos they don’t understand but can’t look away from, but then they go out and chase each other around. Do cartwheels. Play tag. Hide and seek. Cry if they take a particularly bad knock. Kids are weird. Got one whose dad’s in jail and he talks about it like it means nothing. His old man tried to kick a woman to death in the parking lot of a bar and won’t be out until the boy’s a teenager. Kid don’t care. Doesn’t get it. If anything he thinks it’s funny. But then last week I confiscated his novelty pencil that was the size of a cucumber and he screamed so hard he threw up all over the speckled tiles that have been glued to this floor since ‘96.
Ten is a weird age. Old enough to feel the vaguest hint of life’s problems just beneath the surface like lumps in a pillow, to question why Mommy downs three bottles of wine on a Tuesday, or why Daddy changes his shirt and hides it in the garage before coming in from work, but too young to know what’s really under the surface. These kids can feel something is wrong with the world. They just don’t know what. Not yet, anyway. They have my sympathy. Twenty-six years teaching has eroded most of everything else. I’m not particularly invested in whether these little shits become scientists or janitors. Nor am I particularly interested in helping them process their emotional luggage. If any of you want me to undo the damage you’ve done to your own kids, then you can start by paying me a hell of a lot more. But I do feel sorry for them because they don’t really know what’s going on, but unlike a five year old they can’t just fumble around in blind ignorance. They’re stuck in between worlds, one where you cry yourself to sleep at night over your parent’s divorce but still think Santa and the tooth fairy are real.
Maybe it’s different at a rich school, one where kids don’t go to food banks or where whole families don’t have to share a smartphone. I doubt it. Don’t know why. I just doubt anyone’s out there living the plot of the Berenstain bears, rich or otherwise. I used to dream of teaching at one of the big schools a couple towns over, the ones with all the funding. Oh that’d be nice. Walking into a building that doesn’t look like set dressing for the next season of True Detective. Now I just dream of getting out of this profession entirely.
Maybe if I play my cards right.
Sounds crazy to say it out loud, so I won’t. But maybe I found a way out. Well, to be exact the kids found it. Don’t know what they got. Course they fucking don’t. They’re kids. They haven’t got a clue. But I think I’m maybe thirteen weeks from another go and when that happens, you can bet your ass I’m asking for a ticket outta here. At first I planned on getting a cushy job in one of the schools a few towns over. One where the schoolbus doesn’t have to plan its route around multiple trailer parks. Now I realise I was thinking small. If I’m smart, I won’t ever have to work another day in my life.
Imagine that?
Thirteen more weeks.
Right now Grenwig is with Layla. Sweet girl but she’s smart enough for it to be a problem. The dumb ones fair the best. You wake up to something grinning at your bedroom window, it helps to have the sorta mind that doesn’t ask questions about what floor you’re living on. Layla isn’t winning a genius grant anytime soon, but I can tell it’s bothering her because deep down she knows how wrong this all is. Dark circles under the eyes. Pallid skin. Eyes that keep darting to dark corners. Sometimes she falls asleep at her desk. Sometimes she wakes up with a little jump, like something only she can see has startled her. It’s hard. Only reason she sticks it out is the same reason you or I would.
The rewards.
She got a smartphone last time. I wonder what it’ll be this time. These kids don’t ask for a lot. Toys, mainly. One of them got crazy good at football crazy quick. That makes sense. But it’s that kinda thing, you know? They don’t ask after the lottery or nothing like that because money’s a little too abstract right now. Strange thing though, as young and naive as they are they learned the rules pretty quickly. I guess Grenwig’s lessons aren’t subtle. Just look at one of my former students, Jared. Now at the time all this flew under my radar. Kid in my class lost a parent, moved away. So what? Happens. Turns out he asked for his father to get sober. Next day the poor guy got caught in the machinery at his job. CCTV footage was very popular on LiveLeaks. Makes for grim viewing. I’m not particularly handy so I never knew a lathe could do that to a human body.
Anyway, it’s not good to ask after other people. I wish my dad was this. I wish mom was that. Ooph. Alia told me that up front around the time I started asking why half the kids in my class had new iPhones and Nintendo Switches. She said it was easy to ask for things, but it was riskier to ask to change something into another thing, and downright awful to ask it to change a person in any way, no matter how small. Even that kid who got good at football played a risky game. It paid off but the other kids wouldn’t go near him for a week. They kept expecting something bad to happen to him and they didn’t want to be in the splash zone. I can’t pretend to understand the subtleties. Like the kids, I can only observe what happens to other people and learn the lessons that imparts.
Nothing about Grenwig is guaranteed. There are no certainties. Even the kids get worn down by it. Whoever has it, they’re a pariah. Risk assessment in under-elevens. Strange thing to see. But unless it’s your turn, you don’t even want to risk something as inane as a game of catch with his chosen friend. Grenwig is territorial. Possessive. Bizarre. Didn’t even believe in it until it was somehow my turn, which the kids found pretty alarming. Grenwig doesn’t like adults.
I thought it was a ghost at first. Lights coming on and off. Footsteps in the corridor outside my apartment. Pretty creepy, sharing my home with something I couldn’t see. I didn’t like it but it had only been a couple of nights and I did a good job of convincing myself there was no ghost or poltergeist. Just an overactive imagination. Yeah sure the tv channel changed and there were finger marks on my bathroom window I hadn’t put there. So what? Way at the back of my mind I’d reserved a little bit of space for the possibility of a haunting, but otherwise I remained a sceptic. Jesus, if only it was as simple as a haunting.
I don’t know if I could explain to you how it felt that first time I woke to Grenwig gently stroking my toes. Jesus. The violation of it. The feeling of a world that didn’t make sense. My eyes glared at his fingers, terrified, heart pounding, head throbbing like I’d taken a knock, and I kept waiting for it to make sense. My eyes wandered, tried to find the hands those fingers belonged to, but they just kept going. And going. And going. They stretched for metres until they disappeared into the shadow of my closet. Whole time they kept massaging the big toes. Cold as ice. I started counting the knuckles. Got to thirteen and gave up. But they were fingers. I could tell from the nails. The hair that ran along dimpled skin the colour of cement. And then just as I started to really appreciate that I was awake, 100% stone cold sober and lucid, and what I was seeing wasn’t a dream or a nightmare or some other fucking conjuration of the mind, just as I felt panic begin to flare up inside my chest like a burgeoning heart attack, those impossible long fingers withdrew into the darkness like a spider curling its legs.
I got up and threw on the lights but found my closet empty. Felt like the world was coming apart. Had to be a night terror, I decided. Hadn’t had one for decades but what else could it be? I wanted to go back to sleep, to at least try, but I was so scared I couldn’t face the dark again so I decided to stay up. Went out into the living room and turned the tv on, plopped down onto the sofa, and let my head tilt back. I might’ve drifted off again. I don’t know for sure. All I remember was the feeling as the cushion beneath me adjusted and I heard it. The sound of something tightening, like a creaking door.
I looked down and saw white bands wrapped around the entirety of the sofa. Fingers. They tightened, and the material let out a groan as the tension went up a notch. I flew upwards in a terrible panic. By the time I turned back the fingers were gone, but the indent they’d left in the sofa remained.
This repeated itself all night. Each time I felt close to drifting off, those impossibly long fingers would reach out of the darkness somewhere and make an appearance. They knocked glasses off countertops. Opened the fridge. Turned on the oven. And, whenever possible, they touched me. Stroked an ear. Tickled my nose. Slid between my fingers and tried to hold my hand. I tried to play chicken with it at one point. I stayed stock still as a greasy finger plucked at my lips and tried to find its way into my mouth, but before it met any success I flipped out and ran shrieking into the corridor outside my apartment.
Panting in the hallway, I told myself I’d never step foot in that apartment, but there was something about the way all my neighbours came to their doors one-by-one and just stared at me in my underwear and sweat-stained vest. I felt like a fucking idiot and before I knew it, I was offering muddled apologies while slinking through my front door.
By the time I got to school the next day, I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. I genuinely suspected my day was going to end with me being carted off in a straight jacket. Last people I expected to find any understanding from were my students, but when I came in looking like a sleep-deprived drunk they all stared at me in silence. And this wasn’t the slackjawed idiocy I’m sometimes used to with these kids, like that time I told them I used to have a wife. This was something else. Took me a second to decipher it. Not the sort of expression I’m used to from kids in that age group, what with half of them being miniature psychopaths.
It was sympathy. They felt sorry for me. But when I took a step forward, every single one of them scooted their chairs backward.
Just like that it clicked. I’d spent the last year watching them take turns ostracising one another and I’d written it off as just a peculiar product of childhood social dynamics. It felt cruel, and I’d tried over and over to mitigate it. To sit with the excluded kids and talk with them, try to figure it all out. But it was an enigma, all of it. If it wasn’t for the fact that this fucked up system seemed to operate on some kind of rota, I would have been forced to intervene. But as it was, the kid who was targeted would always be back with the crowd a week later, and they’d be the ones excluding someone else. But now all of that made sense. The way they were looking at me. Pity. Recognition. They knew what I’d spent the night going through, and for the last year they’d gone through it themselves one-by-one.
“You should play with Grenwig, sir,” one of the quieter girls piped up looking wide-eyed like a hostage at gunpoint, and all the other kids nodded.
“Yeah he wants to play.”
“You need to play with him.”
“He gets real impatient.”
A chorus of whispered uh huhs.
“Grenwig?” I muttered. One word. Is that what it’s called? I wondered, and all the kids nodded like they could read my mind.
There are no records of Grenwig anywhere, by the way. Good God I tried a thousand times over to find something, anything. The best I could think of was that Grenwig was a kinda boogeyman, but what does that even mean? Just a word I used to give the world a little more shape. A little more structure. I’m not sure Grenwig has much of either. The games he plays are like what a toddler or a young dog would be interested in. Basic stuff. No rules. I move something. Grenwig moves it back. Hours lost tracing the spiral of my hair, or pulling at my cheeks and face to create strange new expressions, or flicking the lights on and off. During that week I took to eating lunch in my car, largely because it was hard to be around people who couldn’t see why a glass went flying at the wall, or why I had to keep stacking plates until they were so tall they toppled over.
At least the kids gave me a head’s up. Most important warning I ever got in my life. Every kid had their own observations, some more reliable than others. Most of them boiled down to the simple fact that for seven days you belonged to Grenwig. You were a toy. A source of endless amusement for something that had the sense of humour of a three year old. Pretty much every kid agreed on one concrete thing though.
Saying no to Grenwig was dangerous.
Now I can’t say for sure but I’m positive Grenwig gave the kids more leeway. He left them alone for lunch and dinner. Bedtime games were usually quieter. But for me it was almost like part of the game was watching me go about my adult life as he did everything to fuck with me. He’d snatch at my steering wheel, giggling from the dark footwell, yellow eyes peering up from between my legs. He’d grab my phone and throw it into the middle of traffic. Or sit there tickling my neck and armpits as the principal demanded to know why my class’s behaviour was so erratic. He made it difficult. Pushed me right up to breaking point.
Eventually I did snap. I slapped his hand away as he tried to mess with me during a traffic stop. Felt like screaming at him that he was this close to getting me shot, but of course I couldn’t. Just had to sit there as this cop looked over my licence and mulled giving me a sobriety test. Couldn’t blame him. I’d been swerving all over the road until I saw the flashing lights. Didn’t help when, as he approached my pulled-over car, he saw me slapping furiously at the steering wheel while hissing,
“Stop it!” over and over.
He inevitably issued the test which I passed. The cop gave me a long narrow-eyed stare before telling me to get some sleep. He must have figured I was just a stressed mental-case instead of a drunk. And he was right. It was day six and I’d barely slept. Despite all the grave warnings from the kids about the dangers of telling Grenwig off, I drove off hoping that maybe he would just let this one go. I went to school and taught lessons as usual, but Grenwig made no appearances. I asked the kids if his little rota ever found itself wrapping up a day early and they all shook their heads like they knew bad news was coming my way, but none of them wanted to say for sure. Still, it was my first time so I ignored the look in their eyes and tried my best to focus on the hope that maybe Grenwig was going to finally leave me alone.
A feeling that dissolved in its entirety when I opened my front door and found a package on the floor. A large box, about one foot cubed. It looked like old cardboard, like what happens when it gets soaked but left out to dry. Just dingy. Its sides had been stapled together too, and that gave it a real homemade look that went the extra creepy little mile. I expected something bad. I knew the second when I went to lift it and it was too heavy that something was wrong. It just felt… well it felt like lifting an overfull bucket from the bottom. And then there was the smell, and the noises that sounded like a distant transmission of a mewing child. Tinny, like the muffled cries of someone on the other side of a very thick wall.
When I finally opened it, I found the policeman inside, familiar because of the shield and name. He… well he’d been folded, I guess is the best way I can describe it. At first I thought it was just his uniform but, well, clothes aren’t warm and obviously a folded uniform wouldn’t explain the forearm hair and skin poking out the side. I recoiled, terrified. Fell backwards onto my ass and this was when Grenwig made an appearance. His arachnid fingers curled out of the box. I’d say about a dozen of them this time, but there are always more in the dark. Out of sight. And these did what I couldn’t have brought myself to do on my own.
They unfolded the policeman. Lifted him up like a tailor showing off a suit, and the flayed skin opened up to reveal the barely recognisable outline of an adult man.
He was still alive.
And the rest of him, I soon found out, was in my bathtub. And that half was also very much alive. Thrashing and sliding as it struggled to gain a grip on the smooth ceramics, begging for its other half. Words I don’t really think were a natural fit for the stern man who’d interrogated me just ten hours ago. But then again it wasn’t really the same man. Either way, he spoke of the darkness between atoms, the infinite space where time doesn’t exist, and the endless shapes that swim the murky abyss, fleeing their cruel god. More than that, he lamented no longer being whole. Feeling himself in two places at once. He called it wrong and on that he had my agreement.
I begged Grenwig to take it away. To undo what he had done.
And that was how I used my first favour. The box and the man disappeared, dragged off to some dark corner that was out of sight. And that was the last I saw of him, although a bit of research later on revealed that while Grenwig did indeed put him back together, the poor man has been catatonic in a hospital bed ever since.
Alive, but definitely not well.
Next day the kids asked me what I’d requested. I told them I asked for a new playstation. Didn’t tell them the truth, partly because it’d traumatise them, but partly because acknowledging it even happened would traumatise me. After that I crunched the numbers. I figured out the number of kids and how often the rota would fall on me. Based on this info I booked the week off work ahead of time and well, I just waited. I tried to support the kids as best I could when it was their turn, but they didn’t really have the same problems as me. I mean… it wasn’t a holiday for them either. Each one came to school looking like they’d spent the night watching their dog die over and over. Just distraught. Ruined. Exhausted. But like I said, Grenwig generally let them eat their food, or interact with their parents and siblings without demanding attention at the worst possible time.
Eventually round two came along. The kids seemed damned relieved. As for Grenwig’s games, this time I came prepared. I’d already noticed that Grenwig only ever emerged from the shadows, and the kids corroborated that fact. So in the run up to my turn I spent a few weeks setting my bathroom up with as many lamps and torches as I could find. Wasn’t easy to eliminate all those shadows. I had a lot of sleepless nights trialling different arrangements but eventually I got one as close to perfect as I could. I figured if I could have just one or two nights of sleep it’d be damned easier to deal with him.
An hour passed before my stomach started to ache. By the time I realised what Grenwig was doing I could already feel the urge to throw up. Guess I hadn’t given him much of a choice. He wanted to play and there was only one place in that room that was still dark. Wasn’t until I threw myself out into my living room and switched off all the lights that the pain eased up, but by then I was already close to suffocating on the finger sticking out of my throat. When it finally withdrew and I took my first breath in over a minute, I collapsed to the floor, unable to do much of anything except heave and sob.
Grenwig, yellow eyes glaring at me from the space beneath my sofa, giggled. In hindsight, I’m lucky he found it funny. I think he thought it was a game of sorts. God knows what would have happened if that little stunt had made him mad. Otherwise, that second round passed without incident. At least, I wasn’t at work. It was hell, but I didn’t have to worry about driving anywhere or being out in public waiting for those wretched hands to find me. I just stayed indoors and played his weird little games, which mainly just involved me cleaning up whatever stupid thing he’d decided to make a mess of. I found it helped if I played up my exasperation. The less I reacted to his mischief, the more likely he’d escalate.
When it was all over I asked for a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately I didn’t specify the amount, which I supposed is my fault. At least the amount I won covered rent that month, even if my expectations were a little higher.
Still I figured it’d be better next time. I’d be more specific, I decided.
Best laid plans of mice and men…
You ever lost someone? Most people have. I have, for sure. More than once, too. It nearly unmade me and I was a fully grown man.
It was about a couple days before my turn that Alia experienced her first loss. Most kids it’s a hamster. If they’re unlucky, a grandparent. For her, it was her older brother. I’d taught him eleven years earlier and he was a good kid. Smart, like her. Went on to become a mechanic. His passing wasn’t anything strange or sinister. Just an accident. Jack popped off. Car crushed him. Random. Devastating. She was called out of a lesson by the principal and her parents, the three of them looking like hell. Like they’d spent a month one-on-one with Grenwig. A little reminder that not all nightmares hide in the dark, I suppose.
I don’t know why this hit me hard. I think it was probably my own experience with grief. Either way it stuck with me. Her absence, the empty chair and desk, felt hard to ignore day-after-day, knowing what she was going through. I think it’s one thing to accept that these kids’ll face circumstance. Poverty. Shit parents. Life isn’t fair. I don’t get a say in the way society says some kids get ponies and others get rickets. But there’s something about losing someone that way, just a random confluence of bad luck, that hits harder than most. I don’t know if I can explain it. It’s just Alia was already growing up at the bottom rung of our not-very-invisible class system. Hadn’t she had her fair share of bad luck already? I mean, fuck, even Grenwig grants favours! Even that wretched monster isn’t all bad. But an accident like what happened to Alia’s brother. There’s no upside. It’s just shit.
Thing is… like I said, my turn was coming up, and I mean, the way I saw it, the boy was already dead, right? Wasn’t like he could die getting wrapped three times around a lathe? Worst had already come to pass. I decided to do something that, even at the time, I figured to be pretty stupid. But if there was a chance it could work, well… I had to try.
Round three with Grenwig went real easy. I preemptively bought a bunch of jigsaws and left them half done. He honed in on them straight away. I did as much as I could in a single sitting, turned around, turned back and he’d muddled them all up. I’d play up my anger and irritation, then go back to it. Drank a lot of coffee and whiskey. Watched a lot of movies. Grenwig loved it. Broke a couple plates and mugs too. It wasn’t all plain sailing. Woke up one night to find him licking my neck and had to rush to the hospital to get the chemical burn treated. Still, for the most part the week went by without much incident because, well, I had something in mind. Couldn’t get it out. This idea, I had to act on it. And the promise of what it would mean if it worked meant I practically skated through that week with a smile on my face.
At least I had the sense to specify that the boy return to me. Not Alia. I thought if anything went wrong, it’d be best if she didn’t have to see it.
It was four in the morning when I was awoken by a sound that had slipped into my dreams as a kind of creaking door. But as I opened my eyes and reality reasserted itself I realised that what I was actually hearing was a little more like gravel being trod on. Strange. Distant. Quiet. I held my breath, if only so that I could hear better, but it seemed to only amp up the sound of blood rushing through my ears. White noise. It’s so hard to perceive what’s there sometimes, isn’t it? All I wanted was for my ears or eyes to report something useful to me without having to get out of the safety of my own bed. Instead all I got were dim shadows and the sea-like susurrations of my own breathing.
At least I could ascertain I wasn’t alone in my apartment. Over time, the longer I waited, the more sure of that I became. Something was out there, in the corridor between my bedroom and living room at a guess, moving with the kind of irregular rhythm that belongs only to living things. This wasn’t the wind or some pipe settling. Something was moving, and it was moving in my direction. Low to the ground. A noise I couldn’t put any shape to. Wrong. All wrong. Made me think of breaking pencils. Grinding teeth. In the end I couldn’t help myself. I got up and called out. Who’s there? The words didn’t feel real to me. The world took on the realer-than-real distortion that comes with terror, coupled with a prickling white heat at the nape of the neck. For a moment I swore I was outside my own body staring down at myself from above. It was too much. But that sound was clearer than ever before. There was no pretending this ghost wasn’t real.
I turned on the light.
Alia’s brother screamed and crawled away from the light, neglected whimpers left behind like a trail that led me to the living room where I found him curled around a table leg. He was alive but not whole. Guess I hadn’t given much thought to what a car would do to a man’s chest. Every breath was a strange orchestra. Too many sounds to disentangle. Bone on bone. Crumpled ribs expanding, or at least trying to, and drawing oxygen into blood filled lungs. Moss had grown across his face, even in the short time he’d been in the ground.
A hand, ice cold, shot out and grabbed my wrist and I cried out, but he didn’t let go. He followed as I tried to push myself away, his bottom half trailing along, limp and misaligned with his torso. Felt like pulling a sack of meat across an ice rink.
“Don’t send me back,” he whimpered. “Don’t send me back.”
Eventually my foot hit the sofa and I fell onto it. He dragged himself using his hands over to the side so that we were face-to-face before I even had time to push myself upright.
“He likes you,” he whispered and I recoiled at the smell of his breath. “There are so few things in the dark that know how to leave. But he does. Don’t… don’t ask him to send me back. Please?”
For the first time my mind started working. Was he talking about Grenwig? I wondered. But of course, I told myself, who else?
“What… what’s over there?” I asked.
He went to answer before the words choked in his mouth and his face twisted into a mask of melancholic agony. Trying to utter something, he burst into painful sobs.
“Don’t make me go back,” was all he could manage to say. “Don’t make me go back! Don’t make me go back! Please please please don’t send me back there you don’t know what they do to us!”
“I don’t… I don’t know what to do,” I stammered.
The boy grabbed me and pulled me close. Unsure of how to comfort him, I let him hold me in an embrace.
“We aren’t the same when it’s done with us.”
“What?”
I never saw him take the knife from the kitchen, but I suppose he’d been in my home for longer than I’d been awake, and he had plenty of opportunity. First thing I felt, which surprised me even in the moment, was that it suddenly became hard to breathe. That was the punctured lung. Felt like the worst pneumonia I’d ever had came over me in the space of five seconds. Just boom, suffocating on your own blood. So much that it spilled over my lips and down my chin. By the time I registered the aching waves of dull agony pulsing out of the spot on my rib cage, I was already slumping back down onto the sofa, sitting there like I was getting ready for a friday night move.
Not that I was helpless. I took maybe two seconds, tops, to accept what had happened. To understand it, and then I was able to drive my heel into his head as he tried climbing up onto me. Weirdly his broken back helped him. He sort of just bent with the blow, but it didn’t actually dislodge him. I had to kick him again to do that. And then I had to stand up and do it again and again, and I think around the fourth or fifth kick I realised I had something of a problem.
The pain didn’t really bother him.
Not when I kicked him in his pulped chest. Not when I stamped on his hand as he tried to push himself back up for the tenth time. Not even when I rolled him over and stamped on his head, struggling to aim my foot through the tears in my eyes. Even after I’d immobilised him, even after I fumbled around and found an old bike helmet, and clubbed his skull until my arm grew sore, he didn’t cry out in pain. He just kept trying to get back up.
“Fuck!” I screamed as seconds turned to minutes, which just kept ticking on. It felt like I was swinging for hours, but in truth I don’t know how long. Eventually I stopped for breath and frantically looked from one corner of the room to another, desperate for the first time in my life to see those horrible long fingers. “Take him!” I cried. “For God’s sake take him back!”
I suspect he’d been waiting and watching, because with very little delay Grenwig finally made his appearance.
Yellow eyes, clustered together like frog spawn, winked at me from a shadow under the table. They seemed self-satisfied, as they always did, but I didn’t care. The mutilated man who lay on the floor continued to bark with wet laughter, pawing at me with broken fingers. I was feeling faint, and my whole right side was burning hot and cold all at once as warm blood began to cool.
“Oh God,” I cried. “Just take him back.”
Grenwig’s hands wasted little time, and that man’s laughter grew only more hysterical as the fingers wrapped around his chest and legs and slowly towed him towards the dark. I felt a brief moment of relief as I hoped this would be the end of my mistake.
But then I felt his arms wrap around my legs.
Even broken, his strength was something special. Trapped in a bear hug, slowly being pulled towards that abyssal shadow, I began to panic. But it was far too little, and far too late. I went feet first. A feeling like nothing else I’d ever had. In the end I was clinging by the tips of my fingers to an impossible ledge. Above me was a sort of opening with no defined beginning or end, and on the other side lay my living room.
I looked down and, for the first time, saw Grenwig as a whole. In hindsight it had been a mistake to think of him as humanoid. I think I’d just decided the boogeyman should look like a man, but what floated in the strange aether beneath me was more akin to a jellyfish, or maybe a spider. I don’t know. It was dark in that void, and yet impossible clear. I could see things in there. More than just Grenwig. It defied dimensions as we understand it. It was both an ocean and a landscape. In the distance, leviathans swam through open space. I’m not even sure I was seeing based on light. When I blinked I still saw everything.
Grenwig found it all hilarious. He had a mouth, and it laughed maniacally as it peeled Alia’s brother from around my waist, leaving me free to kick and pull my way back into reality. As I slid onto the carpet of my living room, his laughter persisted.
As soon as I was out I crawled and rushed to the bathroom where I locked the door and passed out.
Grenwig’s next turn with me lasted two weeks which I think was because I made two requests. One for Alia’s brother to return from the dead, and the other for him to be taken away. Either way, I didn’t begrudge Grenwig’s games. But it did mean I didn’t get another request. I have to wait until next time. Meanwhile I’ve watched the children approach the end of the school year and I find myself wondering if they’ll age out of Grenwig or take him with them into the next teacher’s class. If he leaves them alone, will he terrorise the next lot of kids I teach?
Either way, I think Grenwig will let me double up again and that’s important because if so, I know what I’m going to do. Like I said before, I’m out of here. No more teaching. I’m cashing out. But I’ve decided, after what I did to Alia and her brother, that I can at least take Grenwig with me. He can become a permanent friend, leave the kids the hell alone. I don’t want him following them, or haunting the next bunch to come along.
I’m going to stuff my pockets so full of cash that I can build him and me a playground and he won’t ever have to bother them again.
They have enough to deal with.

submitted by ChristianWallis to u/ChristianWallis [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 13:51 KiraTrain Stained Cups Response

Small vent - As someone who ended up with a stained cup wubby's reply hurt a little. Granted I did not use a cup I care about deeply, it still got stained. I'm fine with staining from normal wear and tear that comes with things like tubberware. However I quite literally used the flavor a single time with not even 2 scoops and both the white lid and the cup are yellowed. Deep cleaning did a good deal but that lid will not recover. It's frustrating that he had the flavor to try for weeks prior and never mentioned this issue. Granted maybe they may have changed to natural colors after he sampled and approved but that's even worse. I personally can not have a good deal of natural color substitutes in drinks due to allergies. I wish gamersupps would have had even though slightest thought to announce the transition or let him know before this.

submitted by KiraTrain to PaymoneyWubby [link] [comments]

2023.05.25 06:54 amelanchier_ Is this a gerbil?

Hi! I saw this cute thing on xhs and was wondering if it was a gerbil? It looks like a hamster but it’s fluffy and has a tail. If it’s not a gerbil does anyone know what it is? Thank you!!

submitted by amelanchier_ to gerbil [link] [comments]